The thing that grates about this is student loans aren't even on the books. So far as the government is concerned they don't really exist and could just be written off immediately with basically no consequences.

just another way of keeping us poor

Of course the problem is, they keep selling student loans as financial assets to private companies. Because that is literally the only thing the UK has to offer the private sector and so now they've basically fucked themselves and everyone who has a student loan.