Moved by
That the Bill do now pass.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education () (Con)
My Lords, I would like to express to your Lordships how delighted
I am that the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits)
Bill is finalising its passage through this House. This Bill is a
significant moment in transforming access to post-18 education
and skills as the next step toward the introduction of the
lifelong loan entitlement.
I thank noble Lords for their valuable scrutiny and input
throughout the Bill’s passage in this place. I express my
particular thanks to Members on the Front Benches, including the
noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Wilcox of Newport, Lady
Thornton and , and the noble
Lords, and , for their positive
engagement and overall support for the principles behind the
Bill, as well as for their thoughtful scrutiny and constructive
contributions. The debates have been engaging and we have
benefited significantly from the deep expertise in this
House.
I pay particular thanks to those former Education Ministers and
Secretaries of State who provided us with their insight. They
include the noble Lord, , and my noble friends and .
I thank the many other noble Lords who took part in the debates
and who have a wealth of knowledge across higher and further
education, including honorary fellows, visiting professors and
members of many of this country’s brilliant universities and
colleges. I am also grateful to those leaders in universities and
colleges who shared their insights with me about the potential
for the Bill, the learning from the pilots and what is needed to
make the Bill have a material impact once it becomes law.
3.30pm
Our debates in this House have brought to light a number of areas
in which we are all united. It is clear that we are aligned in
our desire to create an efficient and flexible system, bring
higher education and further education closer together, and make
it easier for people to get the skills they need which could
transform their lives—whether that might be studying flexibly,
training part-time when working, or undertaking a short course
more suited to their circumstances.
I reiterate the significance of the Bill and the LLE in driving a
transformative impact on post-18 education. The LLE will become
the route for people who require student finance for levels 4 to
6 study across higher and further education. In introducing the
LLE, we want to do as much as possible to make it accessible and
affordable for the most disadvantaged. The Government are
committed to the delivery of this programme from 2025 and are
working closely with partners and the wider sector to make this
happen.
In relation to the specific points raised on Report, I again
reassure noble Lords that this Government are committed to
monitoring the impact of these measures on the transformation of
student finance under the LLE. I also reiterate that the
Government do not intend to change the number of learning hours
in a credit unless standards in the sector change. Learning hours
are, and should continue to be, based on sector-led standards.
Finally, I assure your Lordships that the Government remain
committed to delivering an alternative student finance product
compatible with Islamic finance principles as soon as
operationally possible after 2025, and we will provide a further
update later this year.
I extend my thanks to the team of officials at the Department for
Education, in the Bill team so ably led by Charlotte Rushworth,
in the LLE policy team, our legal advisers, analysts and all
officials involved in preparing this Bill for introduction for
their support, not least from my private office, in engaging
fully with your Lordships’ scrutiny. I would also like to
recognise the clerks and officials in Parliament for their
diligent work in supporting the Bill’s passage through this
place. In particular, my thanks go to the noble Baroness, Lady
Wolf, for her vision in the development of this policy.
While the Bill is the culmination of a large amount of work over
a number of years, it is also the foundation of much work that is
still to come. I look forward to continuing to discuss these
important issues with your Lordships in future. There is no one
in this House, or in the other place, who would disagree with the
principles behind this programme, and, regardless of Governments
to come, that is something we should continue to work with and
build upon.
(Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her constructive engagement on
this Bill and for briefing Members at an early stage, along with
the noble Lord, , and the right
honourable Member for Harlow. I also thank the Bill team. Labour
supports the Bill’s aim; we support the idea that people can
access funding to undertake the learning they need throughout
their career. With people undertaking portfolio careers and with
continual changes in technology and society, it is no longer the
case that what you learn through a traditional three-year degree
course is all that you will need in your work for the next 45
years or so.
We had a number of interesting, if concise, debates as the Bill
passed its various stages. The Bill is quite limited in scope and
Labour still believes that there could have been scope for
setting out a more formal review process on a number of its
aspects. This would, not least, have helped to safeguard against
unintended consequences, whether around distance and flexible
learning or employers making a proper contribution to staff
development.
There are a number of potential negative impacts on people who
are less able to move to study or who are less able to study
full-time because of caring responsibilities. From what the noble
Baroness said, we hope and believe that the Government intend to
monitor and review the lifelong loan entitlement as it is
established and rolled out, to make sure that its promise and
potential are fulfilled, and especially to ensure that every
person in England can have their own promise and potential
fulfilled.
I thank the team in the Labour group office, particularly Clare
Scally, as well as my Front-Bench colleagues and mentors—my noble
friends Lady Wilcox and Lady Thornton. Their patience and
kindness in imparting their own lifelong learning and talking me,
a relatively new member of the Labour Front-Bench team, through
the process of the passage of the Bill has been hugely
appreciated.
(LD)
My Lords, I apologise profusely to the House for arriving after
the Minister started speaking; business moved much more quickly
than I expected.
From these Benches, I thank the Minister and the Bill team very
much for all their work on the Bill. We remain concerned about
how many adults will wish to take on debt in order to improve
their learning, and we look forward to hearing updates from the
Minister about how many people have done so. From these Benches,
we feel that grants would be a much more effective way of
persuading adults to learn. But, of course, we are all totally in
favour of lifelong learning, and we wish the Bill well.
(CB)
My Lords, as many of you will know, the number 1 recommendation
of the Augar review of post-18 education and funding was for this
sort of reform. As someone who was a member of that review and
who has spent a considerable part of the last three and a half
years on secondment to government to work on the Augar review
proposals, among other things, I take this opportunity to thank
everyone involved.
I have been jinxed: I have not managed to contribute to any of
the fine and informative debates that have taken place on this.
They have highlighted some of the challenges that lie ahead. I am
enormously encouraged by the cross-party support for the
principle of a funding system that genuinely takes us forward
into not just the 21st century but a future where post-compulsory
lifelong learning is the rule, not the exception. We now have an
opportunity to build on this.
I thank everyone involved in the drafting and passing of the
Bill—although we have not quite passed it yet. I particularly put
on record my appreciation of the work put in by a large number of
officials who have worked enormously hard on this—on teasing out
the policy implications and on minimising the amount that had to
be put into primary legislation. I thank them and the Minister
for her support. It is a little miraculous that we have moved
from a major recommendation in 2019 to putting this reform on its
way to implementation in 2023. So, on behalf of the Augar review
team—and, I think, all the future students of this country—I
thank everyone involved in this reform.
Bill passed.
