Fast move on student loan sale possible

The BIS website has published a letter from Martin Donnelly to Anthony Odgers dated 25 March 2015.

In it Donnelly, the senior civil servant in BIS, empowers Odgers to deliver the student loan sale once a government decision has been made.

Odgers thereby becomes the Senior Responsible Owner and would presumably appear before the Public Accounts Committee instead of Donnelly were that committee to look into the value for money of a sale.

Odgers objective is to deliver a first sale within nine months of ‘Ministerial decision’. In order to get sale proceeds into the 2015/16 financial year – as per the official projections – Odgers would need to be given the go-ahead in June.

Things could move very quickly after the general election. A different Secretary of State for Business may make a different decision to Vince Cable, who vetoed a loan sale last summer.

A sale though still remains ‘broader government policy’.

For more detail on attempts to sell student loans, see my recent essay for the London Review of Books.