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London Metropolitan University

I want to finish the entirety of my remarks. I have said that this is a serious situation, and I want to discuss where responsibility lies. Under section 65 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992, HEFCE has a legal power to reclaim grant money that is paid in error, and after due consideration the council decided to invoke that power in December last year. My Department's agreement to that decision was neither required nor sought, but it is hard to quarrel with the reasoning behind it. We all know that times are difficult, and it is important that any funding body is cognisant of students in organisations as well as the method of funding that is allocated to other organisations in the higher education sector. For that reason, the council sought to discuss with the institution how it could mend and solve the problem. The council was mindful that reclaiming such a large sum immediately could send London Met out of business, so it decided instead to recover the money in a phased and managed way that would both protect the continued viability of London Met and allow it to carry out the significant institutional restructuring that would be required. Accordingly, the council agreed with the university a schedule for recovering the grants that would spread repayments over five academic years. Repayments on that scale cannot be made painlessly, but I hope and believe that the schedule of repayments that has been agreed will allow London Met to preserve its distinctive and valuable mission and to begin, through its restructuring programme, building for a more sustainable future. Nevertheless, I am aware that, on 19 February, the then vice-chancellor of London Met e-mailed all staff to inform them that the university would seek to reduce its level of staffing by up to 550 posts by July 2010. The university has since made it clear that more than half the posts will be lost through a mixture of voluntary and compulsory redundancies, and that the balance will be through natural wastage.