Student Loans Company Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Diana Johnson
Main Page: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)Department Debates - View all Diana Johnson's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Joseph Johnson
My hon. Friend is right that the income-contingent student loan repayment system has made a huge expansion of access to higher education possible. I have referred to this statistic several times while speaking at the Dispatch Box: young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are 43% more likely to go to university or other higher education today than they were in 2009-10, which is a direct result of successive Governments deciding to share the cost of higher education equitably between students and the general taxpayer.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
Will the Minister have another go at the question put to him by the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, as to exactly why our students have to pay such a high rate of interest compared with those in other countries?
Joseph Johnson
Many hon. Members are under the impression that all students in the repayment period are paying a 6% interest rate, which is of course wrong. Only between 2% and 5% of students in that period are paying rates of about 6.1%. Most students in the repayment period are paying somewhere between RPI and RPI plus 3. That takes us from RPI, which is roughly 3%, all the way to around 6.1%. Students are paying a spectrum of interest rates, and only those earning more than £42,000 in the repayment period will be paying the high rate of interest that has caught the imagination. From the statistics I have, that represents between 2% and 5% of students.