Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill

Munira Wilson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker).

Mr Deputy Speaker,

“adult education must not be regarded as a luxury for a few exceptional persons here and there, nor as a thing which concerns only a short span of early manhood, but that adult education is a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship, and therefore should be both universal and lifelong”.

That is not a quote from one of the many briefings that was sent to me ahead of the debate. It comes from Arthur Smith, who was the master of Balliol College, Oxford, in his foreword to a report commissioned by David Lloyd George’s Government in 1919. This Bill is trying to fulfil an ambition outlined more than a century ago by a Liberal Prime Minister—one that, sadly, successive Governments of all colours have failed to deliver.

As we have already heard, there is consensus on all sides of the House about the need for a revolution in adult education. That cannot be understated, given the pace of economic and societal change before us. Research from the Confederation of British Industry predicts that, as a result of changes in the world of work driven by digitalisation and the transition to a green economy, 25 million workers will need to upskill by 2030, and 5 million will need to retrain completely. The 2022 business barometer, which was put together by the Open University with the British Chambers of Commerce, found that 78% of UK organisations suffered a decline in output, profitability and growth as a consequence of the lack of available skills.

Liberal Democrats see investment in education and skills not only as an investment in our country’s future, but much more than that. It is about helping people to maximise their potential, nurture their creativity and develop their interests and talents, so I share the Secretary of State’s ambition that, no matter a person’s background or what path they have trodden, we all deserve equality of opportunity. That is the reason I am a Liberal. The Secretary of State says that it is the reason she is a Conservative. Maybe we can hammer it out over a drink sometime, and I might persuade her to cross the Floor, because as we have seen, it was a Liberal Prime Minister who originally set out that ambition.

However, I fear that the Government’s investment in lifelong learning over recent years does not meet the scale of the ambition that the Secretary of State has outlined. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, total adult skills spending in 2024-2025 will still be 22% below 2009-10 levels. The number of students taking non-degree undergraduate courses at higher education providers fell from 330,000 in 2007-08 to 110,000 in 2021-22, most of whom were part-time learners. We are promised that the lifelong learning entitlement will change that, and that it will be flexible, unified and high-quality, with parity between technical and academic routes. We are promised that this Bill will underpin the LLE scheme by providing a credit-based method for calculating the fee limit for whole courses and individual modules. While I commend the Minister and the Secretary of State for their commitment to the cause, I agree with many of the comments made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), that it is plain to see that this Bill is not the century-in-the-making panacea we have all been waiting for.

Many questions remain unanswered in what the shadow Minister described as a skeletal Bill. First, we are debating the Bill in reverse. Parliament is meant to debate and approve the policy framework and then let the regulations deal with the technical details. This Bill does the opposite—it sets out the mechanism through which an LLE will be delivered without setting out any of the major policy decisions about how it will work. As we have already heard, the LLE consultation was published more than a year ago, but we are yet to see the Government response. The hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), who is no longer in her place, asked the Secretary of State how old someone would have to be to access the loan entitlement. How will maintenance support work? There are no details in the consultation. Will the repayment terms for these loans be the same as for 18-year-olds going to university when many of these learners will have only 20, 15 or 10 years left in their working lives? Will the equivalent and lower qualifications rule be abolished?

Those are basic questions about the nature and structure of the LLE that the Government do not seem to be any closer to answering as yet, but they will make huge differences to the effectiveness of the programme. The lack of any detail on how to support students with living costs, particularly during a cost of living crisis, seems to me a significant oversight, which is made even more unforgivable by the fact that the Department is increasing undergraduate maintenance loans by just 2.8% next year, when inflation is running at more than triple that rate.

I question whether the Government have correctly identified the major problem they are attempting to address through this Bill, because I am not sure they have made the case that the LLE is something that aspiring learners actually want. The Department for Education sought to prove its concept by making student finance available for 104 courses, yet according to Wonkhe, just 26 of those courses are advertising a future start date and just 33 students have applied for student finance as part of that trial. That was backed up by a survey last year by Public First, which found that telling people about the LLE made no statistically significant difference to whether people would retrain. I do not believe that reveals a lack of demand for lifelong learning, but it does show a considerable lack of interest from the public in this mechanism for financing it.

The most commonly cited reason for not showing an interest in the scheme is not wanting to take on debt. Seeing as talking about our predecessors is in vogue, I will say that was the conclusion my predecessor, the former Member of Parliament for Twickenham, Sir Vince Cable, came to in 2019 when he commissioned an expert panel of university, college and adult education leaders to explore alternatives for financing lifelong learning. They found that most mature students have work, a mortgage or family responsibilities, and so are unlikely to be attracted to a scheme requiring them in effect to pay a higher rate of tax for the rest of their working life to participate in further study.

The commission recommended giving every adult a personal education and skills account—what the Liberal Democrats have nicknamed a skills wallet. The skills wallet is not about just bolting modular learning on to the existing higher education fees system, as this Bill proposes, but would offer central Government grants throughout life to incentivise learning at all levels and would leverage private and public investment from employers, local government and learners themselves.

The Government’s consultation says that a learner’s account will show their learning balance “like a bank account”, so why not operate it like a bank account with tax breaks to incentivise individuals to save for retraining? Many short courses are being paid for by employers, so why not make employers’ contributions as commonplace as a workplace pension? Local, regional and central Government could also incentivise retraining during a downturn or following the collapse of a large local employer by topping up the accounts of affected workers.

Tom Bewick, the chief executive of the Federation of Awarding Bodies said:

“The LLE Bill has the potential to be the most radical entitlement to adult education, skills…and retraining…ever introduced.”

But he goes on to say:

“Grants and maintenance support will also be required.”

I fear that the ambition of Education Ministers for the Bill and its scope have been shackled by the Treasury.

[David Johnston]

The hon. Lady is making an interesting case, but does she accept that some people do not want further or higher education and will not benefit from it? People talk about the archetypal bus driver who has not done such courses—of course, sometimes they will have—and ask why he should have to pay for other people to do them. I can see that the measure could be important for low-income families, but does she accept the principle that people who want to do the course should have to contribute themselves?

[Munira Wilson]

I see where the hon. Gentleman is coming from, but equally, we are ambitious about making sure that the whole population, or many parts of it, are reskilling and are ready for the jobs of the future, and for people from low-income backgrounds, loans are a real barrier to putting themselves forward for additional courses. The skills wallet, as in our 2019 proposal, would be a grant given at various points of someone’s lifetime between the age of 25 and 55, with top-ups from local or national Government or employers and some tax breaks to go with it. That is an innovative and pluralistic way of funding that ambition, particularly given the challenges that we face as a country to fulfil the skills that we need for us to thrive and grow, which seems to be a cross-party ambition.

I fear that the narrow scope of the Bill will prevent amendments that probe the big policy choices that await the Government before LLEs are rolled out in 2025, but I hope that Ministers will answer the following questions as the Bill progresses. Will the Secretary of State consider putting the notional hourly value of a credit in the Bill so that modules cannot be devalued by a future Government looking to save money? Universities UK and other stakeholders have raised concerns that clause 2 may allow the Secretary of State to set differential fees based on subject of the course. Ministers should bring forward amendments in Committee to ensure that that is not possible and protect universities’ institutional autonomy.

How will Ministers ensure that learners have access to high-quality careers advice before they get their loan entitlement? David Cameron promised Islamic-compliant student finance in 2013. It is unacceptable that, 10 years later, it has still not been introduced. Will the LLE also be blocked off to Muslim students? Will the equivalent or lower qualification rule be abolished to give learners more flexibility in what they study? Will the Government support the Liberal Democrats’ plan to restore maintenance grants so that university graduates from low-income backgrounds are not punished by having to pay back more of their loans for longer?

This is a pivotal opportunity to shape lifelong learning in this country, and it is desperately important given the digital and green revolutions that are already under way. If we want to ensure that we as a country are at the forefront of capitalising on these opportunities, we need to equip people with the right skills, so these plans need further thought and further detail. We will rue the day if, in another 100 years, Arthur Smith’s ambitions have still not been fulfilled.