Lord Barnett – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Barnett on 2014-05-06.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is (1) the total sum, and (2) the percentage, of student loans that have been written off as bad debt.

Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon

Information on the repayment status of student loans is available in the Student Loans Company (SLC) publication‘Student Loans for Higher Education in England, Financial Year 2012-13′.

The Amount of Total Public Debt outstanding (including loans not yet due for repayment) at the start of Financial Year 2012-13 including interest was £40,271.5m, rising to £46,590.4m by the end of Financial Year 2012-13.

The amount of debt written off or cancelled during the Financial Year 2012-13 was £27.0m. This figure is 0.07% of the Total Public Debt outstanding at the start of Financial Year 2012-13 and 0.06% of the Total Public Debt outstanding at the end of Financial Year 2012-13.

Write offs occur for policy reasons; when borrowers die, become permanently disabled or when their loan reaches age thresholds. An estimate of ‘bad debt’ has not been provided in the answer as there is no standard definition for this.

Statistics referring to the Financial Year 2013-14 will be published in June 2014.