120 MPs and peers demand urgent review of student loan repayments

More than 120 MPs and peers have asked John Healey to carry out an urgent review of student loan repayments, warning that the current system has become an “unsustainable burden” for borrowers. The intervention adds fresh pressure on ministers to look again at the way debts are repaid, how long graduates remain on the hook, and how much of their monthly income is lost before they can build savings or plan for a mortgage.

The push follows a series of Labour warnings over the past year. In September 2025, more than 20 Labour MPs urged the government to reform the student loan system in England, attacking what they called “rip-off” interest rates and unfair changes to repayment terms. Jas Athwal led a debate in Parliament on the issue, putting the politics of graduate debt directly on the Westminster agenda and forcing ministers to confront complaints from borrowers whose loans were altered after they had already signed up.

The scale of the problem has also been laid out in the figures. Jas Athwal’s campaign page said that in 2024-25 Plan 2 student loans accrued £12.6bn in interest while graduates repaid only £2.8bn, leaving balances rising even as monthly repayments continued. IPPR has said millions of graduates are paying more for longer because of frozen thresholds and high interest rates, a combination that stretches repayment well into adulthood and leaves less disposable income for rent, childcare, saving and home buying.

The Treasury Committee has now added its own weight to the calls for reform. In its report Student loans: Broken and unfair?, published on July 7, 2026, the committee said the government, universities and students all described the system as “unfair and broken”. That judgment sharpened the argument inside Westminster that student debt is no longer just a student issue, but a longer-term tax on earnings that shapes career choices and household finances years after graduation.

Sir Keir Starmer has already told MPs he would “look at ways” to make the student loans system in England “fairer”, but the pressure from MPs and peers now points to a more immediate demand: an urgent review of what borrowers pay under the current rules, and what ministers are prepared to change before repayments keep growing faster than wages.