Speaking to LBC’s Henry Riley, Dame Meg Hillier said that “the door is still open” to reversing the plans to freeze the threshold at which the loans are paid back
Student loans were ‘essentially mis-sold’ to millions of teenagers, the Treasury Select Committee chair has told LBC as she raised the prospect of a reform of the controversial system.
Speaking to LBC’s Henry Riley, Dame Meg Hillier said that “the door is still open” to reversing the plans to freeze the threshold at which the loans are paid back.
She told Henry that information provided to those receiving the tuition fee loans was “shockingly inaccurate”.
Dame Meg said: “Students, or pre-students… were not really given proper information about what that would mean for their income and expenditure later in life.
“And of course, for most people applying to university, you can’t do it without a loan. So they were rather stuck in that position.
“From now on, the Government is going to provide much clearer information, including modelling what sort of income you might get in a job and how much of that would be paid out.
“But that’s only going to affect new students and new graduates. It doesn’t really do anything to affect the people we were looking at, which was particularly what’s called the Plan 2 loans.”
Pointing to the high interest rates paid on Plan 2 loans, Dame Meg added: “You know, not only are you paying this very expensive student loan back at the rate— the way it was, this one was configured under previous governments was very punitive compared with some of the other loans that have been laid out.
“And you’ve also got high rents if you’re renting. You’re struggling to get on the housing ladder in many parts of the country, if that’s what you want to do.
“And many of your generation will also be having children and having to pay for that. So everything is piling on at once, and it seems really very disappointing that the government froze this threshold.”
“So we are asking the Chancellor to look at this again.”
By Chay Quinn
