The UK Government's stance on funding for obtaining Equivalent Level Qualfications

The UK Government has decided not to provide funding for people who already have a qualification but who need to retrain in another discipline to the same level.

How can this be right when we know there's no longer such a thing as a lifelong career in one field? The government (most of whom went to university ENTIRELY at public expense) is frequently on at us to retrain, but is now pulling-up the ladder to make it next to impossible to do so.

Their answer is that they must prioritise those who've never had the chance to, for instance, go to university. By "priority" I assume they mean in terms of access to the limited funding that's available.

Last time I checked (Dec 2006), the wars in Iraq & Afghanistan had cost Britain $16Billion (Bloomberg.com). This could have been spent on 1,306,122 people getting a degree (at my very rough, full teaching cost calculation of £7,000 each). So I'd like to see the final line of their statement (http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page15966.asp) altered to - "It is right that our priority should be the pursuance of the last drops of oil, whatever the human & financial cost, rather than use energy efficiently and invest in alternative forms of energy".

Going off-subject slightly, the state of Florida has had to pay nearly $29Billion towards the war, money it could have spent on healthcare for more than 2.5 million Floridians (nationalpriorities.org).