Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the Institute for Fiscal Studies' estimate that raising the Plan 2 repayment threshold to £31,200 and indexing it to earnings would cost the Exchequer in the region of £3 billion for the 2022-23 cohort.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies utilise a different model to calculate their estimates on student loan costs. This model is known to be substantially more optimistic about graduates' mid-career earnings than the department’s model.

It is important that we maintain a sustainable student finance system that is fair to taxpayers while continuing to support access to higher education for students from all backgrounds. To this end, the government keeps all aspects of the student finance system, including student loan repayment thresholds, under review.

Over time, this has led to reforms being made to student loan terms. Such reforms take into account factors such as macroeconomic conditions, demographic trends and the participation rate in higher education at the time.