Student Loans

Danny Beales Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier]

My hon. Friend says it better than I could. There is a trust relationship, and in the case of student loans, students have nowhere else to go for that money. They signed up on certain terms, and those terms have been changed by successive Governments, and the latest threshold freeze is just another one of those breaches of trust between the Government and those who trust them in taking out a loan.

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

I thank the Committee for its work and for the report. I completely agree with the Chair’s presentation of the level of mistrust among graduates and learners when it comes to the broken system. Does she agree with me that this is not simply a communications issue? It is not about telling people more clearly how bad a deal they have. Fundamentally, this is a broken system—a bad deal that is having massive intergenerational impacts. Does she agree that we need a full and thorough review of the student finance and loans system?

[Dame Meg Hillier]

It is not only my hon. Friend, I and the Committee who agree on that—it is the Government too. The Secretary of State for Education herself has said there are problems and previous Ministers have called it a broken system. There is a long way to move from a broken system to one that is fair, and the focus of our recommendations is on those who are currently paying back a loan. It is difficult to right all the wrongs for those people, but we think pulling back on the threshold freeze would be an important step for them. I absolutely agree that there needs to be proper long-term thinking about how we fund education and how the loans book is structured, and we need to provide information to people. As it is now, the system is not working.