Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of removing student number controls for alternative providers of degree-level courses on national levels of student debt.

The majority of Alternative Providers remain subject to student number controls, with the exception of nine (as at 12th April 2016) alternative providers that have their own degree awarding powers. It is not possible to determine the impact on national levels of student debt – as any students recruited by these 9 providers may instead have been recruited by providers in the publicly funded sector, none of which are subject to student number controls.