Student Loans

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

Labour is failing young people. Youth unemployment is up since Labour took office—it is now higher than in the eurozone. There are more people not in education, employment or training since Labour took office—now nearly 1 million. There is a midlife crisis in our economy, too. More than 2 million people aged between 50 and 64 are on out-of-work benefits. The deal for young people is bad, and it has been made worse by this Chancellor.

Too many young people are coming out of university with excessive debt, and they do not know what the future terms of their borrowing will be. If a private provider were to provide loans in this way, where someone did not know when they signed up what the interest rates, repayment deal or income threshold would be, that provider would be unable to enforce it—it would be unlawful. When it comes to this Government and the Chancellor freezing the threshold, for some reason those on the Government Benches think that is okay.

We have heard from Government Members who said that they joined the Labour party to fight for a better deal. We heard from the hon. Member for Kettering (Rosie Wrighting), who said that she is here to fight for her generation—generation Z. Is she not bitterly disappointed at the limp response from her Government now that they have power and can do something about intergenerational justice as she sees it? Instead, Labour Members come into this House to defend their Government increasing debt for students and freezing the earnings threshold at which those young people have to start repaying.

[Mr Charters]

I am on plan 2, and I had a targeted maintenance grant. I will ask the hon. Member a simple question: does he think it is a fairer system to have targeted maintenance grants in it—yes or no?

[Joe Robertson]

Let me ask the hon. Member a question, because his party is in government, he has power and he can change things. Does he think the system is fair? No, he does not, because he has already told this House that it is not. Is he not bitterly disappointed that his own Government have not got a plan to change it? If he does not like the system that existed before July 2024, why are his Government not changing it?

The Opposition have brought forward a plan, which we are debating today. It would mean that those on plan 2 student loans will not end up paying more and more above RPI, so the Government will not be making money out of them having a loan. That is a meaningful change. The Government can go further because they are in power. I hope that our party, by the time of the next election, will be able to offer more, but we have already announced that we would abolish stamp duty, helping young people. We have already announced that we would scrap bad courses that offer no real additional employment prospects for people who do them, other than leaving them saddled with debt.

It would seem that most Labour Members have history degrees, given the amount of time they have spent speaking about the last decade, but we are talking about the system that exists now. When I went to university, I accepted the principle that young people who went to university did not contribute enough to the education that they received. Under the Blair Government, undergraduates were asked to contribute more. Clearly there is a benefit for society in having an educated and graduate workforce to take up jobs as teachers and doctors, for instance, but there is also a great benefit for those who take up those jobs, because of the higher earnings involved. That is a principle I supported. It is a principle most people supported, and I still support it. However, we have plainly reached a tipping point for too many students. The personal debt is so high that they have no real prospect of ever paying it back. Some have degrees that give them no real opportunity ever to earn more than they would have earned had they been in a good apprenticeship—a good apprenticeship that the last Government gave them the opportunity to enter into.

[Vikki Slade (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

My son is studying for a degree in musical theatre performance, and is due to graduate in a few weeks’ time. That may be something that the hon. Member thinks has no value. My son will probably spend a certain amount of time working tables and trying to make a living while he progresses in his career. He would not be able to be of use to people as a future teacher, a future councillor, a future communications officer or, perhaps, a future politician without that degree. Is the hon. Member suggesting that his degree has no value?

[Joe Robertson]

I am sure that the hon. Lady’s son’s degree is an excellent degree and that, hopefully, he will gain an excellent job, but that is not the case for every student. Too many students in this country are saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt. They do not know their repayment terms because they change, and some of them have degrees that will give them no additional prospect of a job to allow them to repay their debt. I hope that most of us can agree on that principle. It is therefore perfectly legitimate to ask this question: should we be putting an end to some of these institutions and courses when they are doing nothing for the young people involved?

This is not a deregulated market. In order to be able to offer a degree, an institution has to be licensed. There is no groundbreaking idea behind saying that certain courses are not of degree quality, and that the public should not be subsidising those courses. Governments already make decisions about that. It is the Conservative party that is proposing—for some reason the Labour Government do not want to do it—that young people who are sold a future that simply does not exist should not be saddled with debt, and the taxpayer should not subsidise them.

[Several hon. Members rose—]