UK minister defends changes to student loans as criticism mounts

Lucy Rigby tells MPs heavily subsidised system gives the government the right to alter terms of existing agreements Ministers have rejected accusations that recent changes to student loans are unfair, arguing that they are so heavily subsidised that the government has the right to alter their terms. Pressure has been intensifying on the UK government to reform the student loans system but the chief secretary to the Treasury, Lucy Rigby, told MPs on Wednesday that less than half of young people go to university, and the government had to bear in mind “fairness to taxpayers as a whole”. The current debate has focused on the millions of students from England and Wales who have taken out a “plan 2” loan. Many have money taken from their wages each month to repay their debt but what they pay off is often dwarfed by the interest added every month, so the sums they owe get bigger. The catalyst for the row was Rachel Reeves’s decision last year to freeze the salary threshold for plan 2 loan repayments for three years. The above-inflation interest rates that apply to many loans have also come under fire. The consumer campaigner Martin Lewis has said that changing the terms of the loans “wou