Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 15 November 2016 to Question 52361, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of the student loan repayment threshold freeze on those students who depend on student loans or other financial assistance to fund their studies.

The Government published a full Equality Analysis of the impact of freezing the student loan repayment threshold on 25 November 2015. This followed a public consultation that took place from 22 July 2015 to 14 October 2015.

All borrowers whose earnings are above the repayment threshold will pay around £6 per week more (in nominal terms) by 2020/21. Those individuals with the lowest lifetime earnings will be affected the least, because they will either never earn above the earnings threshold, or will only do so for a limited period of the loan’s life.

The full Equality Analysis can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/479559/bis-15-635-freezing-student-loan-repayment-threshold-equality-analysis.pdf.