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Sale of Student Loans Bill

It should certainly be considered. The Minister will be aware, as I am—I represent a constituency with many graduates who face these punitive loan repayments—that concerns have been expressed by individuals and by the National Union of Students about the repayment terms. The rate of repayment, which is 9 per cent. of earnings, is a hefty flat-rate tax to face early on in a graduate career. The cut-off period of 25 years is a progressive part of the loan regime, which we would want to protect, but none the less the discretion of a future Parliament to review it should not be fettered. The terms of the rate of interest, its calculation and whether it is related to the consumer prices index or the retail prices index has, as I am sure the Minister will know, been the subject of much discussion in student circles in the past couple of years as those rates have deviated from each other. The Government choose one measure of inflation to calculate people's salary increases—particularly of people in the public sector, who include many graduates—but choose another to uprate the terms of their underlying graduate debt. A future Government may wish to consider all those things; I hope that the Minister is not fettering the scope of such deliberation. I shall not say much about amendment No. 3. Instead, I turn to amendment No. 7, which is about value for money for the taxpayer. That issue exercised us greatly on Report in January, and it was rightly the subject of much debate in another place. It is good that the Government have now conceded that they will make a report to Parliament within three months of any sale. It will include the publication of the Treasury guidance to the accounting officer of the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills. I wonder who will audit the report. Will there be any external audit? Obviously, the report will be about a substantial part of the Government's income.