Joe Robertson

Let me ask the hon. Member a question, because his party is in government, he has power and he can change things. Does he think the system is fair? No, he does not, because he has already told this House that it is not. Is he not bitterly disappointed that his own Government have not got a plan to change it? If he does not like the system that existed before July 2024, why are his Government not changing it? The Opposition have brought forward a plan, which we are debating today. It would mean that those on plan 2 student loans will not end up paying more and more above RPI, so the Government will not be making money out of them having a loan. That is a meaningful change. The Government can go further because they are in power. I hope that our party, by the time of the next election, will be able to offer more, but we have already announced that we would abolish stamp duty, helping young people. We have already announced that we would scrap bad courses that offer no real additional employment prospects for people who do them, other than leaving them saddled with debt. It would seem that most Labour Members have history degrees, given the amount of time they have spent speaking about the last decade, but we are talking about the system that exists now. When I went to university, I accepted the principle that young people who went to university did not contribute enough to the education that they received. Under the Blair Government, undergraduates were asked to contribute more. Clearly there is a benefit for society in having an educated and graduate workforce to take up jobs as teachers and doctors, for instance, but there is also a great benefit for those who take up those jobs, because of the higher earnings involved. That is a principle I supported. It is a principle most people supported, and I still support it. However, we have plainly reached a tipping point for too many students. The personal debt is so high that they have no real prospect of ever paying it back. Some have degrees that give them no real opportunity ever to earn more than they would have earned had they been in a good apprenticeship—a good apprenticeship that the last Government gave them the opportunity to enter into.