Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q I was trying to exclude the full-time undergraduate. I am trying to get at if there is a danger that, for some of those who might already be accessing technical, part-time, upskilling skills courses that are paid for by their employers, the employers will shift that burden on to the students. My follow-up question, which I have asked to other panel members, is do you believe there are other things that can be done to ensure that employers do not shift that burden—for example, in regulation putting things that make it clear that this is for personal, not professional, development?

Professor Peck: It is a really interesting challenge. One of the things that the short course pilot should tell us, even if they are relatively small numbers, is how many trainers are paying for themselves through taking out a loan with the SLC and how many are coming in through employers. There is a suggestion that there are bigger numbers doing those modular programmes but actually they are being paid for by employers. I have not seen the data on that yet, but I am trying to get those data to see if that is the case.

I think most employers would see it as part of their responsibility to pay for training their current employees. Indeed, they might want to do that in a different way from doing it employee by employee. In sufficient numbers, you would commission your own training; that happens already. It is important to ensure that we are not transferring the cost from employers to the individual employee. I think how you do that is a really interesting question, which probably bears more consideration, but there may be ways of ensuring that that does not happen.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Q Thank you so much for your evidence. As we transition into this new world, I am interested in hearing your expert view on where you are seeing immediate demand—for example, the renewable energy retrofit gets discussed regularly in Lancashire. Could you give us the top three from both of your perspectives?

Julie Charge: The main one we are seeing is around computer science; that is definitely top of the agenda. The other ones for us in terms of all the range of skills are things like the artificial intelligence and robotics space, and absolutely sustainability. That understanding of sustainability actually touches a lot of subjects, whether that is housing through the retrofit or others. Those are the three areas that are definitely at the top at the moment.

Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st March 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Katherine Fletcher]

Fine—now I understand you. Ecology might not be top of the list—I am a biologist who did a lot of ecology so I can say it—and that is a bit like archaeology. The initial stuff at level 4, 5 and, ideally, 6 could be more granular in detail and perhaps more obviously tied to a job—moving satellites around in space or whatever. Thank you very much for putting up with my questions.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q That was very interesting. At the moment with a three-year degree something that protects students from universities completely destroying their course is that universities have to honour the programme they started with. You will allow a cohort to continue. I have been in many fights while representing the unions when universities have done that. I should make a reference to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests on that. With a modularisation process over 10 years, is there a danger that someone starts a process of collecting credits and modules that they want to pursue over a long period and ends up at a dead end, where they have used up all their money and credits but are not able to get the degree because it does not exist any more? How can that be mitigated?

Professor Rigby: I do not think we can avoid that risk. If we imagine that the lifelong loan entitlement will be drawn down from 18 to 50, that is 30 years of continuity, and we have not had 30 years of continuity in higher education in the last century. It is quite possible that an organisation or, indeed, a subject area would cease to exist during that time. You are working from the premise that people would start an LLE in a modular form always intending to get a degree as an outcome, and I am not sure that they would not then just do a degree, because they could do that at any age. The commitment of time might stop them, but I doubt that many people over 30 years would have their eyes set exactly on a particular degree outcome; they would surely be moving in and out of the workplace, revisiting their own choices of modularity. It would be lovely if those modules stacked so that they end up as a generic degree, but I would have thought that the risk is only if we over-specify what that degree would be on graduation. If we say it is a geology degree, that is fine. If we say it is a palaeontology degree on vertebrates that can only be delivered by the University of Bristol, we would have to be assuming that it would have continuity of delivery through 40 years. It probably could, but others might not.

Commonwealth in 2020

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Lloyd Russell-Moyle

Monday 9th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman has raised recent things because, even as we promote the Commonwealth now, we must be honest about places that have gone backwards, not forwards, over the past year and more in promoting peace, democracy and human rights—places where the Commonwealth is needed even more.

We think, of course, of the current tension in India and Pakistan and the violence in Delhi over the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, but we also think of the democratic instability we have seen in Sri Lanka, a country I must have visited more than a dozen times, and in Nigeria and Kenya in recent months and years. We think of the deteriorating human rights situation in Uganda, Singapore and elsewhere, and the dreadful impunity of the regime in Cameroon. We think of the discrimination that continues against the LGBT community in far too many Commonwealth countries. That is the recent history of our Commonwealth. Of course we must celebrate some of the progress that is made, but we must not have rose-tinted glasses when Commonwealth citizens are being discriminated against around the world, their human rights are being denied them and their democratic participation is being taken away. Therefore, it was a missed opportunity when this Government failed to put the issue of LGBT rights formally on the agenda at the CHOGM in April in London. It was not only a missed opportunity, but a dereliction of our historic duty to right our wrong.

To avoid wasting another opportunity, may I ask the Minister what he has done since Britain became co-chair of the Equal Rights Coalition in June to make it a priority to persuade members of the Commonwealth to join that coalition? After all, it cannot be right that the ERC, which exists to promote human rights of the LGBT community, currently has just six of the 53 members of the Commonwealth as signatories to its principles—none of the African, Asian or Caribbean Commonwealth countries have signed. If we are not putting pressure on those other countries to join, is it any wonder that they are doing the exact opposite and seeing how far they can roll back LGBT rights in their countries, including via grotesque proposals to punish same-sex relationships with the death penalty, as in Uganda? I have visited that country a number of times and met LGBT activists there, as many Members have done. Even in countries where the laws are not so draconian, the social situation is dire. In Jamaica last year, the global LGBT+ rights all-party group met many activists. How are those activists getting the support they deserve from this Government to overturn our imposed homophobia?

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for—

[Katherine Fletcher]

My sincere apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. That was newbie mistake No. 473. I commend the hon. Gentleman for his concern for the LGBT community, but surely one of the best things we can do is invite the Commonwealth of Nations to this functioning democracy and show everybody that love does nobody any harm, and they can then take those examples back to their communities.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes, we did that two years ago, in 2018, at the CHOGM London meeting, but the Government failed to put this on the agenda of that meeting and to include it in the communiqué. I agree that we should be leading by example, but that means that when we have the chairmanship of Commonwealth positions and we do not raise these things, even gently, we are failing.