Student Loans
Debate between Luke Charters and Neil O'Brien(3 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Neil O’Brien
Yes, and I am grateful for that question. Under our proposed reforms, four fifths—80%—of plan 2 graduates would benefit and pay less over their lifetime. The hon. Gentleman can look up all this stuff on the IFS website if he wants to check.
There are so many personal stories here. The other day, one doctor was recounting how she graduated with £75,000 of debt, has worked hard for years and has paid off every year, but she now owes £90,000.
Neil O’Brien
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell me why he thinks that is fair.
Mr Charters
The hon. Gentleman referenced the IFS report. He will know that it has costed his proposals and that for the plan 2 cohort there would be a capital cost of £30 billion to £40 billion—I believe that could be a gaping hole. It is a seriously uncosted policy, is it not?
Neil O’Brien
If the hon. Gentleman reads to the end of the IFS report, he will see that it costs our proposal in single-digit billions, and we have explained exactly how we will pay for it—I will come to that in a moment—so there is no gaping hole whatsoever. No wonder so many despair, with more broken promises from the Government and ever-rising debt, and no promise of action at any particular time.
How we would pay for our proposal—this goes to the hon. Gentleman’s question—is equally important. Since the last Government created the longitudinal education outcomes dataset, we have had much better data on which degrees do—or do not—provide economic value for students and taxpayers. Economic value is not the only value put on higher education, or any kind of education, but rather than simply pushing more young people towards courses that the Government’s own data show us do not benefit them—they do not help them, and they leave them feeling like they have been mis-sold and betrayed, with a lot of debt and nothing much to show for it—we need to have a rethink. The current approach is not working.
Since the election, youth unemployment has risen to levels significantly above the eurozone’s for the first time in a generation. That is mainly as a result of the Government’s decision to target lower-paid people for tax increases and to increase regulation, but it is not helped by the Government’s unbalanced approach to skills, based on an endless expansion of university courses whether they are any good or not.