At a Treasury Committee hearing looking into the student loan system, department for education minister for skills Baroness Smith of Malvern claimed Labour’s decision to freeze repayment thresholds did not break the system.
Rather, HM Treasury chief secretary to the treasury Lucy Rigby stressed: "These are not design choices we have made, these are design choices we have inherited." The hearing followed a Treasury Committee survey on student loans that received more than 52,000 responses, one of the highest response rates to a select committee call for evidence on record. Of the respondents, 34,555 said repayments were expected to have a material impact on their financial planning for the future. The committee noted that while recent evidence it had received claimed the student loan system was broken,...
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