Lifelong Learning

Lord Blunkett Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

I have a number of relevant registered interests. I am very pleased to follow the right reverend Prelate and to endorse what I thought was an excellent “Thought for the Day”, which I hope he will be able to get on Radio 4. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Knight on an excellent opening speech, and I endorse everything he said. I look forward very much to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Curran, who is surrounded by friends, so she should have no fear. Being in this place is a lifelong learning experience. I often come in literally to have a seminar, learning things I know nothing about, and go away at least somewhat enlightened. I believe that we should endorse that kind of experience from the beginning to the end of our lives.

I have had a few hiccups lately, so I may not make the 100 that my noble friend Lord Knight referred to, but I am going to do my best. During that time, as well as advocating for a massive shift in the skills agenda, as I have been doing inside and outside this House, I will return to my real love, which is lifelong learning. Just over 25 years ago, I had the privilege of publishing the paper: The Learning Age. The department was slightly bewildered as my noble friend Lady Shephard, as I like to call her, will remember because I succeeded her. No. 10 was not just bewildered; it was bemused about why I should be spending time and energy on lifelong learning. The truth is that our country has been built on it.

The trade union movement was the first to understand the liberation of learning and the way in which this transformed the lives of not just individuals but families and whole communities. After the miners’ strike 40 years ago, women were liberated in my home area of South Yorkshire by adult learning being made available. I hope my noble friend can reassure me that the two remaining adult residential colleges that have major outreach will be secured in an environment where devolution of funding to combined authorities leaves artificial boundaries that might undermine funding initiatives of that sort. My university, the University of Sheffield, was in part built on a levy by the trade unions in the area which put together what would now be worth millions of pounds to get that university off the ground in 1905. The history of people understanding what it was doing to them, their lives and their opportunity and community is something we should build on.

My noble friend Lord Knight and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, mentioned the lifelong learning entitlement. Please let us make it more flexible, more usable and, in the end, more successful, but let us also look at new ways of delivering lifelong learning. Artificial intelligence and technology are transforming the world of work, which is why lifelong learning will be critical for people to return to learn in all kinds of ways. However, artificial intelligence and technology can also deliver and help to spread the opportunity of lifelong learning, including to people who are confined to their home.

My final point, because of the time limit, is very simple. We need lifelong learning to keep us alert and alive and to stave off dementia. I have had a long-standing commitment in the area of dementia, so I know from every possible experience just what a difference it can make if people remain alert and alive at the end of their main working period and throughout their retirement. We have an obligation to ensure that this new Government do not make cuts in what has already been a devastated area of public funding. I appeal to my Government to not condemn austerity and then carry it through. Together, nationally and locally, through civil society, we can make this work.