Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will publish an updated assessment of the RAB charge taking into account announcements in the Summer Budget 2015; and what estimate he has made since that Budget on the level of RAB charge in each of the next five years.

The RAB charge is an estimate and will always fluctuate. Switching grants to loans increases the aggregated RAB charge. We are consulting on freezing the repayment threshold, which may mean that overall the RAB charge would reduce.

My Department publishes an updated estimate of the RAB charge each year, close to the time of the publication of BIS accounts. The most recent estimate of the 15/16 RAB charge was published on 14 July 2015. The estimate, together with an updated simplified version of the model for calculating the RAB charge can be found here:

http://tinyurl.com/stepmodel

An updated assessment of the RAB charge will be published next summer alongside BIS accounts for 2015-16.