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Sale of Student Loans Bill

Far be it from me to make a spending commitment on behalf of the Opposition. I have been around too long to be seduced into going down a road that would not be in my interests to travel, but I will return to the matter that he raises in general terms later during my, I hope, relatively short speech—at least, short by my standards. According to the explanatory notes to the Bill, the intention is to enable"““a programme of sales of students loans, as announced in paragraph 6.42 of the 2007 Budget Report.””" Indeed, the Minister made reference to that. Paragraph 6.42 states that the sale of part of the student loan book"““will raise around £6 billion by the end of 2010-11.””" We have already discussed the turbulence in the financial markets. The Minister will appreciate that there are understandable concerns therefore about whether this is the best time to conduct such a sale. I suspect that he knows well that it is not, and I hope that he will comment on that when he responds to the debate. The student loan book was valued at about £18.1 billion at the end of the 2006-07 financial year, but I have no doubt that the Minister will have estimated the face value of the book in 2007-08. He has already suggested that further projections have been made—indeed, ““projections”” was the word that he used. It would be useful in considering the Bill if the House were to have some feel for the nature of those projections. It is true that there are commercial sensitivities, but if we are to consider the Bill with the proper diligence that the House and the hon. Members currently represented here certainly would wish us to do, we should have some sense of the notional estimates that the Government have made and that their advisers have offered. Will the Minister therefore say a little more about those projections? The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough intervened on that subject when the Minister was on his feet. I appreciate that it is not necessarily the Government’s intention to conduct the sale at the moment, but there are good reasons to be concerned that a sale might be rushed and the taxpayer consequently short-changed. Figures released this week show that public sector borrowing stands at £24.2 billion in the financial year to date—the highest figure for the first seven months of the year since 1994-05, and £6.7 billion worse than last year.