Belated views on Autumn Statement

Apologies – December was very busy for me with other projects and I forgot to add links here to two pieces I published with wonkhe relating to the Autumn Statement.

The first reveals a striking absence from the Statement: BIS has not yet been given a specified budget allocation to cover the ‘impairment’ on new student loans (the difference between the cash used to create them and the estimated value of the loans as a financial asset that generates future income).
That piece also discusses what this blog has been detailing for some time: there are continuing problems with the planned sale of income contingent student loans from the early 2000s to the private sector. A sale was postpoined again in November – Osborne will therefore miss his target of achieving the first sale by March 2016.

The second repeats an analysis already made on this site: the government has now created a ‘tax on social mobility’ through its changes to student maintenance support and the loan repayment threshold. High earners who come from poorer backgrounds will now pay more for undergraduate study than their richer peers.

As an aside, the retrospective freezing of the loan threshold appears to have been the quid pro quo for lifting the age restriction on post-graduate loans and extending maintenance loans to part-time students from 2018.