I've hired lawyers to investigate judicial reviewing Govt's retrospective student lo

Paul_Herring

Ed-1 wrote: »

On what basis?

Because nothing will come of it, and they'll get their money.

It states clearly what the terms are, and the governmental 'promise' of uprating the limit doesn't appear in the contract. Policitcal parties promise to do things all the time, and persist in breaking those promises.


Witness the Lib Dems promise to not change the university fees for example. Worth the paper it was written on.

Ed-1

Will_Haines wrote: »

It's a tax. Listen to David Willetts on Moneybox 28/29th November.

If anyone wants to listen to this, the link is here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p039hn3p

I think the crucial thing with income contingent student loans is that there isn't a 'loan agreement' which fixes the terms like there was for the mortgage-style loans. Instead, the legislation is set up in the same way as tax legislation is set up (i.e. if you earn £x amount in income you agree to (re)pay £x which may change as regulations are amended).

Governments are averse to changing legislation retrospectively unless it is legislation that is intended to be changed retrospectively like tax and income contingent student loan regulations. But the crucial point here is that the current government do not need to change the regulations retrospectively as the last government did not include an uprating term in the legislation - just set the threshold to £21,000. So not changing anything freezes the threshold at this amount until they decide to amend it. No government can be expected to implement promises of a previous government that are not in legislation and this was a Lib Dem promise from Vince Cable. If the Lib Dems were so intent on uprating the threshold then why didn't they force it to be included in the regulations? The reason is, as they knew full well in 2012 when the regulations were made, that earnings were under performing and the £21,000 threshold was becoming ever higher relative to earnings making the system unsustainable with an uprating term there.

Ed-1

Paul_Herring wrote: »

Because nothing will come of it, and they'll get their money.

It states clearly what the terms are, and the governmental 'promise' of uprating the limit doesn't appear in the contract. Policitcal parties promise to do things all the time, and persist in breaking those promises.


Witness the Lib Dems promise to not change the university fees for example. Worth the paper it was written on.

Don't get me wrong - I completely agree with you. When you said 'lawyers will win' I took you to mean they'll win the case. But yeah - the lawyers will get their money and the government will get theirs as the case is doomed to failure.

Paul_Herring

Ed-1 wrote: »

When you said 'lawyers will win' I took you to mean they'll win the case.

Ah - bad phrasing on my part - soz....

XRAT

Good Luck Martin!
With one child on the old system and one on the new, my advice to both was, "Never trust the government! Expect the rules to change. Use the loan while it's cheap but save up and be prepared to pay it back fast!"
As a public sector worker I had a 30 year final salary pension linked to the RPI.., until 2 weeks after it was fully paid up, when it changed to the CPI. The appeal led nowhere.., but then who pays the judges???

XRAT

Would anyone like to place a bet that by 30 years time the "30 year rule" won't have been revoked retrospectively?

Ed-1

XRAT wrote: »

Would anyone like to place a bet that by 30 years time the "30 year rule" won't have been revoked retrospectively?

I think all the 'terms' that are in the regulations can be pretty safely assumed to be OK (crucially the repayment threshold uprating is not written in the regulations), except the repayment rate which along with the repayment threshold is on the 'tax' side of things. No government has yet retrospectively amended the regulations to the detriment of borrowers but I think if any term would be retrospectively amended it would be the repayment rate (e.g. adjust from 9% to 10% in the same way as income tax rates can change). The terms that are on the loan side of things like interest rates and repayment term I think are very unlikely to be altered retrospectively now they are written in the regulations. But of course nothing is guaranteed as future governments are free to change any of the terms retrospectively at any time.

agarnett

Paul_Herring wrote:

... If that is indeed the case, then I think Martin's lawyers are going to be the winners here.

Ed-1 wrote:

When you said 'lawyers will win' I took you to mean they'll win the case.

Ah - bad phrasing on my part - soz....

Bad surmise actually.

Did you not note that Martin indicated he expected much of the legwork would be done by recent law students i.e. pro bono "(it may be people with student loans will need to agree to take cases – I doubt there’ll be a shortage of volunteers)." ?