§ Mr. SimmondsTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what estimate his Department has made of the number of university graduates making repayments of nine per cent. of gross income over £10,000 to the Student Loans Company Limited in each year since 2001. [179445]
§ Alan JohnsonIn general, repayments of income-contingent loans are collected through the tax system. Repayments are notified to the Student Loans Company (SLC) after the end of the tax year, after which time has to be allowed for SLC to reconcile the repayments notified with their records. There will therefore be some borrowers who have repaid their accounts in financial years 2001–02 and 2002–03, but this will not have been reported yet. Therefore data for those years understates the true number of borrowers making repayments. However, latest information from the SLC shows the following:
1402W
Thousands Tax year Number of income-contingent loan borrowers making
repayments1
2000–01 10.4 2001–02(provisional)2 33.2 2002–03 (Provisional)2 114.1 1 Data exclude those borrowers making voluntary or early repayments. 2 Data are marked provisional to reflect the retrospective nature of the reporting of repayments through the Inland Revenue.
Source:
The Student Loans Company (SLC)
Borrowers enter repayment status, i.e. are due to make repayments on their loans, in the April after graduating or otherwise leaving their course. No repayments are deducted from income-contingent borrowers with income below £10,000 per year. Borrowers with income-contingent loans can also make voluntary repayments, either in the form of prepayments before they enter repayment status, or ad-hoc repayments to accelerate their repayments after entering repayment status. These repayments are made directly by the borrower to the SLC. The table shows the number of UK income-contingent loan borrowers who have entered repayment status by tax year. It excludes those who have made early or voluntary repayments.