Student Loans: Review Debate
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Baroness Garden of Frognal
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Student Loans: Review
Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
No we are not, and nor should we, which is why we have made increasing access and participation a major pillar of our reforms of higher education. Despite the student loan system, we have seen an increase in the numbers of young people going to university. We now need to close the gap between those who come from advantaged backgrounds and those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds, which has stubbornly remained. The student finance system removes any upfront fees from students to ensure that anybody who could benefit from higher education can.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, said, the student finance system is broken. Students face soaring repayments that they never signed up for. May I suggest, for instance, that public sector workers—doctors, nurses, teachers, members of the Armed Forces, civil servants, and so on—who will never earn the eye-watering salaries of the private sector, have their loans written off after, say, 10 years of public service? Meanwhile, how about a complete revamp and building a cross-party consensus on what a fairer system would be?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
To be clear, once again, the level of debt does not determine the level of repayments that students make. To suggest that it does confuses and misleads those thinking about going to university. I take the point that has been made recently about the pressure of student loan repayments. As a Government, we have had to set priorities in the 18 months we have been in power. We have chosen to stabilise the finances of our universities, introduce maintenance grants, increase the maintenance support for students, take action to reduce the unacceptably high numbers of young people who are neither earning nor learning—let alone getting the chance to go to university—and reverse the decline in young people starting apprenticeships. That is a pretty fair set of priorities.