Olly Glover

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Ilford South (Jas Athwal) for introducing this debate. I would like to use my limited time to tell the stories of two of my constituents. One of them is Rebecca, a health worker who is an NHS band 6 employee. For those unfamiliar with NHS pay bands, as I am, that is between £38,600 and £46,600 a year. She has raised concerns about the impact that her student loan repayments are having on her finances and day-to-day life. She says: “It feels like a lifelong debt that’s impossible to reduce…Looking at the bigger picture is even more frustrating. Between 2019 and 2025, almost £18,000 in interest has been added to my loan, despite the fact that I’ve been working and making repayments the entire time. It feels like I’m being penalised for staying in steady employment rather than making real progress on the debt…I worry that this system will discourage people from training for essential professions like healthcare.” Another constituent, Alexandra, works at Culham Campus, a site for fusion energy research and many other industries. She says that, “completing a PhD was absolutely necessary to pursue my career in essential scientific research…As they stand, those who choose to embark on a PhD are disadvantaged further by committing to 3-6 years of time in which they will be unable to pay off student loans due to PhD stipends falling under the repayment limit, I am likely to pay significantly more towards my student loan than was originally billed before it is written off purely because as an undergraduate I came from a low income family and I received the full subsistence and fee loans.”