Student Loans: Review

Lord Londesborough Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[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.

[Lord Londesborough (CB)]

My Lords, in England alone, outstanding student debt now stands at £270 billion and is forecast to reach £500 billion by the late 2040s. With respect to the nation’s balance sheet, how much of this total debt do we realistically expect to be repaid? What, therefore, are the net liability implications for keeping to our fiscal rules?