John Pugh – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by John Pugh on 2015-12-17.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, if he will estimate the effect on the public purse of replacing maintenance loans with maintenance grants.

Joseph Johnson

Replacing maintenance grants with loans will reduce grant expenditure by around £2.5bn per year by 2020-21 and therefore make a substantial contribution to reducing the deficit. From that new baseline position, entirely replacing the new, larger maintenance loans with grants would increase grant expenditure – and the deficit – by around £8bn per year.