Kemi Badenoch has faced what could be described as the stuff of nightmares for a UK politician being interviewed about a personal finance policy: being ambushed and contradicted live on air by Martin Lewis.
As the Conservative leader was being interviewed on ITV about her party’s plans to cut interest rates for some student loans, Lewis, the campaigner and finance expert, marched on to the set to announce that he completely disagreed.
Ed Balls, who had been interviewing Badenoch for Good Morning Britain, had challenged Badenoch on whether the Tory plan would help only former students in the highest-paying jobs. After Badenoch insisted this was not the case, Lewis began shouting from off-set before walking into shot to side with Balls, eventually ending up sitting on the sofa.
While Badenoch stuck to her view, polling shows that Lewis, who styles himself as a money-saving expert, is heavily trusted by much of the public on personal finance matters.
The Conservative plan, set out overnight, would scrap any above-inflation interest rate increases on so-called plan two student loans in England, those who started courses from 2012 to 2022.
The change would be financed by cutting tens of thousands of university courses that do not provide “value for money” for students. Interviewed about the plan on Sunday, the shadow education secretary, Laura Trott, suggested this could include creative arts courses.
There is increasing political consensus that the current system, in which rising interest rates mean the majority of former students barely make a dent in huge piles of debt, is unworkable.
The Labour MP Nadia Whittome said recently that she had left university in 2019 with £49,600 of debt and her repayments had taken just £1,000 off that, despite her earning in the top 5% of salaries as an MP.
Balls challenged Badenoch about whether the Tory plan would help most students, saying it would only benefit those earning enough money to start paying pay off their debt.
“I don’t think that’s right,” Badenoch said, to which Balls responded: “It’s definitely right.”
At this point, Lewis began shouting from off-set before walking on to tell Badenoch that while the system needed change, this was the wrong plan.
“If you want to help the middle-earning students, the most important thing is the repayment threshold should have been increased,” he said.
“Lowering the interest rate now will only help those who can clear [the debt] within the 30 years, which means lower and middle earning graduates won’t benefit from that change. If you have £1bn to help students, the most direct thing that would help all students would be not freezing the repayment threshold.”
Badenoch insisted that “everybody will benefit”, adding: “I’m the first person who’s even trying to solve this problem.”
Lewis replied by saying he had repeatedly pointed out the problems with the system: “When the Conservative government brought it in 2012 I said we shouldn’t have above-inflation interest rates.”
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: theguardian.com
