Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate her department has made of annual taxpayer write-offs resulting from unrecovered student loan debt issued to non-UK citizens.

The total amount written off from unrecovered student loan debt issued to borrowers who were non-UK nationals in the 2025/26 financial year was £29 million, to the nearest million, of which 82% was written off due to death of the borrower or the borrower reaching 65 years of age.

An additional £40 million was written off in loans to borrowers of unknown nationality, which could be UK or non-UK nationals. The nationality of all borrowers is checked and validated during the application process. There are a small number of records listed as ‘unknown’, mainly in postgraduate borrower records, which reflect legacy data quality issues in this field in older loan records

The reasons for cancelled or written-off loans include statutory cancellations and write-offs (including those arising from the age of the borrower and eligible Access to Higher Education loan write-offs), death of the borrower, disability, trivial balances and losses through fraud (including phishing).