...
I guess it is possible that is not how the UK works.
Do the loans accept more than minimum payments? Is there even interest applied to the loans, or is the interest being covered each year by the government? When a person starts to earn a huge salary after years of low or no payments, did their loan balloon up? If so, that could be a future problem for OP. ...
Some info here and
here.
It is generally agreed that the majority of people will never pay back their
full loan semi-random amount on a balance sheet, and everyone is fine with this. It is so wildly different to the US system, where the loans are actual loans. Calling the UK system a student "loan" is wildly unhelpful in many ways.
It is true that a future government could change the rules and fuck with the system, but they could also seize assets or kill our health service or quadruple our taxes. Many, many people would be more screwed than Butterfingers if the government changed the loans system so that you actually had to pay back your loans.
It is kind of like (what I understand about) your loan forgiveness programmes, except that everyone is on it, and we don't say loan "forgiveness" (which sounds like a loan is a sin or a crime to my ear), we say "write-off". Or maybe it is more like (what I understand about) you income based repayment, except with much less arduous terms, because a student loan isn't real money over here. A student loan is an agreement to pay X% of your salary above £Y for Z number of years, or the balance of the loan + interest, whichever is lower.
You can make more than the minimum payments, and the interest is calculated and you can see how much it is. But it is widely (but not universally) considered to be a terrible idea for most people. When a person starts to make more money then their payments increase, but the loan amount doesn't increase due to the salary change.
If the OP had a US loan then I'd be strongly recommending either paying the loan or having the ready cash to pay the loan and penalties at any point.