Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Minister for Universities, Science and Skills, commenting on the Public Accounts Committee’s report on private providers of higher education, said:

“These findings show the staggering way the Tory-led government has wasted hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money, handed over to private providers without proper safeguards or controls.

“We still don’t know how much money has been lost where students have lacked any English language skills, were not entered for qualifications or where teaching was found to be unacceptably poor. As the Committee points out, Ministers completely ignored and disregarded repeated warnings on the potential for waste and abuse, and they now have serious questions to answer on the way funding for private providers has been so badly mismanaged at the taxpayer’s expense.

“With almost half of all student loans now set never to be paid back, this is yet more evidence of the mess the government has made of the student finances and the financial black hole they have created.”

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