To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is his estimate of the cost of extending an entitlement to student fees to part-time students on first degree courses, assuming a maximum fee entitlement of £750 and that all such students would be eligible for fees support.

[holding answer 10 March 1992]: Approximately £87 million, with some 115,000 students —the number of part-time first degree students in England and Wales in 1990, including Open university students, and representing some 29 per cent. of the 401,000 part-time students in higher education that year. This assumes that all students are personally eligible for support.