John Swinney, Scotland’s deputy first minister, has promised that EU students will still receive free tuition at Scottish universities after Brexit, at a potential cost of £300m.

Swinney matched a similar pledge from the universities minister at Westminster, Jo Johnson, who said this week that EU students arriving in autumn 2017 would be allowed to stay at English universities for the duration of their courses, and be eligible for loans and grants.

But Swinney, who is also Scotland’s education secretary, said UK ministers had not yet guaranteed that EU students would be granted visas to allow them to stay for the full duration of their courses, which can last up to five years.

He said EU students should also have access to post-study work visas. That policy was scrapped by the previous Tory-Lib Dem coalition in London but is being reassessed in a new pilot project for short-term post-study visas at a handful of English universities.

There is uncertainty over the future of EU students after Amber Rudd, the home secretary, outlined plans for two-tier systems for less prestigious universities and courses. Other UK ministers have suggested that the rights of EU citizens after Brexit would depend on how UK citizens living elsewhere in the EU were treated.

“They are not cards to be played,” Swinney told the Scottish National party’s annual conference in Glasgow. “They are human beings. To use them as negotiating chips is obscene and we will have no part of it.”

The conference had already voted to devolve control over post-study work visas to the Scottish parliament after the controversy over the deportation threat facing an Australian family, the Brains, who came to Scotland in 2011 on a post-study visa that was withdrawn soon after they arrived.

Swinney has been under mounting pressure from universities, teaching unions and the National Union of Students to guarantee that EU students would get free places at Scottish universities. That pressure intensified after Johnson’s announcement on Monday.

The policy, which is required under EU law because Scottish residents get free places, costs the Scottish government about £75m a year.

About 13,500 EU students have places at present, and Scottish university undergraduate degrees normally take four years, with medicine courses lasting five years. That suggests the policy will cost at least £300m, assuming student numbers do not drop following the UK’s decision in June to leave the EU.

In further policy announcements, the SNP conference also heard Shona Robison, the Scottish health minister, pledge £30m for the Children’s Hospice Association Scotland (Chas) to expand its services over the next five years. Michael Matheson, the justice secretary, announced £665,000 over the next two years to allow the Scottish Women’s Rights Centre to expand its services for women suffering domestic and sexual violence across the country.

In one of the liveliest debates of the conference so far, the Scottish government’s Brexit minister, Michael Russell, said Scotland would not be “spoken for” during negotiations for the UK to leave the EU, as delegates considered a motion on whether the country should prepare for a second independence referendum “if no viable solution to safeguard our membership [of the EU] as part of the UK exists”.

Tabled by a former Yes Scotland adviser and SNP Holyrood candidate, Toni Giugliano, the resolution, which gave delegates their only opportunity to debate independence on the main conference floor, attracted passionate contributions from both sides, including a number from older members complaining they had not been picked to speak against it.

Speaking for the resolution, Russell said: “We have to go into these negotiations as a nation: we have to speak, discuss and act as a nation, and that is what we will do at every stage. We’ll go into the negotiations to speak about them, not to be spoken for. We will not accept the arrogant assumption that we can sit in the corner while someone else speaks on the behalf of the vital interests of Scotland.”

Earlier in the day, the SNP reacted angrily when a leaked list of the membership of Theresa May’s Brexit committee revealed that the Scottish secretary, David Mundell, would only attend “as required”.



Referring to comments by Nicola Sturgeon about the possibility of a second independence referendum, Russell said: “The first minister stressed in what she said yesterday that it’s absolutely vital that we look after our national interest, and I will not be told what that national interest is by [Scottish Conservative leader] Ruth Davidson or [Scottish Labour leader] Kezia Dugdale or [Brexit secretary at Westminster] David Davis or Boris Johnson. We’ve been in this party long enough to know what the national interest is.”

Earlier in the debate, the SNP MP and justice spokeswoman Joanna Cherry challenged Westminster, saying: “We need to make it very clear to Ruth Davidson and her nasty rightwing colleagues down south that no amount of hectoring and bullying will prevent us holding a second independence referendum if necessary.”