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London Metropolitan University

The hon. Gentleman is right; the university should be congratulated on fulfilling its mission for its intake and educational programme, to enable its students to contribute to the modern economy. To conclude, I have a few questions for the Minister. First, the hon. Member for Islington, North has called for an inquiry, and the hon. Member for Hackney, North and Stoke Newington called for intervention by the Department, and those are probably necessary, given the seriousness of the situation financially, the effect on students, and the allegations that the hon. Member for Reading, East has repeated. London Met is a merged university, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, formed from London Guildhall and North London universities. Normally, when mergers have taken place in the past, such as that between the old University college Cardiff and University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology, or the new merger creating the university of Manchester, the funding council and the Department offered a great deal of assistance to bring about a successful merger. I wonder whether that now needs to happen—in retrospect—at London Metropolitan. However, there is a need for both an inquiry and intervention to make sure that the university's internal procedures and departments are as robust as they could be in controlling their costs and in providing that reporting functions work as they should. I have two questions of a general nature about the sector. Let us hope that London Metropolitan university will prove to be the last instance of a university plunged into a desperate financial crisis. Given the current economic circumstances, however, that may not be the case. Is the Minister aware of any other universities that are in difficulty because of misreporting of statistics to the funding council? What action, if any, has the funding council taken against them to recover funds? It appears that the LMU is in a unique situation, but its administrators cannot be the only ones who have had a discrepancy in their statistics. Finally, does the Minister foresee any other intervention being needed by the funding council and his Department? Many universities, whether they are dependent on international fees or the domestic market, will be in economic difficulty, given the pressing global economic situation.