Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 19th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when you have listened to a whole debate in which various things have been covered again and again, it becomes ridiculous to mention them anything other than briefly. The main point has been that the mechanics of this Bill are largely welcomed. We agree that there is potential for this credit-based system and for lifelong learning. However, I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, who said to me in a conversation outside, “The Bill’s fine, but what about the big argument?”

It has come across that no one is quite sure how it fits together. People from higher education have looked at that sector; the noble Lord, Lord Watson, was one of those who led the charge on the previous Bill on further education; I looked at the Bill and saw a chance to improve the status of levels 4 and 5 by bringing them into a funding structure that is associated with universities. That may be a good thing. It should give somebody the chance to choose whether they want a three-year degree, the experience and the idea of the expansion, or a way of earning a living that they can top up later. That should come from this Bill, but the colleges and skills colleges would have to buy in and T-levels would have to work to get you ready for it. It is only a part of the system.

In looking at this, we can all point out problems that are not covered and, with new government legislation, what fun we will have with all those SIs. If we get them wrong, who knows where we will end up? Probably remembering the skills Bill, the Minister said that there were no Henry VIII powers in this Bill—I can quite understand why; that was one suicide charge I would not like to have taken.

We will have to get at how this all fits, with a little information from the Minister now and more in Committee. If we do not do so, we will just be saying, “Here’s another toolkit—play with it as you will”. I hope that, as we go through this Bill, we will get an idea of how the Government will use it with other bits of legislation to encourage people to give real options at levels 4 and 5. I say this because I remember being told in my second week here, getting on for four decades ago, that our major skills problem was at technician level. In modern money, that is levels 4 and 5. We have always been bad at this level. We tried to improve up to level 3 and beyond with apprenticeships, but then we discovered that there were limitations with them—primarily, that you need an employer who will pay.

How will we get colleges, even under the new funding regime and with the input of higher education, to make sure that there are real career options? The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, put his finger on it first—most of us thought that we would do it, but many of us would not have done it as well—in saying that short-term courses to upgrade your skill level will be attractive. Longer-term ones will be less attractive, particularly as you get older and may find that your skills, if they are technical, become outdated. This has always happened in the workplace. At the moment, we are in a green revolution; types of technology and power for technology will change and people will need to reskill. Short, bite-sized courses will be much more attractive for everybody—unless you put your life on hold, and it is very rare that you can do that over the age of 25. I hope the Minister will have some answers and the start of thinking about how that will happen.

I declare my interest as a patron of the British Dyslexia Association and chairman of Microlink plc, which deals with assistive technology and packages it for the disabled in the workplace and education. I hope the Minister can confirm that most of the people brought into these courses will be covered by the disabled students’ allowance or something very similar. If you are expanding their skills base, a system that gives them an individual package of support means that they will do it. You also have to make sure that colleges do something called information capture and the old level 1 DSA from a few years ago. That means that the colleges will undertake to record lectures so that they can be transferred on to different types of technology that people can use. Basically, it is about getting something that you can read yourself, can have read back to you or talk to normally.

I hope the Minister will say, if not now, then in Committee—I will certainly come back to it—what is happening there. If you expand the good news on higher education, you should commit to those people, who are underskilled, underemployed and should be brought in, that they will be assisted. The DSA is a good system for doing this because it gives you an individual package of support. This is required and instituted by having this huge institution buy-in. I hope we can clear this up pretty quickly.

This is an interesting Bill but it has got to be seen as a part of a whole approach that goes forward. It provides opportunities but no real answers to what we are doing here, and suggests that things are going to get better because we will apply it properly. Unfortunately, there are gaps and certain bits are left out, such as distance learning and level 3 and level 7 qualifications. Unless we get answers about those linkages, we are leaving a lot of questions hanging. I hope that some of those will be answered throughout further discussions today and when we are in Committee and on Report. This is something with the potential to be good. I hope the Minister will assure us that some of that potential will be realised.