JEZZ U-TURN ON UNI DEBT
Denial over his ‘pledge’ to students
JEREMY Corbyn denied ever promising to wipe out student debt yesterday.
The Labour leader said his comments during the election campaign were not a “commitment” to erase the money owed.
His apparent pledge to abolish student fees helped his party destroy the Tory majority in Parliament.
But when he appeared on BBC One’s Andrew Marr Show, he said: “I did not make a commitment we would write it off because I couldn’t at that stage.
“I pointed out we had written the manifesto in a short space of time because there was a surprise election, but that we would look at ways of reducing that debt burden, recognising that a lot of it is never going to be collected anyway.”
He added: “We never said we would completely abolish it because we were unaware of the size of it at the time.”
Before June’s vote, Mr Corbyn said he wanted to look at ways to reduce the debt burden, possibly by lengthening the period to pay it off.
After they lost the election, Labour admitted it would have cost about £100billion to clear the debt.
Mr Corbyn said that Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell would head a group looking at the policy area and added that an announcement would be made soon.
But Theresa May slammed Mr Corbyn at Prime Minister’s Questions last week, saying: “The leader of the Opposition vowed to deal with student debt. Labour were going to abolish student debt, now they say it wasn’t a promise at all.
“Students know Labour can’t be trusted on student fees.”