For too long, student finance has been the subject our party would rather avoid. I understand why. It is uncomfortable territory. The scars of the coalition run deep, and many of us have heard about them on doorsteps ever since.
But we cannot keep kicking the can down the road. Millions of graduates are paying the price. If we want to win back the trust of my generation – the graduates who signed up to Plan 2 loans between 2012 and 2023, and the growing cohort on the new Plan 5 loans – we have to offer them a solution.
That is why I have brought forward a Ten Minute Rule Bill calling for a proper review of student finance, including the terms graduates were sold. The cross-party Treasury Committee has already found that the way loans were promoted amounted to mis-selling, and that the Government has “a moral obligation” to reverse the latest threshold freeze. The Government has refused.
Let’s be honest about how we got here. Today’s system bears little resemblance to the one introduced under the coalition. That scheme promised a repayment threshold that would rise with earnings, and it kept maintenance grants for the poorest students.
Since then, successive governments have bolted on change after change. Grants scrapped. Thresholds frozen again and again. Terms rewritten after students had already signed. What remains is a Frankenstein’s monster that nobody would design from scratch.
None of that lets us off the hook. It is uncomfortable to admit, but we were part of this story, and we should say so. We should also say what this system has become: regressive and illiberal.
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
A ghost sign near Parliament Hill Fields
Some of the churches of Gower
Jack Meredith 
PM 
David Allen 
Peter Davies 