Corbyn’s £100bn debt pledge
JEREMY Corbyn’s pledge to erase student debt would cost more than £100billion, his education spokesman admitted yesterday.
Angela Rayner said the policy was only an ‘ambition’ because the Labour Party did not yet know how it could be funded.
Mr Corbyn campaigned on a platform of scrapping tuition fees for new students south of the Border. Days before the last election the Labour leader said he wanted a way to tackle the ‘historical misfortune’ of those saddled with huge debts – promising he would ‘deal with it’.
His party’s success at the ballot box has prompted ministers to reassess how to ease burdens that can hit almost £60,000 on graduation. But Miss Rayner said Labour would not make an announcement on wiping out student debt until the sums added up. On the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show she said: ‘Jeremy said that’s an ambition, it’s something he’d like to do. It’s something that we will not announce that we’re doing unless we can afford to do that.
‘It’s a big abacus that I’m working on with that – it is a huge amount, it’s £100billion, which they estimate currently, which will increase. It’s a huge amount of money but of course we also know that a third of that is never repaid.’
‘We’ve got to start dealing with this debt crisis that we’re foisting on our young people.’
Miss Rayner called on ministers to reduce the debt burden by reversing the abolition of grants, reducing interest rates and raising the threshold at which repayments must be made.
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