To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what estimate he has made of the annual cost, for each of the next 20 years, of replacing the university maintenance loan with a maintenance grant for Scottish students at United Kingdom universities; if he will set out the figures in terms of (a) their cash accounting and funding impact and (b) their effect in terms of resource accounting; and if he will make a statement. [74711]

[holding answer 5 March 1999]: The information is set out in the table. Figures have been provided by statisticians from the Department for Education on a U.K. wide basis and the Scottish share has been calculated as approximately 11% of the total. Information is not available for each of the next twenty years. However a selection of years was modelled for illustrative purposes.