Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party, Plan 2 graduate with £50,766.33 debt
Silence can be very telling. Among many issues that chancellor John Healey’s Budget failed to address was the freeze on repayment thresholds for graduates.
Last year, the previous chancellor Rachel Reeves froze the salary threshold at which graduates with ‘Plan 2’ student loans – the loans that approximately five million students have – start to repay their debt. For up to 30 years, Plan 2 graduates pay 9% of their wages above that threshold towards their loan.
Even calling it ‘repayment’ is a joke, because graduates on low wages will have every payment they make wiped out by interest on the debt!
Reeves froze the threshold from 2027 to 2030 at £29,385. So in each of those three years, any pay rise that Plan 2 graduates get, even below-inflation, will mean they pay more back on the loan. Some of the lowest paid will have to start repaying from wages. This is an attack on the incomes and living standards of many graduates, that many did not expect and cannot prepare for.
MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis told Healey the freeze was “morally reprehensible and a breach of natural justice”, to which Healey replied with half-hearted excuses, blaming conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere for him not doing anything about the freeze.
Also in response, Healey patted himself on the back for giving out £100 Household Energy Payments.
That’s insulting to both students and graduates. Students living in university halls, private halls and HMOs won’t be able to receive it. And many Plan 2 graduates’ £100 will get eaten up by their repayments!
The Burnham government is picking up right where Keir Starmer left off, attacking students and graduates alongside the whole working class. All student debt should be cancelled, and free university tuition restored along with maintenance grants. That would ensure all young people can take up university education without taking on debt or being forced to work alongside their studies, taking the wealth that is under the control of the big bosses and putting it under our democratic control to fund it.
