Cuts at region's universities could cost thousands of jobs, warns MP

Ministers should slash spending on health and other parts of education before taking the axe to university budgets, according to Huddersfield Labour MP Barry Sheerman, a former education select committee chairman.

Just two of Yorkshire's biggest universities are expecting to shed 1,600 jobs if budgets are cut by a quarter – the figure Chancellor George Osborne has warned departments could face when the spending review is completed in the autumn – he claimed.

He fears that will badly hit the economy in the longer term because universities play a major role in generating jobs, creating innovation and driving enterprise.

"This is not the time to cut back; this is the time to invest in universities and to increase the money flowing into them," he told MPs in a Westminster debate yesterday. "I have talked to all the universities in Yorkshire. A 25 per cent cut will mean tremendous staffing cuts.

"The 25 per cent cut in the higher education sector may not be a disaster in the short term — perhaps we will be able to live with it for a while — but it will have enormous long-term effects on our industrial future."

Mr Sheerman suggested if cuts have to be made, they should target London's 43 universities rather than the nine in Yorkshire.

GERIATRIC NURSES FACE AXE IN SHAKE-UP

More than 60 posts held by nurses caring for elderly people are at risk under plans by a Yorkshire NHS trust to radically transform services.

The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs services in Wakefield, Pontefract and Dewsbury, wants to cut 66 of 139 nursing positions in elderly medicine. The move last night drew warnings from unions about the impact on front-line care and raised concerns about services for vulnerable elderly people amid claims there are few alternatives to hospital.