Ben lake MP has signed a cross-party letter to the Chancellor calling for an urgent review into the current student loan repayment framework. The cross-party letter to the Chancellor was co-signed by 121 Members of Parliament and Peers.

The letter follows a recent report published by the Treasury Select Committee that states that the current student loans repayment framework requires urgent review that ensures it is fair, sustainable, and supportive of aspiration.

The group of MPs and Peers highlighted the fact that higher education remains a vital pathway for personal advancement and national economic growth which will not come to fruition by placing this unsustainable burden on the next generation of workers.

Last November, a decision was taken by the former Chancellor Rachel Reeves MP to freeze the plan 2 repayment threshold rather than allowing it to rise with inflation.

Normally it would be expected to rise each subsequent financial year, but a freeze has led to claims of plan 2 graduates being mis-sold the intention to uprate the salary threshold annually in line with earnings when it was introduced under the coalition government in 2010.

This change resulted in students starting to repay their loans sooner than they would otherwise have done, and their rising salaries leading to greater repayments.

The Treasury fully funds the Welsh Government's allocation for new student loans providing the Welsh student finance arrangements are broadly comparable with England.

In addition to calling on the government to launch an urgent review into the repayment framework, they also requested a meeting alongside campaigners to discuss how to best support graduates.

Ben Lake MP said: "It is high time the government addressed the student loan scandal. Any commercial lender that sought to rewrite loan terms retrospectively would be widely condemned, and so it cannot be right that a government owned body is allowed to do so. Not only is it wrong for the government to retrospectively change the repayment and interest-rate thresholds on Plan 2 student loans, but it is also immoral when one considers that most of the recipients would have been teenagers when they entered into the agreement.

"I am hopeful that the government will now respond to calls for an urgent review of the current system, as it is not often that any cause secures the support of so many political parties. In truth, I think most Members of Parliament share my disdain for a system that has allowed a generation of young people to be mis-sold student finance by a government-backed scheme, and interest rate arrangements which make it almost impossible for students to ever repay their loans.

“Shockingly, it has been estimated that around 90% of graduates in receipt of a Plan 2 loan and making monthly repayments will see their overall debt increase rather than decrease over time.

"In addition to the financial burden that has been placed on a generation of graduates, I also worry that the scandal itself has already dissuaded people from pursuing higher education.”