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Sale of Student Loans Bill

We are introducing the adult learning grants, which give for the first time an equivalent commitment to the educational maintenance allowance. I am not in the business today of making future announcements, but I will say for the record that before this Government came to power there was no financial support whatever for part-time students. We were the first Government to institute a part-time student grant, and 18 months ago we increased that by 27 per cent. We also substantially increased the access to learning fund, initially from £3 million to £12 million. While there are further challenges for us to face up to, we have a good track record on this issue.