Lifelong Learning

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord and particularly to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Curran, on her maiden speech. As the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, she will find that this Chamber is an opportunity for lifelong learning every time we come into it. It is absolutely true to say that, every time I am here, I hear something new and learn something from noble Lords. So we look forward to her contributions, and I thank her for her passionate and well-argued speech. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Knight, on bringing this debate. I am sure that all of us could have spoken for much longer, had we been allowed, so he has hit on a popular topic. I declare my interest as chair of the board of the national Careers & Enterprise Company and a former chair of the East Midlands Institute of Technology.

In its briefing for this debate, the Learning and Work Institute said that, in 2022-23, 1.7 million people did not just change jobs but switched sectors. That is not just government reshuffles; it is people outside government who switched sectors and therefore had to embrace lifelong learning in order to learn how to do a new job.

In the time available today, the point I want to make is the importance of encouraging that attitude of lifelong learning that so many noble Lords have already spoken about, at both school and college, and doing so via careers advice of all shapes and sizes. As we have already heard, it is important that people of all ages understand that leaving formal education does not mean that learning ends.

The Careers & Enterprise Company, which, as I said, I have the pleasure of chairing, has been backed by successive Governments, including this one, and we thank the Minister very much indeed for her engagement so far. It is driving awareness and interest in key sectors through co-ordinated employer engagement, particularly in the delivery of modern work experience. The Careers & Enterprise Company is piloting the Government’s commitment to two weeks’ work experience in pilots across the health, construction and digital sectors. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight, set out in his opening remarks, the advent, growth and acceleration of new technology mean that lifelong learning is becoming a reality for so many more of us.

The company wants to provide an efficient, evidence-driven basis for regionally driven, nationally led careers and skills systems. The point is that when our young people in schools and colleges visit modern workplaces and hear from employers, it is really important that they see lifelong learning in practice, as other noble Lords have said.

We also welcome the focus on local partnerships and the powers held by mayoral authorities to embed sustainable structures for lifelong learning. There is an opportunity here to learn from the company’s careers hubs, which are networked across all parts of the country. Their role is critical in furthering local skills ambitions with a place-based democratic structure through local and mayoral authorities. The company will work in partnership with every mayoral combined authority to make sure that mayoral priorities are represented, and to ensure a seamless transition from the careers system into the adult skills system.

To conclude, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Bates, lifelong learning, the subject of this debate, supports the Government’s growth agenda. My message to the Minister is that she has the support of us all when she next has to negotiate with the Treasury. We hope that it spends as much time on human capital as it does on infrastructure.