---

Education: Adult Learners

My Lords, I declare an interest as Pro-Chancellor and Chair of the Council at the Open University. It has been suggested by some that many of the affected students are recreational and rather ancient. In fact, 85 per cent of Open University people affected are aged between 25 and 65, 74 per cent of them are working and paying taxes and 9 per cent of them are carers. The Government keep implying that the Open University is grossly overestimating the financial impact of all this. However, our figure of a reduction in support of £31 million a year after three years can be found on the HEFCE website: £31,626,519 to be precise. The Government have seriously underestimated the impact of the proposal on Birkbeck and the Open University in particular. If they had known the scale of the damage, would they have still gone ahead? My own experience of Whitehall—looking at regulations years ago—suggests that the department has created a huge regulatory shambles in its haste in pressing the proposal. How does one police a system that must prove that a student has not got a degree, including an overseas degree? That seems to be heading for trouble in a big way. The Government and HEFCE keep talking about new sources of funds to replace those being lost, but why ditch a scheme that is delivering a mainstream policy objective of lifelong learning, enabling a vast number of people to widen and improve their skills base to cope with work in a modern economy?