Student Loans

Rebecca Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Georgia Gould]

We want young people to have a choice: to go to university, to study, to take up an apprenticeship or to earn and learn. We want that range of routes to be available and for young people to have high-quality careers education, so that they know what the opportunities are in their local communities.

We want higher education providers to go further to give their students the best course and employment outcomes, ensuring that the sector remains globally competitive. The Government are committed to ensuring that higher education is open to all who have the ability and the desire to pursue it. In the 2028-29 academic year, we will be reintroducing targeted, means-tested maintenance grants of up to £1,000 a year, increasing the cash in students’ pockets without increasing their debt. To help students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, we are already delivering on a commitment to future-proof maintenance loans by increasing them in line with forecast inflation every academic year to try to ensure that support keeps pace with financial pressures. In the academic year 2026-27, care leavers will become automatically eligible to receive the maximum rate of maintenance loans, which will provide vital extra support for one of the most vulnerable groups in society.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

I welcome support for people from the most vulnerable groups who are heading to university, but will the Minister acknowledge that by enabling those groups to take the maximum amount of support, the Government are also enabling them to have the maximum amount of debt at the end of their university careers? A frequent problem throughout all this has been the fact that either the people in the middle who do not quite get the support that they need or those at the far end of the system who do need support are saddled with the most debt, because they will not have the parental assistance that would help them to leverage against the loan repayments for the rest of their careers.

[Georgia Gould]

I think it important to make it clear—some people watching the debate will be worried about this—that these are not normal loans, in that young people who are not earning, or are earning below the threshold, do not have to pay anything. In the long term, if they have not earned enough by the end of their careers, they do not have to pay the whole amount, and they do not have to pass that on to future generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Rosie Wrighting]

I do not think it has been talked about enough in this debate, or in the debate more widely, just how much is added on for students who have to take out a large maintenance loan because they come from a low-income family. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that.

When maintenance grants were scrapped by the Conservatives, that cost did not disappear.

[Rebecca Smith]

The hon. Lady is giving an excellent speech, but there is a whole cohort of plan 1 students who experienced the exact situation that she is describing. In 1997, Tony Blair said that he would not introduce tuition fees. In 1998, he did, and the Labour party then also scrapped maintenance grants. I was 16 in 1997 and was suddenly faced with needing to pay fees and get a loan in order to go to university, and had no family support to afford it. It is important that we recognise that it was the Labour Government who did that in 1998, having said that they would not. We can give just as many examples of decisions that the previous Labour Government made as we can of those made by the previous Government.

[Rosie Wrighting]

I was born in 1997, so the hon. Lady will forgive me if I cannot recollect that. I do not think that graduates are arguing that we should not pay. There is an understanding that graduates should pay for their degrees; it is the scale and fairness within the system that I want to highlight.

When maintenance grants were scrapped, the cost did not disappear; it was simply shifted. It was shifted on to students and turned into debt, and the burden was put on those from the lowest-income families. The very policy that enabled working-class kids to go to university gave us the highest debt as soon as we left. That is not fairness, and that is not opportunity. It is generational inequality designed into a system that disproportionately impacts people who do not have a savings account waiting for them when they turn 18, who do not have the money for a house deposit, and who cannot ask for help for childcare.

That is why I welcome this Government taking steps to strengthen maintenance support, including through the return of maintenance grants. If the Conservatives truly cared about those students, I would have expected them to welcome that.