Labour has vowed to ease the “burden” on university graduates by lowering monthly student loan repayments.
It is the first indication of how the party plans to reform the system after leader Sir Keir Starmer scrapped a leadership pledge to abolish tuition fees entirely.
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Writing for The Times newspaper, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said if Labour wins the next general election it “could reduce the monthly repayments for every single graduate”.
She said this could be done “without adding a penny to government borrowing or general taxation”, as Labour modelling showed scope for a “month-on-month tax cut for graduates”.
But the left-wing group Momentum said young people will still be left with “a mountain of debt” under the reforms as it accused the party leadership of backtracking on promises.
Setting out Labour’s plan, Ms Philipson said the university tuition fee system was “broken” but repeated Sir Keir’s insistence that scrapping loans was no longer affordable.
However, she said it could be made fairer as she attacked recent reforms which will mean graduates face higher repayments.
Last year, the Treasury announced that students in England will be asked to repay their loans for up to 40 years rather than the current 30-year period and that they will have to start paying off the debt from when they earn £25,000, rather than £27,295.
Ms Phillipson said the changes mean future nursing graduates “will repay about £60 more a month” and accused the Tories of “hammering the next generation of nurses, teachers and social workers; of engineers, of designers and researchers”.
She added: “Reworking the present system gives scope for a month-on-month tax cut for graduates, putting money back in people’s pockets when they most need it. For young graduates this will give them breathing space at the start of their working lives and as they bring up families.”
Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge on tuition fees when he was running to be party leader
However, the plan appears to have done little to quell the anger among those who want Sir Keir to stick to his promise of scrapping the £9,250 tuition fees.
This was a key part of the 2017 and 2019 Labour manifestos, and a policy Sir Keir pledged to take forward when he ran to replace Jeremy Corbyn.
Fabiha Askari, vice-chair of the National Labour Students Committee, said: “When Labour committed itself to abolishing tuition fees in 2017, hundreds of thousands of students flocked to the Labour Party.
“As more young people find themselves disillusioned with Westminster politics, Labour should make commitments that seek to build a broad coalition of voters to kick out the Tories and their failed policies.”
A spokesperson for Momentum, the left-wing grassroots campaign organisation, said: “Once again we are seeing a worrying poverty of ambition from the Labour leadership. The proposed cuts to repayments will still leave young people facing mountains of debts, even as they already struggle with sky-high rents.”