Corbyn: I never promIsed to wIpe out student debt

JEREMY Corbyn yesterday admitted to being “unaware” of the colossal size of the student loan debt total when making his general election pledge to tackle the issue. Instead the hard-Left Labour leader claimed that his promise to “deal with it” did not mean his party would write off all tuition fee loans. He had made a pledge to tackle the issue before the General Election giving students and families the hope of writing off tuition-fee loans. His admission, made on BBC One’s Andrew Marr show yesterday, pictured left, follows accusations that he treated students as “election fodder” by hinting that their university debts would be cancelled if Labour won. Since the election, Labour frontbenchers have admitted that writing off all outstanding tuition fees would cost £100billion and be simply unaffordable.

Mr Corbyn said: “What I said was we would deal with it by trying to reduce the burden of it.

“We never said we’d completely abolish it because we were unaware of the size at that time.”

Mr Corbyn claimed to have never made a commitment to completely write off students’ debts, insisting his plan was to ease the debt burden.

He said: “We would look at ways of reducing that debt burden, recognising quite a lot of it is never going to be collected anyway, and try and reduce that burden.”

Labour was believed to have won huge student support at the ballot box after Mr Corbyn’s hint.

A senior Tory source said: “This shows that Labour are making up policy as they go along.”

Tory MP Maria Caulfield said: “Labour introduced tuition fees and have now broken their promise on student debt.”