Clause 2
Sale of Student Loans Bill
4:45 pm
Bill Rammell (Minister of State (Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education), Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills; Harlow, Labour)
Our intention is that graduates repaying debts to the private sector should be able to deal with the same independent assessor to whom they can refer at the moment in respect of debts to the Government.
The hon. Lady raised a point about complaints that students are overpaying at the end of their term of repayment. If one looks at the evidence, two thirds of the overpayments are of less than £400. That happens because it is difficult to predict exactly when somebody will reach the end of their loan, given the nature of the taxation system through HMRC. However, in response to Ministers, the Student Loans Company is rightly looking at how it can improve the system in the likely final year of repayments. It hopes to communicate directly with the graduate in question to put a stop to the repayments at an earlier stage, so that such overpayments do not take place. I hope that that answers the question.