Student Loan Repayment Plans Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Education
Julie Minns
Main Page: Julie Minns (Labour - Carlisle)Department Debates - View all Julie Minns's debates with the Department for Education
(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Jas Athwal
I wholeheartedly agree. Some of those suggestions have made me cringe. University enriches our society, expands horizons and fuels innovation, and today’s young people deserve to have the same choices as those who now seek to restrict them. It is our duty to reform a flawed system that is unfairly trapping millions of young people in debt. Student loans were presented as an investment; for too many, they now feel like a sentence.
Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, and he has set out comprehensively the issues that we look to the Government to examine. Does he agree that the Government have begun to take very welcome steps in reforming student finance, in particular the changes to the plan 5 loan system? We are looking for the same consideration when it comes to plan 2 loans.
Jas Athwal
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I agree that the Government need to be applauded for doing a lot of things right, but we are asking them to go further. For many, especially those on plan 2, their loan feels like a sentence—a sentence that lasts 30 years, a sentence that previous generations never faced on this scale, and a sentence that shapes life decisions, from postgraduate study to starting a family.
We cannot build a confident, dynamic economy on graduates’ unrest—once quiet, but now hard to ignore. We cannot speak of opportunity while allowing aspiration to accumulate compound interest. We say that those with the broadest shoulders must bear the greatest burden, so let us ensure that that principle applies here. Graduates are not asking for special treatment; they are asking for fairness and consistency. This House should listen and act now.