If she will make a statement on funding for adult learning in (a) 2006–07 and (b) 2007–08.

The Government are broadly maintaining overall public spending to support adult learning, on average, until 2007–08, but we are shifting priorities in line with the national skills strategy to provide more longer and expensive courses to equip adults for employability. Less public funding will be available for leisure and recreation, so adults in non-priority areas will need to pay more, but at an average hourly cost of £1.94 by 2008, I think that is still a very good deal.

Last Friday the Learning and Skills Council announced that there would be 230,000 fewer adults in education by 2007–08. Surely that contradicts our commitment to lifelong learning. Will the Minister look again, seriously, at funding for adult education?

That figure relates to publicly funded adult education. Part of the strategy means that if adults value the provision, we must ask them to pay a little more. Faced with a choice between supporting adult skills for the purpose of employability and to drive up productivity, and supporting adult leisure and recreation, I am convinced of which is the higher priority and where the money should go.

Notwithstanding the Minister's desperate spin, just six days ago he announced swingeing cuts in the Learning and Skills Council's funding of shorter adult education courses. Where is the freedom for further education colleges when they are forced to remove half a million places—half a million people's chances to learn skills that, in today's world, the country desperately needs in order to meet the demands of local businesses? Is the Minister proud of the fact that he is scrapping courses leading to, for instance, a certificate in care skills, a foundation certificate in meat and poultry hygiene, a Red Cross qualification in preparing for an emergency, the award in providing a healthier school meals service, or the St. John's Ambulance lifesaver for babies and children?

There is no reason why our funding announcement should mean that those courses will go, but I will take no lectures from the Conservative party about further education funding. In the past eight years, the Government have increased the funding by 48 per cent. in real terms. Let us compare and contrast that with the 15 per cent. real-terms cut that the Conservatives delivered during their last five years in power.

The key question for the Conservatives is this. If they disagree with our strategy, what would they do? In the absence of a willingness to spend more public money, if they do not agree with our priorities, what would they cut in order to fund theirs? Funding for 16 to 18-year-olds, the roll-out of the national employer training programme, or funding for adult basic skills?—[Interruption.]

Order. The Minister is answering the questions today.

My hon. Friend will know that adult learning courses are provided at Worcester sixth-form college and Worcester college of technology, both of which are in my Constituency and both of which are excellent institutions. There is, however, no post-16 provision in local secondary schools, although that does not apply elsewhere in Worcestershire. My constituents are at the wrong end of a 13 per cent. funding gap. When will it be closed?

When there is a Tory Government.

When there is a Tory Government—the Government who cut further education funding by 15 per cent. during their last five years in power.

I know that my hon. Friend Mr. Foster is particularly concerned about the issue that he has raised. I shall be meeting him shortly to discuss that and other issues. We have taken action to reduce the funding gap between further education and schools without putting schools at a disadvantage, and over the summer my right hon. Friend the Minister for Schools gave a commitment that we would try to tackle the funding anomalies between sixth forms and further education. We hope to make an announcement in the coming weeks.