Clause 39 - Effect of bankruptcy
Higher Education Bill
3:15 pm
Mr Phil Willis (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Harrogate and Knaresborough, Liberal Democrat)
I fully accept what the Minister says. As we sat through those debates on the original legislation, I do not think that any of us contemplated a situation whereby students deliberately filed for bankruptcy to get out of paying back their debts. The point that I made to both the Minister and the Under-Secretary is that the number of students who actually do that is very small indeed, by the Minister's own admission. I accept the point that the Minister rightly made that, given the mass publicity that followed the Lords debate in 2002, people were encouraged—frivolously, and quite wrongly in my view—to file for bankruptcy.
I will obviously reflect on what the Minister says and on the debate—that is why this is a probing amendment. However, I do not believe that the situation is so big that we should say to any individual who is likely to be a self-employed business person in the future that if they file for bankruptcy, and find themselves in such a serious situation, they should come back after bankruptcy to find that they still have their student loan, even though it is repayable—I fully
accept that—on an income-contingent basis. That was the basis of the probing amendment, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 39 ordered to stand part of the Bill.