Schools and Universities: Language Learning

Lord Hampton Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Coussins for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important topic and for her excellent and constructive introduction. As ever, I declare my interest as a secondary school teacher in Hackney, although I teach design technology rather than useful languages. At school I learnt French and Latin to O-level under the legendary Bill Lucas—let us see if the Minister is listening to that—some Greek and some German. In fact, a few years ago my son Charlie wandered into an airport shop to find me speaking to a woman in German. “I didn’t know Dad spoke German”, he said to my wife. “He doesn’t”, she said. “I don’t know what the hell he’s speaking.”

I respectfully take issue with my noble friend Lady Coussins in the framing of this debate. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, I think we need to discuss the sustainability of language learning in life. I am married to a fluent Italian speaker and early on in our relationship, I found it extremely frustrating to go out to Italy and not be able to understand or be understood, so I took private one-to-one lessons at the age of 30, unlike one of my noble friends who sensibly married his Italian teacher.

Over the next few years, I had a variety of tutors, all Italian and all excellent, and it is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life. It was fun. There was no Duolingo then, and I still remain slightly dubious about that way of learning. Perhaps the parliamentary challenge will change my mind. I am now a reasonable Italian speaker and a keen member of the APPG on Italy. We recently had a visit to Rome with a full day and a half with the Italian parliament. I am rather more used to talking to Italian builders, and some of my language might have surprised our hosts.

We need to engender a love for languages and cultures among children. The government response to the Curriculum and Assessment Review says:

“Languages are a vital part of a broad and balanced curriculum, equipping pupils with the communication skills, cultural awareness and linguistic foundations needed to thrive in a globalised society”.


The elephant in the room is Brexit. It is not so much a hidden elephant as a large pink hippopotamus in a tutu sashaying down the aisle. As my former colleague and head of modern foreign languages, Adam Lamb, says:

“The historic pipeline for recruitment was not just from the UK universities, but also from Europe. Morale amongst MFL teachers has taken several big hits of late for many reasons. MFL has already taken the hard hit of having been decoupled from forming the spine of the EBACC measure. This, along with many departments struggling to recruit, is leading to fragmented departments and students receiving a lot of non-specialist cover teaching nationally”.


According to the British Council, as a nation we lose an estimated £48 billion per year in lost trade due to language barriers, to say nothing of the benefits of employability and social mobility that a basic skill in foreign language brings. The valuable English language summer school business has been hit as well. As Alicja Penrose of Bede’s told me:

“Since Brexit, any EU teachers who did not work in the UK pre 2021 are not able to secure work permits, which creates a shortage of teachers across the industry. There currently is no seasonal visa type for them that would allow them to work in the UK in the summer”.


The Government need to back up their fine words in the response to the review with action. Teaching vacancies need to be filled by language teachers who are specialists in the language that they are teaching. Visa waivers need to be granted to language teachers from abroad and, indeed, as they say, linguistic foundations need to be allowed to thrive in a globalised society.