Guide to Phoning Your MSPs

Sample call script

(the same approach can be taken in any subsequent zoom calls or meetings)

‘Hello, my name is [YOUR NAME] and I am a constituent of [MSP NAME]. I’m calling to express my concerns about mass redundancies at the University of Edinburgh…’

Share your story:

  • What we need is not so much for members to share the facts and figures of this dispute, but rather for members to share their fears, anxiety and anger.

  • Share the impact being made redundant will have or is having on you and your colleagues, your health, your family/loved ones/community. Share your fears for future students, the future of your discipline, and the reputation of the university.

Remind MSPs that the cuts are unnecessary:

  • The University of Edinburgh is an extremely wealthy institution and has ample reserves to weather any downturn in income.

Explain that we are listing all MSPs on our website, with their statements/supportive photos, and ask if they will be willing to take a photo with our sign and send it for our website.

  • They can email their statement and photo to you or (preferably) direct to the branch at ucu@ed.ac.uk

Ask them to write to the Minister for Higher Education, Ben Macpherson, with two asks:

What if my MSP starts asking me lots of questions I can’t answer!? 

It’s totally fine to say you don’t know the answer to something!

Here are some facts and figures if you want to go into more detail.

  • Senior management have embarked on an extreme and rapid reduction of £140m in the University’s overall budget to be achieved by 2026-27, including a catastrophic £90m from cuts to staff

  • Hundreds of jobs have already been lost, Joint Unions estimate that as many as 1800 may eventually be cut

  • UoE is one of the wealthiest universities in the UK with net assets of £2.7bn, and reserves of £0.5bn, and has sufficient resources to rebalance income and expenditure without massive staff cuts

  • In all recent years, UoE has registered a surplus of income over expenditure

  • University leadership are side-lining Senate, which is the supreme academic body of the university and which should thus have a say over the massive restructuring that is taking place. In May 2025, a supermajority of Senate passed a motion of No Confidence in the University Executive over its approach to cuts and finances. Senior Leadership have carried on regardless.

  • University leadership has not presented members of the University’s Court with detailed workings behind the budgets presented, nor the details of management accounts necessary to form a complete picture of the budgetary situation. It has not explained to Court how such a radical loss of jobs could be undertaken without losing significant income from labour-intensive core research and teaching.

  • University leadership is also ignoring the Convenor of Scottish Parliament’s Education, Children and Young People Committee, Douglas Ross, who asked for modelling of the cuts’ likely impacts on the City of Edinburgh (4 June).

  • Many of the agendas, papers, and minutes of the Estates Committee have been closed to public scrutiny. In the context of the Gillies Report findings on transparency failures in financial management at the University of Dundee, comparable secrecy at Edinburgh since 2021 raises profound concerns about the critical risks and blunders that the university’s closed papers might be hiding.

You can ask MSPs to contact the branch at ucu@ed.ac.uk if there are specific questions you cannot answer.