Your editorial (8 February) is correct to highlight that a graduate levy by stealth is no way to fund the NHS and its potential consequences. This will include resident doctors, whose dissatisfaction with their pay and working conditions will be amplified by the chancellor’s statement that they now need to help pay for their own salaries.
The anger that recent graduates feel will also be felt by their parents, many of whom benefited from free higher education and see as unfair the repayment/tax changes being imposed. The government should bear in mind the electoral near wipeout experienced by the Liberal Democrats in 2015, having enabled the Tory-led coalition to triple the cost of student fees, despite the manifesto pledge to remove it.
Dr Michael Symonds
Emeritus professor, University of Nottingham medical school
It might useful if Martin Lewis would explain why a graduate with a student loan should not seek to reduce the amount payable by claiming it as an investment, in line with successive government claims that a degree is just that.
Gavin Greenwood,
Brighton, East Sussex
