Sale of Student Loans: Regulation Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Steve Rotheram
Main Page: Steve Rotheram (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)Department Debates - View all Steve Rotheram's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(7 years, 9 months ago)
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Joseph Johnson
As I said, as a result of this privatisation process, investors will gain no right to change the terms and conditions of the student loans they hold, so students will not be impacted by the sale.
Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
I am worried that the Minister seems reluctant to agree to the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), which would assure students that the terms will not be changed in the future.
Joseph Johnson
I have just given exactly those assurances. After the sale of this part of the student loan book, terms and conditions will not change as a result of any actions by the investors who go on to own them.
The sale process we have launched covers loans issued under the previous system, which operated before 2012. Specifically, the loans in scope are those issued by English local authorities only, and which entered repayment between 2002 and 2006. A loan enters repayment the April after the student leaves his or her course, so most of the loans in the scope of the sale were taken out between 1998 and 2002. Some loans taken out after that date might also be in scope if they entered repayment in 2006. Loans issued by the devolved Administrations are not in scope, and nor are loans to EU borrowers, who became eligible to apply for a student loan from an English local authority only in 2006.