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Sale of Student Loans Bill

I agree that it is important to have accurate records—and also for them not to be lost by anyone. However, we do not want a large number of agencies to have to keep accurate records of the addresses, income and circumstances of borrowers. Once young people graduate and their incomes start rising, they tend to move about a good deal. Certainly that was my experience after I graduated. Retaining the Student Loans Company as the primary agency to continue the relationship with the borrower seems to me to make good sense. As for Lords amendments Nos. 8, 9 and 10, I was puzzled by the insertion of the phrase ““aim to”” by the Government, or their draftsmen, in the clause that deals with ensuring that the borrower is not put in an adverse position once his or her debt has been sold on. I am sure that such clauses are always carefully drafted on the basis of good advice from Treasury or other Government draftsmen. No doubt there is a good reason for the Government to ““aim to ensure”” that graduates are not put in an adverse financial position, rather than to ensure that they are not. That leads me to wonder how the sales of the debts are selected. I had thought that there would be blocks of debt rather than individual debts. Might not the debt being sold turn out to be that of graduates with a good record of repayments rather than those with a patchier record? I do not think we want to find ourselves in a Northern Rock-like position in which the good debt is privatised and the no-so-good debt remains on the Government's books.