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London Metropolitan University

London Metropolitan is on the edge of my constituency, on the other side of the Holloway road. Many staff and students are constituents of mine, and a number of them have written to me, because they are concerned about the university's dire financial problems and its future. Several interns, both international and local, who have worked in my office have come from the university, and I receive a weekly update on their concerns about what is happening in the university. The university is clearly in a serious situation, because it has to pay back £40 million of public money, which it has been wrongly paid. That will require significant restructuring, which will no doubt have a serious effect on staff and students. As my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Jeremy Corbyn) said, London Met has done a great deal of work on widening participation, and it runs a variety of successful courses promoting inclusion. Although it depends on how we count these things, one way of assessing Islington shows that it is the sixth poorest borough in Britain, while another shows that it is the eighth poorest. Either way, we are poor and, unfortunately, we have suffered from low levels of academic achievement historically. Universities such as London Met play an important role in attracting students who would not have considered university in the past. The university's vice-chancellor has now resigned, and an interim vice-chancellor has been appointed. However, it remains unclear how incorrect information about non-completions led to the university being overpaid. Others have referred to an error by the administrators, but I spent 20 years as a criminal lawyer dealing with cases that looked very much like this one, and I do not understand why the police have not been involved.