Schools and Universities: Language Learning

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Janvrin (CB)]

My Lords, I also express my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, for securing this debate and for her tireless work over so many years in support of language training and related issues.

As many have pointed out, we are living in an international and, in particular, business environment dominated by English in various forms. This, we must recognise, inevitably leads to a lack of interest in foreign languages, particularly among the young, in the UK and more widely in the English-speaking world. To do nothing about this, even at the best of times, is surely short-sighted; as has been pointed out, it is widely recognised that the UK needs foreign language proficiency to enhance our economic prosperity, global competitiveness and general political, diplomatic and cultural engagement in the world. To do nothing about it in today’s world is not just short-sighted but positively misguided, a point to which I will come back.

Retaining and improving our national foreign language proficiency can be achieved only by investing sustainably over time in an effective modern language programme in the wider educational curriculum. There is clear evidence of a worrying decline over recent years in foreign language learning, particularly at A-level and at university. There is also plenty of evidence that this decline is to a large extent caused by teacher shortages. We have the vicious circle—what others have called the spiral of decline.

Short-term fixes are available and, to be fair, the Government have recognised the need for action with financial incentives, apprenticeship schemes, and talk about recruitment and retention measures. The decision to rejoin Erasmus next year is hugely welcome. It may over time increase the attractiveness of European languages, both as subjects to be studied and as a teaching career. However, it seems odd in this context that other quick wins described by the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, such as a visa waiver programme, are not being pursued or followed up.

In all this, as so many other speakers have mentioned, there seems little evidence of any sense of a long-term strategy to address what is, in effect, a language learning crisis in the United Kingdom. Perhaps it is a cost issue, but surely we are talking of reasonably small sums in the wider education budget. To have a comprehensive strategy, as so many have called for, would hardly be a huge shift of education spending priorities. It is difficult to avoid concluding that addressing what is, in effect, a crisis is somehow low on the Government’s priorities. As I said earlier, this seems positively misguided at this moment in time. Every day’s news reminds us that we live in the increasingly unstable and unpredictable world that is so often mentioned in this Chamber.

In my view, this debate needs also to be seen in this context, as well as many others. A small but vital element in the wider security picture is a priority to invest in the nation’s foreign language proficiencies. For example, our ability to work alongside our European allies, understand the complexities of the Middle East, trade effectively in Asia and penetrate the thinking of those who wish us harm depends, in part, on this. The cost must be comparatively small. I urge the Government to give language teaching the priority it deserves.

Leveson Inquiry

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Friday 11th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Janvrin]

My Lords, while it goes without saying that a robust, free press is an essential ingredient in a free society, even the most cursory reading of Lord Justice Leveson’s excellent report confirms that there have been major problems with the culture, practices and ethics of some parts of our press.

As many noble Lords have alluded to today, this is not a new problem. The fact that in the past 70 years there have been seven major inquiries, including three royal commissions, suggests that this is the case. But what is new today is that the internet is now posing a fundamental challenge to, and major economic consequences for, the newspaper industry. This, as Lord Justice Leveson observes, is particularly severe for Britain’s regional and local newspapers, which provide a major contribution to the life of the communities within which they operate. I join the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich in paying tribute to the unique contribution made by the local media to local life. I hope that their voices will be heard in this post-Leveson debate.

The internet poses a much greater challenge to the future of a robust newspaper industry in this country than effective, independent self-regulation. If new providers are going to survive and prosper, either in print or digital form, we the public are going to have to continue to want to read those publications and pay for them in preference to free online blogs, social media or whatever comes next. We will surely do so only if the quality of the news coverage, the investigative reports, the features and the comment—whether in red-tops or broadsheets—are of a standard that makes us wish to do so. Faced with increasing choice, we will surely be willing to pay only for standards that we trust and are of the highest quality, and for more accurate, more challenging, wiser, and more entertaining words than are ever likely to be consistently available from other online sources. Standards will become more, not less, important and are, above all, about culture rather than only about rules, as my noble friend Lady Boothroyd expressed. An effective system of self-regulation, as put forward in the Leveson report, has a vital part to play in ensuring that these standards are met, primarily by providing an effective means of arbitration when they are challenged, and that redress is accessible to all when things go wrong. An effective regulatory system can also provide, in a sense, a kitemark trusted by readers.

However, such a system will be trusted only if it is seen to be truly independent, certainly of both the newspaper industry and the Government. I welcome the fact that much of the newspaper industry now seems to accept that although it will pay the bills for the regulatory system, it would do much better by not trying to control the system—or appearing to control it—as has been the case in the past.

Two vexed questions remain. First, how can we devise the process of validation for this independent self-regulatory system? Who verifies the work of the regulators? Secondly, how do we ensure the fullest coverage of the new independent self-regulatory system in order to prevent major newspaper groups exiting from the regulatory system, as happened under the Press Complaints Commission?

Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, eloquently argued, it might be better to avoid statutory underpinning, if there were an easy way to do that, although I share the view that here we are considering statutory regulation of process and emphatically not of content. It may be that some sensible non-statutory basis for the validation process can be devised, although I remain to be convinced. An additional advantage of some statutory underpinning is that it could allow some benefits in law to provide the incentives to ensure the widest possible membership of an independent self-regulatory system.

My view remains—and here I join the noble Lord, Lord Giddens—that an effective regulatory system, trusted by the general public, is very much in the long-term interests of the newspaper industry itself in the digital age and that some very limited statutory underpinning may well be a sensible price to pay to ensure that this system is credible, long-lasting and widely accepted. As so many noble Lords have said today, the Leveson report provides us with a unique opportunity to grasp this nettle. I add my voice to those who say that we should do so.