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LABOUR education secretary Angela Rayner tore into privatisation-obsessed Tories today after student loans were sold off at less than half their value for a second time.
Education Secretary Damian Hinds has revealed that the government had “completed its sale of part of the older pre-2012 student loan book achieving a value of £1.9 billion.”
Mr Hinds argued that the sale was “good” for the taxpayer, despite the loans having a face value of £3.9bn.
Ms Rayner said: “After being told that student loan sales do not strengthen the public finances and without even having a universities minister in place, this government is privatising assets at a loss and it will be taxpayers who lose out in the long run.
“These loans have been sold at less than half of their face value, a similar loss to the previous sale, when the government lost hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ money. This is a scandal.”
Last year's sale of student loans, at less than half the face value and around three-quarters of the book value, cost taxpayers £600 million in future receipts, the National Audit Office found.
Ms Rayner called on the government to reveal exactly how much more public money has been lost to “serve the Conservatives’ ideological obsession with privatisation.”
She added: "Selling off student loans does nothing for students and does not strengthen the public finances in a meaningful way."
Labour have promised to take action to support students and universities, scrap tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants as part of an education system “for the many, not the few.”
