The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan) I beg to
move, That the Bill be now read a Second time. Everyone has a
different reason for being passionate about education, but most of
us can point to that time in our lives which changed our lives: the
excitement when maths began to make sense, the thrill when we found
a subject that we really loved and were good at, or the pride that
came when a life-changing teacher showed that he or she believed in
us. I have spoken...Request free trial
The Secretary of State for Education ()
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Everyone has a different reason for being passionate about
education, but most of us can point to that time in our lives
which changed our lives: the excitement when maths began to make
sense, the thrill when we found a subject that we really loved
and were good at, or the pride that came when a life-changing
teacher showed that he or she believed in us. I have spoken in
this place before about my first moment of that kind, when my
teacher, Mr Ashcroft, stayed late after school to help me take
extra O-levels in engineering and technical drawing, which he
continued to do for two years. His belief in me changed my life.
Thanks to Mr Ashcroft, I was able to be accepted for an
apprenticeship in a car factory, which was the golden ticket to a
different life. But I have spoken less here about the second
moment, and the third, and the fourth. I was lucky in that my
education started there, but did not end there.
I have been lucky enough to benefit from truly lifetime learning
throughout my jobs. I was able to go back and study in both my
30s and my 40s. From that, I have learnt a simple truth: offer
people a hand up, and they will take it. However, while we excel
at educating people in their younger years, too often we do not
offer the same support once they are off the beaten track.
Education is an opportunity—it is the ultimate levelling-up tool,
the closest thing that we have to a silver bullet when it comes
to improving lives—and it is always good to have more than one
shot, as many things will change throughout our working lives. We
have pledged to level up the country so that everyone gets the
education that will enable them to seize the opportunities that
come their way. I take that pledge extremely seriously, and that
is why I am so proud to present this Bill to Parliament
today.
(Strangford) (DUP)
I applaud the Secretary of State for presenting a Bill which I
think everyone in the House will welcome as a positive move. The
Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, the
right hon. Member for Harlow ()—who is sitting beside the
Secretary of State—has often promoted young people whom I would
describe as white Protestant males who do not achieve educational
standards. He has frequently said that it is his purpose to make
a difference. Is that also the purpose of the Secretary of
State?
Absolutely. I can assure the hon. Gentleman of that, as someone
who went to a comprehensive school in Knowsley, a deprived white
working-class area. Most of my schoolmates did leave school
without many qualifications, and this is exactly the kind of
opportunity that will be there for them many years later. They
will be given that helping hand and, hopefully, take it.
(Ipswich) (Con)
I, too, applaud my right hon. Friend’s educational support for
people throughout their adult lives, but does she agree that it
should also apply to those who are neurodiverse? People do
not stop being neurodiverse when they leave school, which is why
this support is needed throughout their adulthood.
Absolutely. It is important that lifelong learning continues to
be accessible to many people. Sadly, we have heard of cases where
people are not diagnosed during their time in school, and it is
even more important that those opportunities are always there for
them.
The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill is one
step further in our mission to revolutionise access to higher and
further education with the introduction of a lifelong loan
entitlement, otherwise known as the LLE. As the Minister for
Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon.
Friend the Member for Harlow (), says, the LLE will ensure
that everybody has a flexible travel card to jump on and off
their learning journey, as opposed to being confined to a single
ticket. It is hard to overestimate the transformative effect that
this legislation could have. Through the Government’s wider
skills agenda, we have built the engine to help to transform our
technical education system. We are doing this by expanding the
number and quality of apprenticeships, by growing technical
routes into work and by creating innovations such as boot camps.
These reforms mean that the engine is ready, but it needs
accelerator fuel and that is what the LLE is. It is the way we
will deliver on a simple promise: if you back yourself, we will
back you.
The Bill will adapt the student finance framework, making
different types of study more accessible and more flexible. This
is chiefly because it will enable meaningful fee limits to be set
on periods of study shorter than a year. It will no longer be the
case that the only ticket to further or higher education is
through a three-year degree. Money talks, and there is often talk
about parity of esteem. This system delivers parity of esteem.
What this means in practice is that modules and short courses, as
well as traditional degree courses, will be priced according to
the amount of learning they contain. This will create a fair,
more flexible system and go a long way to encourage more people
into post-18 education.
(Meon Valley) (Con)
We are talking about lifelong learning, but we are now expecting
people to work until they are 67, so is there going to be an age
limit on this loan?
Subject to the consultation, there will be. I think that there
are some age limits at the top end in the student loan scheme
today.
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Con)
My right hon. Friend was just talking about a fair price and a
new method for calculating a maximum level for tuition fees. Does
she agree that some people have been receiving higher education
that has not been value for money over the past 20 years or so,
and that this reform will make sure that people get what they pay
for and get value out of their education?
Yes, there have been occasions when some people may have felt
that the value of the course they were on did not match the
aspirations or expectations they had on their way into it.
Obviously it can help if courses are shorter in length and there
are more options to get to the career routes that many people are
seeking.
As someone who studied part-time at college and at university I
really appreciated the flexibility, but too often the system
today tries to fit people into a box rather than adapting to
their needs. That is why this legislation and the flexibility it
brings will be of special benefit to students who need flexible
study options—for example, those from disadvantaged groups or
those who have caring responsibilities. Let me give some
extremely practical examples. Take Alice, who is ambitious and
wants to move into management but has not yet got the skills to
do so. By using the lifelong loan entitlement, Alice can fund a
module of learning to take that important next step, studying
part-time so that she can stay in her job, earning while she is
learning.
What about Ed? He has worked for the same company for 20 years
and feels as though he is stuck in a rut and going nowhere.
Luckily, Ed can use his LLE to enrol on a course that focuses on
a growth area of the company he works for. He hops in and out of
the training when he can and he is eventually able to break out
of his rut and get himself promoted. Finally, Amy uses her LLE to
study for a three-year degree to build a career in engineering,
but because after 10 years in work, new technologies mean that
she is not as skilled as she needs to be, she uses her remaining
LLE entitlement to do a module that refreshes her skillset. She
is then able to get a better job that makes use of that.
Mrs Drummond
What about carers? Will they still be entitled to carer’s
allowance while they study?
I am afraid my hon. Friend is a little ahead of me. This is a
subject of the consultation, to which we will respond before
Report.
Our education system should have this kind of flexibility at its
heart, and through the LLE it will. The fee limits for all
courses are currently set per academic year of a full course.
Without action, the fees for modules or short courses could be
set too high, which would put anyone who wants to study flexibly
at a disadvantage, wasting our golden opportunity. It is the
polar opposite of what the LLE should be trying to encourage.
This Bill addresses the lack of fairness in how learners choose
to study, by introducing a new method for calculating fee limits.
This Bill will do three key things. First, it will enable tuition
fee limits to be based on credits, which are already a popular
measure of learner time and will enable fee limits for all types
of courses to be set consistently and appropriately.
Secondly, this Bill will introduce the concept of a course year,
rather than an academic year. This will allow charges for short
courses and modules to be set with greater accuracy. Finally,
this Bill will allow the Secretary of State to set a cap on the
total number of credits that can be charged for each type of
course. This will prevent modules from being premium-priced.
Ultimately, this Bill will help to ensure that everyone, no
matter their background or career stage, will have access to
life-changing skills and training. The LLE will transform access
to post-18 education and skills, and it will provide learners
with a loan entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18
education, which is £37,000 in today’s fees. Learners will be
able to use the LLE over their working lives. It will be
available for both modules and full courses in colleges,
universities and institutes of technology.
I welcome the commitment to four years because, to follow up on
my earlier intervention, some people may feel that their
three-year course did not set them up for the world of work as
well as they would have liked. Does this mean such people will be
entitled to one further year, with a loan, to reskill themselves
to get the job they want?
Yes, absolutely. That is why we sometimes see people take a level
4 or 5 apprenticeship course after completing their degree to get
the skills that are useful in the workplace. Both full-time and
modular options will be available.
The LLE will help people to get the skills they need for the jobs
of the future, to build the energy resources, to lay the
broadband fibre, to deliver the high-quality social care and to
train the teachers and nurses we need. Some of us were fortunate
enough to have the right opportunities at the right time, but
others were not so lucky. That is what I want to change, because
everyone should get that opportunity, regardless of where they
are from, the decisions they have taken or even the courses they
have chosen in the past.
We believe that the LLE will create a more streamlined lifelong
funding system that benefits everyone—learners, employers and the
economy. It is estimated that at least 80% of the workforce of
2030 are already in work today. They will need the opportunity to
upskill and reskill over their career to progress and adapt to
changing skills, needs and employment patterns. The LLE presents
everyone with life-changing opportunities to get the skills
training they need to retrain, upskill and progress.
I assure my hon. and right hon. Friends that we have consulted
widely on how the LLE will work, who is eligible and how to
support them. We are considering the contributions to this
consultation, and we intend to publish a full response ahead of
Report on the wider policy and design of the LLE. My hon. Friend
the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) has a great interest in
this, I am sure.
As we move forward to delivery from 2025, we will continue to
talk to representatives from across the education sector, as well
as key delivery bodies, such as the Student Loans Company, to
create a flexible and streamlined system that responds to the
needs of the economy.
Too many businesses are struggling to find people with the right
skills for their job vacancies, while school leavers and learners
are often baffled by a skills system that is complex and
bureaucratic. That means that companies cannot find the workers
they need, people cannot progress and the country is stuck in a
productivity quagmire. We have people who want to work and
companies that want to hire them, but we need the LLE to ensure
that the workers of today have the skills for tomorrow. We need
learners to be able to upskill and retrain flexibly throughout
their working lives as their circumstances and needs change. By
offering funding for shorter periods of study, the LLE will help
those who may have been put off studying because they thought the
fees were too high or the living costs would be too
expensive.
This legislation supports the Government’s pledge to introduce
the LLE from 2025, building on the Skills and Post-16 Education
Act 2022. It also furthers Sir Philip Augar’s independent review
of post-18 education in 2019, which included the recommendation
that the Government introduce a lifelong learning allowance.
Through the LLE, we aim to introduce a more streamlined,
efficient and flexible learning system that is fit for the future
and brings further and higher education providers closer
together. The LLE will transform access to post-18 education,
presenting opportunities to retrain, progress and excel
throughout an individual’s working life.
This Bill may seem small and technical, but its impact will be
far-reaching. We need more coders, doctors, nurses, teachers,
technicians and builders—more of most things—and I am certain the
British people will answer the call, if only we give them the
tools and training to do so. Establishing the LLE may be one
small piece of legislation, but it is one great step for life
chances and social justice. I am a Conservative because I believe
in equality of opportunity—because I believe that what matters is
where someone is going, not where they have come from. For that
reason, I commend this Bill to the House.
Mr Speaker
I call the shadow Minister.
16:02:00
(Warwick and Leamington)
(Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the Secretary of State. I share a lot
of her view on the importance of lifelong learning and how it
transform lives, and the passion with which she spoke about that.
The policy areas that unite us in this House are few and far
between, but as she demonstrated in her remarks, the principle of
lifelong learning elicits widespread support across the House.
That is because we all recognise the transformational potential
of education and the fact that it should not be capped simply by
virtue of a person’s age or life stage. My view, and that of the
Opposition, is very much that education is an investment not just
in the individual, but in human capital and society, and, de
facto, in our economy. We all probably know a Mr Ashcroft, as the
Secretary of State was describing; we have all been touched by
someone who felt that they should perhaps be widening their
skillset through their lives or careers.
The world is clearly changing fast. With the fourth industrial
revolution, net zero and changing demographics on the horizon,
the need for a flexible multi-skilled workforce is more important
than ever before. The CBI estimates that nine in 10 workers will
have to retain and reskill by 2030 as result of the digital
changes seen in the world of work. Likewise, the Climate Change
Committee estimates that 300,000 additional jobs will be created
if we are to meet our decarbonisation targets by 2030. Many of
those jobs will require skills not yet being taught—or skills
that perhaps should have been taught in recent years—if we are to
catch up on achieving our objectives .
For too long now, the drive for more widespread adult
education—lifelong learning and reskilling—has been, at best,
lacklustre. The Government have sat on the sidelines and overseen
a decade of decline in skills. On adult learning, for example, a
survey by the Learning and Work Institute revealed that only one
in three adults self-reports any participation in learning—that
is the lowest in 22 years. Between 2009 and 2019, Government
spending on adult education fell by 47% and, according to the
Institute for Fiscal Studies, adult education and adult
apprenticeships will still be 25% lower in 2024-25 compared with
2010-11.
We often talk about the lost decade of wage growth, and that is a
fact, but it is pretty hard not to see it as a lost decade of
skills growth as well. Indeed, the Learning and Work Institute
quantifies that loss as up to 4 million learners, which is a
pretty damning indictment of the Government’s skills agenda for
these past 13 years. Indeed, part of the problem in recent years
has been the lack of priority and focus in the Department, as
deckchairs have been shuffled, reshuffled and shuffled again. The
figures are well known. We have had five Education Secretaries in
the past year, a succession of Ministers responsible for higher
education and a seemingly constant shifting set of
responsibilities between Ministers. There has been a fatal lack
of consistency at the heart of the Department. It must be
particularly challenging for the Secretary of State to be
witnessing that at first hand. That may well explain why there is
a widespread lack of awareness among employers of the
Government’s skills reform programme. Four in five employers said
that they were unaware of the Government’s plan to introduce
lifelong learning entitlement.
Having listened to the Secretary of State’s opening speech,
however, I note her determination finally to kickstart the
lifelong learning agenda, and I commend her for the work that she
is doing. I commend, too, the work of the Minister for Skills,
Apprenticeships and Higher Education, both from the Back Benches
and as Chair of the Education Committee. It was my former
colleague, who, as MP for Blackpool
South, really started this agenda, recognising the need for
lifelong learning in the form of Labour’s Lifelong Learning
Commission report in November 2019. Labour is fully committed to
supporting the Government in delivering lifelong learning,
continuing the important work that put together.
None the less, there remain some significant questions over the
Government’s stated policy. In a slightly unusual way, what we
have before us is merely a frame with no content—an exoskeleton
without a body, as it were. The Government launched a
consultation 12 months ago on how the lifelong learning policy
should be framed, which included who should be eligible; whether
maintenance should be provided; what courses should be covered;
what courses should be exempt; what changes to the regulatory
framework are required; what incentives, support and guidance are
needed to encourage prospective students; how students can stack
up their credits or modules; and how course quality assurance is
monitored. However, despite that, the Government have failed to
publish their consultation response ahead of introducing this
legislation, denying Parliament the full picture when
scrutinising the Bill—and that consultation closed 10 months ago,
in May last year.
The Cabinet Office regulation rules, published in 2018,
state:
“Government responses to consultations should be published in a
timely fashion.”
Ideally, that is within 12 weeks—I guess that is three months—of
the consultation. If not, they should
“provide an explanation why this is not possible.”
I ask the Minister this: why has the response to the lifelong
learning consultation not yet been published? When does he expect
to publish it, and what explanation can he give for the
delay?
This is important, because this skeletal Bill’s skeletal impact
assessment states:
“A full and detailed quantitative assessment of impacts on
learners, providers, employers, the Exchequer and the wider
economy and society is…not possible because of two key sources of
uncertainty”—
namely, broader lifelong learning entitlement policy and
behavioural uncertainty. The impact assessment goes on to
say:
“As some aspects of the broader LLE policy are still in
development, it is not yet possible to accurately estimate these
familiarisation costs.”
As a cherry on top, we are promised that an enactment impact
assessment will be published after the Bill receives Royal
Assent. One would have thought that the two sources of
uncertainty—broader LLE policy and behavioural uncertainty—would
have been addressed by the consultative process and the learnings
from the pilot programme. But no, for some reason those are being
kept from this House. That may have something to do with the fact
that only 33 applications for student finance were made for the
Office for Students short course trial, which is widely
considered to be a failure.
Call me old-fashioned—I have only been in this place for six
years—but I prefer to debate the policy underpinning
parliamentary Bills and their potential impact while we still
have a chance to get it right. It is incumbent on all of us to
try to deliver the best legislation. That is in all our
interests, particularly given the unanimous support for the
principle behind this Bill. Instead, we, the sector and
prospective students are waiting on tenterhooks for the final
publication of the consultation response before we can make any
well-informed assessment of the Bill and how it will interact
with the broader lifelong learning policy offer.
In anticipation of the Minister delivering the much-awaited
consultation response in the coming days, I will move on to our
concerns about the principles of the Bill as drafted and about
lifelong learning policy. Given the importance of getting the
lifelong learning policy right for boosting the UK’s economic
growth, productivity and workforce potential, there remain
significant questions related to the deliverability of this
reform. The Minister is committed to delivering lifelong learning
by the 2025 academic year. However, as he well knows, it takes a
considerable amount of time to make changes to the student
finance system, the admissions system and the design of new
courses. As a fellow pragmatist, does he genuinely believe that
it will be delivered by the start of the 2025 academic year, or
will it be delivered in a limited form?
Delivering that could prove groundbreaking in changing the
post-16 education landscape, and Labour would continue to tailor
it if in government. To borrow a sporting metaphor, the pitch
needs to be rolled. That includes the need for more clarity on
who will be eligible. Universities UK, the representative group
of 140 universities, has called for broad and consistent
eligibility criteria to ensure that as many future learners as
possible can upskill and retrain in the future. Given this
Government’s previous form on proposals to limit access to higher
education, whether directly or indirectly, what plans does the
Minister have to extend this policy offer to as many people as
possible, including those who are most hard to reach? Ultimately,
as I have said, education is an investment in people. Therefore,
the lifelong learning entitlement should be viewed through the
lens of educational empowerment, rather than restrictively
controlled and micromanaged. Many of us have concerns about how
this is going to be managed and delivered, particularly through
the OFS.
Given the scale of the challenge and the reforms to the student
finance system, it is also important that the Student Loans
Company is adequately prepared to deal with this new funding
model. I, and indeed the sector, have noted that there is little
to no information on the financial cost for the Government in the
event that the Student Loans Company requires a redesign in any
document attached to the Bill. That could be significant, surely.
Given that the SLC funnels £10 billion-worth of public money into
supporting students undertaking higher education courses, what
assurances can the Minister give the House that adequate
preparation has been carried out to ensure that the SLC is
prepared for the coming change?
The Bill gives a surprising amount of power to the Secretary of
State to decide what fee method applies, the type of courses and
activities it applies to, and the maximum amount of funding
available for each module or course. Understandably, that has
raised eyebrows. With so much power in the hands of the Secretary
of State, depriving Parliament of the ability to hold the
Government to account adequately, there are few brakes to prevent
them from unilaterally deciding to redefine the nature of a
credit or a module, and to make compliance with that change
contingent on future funding. I am sure that the sector would
therefore warmly welcome greater clarity in the Bill on key
concepts such as credits and modules. That would go a long way to
assuage such concerns, whether or not they are well founded.
It is also widely recognised among providers that running modular
provision is more expensive, not least because of the need to
provide additional wraparound support, including onboarding,
mental health support and academic writing support. Clearly, it
is important that a minimum fee level is set to prevent students
from being unfairly charged more for modular study than for a
traditional academic year of study. However, in the light of the
financial pressures on institutions, what plans does the Minister
have, if any, to address the cost burden for providers delivering
those courses? Failure to understand how that will work on the
ground runs the risk of providers shying away from running such
courses because of their prohibitive expense. The Government’s
own impact assessment stresses as much, stating:
“Some providers could receive less tuition fee income per student
if some types of learners that are currently studying longer
courses instead choose to study in a modular fashion”.
It would be deeply concerning if the policy behind the Bill
further eroded the financial sustainability of the sector, and
damaging to the UK’s economic outlook if providers ended up
opting out of modular study. It is therefore vital that
sustainable and adequate funding be available to providers, and
that fees be proportionate to a full qualification with support
to deliver wraparound support and high-cost modules. That is also
why consultation and dialogue with the sector are so important
during the setting of fee limits. In that vein, what plans does
the Minister have to ensure that, when setting those limits, the
Secretary of State has properly consulted those in the sector
charged with delivering this model of teaching?
Finally, let me touch on how the policy underpinning the Bill
will engage with the current regulatory landscape. Sector bodies
and universities are clear about the need to minimise additional
burden. As a result, it is important that the Bill builds on
existing regulatory and quality-assurance mechanisms. That is
important for employer and student confidence in the system. It
is somewhat ironic therefore that the Government are currently
validating the de-designation of the Quality Assurance Agency for
Higher Education from the Office for Students. That could leave a
quality assurance black hole when we most need an experienced
quality assurance body. I would be grateful if the Minister set
out what plans he has to ensure that regulatory burden is kept to
a minimum during the implementation of LLE, and how modular-based
courses will be assessed for quality harmoniously across the
sector.
Although the Bill is the flimsiest piece of legislation, we will
not oppose it. We will wait for the Government’s response to the
consultation. I urge the Government to publish the consultation
document way before Committee stage, so that we have access to it
and can properly scrutinise the legislation in the context of the
consultation and the Government’s response. On that basis, we
will not oppose the legislation.
16:19:00
(Worcester) (Con)
I very much welcome the Second Reading of this important
legislation and the broad principle of extending the Government’s
support for further and higher education to more people through a
lifelong learning entitlement. It is a pleasure to follow the
thoughtful and constructive contribution from the hon. Member for
Warwick and Leamington (), who raised some genuinely
valid questions. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the
Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education for the
briefing he provided ahead of the debate to members of the
Education Committee, which I chair.
The Bill is an important step in the journey to create what my
right hon. Friend has often described as the ladder of
opportunity, and it should benefit people across our country and
at every stage in life. Making level 4, 5 and 6 qualifications
more widely available, and encouraging HE institutions to offer
greater flexibility to those pursuing them, are both worthwhile
aims. This legislation, if done right, should stimulate greater
competition and innovation in the market for lifelong learning.
It has been welcomed by the Open University, which has been a
pioneer in this space, and it has long-term potential to
transform the skills landscape for learning through life.
I generally make it a rule not to bang on too much in this House
about my predecessor but two as Member for Worcester—my late
father—but I will make an exception in this debate. My late
father, who never had the opportunity to pursue his studies
beyond what we would now describe as level 2, set out an ambition
in his Macmillan lecture about 40 years ago for people to be able
to pursue education through their lifetimes. He envisaged a
society in which people would be freed by the technological
revolution then getting under way to pursue opportunities for
education and advancement at any stage in their career. He
summarised that opportunity under the heading “Athens without the
slaves”—a piece of hyperbole that was much ridiculed at the time
and that is commemorated in a lovely Times cartoon we have in the
downstairs loo at my mother’s house—which I think recognises the
intrinsic value of pursuing education.
My father’s was a generation in which higher education was a
luxury withheld from the vast majority of the population.
(Wantage) (Con)
I am very much enjoying hearing about my hon. Friend’s father’s
views, and I look forward to reading his lecture. Does my hon.
Friend agree that many people just do not appreciate education
when they go through it the first time round, in the years to 16
or 18? They might have bad teachers, or they might have other
things going on in their lives, and they cannot see the relevance
of what they are doing in the classroom. Many people would like
another opportunity at education later in life, which is why this
Bill is so important.
Mr Walker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: there are those who perhaps
did not relish being in the classroom at the time. There are also
those who go through their whole lives regretting not having had
the opportunity to pursue further studies and feeling that they
have somehow missed out on something. This Bill should provide a
solution for both groups.
As I was saying, in my father’s generation, higher education was
available to the few; it was a luxury withheld from the vast
majority of the population. However, his generation also
recognised that there should be no limits to where aspiration and
hard work could take an individual. In his case, they took the
lad who left school at 16 and who took his insurance exams while
doing his national service to success in finance, politics, the
Cabinet and eventually the House of Lords. However, he always
recognised that, in missing out on the higher studies and
university education that so many of his peers had enjoyed, he
and many of his generation lost out on something of real value.
He wanted to create the opportunity for people to study later in
life, and to keep open the offer of vocational and academic study
to adults throughout their lives.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (), I am very interested in
my hon. Friend’s father’s reflections in his Macmillan lecture.
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as we stand on the cusp of
another scientific and technological revolution, with artificial
intelligence, green jobs and so on, the need for lifelong
learning is more urgent than ever?
Mr Walker
I do, and I think that that point has been well made from both
sides of the House. With the fourth industrial revolution, there
are opportunities for people to reskill—something that the Bill
can well support.
The Bill has the potential to be an important step in recognising
the vision my late father set out, ensuring that people like him
in future generations have educational opportunities that were
simply not available in previous generations. Allowing
universities to spread the cost of a degree over more units and
to have more flexible start dates should allow more people to
pursue high-level studies flexibly and on a part-time basis.
That, in turn, will help to meet the clearly expressed
requirement from employers for more qualified people at level 4
and above.
Making the low-interest loans that are currently available to
undergraduates accessible to more people in later life, and for a
greater range of courses, should ensure that many more people
have the opportunity to pursue studies at a stage in their career
that might suit them. That would help people wanting to skill up
in order to return to work, and also those for whom the only
option for higher study is part time alongside continuing to
work. Allowing units of progress on qualifications to be retained
and transferred should allow more people to achieve higher
qualifications over time than has been the case, and enable
learners for the first time to lock in progress with their
studies, in a way that was not possible under an all-or-nothing
approach. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s analogy
of a travelcard, rather than a one-way ticket, is a very good one
in that regard.
I recognise the broader range of skills challenges that we face—I
perhaps expected to hear more from the Opposition on that topic.
My Committee will shortly be publishing our report on post-16
qualifications, and I am also looking forward to supporting the
work of the all-party parliamentary group for students on the
cost of living for students, which is undoubtedly a matter of
significant concern. However, I am strongly in support of what
this legislation sets out to do, and of the drivers behind it. I
do have a few queries, though, which I hope the Minister can
answer fully in his closing remarks.
First, my Committee has recently heard from a range of
organisations across the university sector with concerns about
the burden of regulation they face from the OfS. I hope the
Minister can reassure us that the requirements of the Bill will
not be overly onerous and that, rather than increasing the burden
of regulation, it will set out to create new freedoms for an
independent sector to innovate and compete. Secondly, given that
the scope of the legislation covers qualifications at levels 4, 5
and 6, what roles do Ministers envisage for the FE sector, and
for partnerships between higher education and FE, as providers
for lifelong learning under the new arrangements?
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, given that the Government
have consulted on the details of their proposals but have not yet
responded to their own consultation, when can we expect to see
the Government’s full response? I join the hon. Member for
Warwick and Leamington in urging Ministers to bring that response
forward before Committee stage, if at all possible. It would be
very helpful for the House’s scrutiny of the Bill if it were able
to see the details of that response and how the Bill will
operate, rather than the framework itself.
However, the legislation is very welcome in its intent, and I
look forward to the Minister’s responses to my questions. As
Chair of the cross-party Education Select Committee, I welcome
the Government’s intention to support lifelong learning by
extending the benefits of student finance to more people. I look
forward to supporting the Bill’s Second Reading.
16:26:00
(Twickenham) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Education Select
Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).
Mr Deputy Speaker,
“adult education must not be regarded as a luxury for a few
exceptional persons here and there, nor as a thing which concerns
only a short span of early manhood, but that adult education is a
permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of
citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and
lifelong”.
That is not a quote from one of the many briefings that was sent
to me ahead of the debate. It comes from Arthur Smith, who was
the master of Balliol College, Oxford, in his foreword to a
report commissioned by George’s Government in 1919.
This Bill is trying to fulfil an ambition outlined more than a
century ago by a Liberal Prime Minister—one that, sadly,
successive Governments of all colours have failed to deliver.
As we have already heard, there is consensus on all sides of the
House about the need for a revolution in adult education. That
cannot be understated, given the pace of economic and societal
change before us. Research from the Confederation of British
Industry predicts that, as a result of changes in the world of
work driven by digitalisation and the transition to a green
economy, 25 million workers will need to upskill by 2030, and 5
million will need to retrain completely. The 2022 business
barometer, which was put together by the Open University with the
British Chambers of Commerce, found that 78% of UK organisations
suffered a decline in output, profitability and growth as a
consequence of the lack of available skills.
Liberal Democrats see investment in education and skills not only
as an investment in our country’s future, but much more than
that. It is about helping people to maximise their potential,
nurture their creativity and develop their interests and talents,
so I share the Secretary of State’s ambition that, no matter a
person’s background or what path they have trodden, we all
deserve equality of opportunity. That is the reason I am a
Liberal. The Secretary of State says that it is the reason she is
a Conservative. Maybe we can hammer it out over a drink sometime,
and I might persuade her to cross the Floor, because as we have
seen, it was a Liberal Prime Minister who originally set out that
ambition.
However, I fear that the Government’s investment in lifelong
learning over recent years does not meet the scale of the
ambition that the Secretary of State has outlined. According to
the Institute for Fiscal Studies, total adult skills spending in
2024-2025 will still be 22% below 2009-10 levels. The number of
students taking non-degree undergraduate courses at higher
education providers fell from 330,000 in 2007-08 to 110,000 in
2021-22, most of whom were part-time learners. We are promised
that the lifelong learning entitlement will change that, and that
it will be flexible, unified and high-quality, with parity
between technical and academic routes. We are promised that this
Bill will underpin the LLE scheme by providing a credit-based
method for calculating the fee limit for whole courses and
individual modules. While I commend the Minister and the
Secretary of State for their commitment to the cause, I agree
with many of the comments made by the shadow Minister, the hon.
Member for Warwick and Leamington (), that it is plain to see
that this Bill is not the century-in-the-making panacea we have
all been waiting for.
Many questions remain unanswered in what the shadow Minister
described as a skeletal Bill. First, we are debating the Bill in
reverse. Parliament is meant to debate and approve the policy
framework and then let the regulations deal with the technical
details. This Bill does the opposite—it sets out the mechanism
through which an LLE will be delivered without setting out any of
the major policy decisions about how it will work. As we have
already heard, the LLE consultation was published more than a
year ago, but we are yet to see the Government response. The hon.
Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), who is no longer in her
place, asked the Secretary of State how old someone would have to
be to access the loan entitlement. How will maintenance support
work? There are no details in the consultation. Will the
repayment terms for these loans be the same as for 18-year-olds
going to university when many of these learners will have only
20, 15 or 10 years left in their working lives? Will the
equivalent and lower qualifications rule be abolished?
Those are basic questions about the nature and structure of the
LLE that the Government do not seem to be any closer to answering
as yet, but they will make huge differences to the effectiveness
of the programme. The lack of any detail on how to support
students with living costs, particularly during a cost of living
crisis, seems to me a significant oversight, which is made even
more unforgivable by the fact that the Department is increasing
undergraduate maintenance loans by just 2.8% next year, when
inflation is running at more than triple that rate.
I question whether the Government have correctly identified the
major problem they are attempting to address through this Bill,
because I am not sure they have made the case that the LLE is
something that aspiring learners actually want. The Department
for Education sought to prove its concept by making student
finance available for 104 courses, yet according to Wonkhe, just
26 of those courses are advertising a future start date and just
33 students have applied for student finance as part of that
trial. That was backed up by a survey last year by Public First,
which found that telling people about the LLE made no
statistically significant difference to whether people would
retrain. I do not believe that reveals a lack of demand for
lifelong learning, but it does show a considerable lack of
interest from the public in this mechanism for financing it.
The most commonly cited reason for not showing an interest in the
scheme is not wanting to take on debt. Seeing as talking about
our predecessors is in vogue, I will say that was the conclusion
my predecessor, the former Member of Parliament for Twickenham,
, came to in 2019 when he
commissioned an expert panel of university, college and adult
education leaders to explore alternatives for financing lifelong
learning. They found that most mature students have work, a
mortgage or family responsibilities, and so are unlikely to be
attracted to a scheme requiring them in effect to pay a higher
rate of tax for the rest of their working life to participate in
further study.
The commission recommended giving every adult a personal
education and skills account—what the Liberal Democrats have
nicknamed a skills wallet. The skills wallet is not about just
bolting modular learning on to the existing higher education fees
system, as this Bill proposes, but would offer central Government
grants throughout life to incentivise learning at all levels and
would leverage private and public investment from employers,
local government and learners themselves.
The Government’s consultation says that a learner’s account will
show their learning balance “like a bank account”, so why not
operate it like a bank account with tax breaks to incentivise
individuals to save for retraining? Many short courses are being
paid for by employers, so why not make employers’ contributions
as commonplace as a workplace pension? Local, regional and
central Government could also incentivise retraining during a
downturn or following the collapse of a large local employer by
topping up the accounts of affected workers.
Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding
Bodies said:
“The LLE Bill has the potential to be the most radical
entitlement to adult education, skills…and retraining…ever
introduced.”
But he goes on to say:
“Grants and maintenance support will also be required.”
I fear that the ambition of Education Ministers for the Bill and
its scope have been shackled by the Treasury.
The hon. Lady is making an interesting case, but does she accept
that some people do not want further or higher education and will
not benefit from it? People talk about the archetypal bus driver
who has not done such courses—of course, sometimes they will
have—and ask why he should have to pay for other people to do
them. I can see that the measure could be important for
low-income families, but does she accept the principle that
people who want to do the course should have to contribute
themselves?
I see where the hon. Gentleman is coming from, but equally, we
are ambitious about making sure that the whole population, or
many parts of it, are reskilling and are ready for the jobs of
the future, and for people from low-income backgrounds, loans are
a real barrier to putting themselves forward for additional
courses. The skills wallet, as in our 2019 proposal, would be a
grant given at various points of someone’s lifetime between the
age of 25 and 55, with top-ups from local or national Government
or employers and some tax breaks to go with it. That is an
innovative and pluralistic way of funding that ambition,
particularly given the challenges that we face as a country to
fulfil the skills that we need for us to thrive and grow, which
seems to be a cross-party ambition.
I fear that the narrow scope of the Bill will prevent amendments
that probe the big policy choices that await the Government
before LLEs are rolled out in 2025, but I hope that Ministers
will answer the following questions as the Bill progresses. Will
the Secretary of State consider putting the notional hourly value
of a credit in the Bill so that modules cannot be devalued by a
future Government looking to save money? Universities UK and
other stakeholders have raised concerns that clause 2 may allow
the Secretary of State to set differential fees based on subject
of the course. Ministers should bring forward amendments in
Committee to ensure that that is not possible and protect
universities’ institutional autonomy.
How will Ministers ensure that learners have access to
high-quality careers advice before they get their loan
entitlement? promised Islamic-compliant
student finance in 2013. It is unacceptable that, 10 years later,
it has still not been introduced. Will the LLE also be blocked
off to Muslim students? Will the equivalent or lower
qualification rule be abolished to give learners more flexibility
in what they study? Will the Government support the Liberal
Democrats’ plan to restore maintenance grants so that university
graduates from low-income backgrounds are not punished by having
to pay back more of their loans for longer?
This is a pivotal opportunity to shape lifelong learning in this
country, and it is desperately important given the digital and
green revolutions that are already under way. If we want to
ensure that we as a country are at the forefront of capitalising
on these opportunities, we need to equip people with the right
skills, so these plans need further thought and further detail.
We will rue the day if, in another 100 years, Arthur Smith’s
ambitions have still not been fulfilled.
16:39:00
(Bexleyheath and Crayford)
(Con)
It is a great pleasure to be able to participate in this Second
Reading debate. I should begin by congratulating the Secretary of
State on her excellent speech, and on her passion for opportunity
and excellence. I would also like to congratulate my hon. Friend
the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on his speech, including his
memories of his father. As someone who knew his father very well,
and who went to some of his lunches when we had discussions about
these sort of things, it brought back happy memories.
[Interruption.] Ah, the Secretary of State is still here. I just
wanted to say congratulations to her on bringing forward this
Bill. I know she is passionate about opportunity, excellence and
the fact that everyone should have a chance to develop
themselves.
Many of us on these Benches have, over many years, been
persistent in campaigning for lifelong learning and greater
educational opportunities, irrespective of people’s backgrounds
or situation. We have also praised our further education
sector—the colleges—and I know the Minister for Skills,
Apprenticeships and Higher Education, who is his place, has been
a champion for the colleges. I believe that inspirational
teachers, parents, role models, friends and school facilities are
very important in encouraging young people, teenagers and people
in their early 20s at college or university to go on and make
something of themselves, but that is not enough. They need
additional opportunities later on in life.
As someone who was a schoolteacher and subsequently, and more
importantly in respect of this Bill, a college lecturer, I know
from personal experience, as well as from constituency
involvement, of the many students who, for many and various
reasons, have not had the opportunity to continue in training,
education or college courses. Their ambitions and their careers
were stymied because they did not have that opportunity. When I
was out of Parliament between 1997 and 2005, I was privileged to
meet and to teach students at Bexley College, which at the time
was led by the inspirational principal Dr Jim Healey. I taught
women returners, the unemployed, those who wanted qualifications,
those who needed qualifications to advance in their jobs and
those who wanted to change careers. In particular, I was dealing
with Institute of Personnel Management courses. They were good
opportunities, but they were limited in scope—they did not go far
enough—and now we are addressing that situation.
I would like to praise the Open University. I think we should do
that, because it has done fantastic work in offering modules,
degrees, courses and education at a high level with greater
flexibility for students in relation to both age and time.
However, this is not enough, and that is why we need other ways
of ensuring that people obtain qualifications below degree
level.
In today’s rapidly changing world, it is essential that we have a
skilled, educated and motivated workforce to meet the challenges
of modern Britain. We must never forget that we never stop
learning—all of us, throughout life, are continuing to
learn—particularly in the technological age we are in. When I
left Parliament in 1997, we were still using electronic
typewriters. We did not have computers or mobile phones, and it
was a bit of a shock when I came back in 2005. Fortunately,
however, I had been at a college, Bexley College, where I was
able to do some courses, so I therefore understood and could do
the basics. I still cannot type very well, but that is a
different matter.
I am learning a lot about my right hon. Friend’s history, which I
am finding very interesting. On Friday in the Chamber, we
discussed the Employment Relations (Flexible Working) Bill, which
the hon. Member for Bolton South East () brought in. Does my right
hon. Friend agree with me that these measures encouraging more
mature students back into education go hand-in-hand with the
reforms the Government are making to flexible working, which mean
that people can continue to learn while they are earning and
broadening their skills?
I totally agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a very important
point.
Lifelong learning is important; learning is not just for the
young. Opportunities should be there for people to re-enter the
world of learning and training throughout their individual
working life. It is good news, therefore, that the Bill creates
the flexibility for individuals to decide what and when they wish
to study over their working life in order to progress their life,
increase their skills and make something more of themselves. I
particularly welcome the lifelong loan entitlement, as it will
improve access to education and certainly accelerate the
Government’s levelling-up agenda. Everyone should be afforded the
opportunity to reach their full potential irrespective of their
background or the lack of opportunity they had at school or
college. People in established careers should also have an equal
opportunity to pursue further studies. As a product of social
mobility—like many colleagues on both sides of the Chamber—I am a
firm believer that access to education should be fair and
available to all who choose to look for and pursue it. The loan
will enable those trapped in unemployment or low-paid jobs to
undertake further study. That will improve their skills and
employability, and their opportunities throughout life.
Research by Universities UK suggests that 35% of those who
considered part-time education in the past 10 years did not enrol
because of their personal life or their employment situation. We
have to change that in modern Britain, and that is what the
Minister, the Secretary of State and the Department are doing. My
constituents in Bexleyheath and Crayford will be delighted to
know that they can pursue further studies to suit their own pace,
time and opportunities, without paying a premium for doing
so.
I am keen for the simplification of the higher education system
to enable wider and easier access. Research by the Department for
Education suggests that the complexity of the student finance
system and the difficulty in obtaining information for mature
students are major factors that deter people from going back into
study. The lifelong loan entitlement will offer a system that is
easier to understand—my goodness, in today’s society, don’t we
need things that are easier to understand, because of the
complexities of life? [Interruption.] I see Mr Deputy Speaker is
agreeing with me, and he is young by comparison. Things such as
clearer detail on financial entitlements will no doubt encourage
more people to study. I hope the Secretary of State will agree
that to get the full benefit of the scheme, we must embark on an
education and information campaign, targeting those who will find
it of particular interest and benefit. It is no good thinking
they will just find out; we have to go out there and sell it.
I am concerned, of course, by the skills gap that is plaguing our
economy, particularly in this time of considerable economic
challenge for our nation. In August 2022, the Federation of Small
Businesses reported that 80% of small firms were facing
difficulties recruiting applicants with suitable skills. As I go
round my borough and constituency of Bexleyheath and Crayford, a
number of businesses say that they cannot get staff who have the
necessary levels of training or education. People do not have the
opportunity to obtain further qualifications, and therefore those
businesses cannot get the necessary skilled workforce.
We must endeavour to ensure that the UK remains an attractive
investment proposition, with its skilled and talented workforce.
I believe we have the people in this country, but they need the
opportunity, training and skills development. We can then be No.
1 again in so many fields and be competitive across the world. We
cannot afford to fall behind our counterparts, which is what we
seem to have been doing. The lifelong loan entitlement will
address that skills gap by enabling employees to continue to
upskill as they progress through their careers.
For many, it may be more sensible to learn over a period of years
because they have other commitments—families or other
interests—in their lives. They may wish to develop practical
experience first, and there is nothing wrong with that. People do
not necessarily want to go on a three-year university course.
They may not be ready for it or feel that the time is right. As
our economy continues to shift towards greater automation, it
will be crucial for employees to develop more technical skills.
Low-skilled jobs will be those most at threat from automation, so
we must equip those currently working in such jobs with the
skills to ensure that they can thrive in an increasingly
technological economy and society.
The Bill will be of huge benefit to all our constituents and all
the countries in our United Kingdom, bringing the skills that
employers want and that employees need. The result, hopefully,
will be the happier and better paid workforce that we are looking
for.
I believe, in all honesty, that the Government have done a
considerable amount over the past decade or so and have a good
record on education. I listened to the Opposition spokesman, the
hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (), whom I respect. I always
listen to him with great interest because he is measured and
reasonable—though usually wrong. But he is a nice chap, and he
put forward some thought-provoking ideas for us today. That is
why the Bill needs cross-party support, including from the hon.
Member for Twickenham () of the Liberal Democrats. I
am not going to get party political—the Liberal Democrats always
like to do that. We are trying to be constructive.
On technical education, over the last few years we have
introduced T-levels, so that all people can access a world-class
education. I did the old traditional A-levels. I enjoyed them and
they suited me. As we have heard, I am not very good at
technology. I do not think my hon. Friend the Member for
Newcastle-under-Lyme () will let me forget it.
Nevertheless, young people can gain skills via the revamped
T-levels. High quality is the key. Everything we do in education
has to be high quality, not substandard. I therefore passionately
support what the Government have done with T-levels, practical
learning and industry placement. It is the best of both
worlds.
On high quality, does my right hon. Friend recognise, from the
independent Wolf review, that at least 350,000 young people were
let down by courses that had little or no labour market value?
That is what we need to change. As well as bringing forward
lifelong learning, we need to ensure that all courses, whether
for undergraduates of traditional age or older, offer value for
money.
Absolutely. I would also highlight the £490 million in extra
funding that the Government are delivering to boost training and
upgrade colleges and universities across the country. I must
praise my own college, Bexley College, which has now merged into
London South East Colleges under the successful and inspirational
leadership of Dr Sam Parrett CBE. She is a brilliant and dynamic
woman who is driving the agenda we desperately need. The
Government’s extra funds will boost colleges’ training and
upgrade colleges. This particular college is very good. It is an
amalgam of several colleges in south-east London. There is a buzz
and it is looking to the future. The traditional old-fashioned FE
colleges were good in their day, but their day was yesterday, or
even before that, when the father of my hon. Friend the Member
for Worcester was in government in the 1980s. The Government are
also investing £350 million to renovate further education
colleges, which is welcome.
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. I could not
resist the opportunity to welcome the progress being made on new
science and tech labs at Worcester Sixth Form College, which I
visited just the other day. The college has been transformed by
successive small investments under this Government, while under
the Labour Government it got the promise of a complete rebuild
under Building Colleges for the Future, which then got cancelled
when they ran out of money for their programme. Is that not an
example of how we can invest more effectively and productively
for our college estate?
My hon. Friend makes a brilliant point. I think we would all
agree that what we need is upgrading and progress, rather than
pie-in-the-sky ideas. We must get practical.
The other thing I want to highlight is that colleges in local
areas should provide for local needs, boosting the skills that
are necessary in that area. The skills needed in my area of
south-east London are probably different from those needed in
Worcester or in other parts of the country. The Bill creates a
new duty for further education colleges, sixth-form colleges and
designated institutions to ensure that the provision of further
education is fully aligned with local needs and requirements.
This is another way to ensure we have the employment and
opportunities for young people and not so young people to make a
real contribution to their community, and to strengthen the
accountability and performance of local colleges and the
businesses involved in helping the programme forward.
There is a lot to be pleased about in this small Bill, and I look
forward to debating it in Committee if I am privileged enough to
be put on it by the Whips, though I do not usually blot my
copybook. We will discuss certain bits of the Bill and we will
all have ideas for how to tweak it, but we must be grateful to
the Government for putting forward an excellent, necessary and
most welcome Bill that will support the introduction of a
lifelong loan entitlement from 2025 and promote a culture of
upskilling and retraining.
The Bill will help to open up higher and further education by
introducing new methods and limiting the fees that can be charged
based on credits. That is really positive, good news. Students
will therefore be charged a proportionate amount depending on the
number of credits studied, encouraging more people to study by
taking advantage of the flexibility that the scheme will offer.
We have seen flexibility in work because of covid and changing
work patterns. Many people have found that to their liking, and
many businesses have as well. Flexibility must be the word for
our era, because it gives opportunity to so many more people.
Sir (New Forest East) (Con)
I obviously welcome that the fees charged will be limited, but I
presume that the colleges will be able to choose the packages
that they offer, so is there a danger that they will be less
inclined to offer modules if they cannot charge extremely
exorbitant rates for them?
I know that my right hon. Friend has a touch of cynicism. I am an
optimist, and I believe that the colleges will want to take up
the opportunity, because that will show the success of what they
are doing. They are part of the local community, so they need to
get real. We will have to discuss that point further. I encourage
my right hon. Friend to beat the drum in the colleges in his
constituency and to tell them that it is their civic or local
duty—whatever we want to call it—to do these kinds of things. But
we should be wary of what he says.
The Bill is the key to the Government’s skills revolution and it
will support our businesses, long-term productivity and job
creation. That is particularly important as we deal with the
difficult times of the cost of living crisis and other things we
will face in the future. We need to make the most of our
opportunities. I welcome the Bill; I look forward to it passing
into law and to the opportunities it will give so many people
across our country for more studying, more career development,
more skills and, hopefully, a more successful career.
16:57:00
(Waveney) (Con)
I am grateful for being called to speak in this important debate.
The Bill is somewhat technical in nature, but its objectives are
to be welcomed and applauded. We need to ensure that its
provisions are implemented as soon as practically possible and
that, thereafter, they deliver the desired outcome. The Bill is
vital to address the skills crisis that this country faces.
Moreover, we need to ensure that people from all backgrounds and
of all ages have every opportunity to realise their dreams and to
pursue their chosen careers; that businesses of all sizes can
recruit and retain staff with the necessary skills and expertise;
and that the stubborn productivity gap that has plagued the UK
economy for so long is at last vanquished and eliminated.
In East Anglia, there are exciting opportunities emerging in a
wide range of new industries: zero-carbon energy production, life
sciences, and food and agriscience. However, a skills mismatch is
holding back those sectors, and if we do not address it,
businesses will go elsewhere and we will have lost a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity not only to revolutionise the
local economy for the benefit of local businesses, local people
and local communities in East Anglia, but to benefit the whole of
the UK, not least the Treasury.
I will not go into detail on the provisions of the Bill, because
the Secretary of State has already done so. I shall focus instead
on why the Bill is needed, why it is welcome and what more needs
to be done if it is to have the desired impact. It is first
necessary to put the Bill in context. In February 2018, the then
Prime Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead
(Mrs May), announced a post-18 education and funding review. Sir
Philip Augar’s report, which was published in May 2019, described
post-18 education in England as
“a story of both care and”—
I am afraid—
“neglect”.
The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 subsequently provided
the framework for embedding lifelong learning in our tertiary
education system.
The Government have quite rightly recognised the problem and the
need for action. They are to be commended for introducing a
comprehensive framework that can deliver much-needed reform, but
I do feel a sense of frustration that the challenges are not
being tackled more quickly. At times, I feel we need to be more
radical and send a clear message to communities, people and
businesses that wholesale change for the better is on the
way.
Why is the Bill necessary? It is part of a drive to embed
lifelong learning in our education and training system. The need
for a lifelong learning culture is clear. Given the ageing
population and the lack of people with the technical skills
needed by employers, as well as technological change and the need
to move rapidly to a net zero economy, we need every adult to
have the capacity, motivation and opportunity to carry on
learning throughout their life.
We have an ageing population. By 2030, the population aged 60 is
projected to have increased by 42%, while the population aged 14
to 64 is forecast to have grown by just 3%. That has critical
implications. First, people living longer might choose to work
longer and must therefore be able to upskill and reskill.
Secondly, those who are out of work might well benefit from
accessing education and training to support them to be healthy
and active in retirement. Thirdly, the pressure on public
finances that an ageing population brings requires us to ensure
that people of working age who are out of work or underemployed
can upskill and retrain as quickly as possible.
We must address the challenge of climate change, which will lead
to dramatic changes in the world of work. New and emerging
sectors, jobs and working practices will require upskilling and
retraining a very large number of people. The target of net zero
by 2050 requires a radical shift in the response from our skills
system—a challenge that I am afraid is not currently being
met.
A fourth industrial revolution is taking place in information and
communication technologies. Artificial intelligence, virtual
reality and robotics are profoundly changing how people work,
learn, communicate and live. That will require smarter and more
agile ways of living and working. People will need higher, more
specialised and socialised skills. As a result of the changes in
the world of work driven by digitalisation, by the fourth
industrial revolution and by the transition to a green economy,
CBI research predicts:
“Nine in ten workers will need some form of reskilling by
2030”.
The Bill should not be considered in a vacuum or in isolation. If
it is to be a success, it must form part of a comprehensive
package of measures. Let me briefly list five of them. First,
there is the need to ramp up participation in adult education.
Since 2004 participation rates have almost halved, from 29% to
just below 15%, which means that millions of people are missing
out on opportunities to retrain and upskill for a new job or
career and employers are unable to fill key vacancies. Secondly,
there is a need to address the consequent low levels of employer
investment in work for skills. While much recent reform has
rightly focused on the role of employers in the skills system,
there has at the same time been a decline in the amount of
investment on the part of employers themselves.
Thirdly, we need to address the situation whereby the least
advantaged suffer the most and have the least opportunity to
advance. At a time when more jobs require education at level 3
and above, only 60% of young people reach that level by the age
of 19, while 15% fail to reach level 2. The number of people
taking higher and intermediate and technical college courses is
lower than it should be, given both the current skills shortages
and those that can be predicted owing to retirements and economic
change in the coming years. Those who do participate are far more
likely to be well educated and better off. The poorest adults,
with the lowest qualification levels, are the least likely to
access adult training, despite being the group that will benefit
most. They must not be left behind.
Fourthly, there is poor co-ordination across the education
system. Further education, higher education and apprenticeships
are currently treated as distinct systems in their own silos,
which makes it hard for employers and others to access the
overall system. There is insufficient alignment across welfare,
skills and economic strategies, and that needs to change. Fifthly
and finally, there has been a neglect of level 4 and level 5
provision. Sir Philip Augar’s review notes that the small number
of level 4 and level 5 students translates into persistent skills
gaps at technician level. That gap, I am afraid, makes England an
international outlier, with our numbers declining.
What else do we need to do? As I have said, the Bill is to be
welcomed, for it has a vital role to play, but it is only one
piece of the jigsaw. We need more detail on the lifelong loan
entitlement ahead of its introduction in 2025. It has the clear
potential to be a game-changer, introducing a stronger lifelong
learning culture in England. However, there are issues of detail
that need to be addressed, as well as wider issues relating to
how it fits into the whole tertiary education offer, including
further education and apprenticeships.
As the Bill progresses through Parliament, three big systems
issues need to be borne in mind. First, there is a need to instil
a new lifelong learning culture. Arguably, the biggest hurdle
when it comes to the success of the lifelong learning entitlement
will be the issue of how quickly a new culture of lifelong
learning can be developed. Secondly, there needs to be clarity on
the role of employers and how the lifelong learning entitlement
will work with the apprenticeship levy. Employers are central to
the working of the new system being developed as part of the
Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022, and it is important that
they are fully involved in the development of the lifelong
learning entitlement. Thirdly, there is a need for changes in
regulations to develop a coherent post- 16 education and skills
strategy that is properly aligned to wider Government policies,
redressing the inefficient competition that exists across the
system and setting out a co-ordinated approach to an expanded
lifelong education service. This should include legislation to
introduce a new tertiary post-16 commission.
In addition, I have two concerns that must be addressed when the
Government publish their response to the consultation carried out
last year that we have heard about. First, there remain questions
about eligibility and who will be entitled to access the lifelong
learning entitlement. This includes rules around equivalent or
lower qualifications. Secondly, the matter of maintenance support
needs to be addressed. The Government are still considering how
maintenance support will be adapted for the lifelong learning
entitlement. This will be crucial for mature learners, who often
have family commitments and caring responsibilities.
As I have mentioned, there is a danger that the lifelong learning
entitlement becomes something used by well-educated people to add
a year after a degree rather than by people who do not yet have a
level 3 education. The pathways from lower levels need to be
strengthened with better funding and maintenance support at level
3 and below, with universal credit recipients being given every
opportunity to access training without loss of benefits. It is
important that the provisions of the Bill are accompanied by the
necessary careers advice and guidance, so that those who need it
most can take full advantage of the opportunities that will
become available. A strategy is needed that sets out how the
lifelong learning entitlement will fit into the careers advice
and guidance for individuals to access throughout their
lives.
If the Bill is to be successful, it must be accompanied by
systemic change, and if the House will bear with me for a few
minutes I will briefly outline what the ingredients of this
change might be. They could include: a 10-year education and
skills strategy; a new tertiary education system with a joined-up
approach to regulation and oversight; the creation of a
maintenance support system that enables everyone to have a fair
and reasonable standard of living while studying training at
college, across both further and higher education; the reform of
the benefit entitlement system so that people who would benefit
from attending college while unemployed do not lose out; and
ensuring that the whole education and skills system is
sustainably funded. For too long, the college system has been the
Cinderella service of the education system. Significant
improvements have been made, but more work is still required.
Finally, we should have a support fund for providers branching
into new resource-intensive areas at levels 4 and 5.
In conclusion—I think you will be pleased that I have come to
this point, Mr Deputy Speaker—this Bill is to be welcomed, but it
is only one part of a wide range of policies and initiatives that
must be provided so that all people, whatever their backgrounds,
are able to realise their full potential. If we do this, it will
in turn enable businesses to prosper and allow the economy at
last to move into top gear, eliminating that stubborn
productivity gap. This is what is needed if we are to deliver
sustained economic growth and meaningful levelling up. As the
Bill moves forward, I would urge the Government to consider
reasoned amendments—I know my right hon. Friend the Minister will
do so—to quickly bring forward any necessary enabling and
secondary legislation, and to work collaboratively, not only
across this House but with universities, colleges, employers and,
most of all, those people that we represent, to whom this Bill
gives the opportunity to realise their full potential.
17:14:00
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney
() and to speak in what has been
a very good debate. I thank the Secretary of State for her
opening remarks. It is a shame that there are not more Opposition
Members here, but it would be churlish of me not to acknowledge
the speeches from the Opposition spokespeople, the hon. Members
for Warwick and Leamington () and for Twickenham (), who are no longer in their
places. They both raised thoughtful points, as did my hon. Friend
the Member for Waveney, and I am sure the Minister for Skills,
Apprenticeships and Higher Education and the Secretary of State
will have heard them and will consider what more we can do in
Committee.
I also pay tribute to the speeches of the Chairman of the Select
Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker),
and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford
( ). I look forward to hearing
from my hon. Friends the Members for Wantage () and for Stroud () in due course.
As I said in my maiden speech, if I can remember back that far,
education is
“the greatest tool of social mobility that we have.”—[Official
Report, 20 January 2020; Vol. 670, c. 78.]
To echo the Secretary of State, I am a Conservative because I
believe in equality of opportunity and in the famous ladder of
opportunity that I am sure the Minister will mention in his
closing remarks.
In my maiden speech, for which I believe you were in the Chair,
Mr Deputy Speaker, I went on to talk about young people making
the very best of themselves. In truth, I should have widened it
out because it is not just about young people; everyone should
have the opportunity to educate themselves. I understand that we
cannot offer the LLE to, say, 70 or 75-year-olds because there
would be no return on the investment, but I hope that
55-year-olds, or even 60-year-olds, might benefit from lifelong
learning, because they still have so much to offer.
I spoke on Friday about an 82-year-old in Chesterton in my
constituency who wanted to know whether there are opportunities
for flexible working in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I am sure
plenty of older people are looking for opportunities not only for
flexible working but to go back to college to get themselves more
skills, perhaps while they are working. This Bill will go some
way towards that.
I also said in my maiden speech that levelling up is about
education, and not simply funding for local areas, although the
funding I have secured for Newcastle-under-Lyme—more than £50
million for the borough from the future high streets funds and
through the town deal—is incredibly welcome. I am glad the
vice-chancellor of Keele University chairs our town deal
board.
As I always say to schools, colleges, universities and businesses
alike, levelling up is not simply about throwing in money,
knocking down buildings, building new buildings and applying a
lick of paint; true levelling up comes from the investment our
businesses make, the investment we make in our public services
and, most of all, the investment we make in our people.
That starts before school in the first 1,001 days that my right
hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame ) talks about and continues
through nursery, primary school and secondary school and into
further and higher education, which is the point at which it
often seems to stop. If people do not have the opportunity of a
forward-thinking employer that pays for training, they often do
not continue to grow their skills. They obviously gain
experience, but they do not have the opportunity to go out and
learn new skills that might allow them to take their career in a
new direction. I particularly welcome the fact that the Bill
offers the opportunity of lifelong learning to people who may
have studied to some degree or who may have dropped out of
university, so that they are able to go back and put right what
they perhaps once got wrong, or once did not value as much. They
will then be able to redirect their career and perhaps their and
their family’s entire future.
For too long, young people have been encouraged towards
unsustainable degrees. We have a fixed model, pushed under the
Blair Government, of three-year courses that all charge the same
fees. When that Government introduced tuition fees, the original
idea was that different institutions would charge different
amounts, but that is not how the free market resolved the
problem. It was apparent that if a provider charged less than the
maximum —originally £1,000, and later £3,000 or £9,000—it would
be advertising itself as inferior, and no provider wants to do
that because they all want to have the badge.
In practice, of course, there are inferior courses and
universities that are not as good as others, yet people are
paying the same for every course at every university. There is no
proper market signal to young people as to what is valued in the
marketplace and the world of work. The Bill introduces a new
method to make sure that students access courses at a fair price,
and pricing modules and short courses proportionately will go a
long way towards getting the market signal out to our young
people, and to older people who take advantage of lifelong
learning, as to what is valued.
Sir
I recall some of these debates and it was predicted at the time
that the universities, in particular, would behave in precisely
the way my hon. Friend has described. I am a little bit concerned
about the people who did a course that was not really viable in
terms of qualifying them for a practical career. How, if at all,
will they benefit from this legislation, given that, presumably,
they may have used up their three years’ worth of learning
allocation?
I am not sure whether my right hon. Friend was in the Chamber
earlier when I intervened on the Secretary of State on precisely
that point. This comes with a four-year entitlement. It is not
perfect and people will have used up entitlement; I discussed
this last week in the Tea Room with the Minister for Skills,
Apprenticeships and Higher Education, who is in his place. The
flexible loan is worth £37,000 at today’s prices—four lots of
£9,250. Those who did a three-year course and found it did not do
much for them may have the opportunity to do a one-year course
now. When people are a bit older and wiser, they can often get as
much out of a one-year course when they really want to do it as
they did in three years when they were at university and perhaps
were too busy in the bar, on the football pitch and so on. I take
the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest
East (Sir ) and thank him for sharing his
experience of those debates from back in the early days of the
Blair Government. However, I do think that the Minister and the
team in the Department for Education have considered this point,
and I think it is one reason why they have set this at four years
rather than three.
I also welcome the investment we are making in skills training
more generally, and I will talk a little more about that in a
moment, because I want to speak about the further and higher
education institutions in my constituency. I am lucky, as it is
blessed with both a fine further education establishment,
Newcastle and Staffordshire Colleges Group and, specifically,
Newcastle College, and a higher education institution, Keele
University. It is genuinely positive for the area, if not for my
re-election prospects, that we have a university in my
constituency. If we could make sure the next election takes place
during the holidays, I would be extraordinarily grateful,
although I know that is not in your gift, Mr Deputy Speaker. I
always enjoy going to Keele University and speaking to the
students, even if they do not always vote the right way at the
ballot box. [Interruption.] I see the Opposition Whip, the hon.
Member for Ogmore (), heckling me from a sedentary
position.
Keele University is very integrated now into
Newcastle-under-Lyme, in a way that it has not always been,
partly because of the involvement in the town deal that I spoke
about earlier, with the vice-chancellor as the chair. As part of
that, Keele University is going to be opening a digital society
centre in the centre of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The science and
innovation park at Keele is also a huge benefit to the
constituency. We manufactured the vaccine on that park; the
AstraZeneca vaccine was manufactured by Cobra Biologics, which
has since been taken over. A number of small businesses are also
going on there, through the Denise Coates Foundation, which has
funded a school of management there. All of that is essential to
levelling up, having more money in our local economy and more
wealth generated locally and spent locally, supporting our high
street and helping us to get the growth we want in our local
economy.
I will speak a little more about Keele in a moment, but first let
me speak about the Newcastle and Staffordshire Colleges Group. I
am delighted to say that it is becoming an institute of
technology—sadly, it is in Stafford, not Newcastle-under-Lyme,
but that is by the by because it will be open to people from both
areas, which are very much connected. Ours was the first FE
college anywhere in the country to be rated outstanding across
the board by Ofsted. I wish briefly to raise a point about
T-levels with the Minister. I know that the college welcomed
them, and it currently has 2,259 learners studying level 3s,
mostly in applied general things, mostly on BTECs. That cohort is
considerably disadvantaged compared with the one doing A-levels
at the college; they are eight times more likely to have
education, health and care plans, twice as likely to have a
learning difficulty or a disability, and 33% more likely to be
economically disadvantaged and in receipt of a bursary. The
college has written to me as it has concerns about the transition
to T-levels and the speed with which it is occurring, and I think
there are a number of practical concerns. The college is very
much in favour of what the Government are doing but it has a
number of practical concerns. If the Minister would be willing to
meet people from the college, either on a visit, which I know he
would be keen to do, or virtually in the meantime, that would be
welcomed by the excellent principal, Craig Hodgson, who has
written to me about those concerns. I am very blessed to have
that further education establishment in my constituency, as it is
changing the life chances of many of my constituents. It is also
well engaged with local businesses, as it offers apprenticeships
as well. Having such a good further education provider in my
constituency is a fundamental part of what will help to level up
Newcastle.
Let me speak a little more about Keele University, which, as I
have said, is also in my constituency. A total of 31% of home
undergraduates are in receipt of financial support due to low
household income. That places the university 27th out of 122
English higher education institutions, according to the Office
for Students. It does very well on non-continuation—keeping
disadvantaged people in university—but it acknowledges that it
has more to do on attainment. According to the most recent
figures that I have available, in 2017-18, only 14% were mature
students, and the university wants to do more about that. I am
sure that the Bill will encourage more people to study at what is
an excellent university in Keele. It is so excellent, in fact,
that it was voted Britain’s best university, as ranked by
students. It has 96% graduate employability, which is very
encouraging.
I will, if I may, briefly mention Staffordshire University,
which, although it is in neighbouring Stoke-on-Trent, is attended
by a number of my constituents. It has a different profile: some
24.5% of its students are in quintile 1of the income deprivation
affecting children index; and 50.5% of its students are mature,
of whom 35.5% are full-time—that compares with 21% nationally.
The university is incredibly well set up to deal with lifelong
learning. There are a number of disadvantaged people in
Stoke-on-Trent who did not even get GCSEs, let alone A-levels or
go to university, and I hope that some of them will take
advantage of the opportunities that this Bill presents.
Let me cite some figures that were provided by UCAS, for which I
am grateful, to give the overall picture in my constituency. In
the last cycle, there were 730 applications to higher education
institutions, 600 of which were accepted. Of that, 135 were
studying locally, which I think is mostly at Keele. Those numbers
are lower than average. I would like to see them higher, again,
to see us do better, but 28.1% of those were aged 21 plus, which
is above the latest national average of 23.8%. That is
encouraging, as it shows that mature students in
Newcastle-under-Lyme are already taking advantage of the
opportunities through UCAS.
The Bill also sits alongside our record in education in general,
and how we are using education to improve people’s life chances
to help level up their opportunities and outcomes. I welcome
T-levels, despite the aside from the college that I mentioned,
because they are a technical qualification that will help people.
They provide practical learning for those who do not necessarily
want to study A-levels. We have also delivered lots of money on
different fronts—£490 million to boost skills training and
upgrade our colleges and university, £432 million of which will
fund state-of-the-art university and college facilities at 100
providers, and a further £57 million will support 20 specialist
higher education providers to deliver a wider range of specialist
courses of the highest quality. We have invested £350 million in
renovations for further education colleges across the UK. We have
brought forward £200 million of that to renovate 180 providers.
That means that colleges have started immediate work in repairing
and refurbishing their buildings.
Importantly, given the context of Putin’s war in Ukraine, we have
provided £500 million for energy efficiency upgrades for schools
and colleges, which will help them to save on their bills. A
primary school will receive, on average, £16,000, a secondary
school, £42,000, and further education groups approximately
£290,000 each, which is very welcome and will help to make sure
that we have energy efficient buildings, saving ourselves and the
providers money in the long run.
We have £3 billion in the National Skills Fund that we have
established. That helps individuals and small and medium-sized
enterprises to access high quality education and training.
Although that is not completely in the scope of the Bill, it is
important that we engage with businesses at every stage on what
they want. I had representatives from businesses down here just
last week to attend a roundtable meeting, and they told me that
their two challenges are land and planning and then skills in the
local population. Therefore, everything that we can do—whether it
is through apprenticeships, through training on the job or
through the opportunities that the Bill will provide for people
to acquire new skills, possibly taking a year out and possibly
while working part time—will be welcomed by businesses in
Newcastle-under-Lyme.
It is not just money that we need. We are also requiring further
education establishments to provide for local needs. The Bill
creates a new duty on further education colleges, sixth-form
colleges and other designated institutions to ensure that the
provision of further education is fully aligned with local needs.
That will be considered on an annual basis to strengthen
accountability and performance, so if an area is falling behind,
there will be scope for it to catch up. Finally, we need to
reform initial teacher training in further education, which is
part of the cycle that I spoke about earlier. We need the best
quality teachers. At the moment the system is a bit too
fragmented, so we need to make it easier to navigate and it needs
to have high-quality, clear standards throughout. We need to
ensure that public funding for teacher training goes only to
high-quality providers following the standards that we and
employers want to see.
In conclusion—I know that a couple of other Members wish to
speak—as I said at the start, I believe in equality of
opportunity and in giving people the tools they need to make more
of themselves. My people in Newcastle are ambitious; indeed, all
of our constituents are ambitious. They want to stretch
themselves, learn new skills and make a better life for
themselves and, above all, their families. As I have said,
education is at the core of that. It gives people and their
children the opportunity to make more of themselves, and this
Bill is all about expanding that opportunity and making it
available to more people—more than I considered in my maiden
speech, to be honest. It will ensure that opportunities are
available, with Government support and the help of teachers,
lecturers and everyone else who works in the sector. I pay
tribute to them, because they have been through a very tough time
with covid and have had to work very hard to get back on track.
This Bill will be a shot in the arm, giving them more keen
students who have actively chosen to go back into learning. That
is exactly what teachers and lecturers want—those are the people
they want to work with. This Bill is about expanding opportunity,
regardless of people’s background, previous educational history
and age, and I commend it to the House.
17:31:00
(Wantage) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for
Newcastle-under-Lyme () and for Waveney (). There have been a number of
good speeches, but I was struck in particular by a couple of
things said by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney, who is no
longer in his place. First, he spoke of FE having been a
Cinderella service for a long time, and secondly, he addressed
the risk of affluent people using the Bill’s provisions to get a
qualification additional to those they already have. I will talk
about the issue of access, which I think chimes well with my hon.
Friend’s comments.
Before I entered this place in 2019, I ran charities for
disadvantaged young people. Those charities pretty much worked
with young people aged 16 to 25—a couple of them went all the way
down to age 10, but the bulk of young people I worked with in the
16 years before becoming an MP were aged 16 to 25. I am therefore
quite familiar with how the system pushes people to do three-year
university courses at the age of 18. Indeed, they are set on that
path before they even get to that point, because at 16 they have
to choose the courses that will set them up for their desired
university course. For example, if someone is not studying
chemistry at A-level, they will not be admitted to a medical
course. We put people on a narrow track at a very early age.
There are all sorts of debates about the international
baccalaureate and whether we should study a broader range of
subjects. If students are to follow the university track at 18,
however, they have to pick subjects at 16, and school visits will
often be to universities rather than to colleges and employers.
The UCAS system—I am really glad that we are changing this—makes
it incredibly easy for people in year 12 and moving into year 13
to apply to university. There is one form, on which they list
five universities. The process could not be much simpler,
although there are difficult things to do to put the form
together. Everything says to young people, and to adults, “There
is a slip road at this point, but if you miss your junction”—to
mix metaphors slightly—“that is it. You will be set on an
incredibly long road without the opportunity to come off at the
next junction or go back and find that junction again.” That is
what our whole system has done for a long time, and it has been
quite instructive.
I do not say this as a criticism, but the two big influencers of
young people—parents and teachers—reinforce that message. That is
not a criticism, as I say, because we all have to do better in
that regard. Parents often want their children to go to
university, even if they did not go themselves. My parents wanted
me to go to university, but I was the first generation in my
family to do so. For many people, going to university is held up
as the aspirational thing to do, and the alternatives are not
seen in the same aspirational way, which they should be.
Most teachers did exactly what we are talking about: they got to
18, went to university, did a teacher training qualification, and
joined the profession. So it is the thing that they are most
familiar with, too.
(Gillingham and Rainham)
(Con)
My hon. Friend makes an important point about the influencers —be
they teachers or parents—who inspire individuals to go to
university. A point that needs to be considered relates to the
initial teacher training market review that the Department for
Education has just carried out, affecting teacher recruitment.
Twelve universities—including Greenwich University, which covers
Universities at Medway, and the University of Durham—have been
removed from teacher training opportunities, affecting more than
4,492 future teachers. If we are to inspire the younger
generation to go to university, we need outstanding teachers and
a spectrum of universities from across the country providing that
training. Does he agree that it is absolutely right not only that
we get the right teachers, but that such reviews take into
account the excellent work already being carried out by teachers
across those institutions?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I do not know enough
about why those universities have been removed, so I will not
comment on that, but a point to which I will come later is the
importance of outcomes for young people and adults. Whatever the
qualification that they are studying, we have to judge the
outcome that they go on to, rather than just saying, “Well, you
have to go to university or you will have to do this sort of
thing instead.”
Apprenticeships, as well as higher technical qualifications,
which I know the Bill will enable people to do through the
lifelong learning entitlement, do things that teachers and
parents are not familiar with, which is quite important. My hon.
Friend the Member for Waveney and others have talked about the
importance of careers advice. The truth is that there are very
few examples of good careers advice anywhere—be it in the state
sector or the private sector, for the young or the old. A lot of
our decisions are based on anecdote, or being told what not to do
rather than what to do, without understanding the full range of
available options. One thing that we have to do is to help
parents and teachers understand the range of options that are
available to young people. If they knew about them, they would
probably be more open to promoting them.
My hon. Friend speaks with great authority on these matters. I
completely agree with his point about careers advice. Does he
agree that what is perhaps needed at the ages of 16 to 18 is
better advice about what courses to take and what will open up
the most doors? A lot of people aged 16 to 18 have no idea what
career they want to take up. I know that I, for one, did not.
My hon. Friend makes another important point, and it leads me
incredibly nicely to the point that I was just about to make.
I understand the motive behind the Labour party’s desire for 50%
of young people to go to university. It was not a malign motive.
Labour believed that that was aspirational and that it would help
us compete, but it has clearly had a number of negative
consequences. One of the most important—this goes to my hon.
Friend’s point—is that we have told people, “The most important
thing you can do is go to university at 18. It doesn’t
particularly matter where you go to university or what you study.
The most important thing is that you go to university, because we
want all young people to go to university.” Thanks to a whole
range of organisations, including the Institute for Fiscal
Studies, which has done great work on this issue, we now know
that people who graduate from a number of institutions will earn
less than they would have done had they just got a job. In 2020,
the IFS found that about 20% of people who go to university—one
in five—earn less than people with similar grades who just get a
job.
We might dislike that that is the case—we might wish that every
university or subject gave people the same earnings outcome—but
when I worked in this field, people could choose from 60,000
university courses, which of course do not all give the same
outcomes. Certain universities—particularly Russell Group
ones—give people higher earnings, as do particular courses, such
as medicine, engineering and maths. The charities I worked with
overwhelmingly supported disadvantaged young people, and the
truth is that it is usually those people who do not get the
advice they need and who pay large amounts for courses that do
not add to their employability outcomes. They do not get good
information, advice and guidance at a young age from school or
from parents, in the way that a middle-class child might. That is
one big way in which the 50% target has prioritised quantity over
quality.
Sir
I thoroughly endorse the direction of my hon. Friend’s thoughtful
argument. Does he agree that, even at the Russell Group
university end of the spectrum, there has been a serious issue
with grade inflation? So many people—a large majority, I
think—are now awarded first and upper second-class honours in
institutions where, 20 years ago, one in 10 might, if they were
lucky, have got a first-class degree, that it becomes difficult
for employers to pick out people for the right reasons and for
the right jobs.
I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. Part of the reason
why that has happened is that young people feel, “I’m making an
investment here. I’m paying £9,000 a year. I’m not doing that for
you to give me a 2:2 or a third at the end of it.” There has
therefore been this pressure on universities—often,
unfortunately, with the threat of legal action from parents who
can afford it—to inflate the grades people are given. This is
another unintended consequence.
People will say, “Look, it’s not just about the money you can
earn after your degree,” and that is the case, but because we as
individuals are making that investment at that age, we
understandably want to see an impact on our earnings. However,
another problem is that lots of people will never pay back the
money they have borrowed, and that is a huge liability for the
taxpayer. Some taxpayers have been to university themselves, and
some have not, but they will all incur this cost. We lend money
to people to go to university, but if they do not earn enough to
be able to pay it back, the taxpayer will not get a return on
that investment. At the moment, we are on course for only a
quarter of people to fully pay back their student loans. That is
a huge amount that the taxpayer is investing unnecessarily in
something that I hope we will change through this Bill.
As has been touched on, it is also the case that the three-year,
full-time model for people aged 18 does not suit every young
person. Lots of the young people I used to work with at the
charities I ran had caring responsibilities, either for younger
siblings or ill relatives. Perhaps a member of their family had
unfortunately died, and those young people therefore had greater
responsibilities, or they needed to work alongside study in order
to supplement the family income. As such, again, we need greater
flexibility, and that is before we come on to the technological
change that we are expecting. We will see some of the most
radical technological change that the country has ever known, and
lots of the jobs that we train people for today will become
obsolete. A person might make a decision at 18 about the
particular course they want to study for a particular job, and in
20 years find that that job is obsolete and that they need to
retrain for something else. That is why the Bill will be so
important.
As an aside, lots of jobs should not need a degree anyway—we have
slipped with the 50% target, I am afraid. In order to make the
lives of employers easier, we have applied a higher and higher
degree threshold to weed out people when we make selection
decisions. If everybody has a degree, we end up starting to ask
for master’s degrees, so we have entry inflation, not just grade
inflation. Above all, that target has contributed to the
disparity of esteem between academic and vocational courses. As
has been touched on, this is a limited, smallish Bill, so giving
people the equivalent of £37,000 in today’s money to enable them
to train themselves across their lifetime, at some point in the
future when they decide that they need to study for
qualifications that they do not yet have, is so important for
what we are trying to do: create that parity of esteem.
The Bill will promote lifelong and modular learning, and set
limits on course and module fees based on credits. It will also
achieve subtle things. Going back to the point about the whole
system being geared towards one particular model, changing from
an academic year to a course year is hugely important, because
when everything is geared towards academics, we are continually
reinforcing the message that the academic model is the only one
for people.
We know that lifelong learning has a huge number of benefits. We
know it will help with earnings; for some considerable time only
about one in eight of the people who are in low pay have escaped
that low pay a decade later. That has been true for decades, and
part of that is about progression. By the way, that is partly the
job of employers —they need to have good strategies for
progression —but it is also about allowing adults to train in
things they are not able to do, so that they can get more skills
and therefore get more money.
(Huddersfield)
(Lab/Co-op)
I came into the Chamber after the hon. Gentleman had started his
very good speech, so I hope he will forgive me. Is he trying to
reinvent the individual learning accounts, which were an early
attempt by Tony Blair’s Government to create that lifelong
pattern of learning and open up opportunities? I was Chair of the
Education Committee at the time, and unfortunately that
Government found out very quickly that that scheme could be
scammed, and it collapsed. Everyone said that the Government
should have brought it back, even Mr Deputy Speaker, who used to
be one of my students. Even he believed in that scheme, but it
has never been resurrected.
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am a
politician, so I would never try to reinvent the wheel, but I
think what we are trying to do in this Bill is learn from some of
the problems that the Government at the time had with that
situation, because lifelong learning is so important and people
will need to retrain. People cycle in and out of work, and we
will need to train people for jobs that none of us has even
considered. Developed economies such as ours are historically bad
at retraining people for new technology—it is not just a UK
problem; it is a US problem too. All the developed economies find
that difficult, so the Bill is an important way in which we can
help people. That is before we consider the health and wellbeing
advantages of lifelong learning, which are also well
documented.
The Bill is set in the context of a couple of problems with which
my right hon. Friend the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and
Higher Education is familiar. One is access. It is still the case
that access to certain universities is not what it should be.
Disadvantaged young people find it difficult to get into certain
universities, and we have to make better progress on that—some
universities are still dominated by those from private schools,
and that matters for everything we are training people for—and
ditto the situation with international students. Some
universities have made much better progress on getting
international students rather than low-income students. They do
that because it gives them a lot more money, but universities
need to be making a good contribution to social mobility at
home.
With this lifelong learning entitlement, I hope the Minister
will, as with everything else, be applying two tests. First, what
are the outcomes for people who undertake certain courses? I am
agnostic about whether it is level 4 or level 8 and whether it is
academic or vocational; the thing I care about most is whether
the course helps someone get a better outcome than they otherwise
would have had if they had not done that qualification. That
unfortunately has not been the case with lots of the university
courses that people have done at 18. The second test is simply
this: do disadvantaged young people or older people who have been
disadvantaged get their fair share of the courses that will
really help them to have those better outcomes? Across degrees
and apprenticeships, too often it is the most affluent and the
most privileged who take most of the spaces on the things that
will give the best outcomes. All that being said, this is an
important Bill that is trying to get us to that parity of esteem,
and I am very pleased to support it.
17:51:00
(Stroud) (Con)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member
for Wantage (), who I genuinely believe
could speak for an entire day on this subject and still enthral
the entire Chamber. I completely love this focus on lifelong
learning. Whether short courses, long courses or life-enhancing
learning, it is hugely important not only to the individual, but
to the country. I am pleased that we finally have a Government
who are committed to all forms of learning, jobs and sectors. I
give credit to the Department for Education and all the officials
in the Box as well, because I know how hard they have been
working.
I did not go to university; I left home at 15 and did not do
particularly well at school. I got a job as a legal secretary,
and then I worked my way up. I went to night school, carried on
and qualified as a solicitor. I was quite embarrassed about all
that. I did not tell anybody. I remember going out with
barristers and their saying, “Just give this up. It is hard work.
You are going to work all day and studying at night. You are
teaching aerobics as well in the evening to pay for all the law
school fees. That looks like hard graft, why don’t you just go to
uni?” I used to fumble around and stumble in my explanation as to
why I was learning in the way I was. That was because the entire
country and the Labour party for a long time had focused very
much on getting 50% of youngsters into university, and there was
not a lot of chat about the rest of us.
We know that a lot of parents are often very supportive of
further education colleges, but mainly for other people’s
children, because many families, many schools and many quarters
still consider that university is the only way forward. Let us
fast-forward to me as a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed candidate in
Stroud. I got chatting to those at the amazing further education
college, South Gloucestershire and Stroud College. I spoke to
people at all our secondary schools, and I met bright and
ambitious young people. On the doorsteps, I kept meeting people
who had qualified through further education colleges, and I was
learning all the time about these great careers. Often they were
running great big departments or leading the way in their
individual industries, but they tended not to talk about how they
had qualified, often because they had been written off by the
time they had got into colleges. We drop that part of our
lives.
I started bothering Education Ministers about further education
and skills, and I started a campaign called #FEFriday. I
basically bang on about further education every single Friday on
all my social media. What I have learned from all that is just
how valuable everything that goes on in our colleges is and how
important our lifelong learning programmes are. I remind
everybody that during the pandemic the professions that people
missed the most were the chefs, hairdressers, childminders, those
in beauty and those in construction. We should remember when we
were not allowed plumbers in our houses, and how much trouble
that caused. I absolutely welcome this Bill, the focus on
lifelong learning and finding a way to support that
financially.
Similar to other Members, I have questions for the Minister that
I know he will deal with about the funding behind the Bill for
our colleges and how much that will help them. They have a real
crisis in recruitment. They are seeing other colleges and other
sectors providing golden hellos and cash to recruit and retain
staff, which FE colleges cannot offer. Similar to my hon. Friend
the Member for Waveney (), I am interested to see how
this Bill works alongside the apprenticeship levy, which we could
have another very long debate on, and how we are ensuring that we
are seeing reforms.
I want to hear—not necessarily today—a little more about the
polling and work that the Department has done to look into the
perception of taking on more debt, because when I was growing up
I did not want to get into debt. That is the reality for lots of
people in my communities. That is why I worked to learn, and it
is why I made sure I was teaching those aerobics classes to pay
my fees.
Does my hon. Friend agree that some of the contributions about
debt, particularly, I regret to say, from Opposition Members,
have been very unhelpful? I have found that the best advice has
often come from , who is very widely trusted
on these things. Going to university or taking on any course, as
people could under the Bill, should not be seen as a debt in the
traditional sense of the term; it operates for UK-based people
much more like a graduate tax than actual debt, and that framing
is far more important, because that will encourage people into
learning, rather than discourage them.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. When we look into how these
things work, we see that it is not a debt, but very much an
enabler. However, we know that many people feel that it is a
debt. I want to understand how the Department has looked at this
issue and how we deal with those concerns going forward.
In the final minutes I have, I want to make two separate points:
first on green skills, then on employability. I wrote an article
some time ago that set out and argued that net zero cannot happen
without know-how, but we have effectively got a green skills
emergency. There is a challenge to reskill those who work in
existing industries that will be affected by the transition.
Fossil fuel production in the North sea, for example, created
skilled and well-paid workers who are sorely needed to make the
transition successful, but they need to have a skills bridge to
make sure they are being retrained for future industries. I am
interested to know how the lifelong learning entitlement can help
that.
The second issue with the skills emergency is educating our young
people. We have a huge skills gap for our future workforce, which
urgently needs closing. I did some work with the Chair of the
Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr
Walker) to create a nature GCSE and engage people. My main
message to young people when I go into schools is, “Do not lie
down on motorways or glue yourselves to stuff. Do your STEM
subjects and make sure you are learning well, because if you
become scientists, you will be fixing the environmental
challenges that we have today, and you will be the saviours of
our future.”
I encourage people to look at the Onward report, “Green Jobs, Red
Wall”. I work closely with the Onward think-tank, and it is
excellent. I will run out of time if I go through that report,
but alongside the Bill, it is important that the Department for
Education works with other Departments to ensure that the
landscape is set up so that we educate, encourage people to gain
skills and encourage people to take on more courses. However,
unless we get the factories up and motoring and unless we get the
seed investment into some areas of tech, the jobs will not be
there, so I ask the Department for Education please to work with
other Departments.
On employability, I started the all-party parliamentary group on
the future of employability in direct response to the calls of
employers in Stroud, which are echoed around the country, about
recruitment issues; the calls of potential employees who are
feeling burnt out post pandemic; the high number of people with
mental health issues; and the millions of people on welfare. I
have also been fighting the good fight on childcare, because we
have a huge group of economically inactive people—mainly
mothers—who are not working at full tilt.
I had been looking at the issue and I spoke to a good friend,
Ronel Lehmann, who started an employment company called Finito.
It is his job to get people work ready, so we put our heads
together and started the APPG, because I passionately believe in
the power of work doing good. I can see that thousands of people
are no longer work ready, that many millions are not working at
full tilt, and that people do not feel that they have a place in
the workforce because they do not feel that they can engage.
All the evidence tells us that work is the fastest route out of
poverty. It gives us a reason to get out of bed and it is good
for mental health and for relationships. It is also good for
children to see their parents have a routine and a sense of
purpose. We do not always have to like our jobs—there are days,
even though it is a great privilege to be here, when we do not
like our jobs—but we have to send a strong message to the country
that, “Work is good for you. Work will help not only you and your
family, but the country.”
Having a focus on lifelong learning, on employability and on
ensuring that we are getting people work ready and into a job—and
that once they are in a job, they can transition into a more
responsible part of that job or to a new job—is the quickest way
for people to feel sustained and fulfilled. I look forward to
working with the Minister, and I believe passionately in what he
and the Secretary of State, who is now in her place, are trying
to do. I am genuinely ambitious for every single person I meet,
and I think the Front-Bench team from the Department for
Education feel exactly the same, so I wish the Bill Godspeed and
I look forward to making sure that it happens.
Mr Deputy Speaker ( )
We now come to the wind-ups. I call the shadow Minister.
18:01:00
I have benefited from training courses and adult education
throughout my career, as I am sure many hon. Members have.
Although some of the skills that I developed may not have been
directly relevant to my employment at the time, they proved
incredibly useful later in life. Like the Minister and the
Secretary of State, I am therefore a deeply committed believer in
the power of lifelong learning.
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who participated in the
debate, although perhaps I will not refer to them all in my
summing up. I was particularly interested to hear some of the
historical perspectives from a century ago, or perhaps 40 years
ago—certainly I remember Peter Walker from my youth. They give
context to the fact that some of these challenges have been
around for some time, and show how important it is that we
address them collectively.
The hon. Member for Waveney (), who is not back in his
place, rightly raised the issue of productivity. I am
particularly concerned about that and about how the performance
of the UK economy has fallen back. As far as I am concerned, it
is not a puzzle and there are easy ways to resolve it. The fact
is, however, that our relative productivity is 20% behind that of
France. He also raised questions about eligibility and
maintenance support, especially for carers, which are concerns
that the Opposition share.
I was interested to hear the discussion between the hon. Members
for Stroud () and for
Newcastle-under-Lyme () about debt. Of course, we have
to put that in the context of debt for students being raised to
£9,250, and the impact of that. We are now in a situation where
maintenance loans are relatively frozen, which is frustrating,
because it reduces the breadth and opportunity for people and
reduces young people’s access to education.
The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) had certain queries and
asked about the burden that might fall on the sector, which is a
real concern that I also picked up on. The hon. Member for
Twickenham () echoed my concerns about the
mechanism of the Bill and the fact that there was no actual
policy within it. She asked whether the Government would now
abolish the ELQ rule, which is one of the many questions that we
will put to the Government in Committee. I thank my hon. Friend
the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) for raising individual
learning accounts. They were put forward by the Labour
Government, but there were concerns and difficulties with them
when they were introduced, because of some of the fraud that they
led to.
As I alluded to in my opening speech, the need for lifelong
learning is greater than ever. We have been on a slippery slope
of economic decline for too long, with UK GDP per capita growing
at an average annual rate of 0.5% in real terms between 2010 and
2021, according to the World Bank. The Labour party is resolute
in its determination to reverse that trend, so much so that it is
one of our guiding national missions. In that vein, we are
prepared to support the Minister throughout the Bill’s passage,
assuming that we see fuller detail in due course.
As I said in my opening remarks, however, there remain far too
many gaps, questions and uncertainties at this critical stage. We
have a frame, but the real work is yet to be done. In essence, it
is a promise—not an empty promise, but a promise that needs
substantiating. Many questions have been asked in this debate,
such as about the fee setting for modules and courses; the
quality and how the Government plan for that to be determined;
and, in particular, the role that the OfS will have.
Many of those questions would be resolved if the Minister were
prepared to finally publish the LLE consultation response. I
raised many questions in my opening remarks that I very much look
forward to hearing from the Minister about shortly, but my
lasting message is to please publish the response to the
consultation as a matter of urgency. I look forward to working
with the Minister to flesh out this most skeletal of Bills, and I
hope that we can work constructively in future.
18:07:00
The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education
()
I thank the shadow spokesman for the Labour party, the hon.
Member for Warwick and Leamington (), for the constructive way in
which he has approached the Bill, and the shadow spokesman for
the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Twickenham (). I knew well—he was my opposite
number when I last held this post a few years ago. He is a good
man and he knows the subject inside out.
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington asked about the
consultation response. We have said that we will publish it
before Report stage. He will know that it is not specifically
aligned to the measures in the Bill, but about the wider policy
of the LLE. He wants us to introduce the LLE at speed, which is
exactly what we are trying to do, but we want to do it carefully
and to make sure that we respond to the consultation following
all the submissions that we had. As I say, it will be published
by Report stage, if not before.
The Minister is a decent individual, so I ask that we have
sufficient time to consider the response before Committee, given
that it has been 10 months since the consultation.
I repeat that the consultation will definitely be ready by Report
stage, if not before; I guarantee to the hon. Gentleman that it
will be ready by Report.
The hon. Gentleman asked about fee limits. He will know that the
Secretary of State can set fee limits as a result of the Higher
Education Act 2004. The Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022
built on that and allowed for flexible and modular learning. That
legislation has long roots in the Augar report as well, so the
Government have clearly set the direction of travel.
We will be having regular consultation with stakeholders as well.
The hon. Members for Warwick and Leamington and for Twickenham
asked about the hourly value of credits in the Bill. The
Government feel that the number of learning hours in a credit is
an area that should continue to be governed from a quality
standards perspective, rather than from a fee limits perspective,
and we have legislated accordingly. In the Bill, the credits are
used to signify the total amount of learning time that a student
would ordinarily be expected to spend to complete a particular
course or part of a course. However, I can assure both
spokespeople that further details on the number of learning hours
associated with credits will be set out in the regulations. Where
providers choose not to use credits in this way for certain
courses, these courses will have the fee limit determined using a
default credit value, but they will face no penalty or reduction
overall as a result.
To turn to my successor as Chair of the Education Committee, my
hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) spoke quite
interestingly about his father. I have read a book about his
father, who was a very good man. My hon. Friend talked about the
burden of regulation, and our intention is to simplify
regulation, not to add to it. Of course, those institutions that
offer the LLE will be registered with the OfS. He talked about
partnerships between further education and higher education. I
absolutely agree, and I think this policy will rocket-boost that.
There are already examples, and I can give him the great example
of Nottingham Trent University and the college in Mansfield. I
repeat that the consultation will be ready by Report.
I have answered some of the questions of the hon. Member for
Twickenham, but on the point about the equivalent learner
qualification, I can only say that we will be able to tell her
when the consultation has been published. However, I hope she
will not be unhappy with that, and I appreciate her support.
Again, on maintenance, I envisage a similar system to what exists
now for the current student loan system, but the full details
will be in the consultation on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney () made a very important speech,
and he is passionate about further education and about
championing it. He is absolutely right about employer investment.
That is why we introduced the apprenticeship levy—it is not part
of the Bill and it is separate, but it is very important—so that
we would have business investment in skills. He talked about the
disadvantaged, and he is absolutely right. They will be able to
do modules and flexible learning, and they will have more access
to courses they want to do than they otherwise would have had.
One of the reasons for the decline in part-time learning is the
three-year loan, and they will be able to do short courses or
modules of courses. [Interruption.] Of course, I will give way.
Sorry, I thought somebody was asking me to give way, but it was
just my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield () being very noisy, as
usual. I used to work for him many years ago, so I can say that.
This will be published in the consultation, but the LLE, as has
been highlighted, will concentrate on levels 4 to 6 and it will
have a phased approach.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme () talked powerfully and spoke
about good outcomes for students. Of course I will meet his new
college group. On local business involvement in qualifications,
that is entirely why we have the local skills improvement
plans.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wantage () made a brilliant speech,
as is his wont. He will know that we have introduced UCAS for
apprenticeships and hope to expand that over the coming months
and years. He is right that we should not just have been saying,
“University, university, university”, but “Skills, skills,
skills”.
I am delighted, as I say, by the positive response to the Bill.
Universities UK has said that it is a welcome step with a more
flexible system of opportunity at its heart, and I thank all
Members who have spoken. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of
State mentioned, the Bill is a major step forward in our mission
to revolutionise access to post-18 education and skills through
the introduction of the lifelong loan entitlement.
I want to respond to an additional point about the number of
adult learners. That number has increased by 4.3% from 2021-22 to
2022-23, and the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington will know
that many adults are now doing apprenticeships and different
kinds of adult learning skills.
The Bill has just three clauses, but in supporting the LLE it
will transform lives. It will transform the lives of working
people on low incomes, it will transform the lives of carers who
need to balance their commitments alongside study, and it will
transform the lives of anyone who wants to upskill in their
existing career or propel themselves into a new one. The LLE will
enable access to modules and courses in a way that has not been
possible before. It will provide individuals with a loan
entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 education to use
over their working life. Regardless of background, income or
circumstance, people will have access to a flexi-travelcard to
jump on and off their learning as opposed to being confined to a
single advance ticket. This is not just a train journey; it is a
life journey.
The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill brings
in the next piece of legislation to support delivery of the LLE
from 2025. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set
out, the Bill has three core elements. First, it will enable
limits for tuition fees to be based on credits. Currently,
tuition fees are set for complete years of full courses only.
This change means that short courses and modules will be priced
appropriately in comparison with and alongside longer courses—for
example, degree programmes.
Secondly, as was highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for
Wantage, this Bill introduces the concept of a course year.
Currently, tuition fee limits are based on academic years of
study. This change will allow fee limits to be applied more
accurately to courses that are not aligned with traditional
academic years.
Finally, this Bill allows for an overall maximum chargeable
number of credits for each type of course. Currently, a maximum
can only be set in relation to an academic year. This will
prevent students being charged excessively for their studies. In
sum, the Bill will lay the groundwork to ensure that fee limits
are the same for a learner who completes a qualification by
studying each individual module at their own pace as it would be
for them to study a typical full-time course across three
academic years.
Does the Minister agree that the Bill will be transformational?
By enabling people to change careers, change skills and develop
talents throughout their working lives, it will make people’s
lives better and their opportunities much greater?
My right hon. Friend, who made a brilliant speech, is absolutely
right. We will also be resourcing this in the way that my hon.
Friend the Member for Stroud () wanted with our extra
spending on skills and further education colleges. I also thank
her for her important speech.
(Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]
I just want to answer some other questions that the Labour
spokesman asked first.
To be clear, as part of the pathway towards the LLE, the
Government will stimulate the provision of high-quality technical
education at levels 4 and 5 through the HE short-course trial
that he talked about, with 22 providers. [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Could I ask Members to be quiet, because we cannot hear
what the Minister is saying and he is not able to hear where
interventions are coming from?
We will keep the student finance system under review to ensure it
is delivering value for money both for students and the taxpayer.
The forecast costs for the LLE, which the hon. Member for Warwick
and Leamington asked about, will be outlined in a future spending
review. He also asked about the QAA. It released a public
statement in July 2022 requesting to step down from its position
as the designated quality body. We are currently consulting on
the de-designation of the QAA as required by the Higher Education
and Research Act 2017. That consultation closes on 3 March.
I am hugely grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way.
Clearly, this is a devolved area of policy in the nations of the
UK, but what discussions has he had with the devolved
Administrations? Students from all parts of the UK clearly cross
borders quite frequently, and there will be implications—not only
for funding, but for a whole range of issues affecting those
impacted by this Bill.
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We will be able to
explain further once the consultation paper has been published,
before Report.
My right hon. Friend will know that the difference between the
Report and Committee stages can often be a few days. Sometimes in
this House it can even be a few hours. I am sure he will
recognise that it would benefit the House enormously in its
scrutiny if Members could have sight of the Government’s response
to the consultation ahead of Committee, when we will debate the
detail of the Bill. I know he cannot make that commitment right
now, and I appreciate the commitment he has made to bring it
forward before Report, but will he give every consideration to
whether that response could be brought forward any faster in the
passage of the Bill, so that the House can give the most
effective and positive scrutiny to what, as we have heard today,
is a good idea in principle? [Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Once again, there are clearly important interventions
being made. I am sure right hon. and hon. Members want to hear
those interventions, and the answers as well. I urge all
colleagues to listen to the remaining part of the debate. Even
though there is an important statement coming, we want to hear
the interventions and answers.
Of course I will consider the representations made by my hon.
Friend the Member for Worcester and others across the House. We
will try to get the consultation out speedily, but it will be
published by Report.
(North East Hertfordshire)
(Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that as we look to educate people
perhaps in middle age into new skills and to improve their higher
education for the future, it would be good to ensure that we get
the sort of skills we need as a country, and to have a form of
workforce planning? As we know, we are short of doctors and
nurses, but there are others areas such as welders, life sciences
and so on where we have great hopes and needs for future
industry. Does he think there is a way of directing that sort of
effort in a more planned way?
That is exactly what the Government’s programme is doing. We are
investing in employer-led qualifications—that is exactly what
this is about—and the LLE will enable many millions more people
to have access to get on the skills ladder of opportunity.
(Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
As people look to retrain in later life, can we ensure that our
armed forces have the support they need after serving their King,
Queen and country, if they need to retrain after they leave the
armed forces?
The beauty of the Bill is that it will enable anyone to retrain
and do long courses, short courses or modules at a time of their
own choosing, building up credits along the way. Those who leave
the Army will be able to do that kind of skilled retraining.
(Birmingham, Northfield)
(Con)
Does the Minister agree that as well as the Bill and Government
support, the £6.6 million of investment in Cadbury College in
King’s Norton in my constituency will ensure that people have the
facilities and resources to give people the skills they need for
later in life—[Interruption.]
Madam Deputy Speaker ( )
Order. Once again it is getting very noisy, and we are not able
to hear the Minister’s answers. I urge colleagues to listen to
the answers that the Minister is giving.
(Lichfield) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you
could make an inquiry into whether the loud speakers are turned
up. Although there is some noise in the Chamber, it is actually
rather quiet coming out of the speakers in our Benches.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I think the situation would be helped—I can still hear a lot of
noise, even when I am speaking—[Interruption.] Perfect. I urge
colleagues to keep the level of noise down, and then we will be
able to hear what the Minister is saying.
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham,
Northfield (). He has hit the nail on the
head. On the point of order, it is never quiet when my hon.
Friend the Member for Lichfield is in the House.
Finally, let me respond to one of the questions from the hon.
Member for Twickenham regarding how the student loan repayment
mechanism will work compared with now. We are building the LLE on
a proven system, consciously designed both to support students
pursuing higher education, and share the cost fairly with the
taxpayer. Like the current student loan system, repayments will
be linked to income not interest rates or the amount
borrowed.
I am grateful to hon. Members for their contributions today, and
I hope to have addressed as many points as possible. I reiterate
the significance of this Bill. It is a further piece of the
jigsaw of the transformative reforms that will improve our skills
system and revolutionise how and when people can and do access
study. That sentiment is echoed by the sector. Professor Tom
Bewick of the Federation of Awarding Bodies emphasised the
Bill’s
“potential to be the most radical entitlement to adult education,
skills training and retraining (delivered at the point of need),
ever introduced.”
The reforms are a step forward, providing everyone with a ladder
of opportunity to get the skills, security and prosperity they
need.
The Government are not only expanding high-quality opportunities,
the rungs of the ladder, which encompass careers, quality
qualifications, skills and lifelong learning, but through the
Bill and the LLE we are building the top rung of the
ladder—social justice—by expanding access to quality lifelong
educational opportunities that for the most disadvantaged pupils
will mean levelling up productivity and employment, improving the
skills pipeline and supporting people into fulfilling and lasting
careers. I know hon. Members will join me in supporting that
greater flexibility in our post-18 education and skills system,
removing barriers to ensure that everyone is empowered to access
further and higher education when and how it suits them. The Bill
will promote equality and access to education, whether students
are undertaking a degree or a module of a degree, and I commend
the Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill
(Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No.
83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Lifelong
Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not
previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 28
March 2023.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on
the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration shall (so far as not previously
concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment
of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are
commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously
concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of
interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not
apply to proceedings on Consideration and Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill may be programmed.—(.)
Question put and agreed to.
|
