\n<\/p>\n
Young adults in the UK face a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of economic challenges, the head of the influential Treasury select committee has warned as it launches an inquiry into student loans.<\/p>\n
The cross-party committee\u2019s investigation comes as the government considers ways to ease the burden on graduates, amid a growing backlash about high interest rates and hefty repayments, including among Labour MPs.<\/p>\n
Rachel Reeves\u2019s decision in her November budget to freeze the threshold at which loans start to be repaid for three years from 2027 reignited anger over the system.<\/p>\n
The select committee is asking people to contribute their experiences through an online portal. The committee chair, Meg Hillier, said she saw the burden of student loans as part of a wider squeeze facing people in their 20s and 30s.<\/p>\n
Hillier, the MP for Hackney South and Shoreditch in London since 2005, said: \u201cI represent a young borough. One of my concerns is the layering and layering of challenges on that generation.\u201d She cited the eyewatering cost of housing, inadequate pensions saving, and the looming jobs threat from AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery government will make what seem like rational decisions in their own silo. So you can look at student loans, you can look at renting, you can look at home ownership, you can look at pensions. But cumulatively, the 20-to-30 generation has had a lot piled on them. It\u2019s about fairness in the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hillier hailed the rising proportion of her own constituents who now go to university, helped by the significant improvement in London schools since she was first elected.<\/p>\n
However, she warned: \u201cNow those young people are coming out and finding rents are sky high. House prices in my area are particularly high. You couldn\u2019t possibly be a young person locally and look across the road and think, \u2018I\u2019ll buy that property that\u2019s being built,\u2019 because they\u2019re \u00a3650,000 for a two-bedroom flat, or \u00a3750,000.\u201d<\/p>\n
She suggests high housing costs partly explain falling birthrates in London, which is contributing to lower school rolls and in some cases, school closures.<\/p>\n
\u201cHousing costs are having a big impact on that,\u201d Hillier argued. \u201cIf you\u2019re sharing [a home] into your 30s, children can fit into a lot of things, but there\u2019s a point where you really just need space for them. And you need to have the money to pay for that. And it\u2019s really very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n
She warned many young people are struggling to pay into their pensions, too, once they have met their day-to-day living costs \u2013 storing up problems for the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf people aren\u2019t paying into their pensions, in years to come, the taxpayer will be either picking up the pieces or, depending on the colour of the government of the day, not, and you have a lot of pensioner poverty,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a perfect storm for that generation that\u2019s just been building up. And AI, which has many potential benefits, is going to reshape the workforce. So are we helping young people be equipped for that newly shaped workforce? We need to be looking at that, and we need to be firing some warning shots now.\u201d<\/p>\n
The unemployment rate is close to a five-year high, with young people bearing the brunt.<\/p>\n
However, Hillier argued that the nation has a clear incentive to help younger workers get on, since they will go on to be the taxpayers bearing the costs of a growing elderly population in years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got the demographic timebomb. So they\u2019re going to be supporting the older generation. So we\u2019ve got an interest in investing in these young people.\u201d<\/p>\n
A minister in Tony Blair\u2019s Labour government, Hillier has since carved out a formidable reputation on the backbenches, initially as chair of the public affairs committee, and now as chair of the Treasury select committee.<\/p>\n
She said she routinely carries in her handbag a pocket summary of the \u201cwhole of government accounts\u201d \u2013 the most detailed data setting out the nation\u2019s financial health.<\/p>\n
Hillier used her expertise to devastating effect when she led the rebellion by backbench Labour MPs against the disability benefit cuts, in last year\u2019s spring statement. But she is scrupulously loyal when asked if the economic morass she has described could tempt younger voters to turn to other parties such as Zack Polanksi\u2019s Greens.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnywhere where you have dissatisfaction, people will always look around. But I think actually some of the things that Labour is doing \u2013 some of the early-years stuff that we\u2019re seeing, the skills stuff, the youth guarantee, I think are all good things. And it\u2019s early days about how much those penetrate through.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Young adults in the UK face a \u201cperfect storm\u201d of economic challenges, the head of the influential Treasury select committee has warned as it launches an inquiry into student loans. The cross-party committee\u2019s investigation comes as the government considers ways to ease the burden on graduates, amid a growing backlash about high interest rates and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46524,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[7117,357,3164,3023,414,364,2305,7081,393,801],"class_list":{"0":"post-46523","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-finance","9":"tag-inquiry","10":"tag-launch","11":"tag-loans","12":"tag-mps","13":"tag-people","14":"tag-perfect","15":"tag-storm","16":"tag-student","17":"tag-young"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/46524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}