Higher Education and Research Bill

Debate between Lord Winston and Lord Blunkett

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I welcome this brief debate. It is crucial that we should turn our attention to different forms of access and to lifelong learning in its widest sense. The publication from the four years that I was Education and Employment Secretary that I remain most proud of is The Learning Age Green Paper. I am proud of the commitment of the then Government to the whole range of opportunities for lifelong learning.

I deeply regret that universities as a whole in this country countenanced the demise of their extramural outreach at a time when more utilitarian delivery was uppermost in people’s minds. I pay tribute to Sheffield Hallam University for its outreach, embracing those from a whole range of disadvantaged backgrounds. I declare an interest: I have a close relationship with the University of Sheffield, where I hopefully deliver some pearls of wisdom and experience from a lifetime engaged in education, and I welcome its renewed commitment to lifelong learning. However, universities using resources, expertise and facilities to reach out is still in embryo.

Digital platforms now allow us to communicate at a distance. Over past decades, the Open University has been able to link that effectively to collective study and engagement; that is a crucial part of a rounded education that we can all welcome. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will, in a wider sense than just this Bill, encourage and support universities to use those resources to reach out and become essential parts of their own community, as well reaching out internationally.

[Lord Winston (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness’s amendment. This is a particularly important issue which, regrettably, has been repeatedly neglected in this House, except by my noble friend Lady Bakewell and a few others who have, from time to time, tried to cudgel the Government in debates that perhaps do not have quite so much impact as this major debate on higher education today. I have an interest as chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University which, together with the University of Sheffield, has transformed Sheffield and its workforce in the last 15 years. Many of the people who have transformed that place have of course been those who have come in part-time.

I do not want to repeat what I said in the previous sitting on Monday, but I pointed out—during the Tube strike—that we are going to have to look at driverless trains and at automation, which will happen right across the whole of industry. It has been calculated by some people that perhaps as many as nine out of 10 of the workforce will be out of their current work in the next decade. I am not quite certain whether the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in moving her amendment, pointed out that a large proportion of the people who undertake part-time degrees are over the age of 30 and under the age of 60. We need to be skilling people as they grow older because we are now living longer. We need to ensure that that middle-aged group is educated. It is important to recognise that as long as we learn, we are useful. It is vital to support learning in an ageing society.

I wish to relate a personal story about a PhD student who I met at Imperial College last year. I asked her about the subject of her further degree as she was undertaking a very intricate project on global warming, looking at rare earth radioisotopes two miles below the seabed. She was tracking sea movements from 50 million years ago and providing crucial information on climate change using the most sensitive instruments. I thought that she must have the most splendid degree from one of the Russell group universities. When I asked her where she had taken her first degree, she said, “I was in an office and started an Open University course, which led directly to this PhD studentship”. We need to ensure that we fully support people who have the capacity to contribute to our society intellectually. At the moment, that is not happening enough.