An extra 20,000 university places will be available in England this September on science, maths, engineering and technology degree courses, the chancellor Alistair Darling announced in the budget today.

Darling told the Commons that the cost of the "one-off" places would be £270m and would come, in part, from switching resources from existing budgets and higher revenues from taxes on bankers bonuses.

This will ease what has been predicted to be record competition for university places this summer. Applications in February were up almost a fifth on last year, the university admissions service, Ucas, said.