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Universities and colleges are being forced into a time-consuming bureaucratic paper chase for cash as part of a central government clampdown on their financial autonomy, Conservatives claimed this week.

Shadow further and higher education minister Damian Green said that senior managers were snowed under making applications for a growing range of relatively small pockets of public money.

Furthermore, Mr Green said, public cash is increasingly earmarked by government for highly specific uses, which reduces institutions' financial freedom. He said that this seemed to be part of a move to impose a "national financial blueprint" on higher education.

"The amount of effort involved for the money is disproportionate. There ought to be overall auditing of universities, but institutions do not need the Department for Education and Employment or the funding councils to tell them how to spend every pound," Mr Green said.

Mr Green spoke out after colleague and shadow chancellor Francis Maude announced that the Conservative Party would honour Labour's spending plans for both education and health if it wins the next general election. The government's comprehensive spending review allocated Pounds 19 billion for education and Pounds 20 billion for health up to 2002.