Tories would scrap ‘debt trap’ of high interest student loans, says Kemi Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch said graduates were making payments ‘yet watching the balance they owe growing bigger’. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

Kemi Badenoch has said the Conservatives would scrap the “unfair debt trap” of high interest rates on student loans, piling pressure on Labour ministers to tackle the growing outrage over the high costs.

The education secretary, Bridget Phillipson, admitted the system of plan 2 loans had “problems” but suggested the government’s priority would be maintenance grants for poorer students, rather than tackling the high interest rates.