To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he next expects to visit Leeds university and Leeds polytechnic to discuss funding for higher education.

I will be visiting Leeds polytechnic to open the Higher Education for Capability office on 27 November. This is a joint project of the polytechnic and the university.

Is the Minister aware that at Leeds university top-quality alpha-grade research in technical and scientific subjects can no longer be funded? Will he give an assurance that in future research at Leeds polytechnic will be funded under the new joint proposals? Is he aware that such cuts in academic research will prove to be economic short termism with vengeance?

Our policy is that high-quality research should be supported in departments of universities and polytechnics, wherever they may be. The Universities Funding Council and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council will embark jointly on a new research and assessment exercise next year. As a consequence, up-to-date ratings of quality will be made, department by department, across the spectrum of higher education. Every department that scores highly in those assessments will benefit accordingly. That is a thoroughly fair system.

Will the Minister make absolutely certain that the funding councils use up-to-date figures? Universities such as Lancaster are going steadily and rapidly up the poll and are doing very well indeed. However, the 1988 criteria are not as good as current ideas, so it is important that the universities that are forging ahead should be encouraged.

As always, my hon. Friend is eloquent in championing the university in her Constituency—and rightly so. The new research assessment exercise has been brought forward in anticipation of ending the binary line and bringing together the polytechnics and universities in one sector. As a result of the exercise to be carried out during 1992, the assessments of research quality will be based on the most up-to-date data.

When the Minister discusses higher education funding at Leeds, will he confirm that it is Government policy to increase basic funding in line with the increase in student numbers? Given the pressures on laboratories, libraries, teaching and student accommodation, and the real cut in capital funding in this year's autumn statement, what is the Government's policy on capital expenditure?

I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that our policy on capital expenditure is to encourage and enable higher education institutions to invest, as they need to do, to accommodate the dramatic increase in student numbers as well as provide facilities for the research of remarkable quality which takes place in so many of our universities. Capital funding available from the polytechnics has increased by 50 per cent. since 1989–90, when the PCFC sector was established. I am pleased that, in the new settlement that has just been announced, we have secured an extra £9 million of capital funding for the higher education institutions.