Britons in their sixties must accept that they are the “luckiest generation” in history, former Conservative leader Lord William Hague has said, as he called for a “national conversation” about student loans and the bleak jobs market.
In an interview with the FT, the chancellor of the University of Oxford said young people were “systematically losing out in the economy” and warned that the “unsustainable” student loan system risked putting people off higher education at a time when graduates were needed.
“My generation [those in their sixties] . . . we are the luckiest generation that has ever lived, in multiple ways, but partly because we’ve lived through this period where all the house prices went up . . . we still got defined benefit pension schemes . . . and we [went to university] before student loans,” said Hague, 64.