Lifelong Learning: “University of the Air” White Paper

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the impact of the University of the Air White Paper on lifelong learning opportunities.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this debate marking the 60th anniversary of the White Paper that led to the founding of the Open University, originally called the “University of the Air”. It is worth pausing on that phrase for a moment, because 60 years later it still sounds faintly otherworldly, even with all our electronic gizmos and gadgets and the information whizzing around us constantly. A “University of the Air” meant higher education broadcast directly into people’s homes. It meant learning being made available not just to those who had always had privilege, not just to the young or the affluent, and not only to those who followed a conventional academic route, but, crucially, to ordinary working people fitting study around jobs, families and the realities of their lives.

Sixty years on, what once sounded ambitious, perhaps even eccentric to some, instead now looks visionary. That is because it was visionary. It did not begin as some sort of administrative reform dreamt up in Whitehall; first and foremost, it was a political project. Harold Wilson first floated the idea in 1963, after seeing the potential of television and broadcasting to widen access to education in ways that had not previously seemed possible. But the person who really drove the project forward was his Minister, Jennie Lee.

There are not many White Papers that leave behind institutions that still change lives six decades later, but this one did, because Jennie Lee understood something important: there has always been a mismatch in this country—potential is spread far more widely and far more equally than opportunity. In the mid-60s, the assumption was still that higher education belonged to a relatively narrow section of society.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. On the narrow cohort of people who normally benefit from higher education, does he agree that lifelong learning is an essential component for young people from working-class communities in particular? Many of them do not take part in traditional higher education, and they can and should be targeted so that we benefit not just now but for generations to come.

[Patrick Hurley]

I agree entirely, and will make similar points later in my speech. The hon. Gentleman and I are very much on the same page.

[Alex Easton (North Down) (Ind)]

Will the hon. Gentleman join me in recognising the Open University’s role in pioneering modules, credits and credit transfers, which turned lifelong learning into a reality for so many adults in my constituency? Does he agree that the funding changes in 2010 badly hit part-time and mature learners, and that the promise of the White Paper still depends on the choices that Governments make on funding policies?

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Hurley]

Funding is a huge issue here. The modular basis for the Open University has been a real boon to people who find themselves unable, for whatever reason, to study in a traditional format, but funding is still a key concern.

Back in the ’60s, university was for young people. It was thought to be for young people, usually at least middle class, studying full time and following a fairly prescribed path. The thinking went that if someone missed their opportunity at 18 or 21, that was that—they had had their chance. But Jennie Lee and the Wilson Government challenged that assumption. They believed that education ought not to be reserved for those lucky enough to travel a conventional route through life, and that people should have second chances—and third chances if they need them, and fourth chances too. Crucially, she insisted that there should be no lowering of standards and no second-class offer for those who had missed out the first time round.

Perhaps the most radical thing of all was that the Open University would be genuinely open. The White Paper made it clear that people should be able to study irrespective of their previous educational qualifications. In other words, someone would not be shut out just because they had not done their A-levels.

On all those points, the Government at the time were absolutely right, because the Open University has become one of the great success stories of modern Britain. Today, it is the largest university in the country, with around 125,000 students. Nearly a quarter of all part-time higher education students in this country study at the OU. It reaches every constituency, including my own, Southport, where around 135 people are currently studying through it. This is not some sort of niche institution sitting at the margins of education policy but one of the central pillars of lifelong learning in this country.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for celebrating such a great Labour achievement, led by a great Labour woman, Baroness Jennie Lee. Will he join me in congratulating the Open University and underlining its importance for people like me? I was looking after four children and was able to do a master’s at the Open University, spread out over three years, with some cutting-edge modules that I still rely on now. The Open University opens up education for people from all backgrounds, offering home-based and flexible learning, including for those with family responsibilities.

[Patrick Hurley]

I am more than happy to commend Baroness Jennie Lee, and I am more than happy to celebrate the success of my hon. Friend and of the countless thousands of others who have studied around the real lives we all lead.

One reason why the Open University works is precisely because it understands something that many higher education institutions still struggle with: life is not linear. People do not all move neatly from school to university to career to retirement in a straight line. Our lives are messier than that. People leave school without confidence, drift into jobs and later discover different ambitions. They become parents, care for relatives, lose jobs, or their health changes. Sometimes, at 35, 45 or 55, they simply decide that they want to try something new. The original White Paper understood that. It explicitly talked about flexibility, recognising that some learners would move quickly and others slowly, depending on the realities of their lives. The Open University says something very simple to people in those circumstances: “It is not too late. It is never too late.”

I should declare an interest, because I would not be standing here in Westminster Hall this afternoon without the Open University. I did not come through the conventional route into higher education. I left school without much expectation that university was really for people like me. For most of my life, I worked in fairly ordinary, fairly low-paid jobs. For instance, I sold “Magic Tree” air-fresheners to petrol stations. I spent a decade working in a call centre for an insurance company. I spent a few soul-destroying months working for a debt collector, before I could take no more and quit to go back on the dole.

Like many people, I found that without qualifications there were doors that simply remained shut, no matter how hard I tried. The Open University changed all that for me, although not in some dramatic overnight fashion like we might see in a television drama. It was hard work. It meant studying in the evenings, at weekends, on the bus to and from work—and, to be honest, probably sometimes during work if the boss was not looking. I was doing assignments when other members of the family were watching television or going out and getting on with their lives. But it made something possible for me that would otherwise not have been possible: it gave me the ability to learn around my life.

From speaking to other OU students over the years, I know that my story is far from unusual. There are hundreds of thousands of us out there who have rebuilt confidence, changed career, retrained or simply proved something to ourselves, because somebody, somewhere, 60 years ago had the foresight to build an institution flexible enough to meet people where they already are.

Something about all this is deeply embedded in the labour movement. The Open University sits in a much longer tradition of working-class people organising to educate ourselves and improve our circumstances. Long before most people had access to university, we had mechanics’ institutes, miners’ libraries, mutual improvement societies, trade union reading rooms and university extension programmes. We had the Workers’ Educational Association. Working-class people have always valued education, hard work and making something of ourselves. The nonsense about a lack of aspiration that we sometimes hear from the assembled ranks of the privileged has never been true. The problem was never aspiration; the problem was access.

In many ways, the “University of the Air” was the modern expression of that Victorian-era working-class tradition, and the belief that education should not stop, even when life gets complicated. That approach matters now more than ever. We live in a country where people are likely to work for longer. They change careers more often. They need to retrain repeatedly. We are also living through profound economic change, with automation, artificial intelligence, changing labour markets and an ageing population. We simply cannot operate on the assumption that education happens only once, in our late teens or early 20s, and then stops. Frankly, that never made sense, and it certainly does not make sense any more.

If we are serious about economic growth, improving productivity and helping people back into good work, lifelong learning has to move from being a worthy aspiration to being something much closer to the centre of how we think about our economy. Since being elected to Parliament, I have spent a lot of time working in the areas of employment, skills and economic inactivity, and I think we sometimes underestimate the role education plays in building people’s confidence as much as their competence. Often, people are not just missing qualifications; they are missing the confidence that they are capable of more. Adult education changes that. It changed it for me.

To be frank, I have forgotten quite a lot of the stuff that I was actually taught during my time at the Open University. I sometimes need a primer on the exact details of the theoretical framework underpinning the long-run Phillips curve. When I re-read my master’s thesis a few years ago, I surprised myself with how much I agreed with my conclusions on the intersection between liberty and unequal power relations. But I will never forget that moment back in December 2010, when I got my undergraduate result. It felt like validation. It was a confidence boost that has never left me.

In among the successes and the congratulations, we should be honest about the challenges—

[Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is speaking powerfully about his story and his experience of higher education. Young people from more advantaged or affluent backgrounds are still much more likely to enter higher education than their less-advantaged peers. Socioeconomic background—what we more commonly call class—is still the strongest predictor of university attendance. Does my hon. Friend agree that the mission at the heart of the 1966 White Paper, to expand access to higher education and spread opportunity, is just as relevant today as it was then?

[Patrick Hurley]

Definitely. If anything, it is even more important in 2026, with all the challenges we see around us.

As I said, we should be honest about the challenges. Despite the success of institutions like the Open University, adult participation in higher education has fallen over the last decade. Too often, the system still feels like it is designed around the traditional undergraduate who left school at 18, rather than the parents in their 30s or 40s, the worker retraining after redundancy or the person managing long-term ill health while trying to rebuild their future. Yet mature students are not some small minority: more than a third of undergraduate entrants are mature learners. They are already a major part of our higher education system, whether we recognise it fully or not.

That is why I welcome the broad direction of travel on lifelong learning and the more flexible provision the Government are pursuing. The principle is right—people should be able to access education throughout their lives and in a way that fits around their work and family—but it remains true that implementation and delivery matter as well. If lifelong learning is genuinely to continue to work, people need a system they can understand and easily navigate. The funding regime needs to feel straightforward and fair. Flexible provision has to be properly supported. Employers need to be part of the conversation. And, frankly, we need many more people just to know that these opportunities exist, because too many adults still assume that higher education is simply not for people like them.

I ask the Minister to reflect on the role that institutions such as the Open University can play in regions like mine. One of its great strengths is that people do not have to leave their communities to access the opportunities available to them. That matters in places that have too often watched talent drain away, like the region I am from. Somebody in Southport or St Helens, in Birkenhead or Bootle, should not necessarily have to move away from their home town to improve their prospects. The Open University allows people to build skills while remaining rooted in the places that they love and that they want to contribute to. That strikes me as important, not just educationally but economically and socially.

I am proud that this Labour Government are acting in a way that is true to the founding vision of the Open University. The lifelong learning entitlement represents a major step forward. It is transforming the student finance system to support flexible, modular learning across people’s lives. For the first time, individuals will be able to access funding both for traditional degrees and for shorter courses, as well as retraining and skills development, when they need it throughout their careers. It is fitting that this reform builds directly on the principles pioneered by the Open University almost 60 years ago.

The OU’s expertise in modular, flexible provision will be vital in making the lifelong learning entitlement a success, but we must do more. We must ensure that part-time provision is properly funded and properly supported, we must raise awareness so that more people know these opportunities exist, and we must ensure that lifelong learning is embedded across Government—yes, in education policy, but also in economic, employment and regional growth strategies as well.

As we mark 60 years since the White Paper, we should all do two things. First, we should celebrate one of the most genuinely radical and successful achievements of not just Harold Wilson’s Government but every Labour Government: an institution built on the belief that intelligence is not confined to one class, one place or one stage of life. Secondly, we should remember that the argument Jennie Lee made in 1966 is not yet finished. The central question remains exactly the same as it ever was: what do we do with potential that has not yet had its chance?

For millions of people, the Open University has represented confidence, dignity and a second opportunity. I know that, because in my case it changed the direction of my life. For that reason, if no other, I believe that the vision behind the “University of the Air” deserves not simply our admiration but our continued support.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patrick Hurley]

First, I pay tribute to you, Sir Desmond, for your exemplary chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I also thank Members from across the House for their valued contributions.

With your indulgence, Sir Desmond, I will touch on funding, a topic raised by several Members, through an anecdote about how I paid my Open University fees. When I studied at the OU, modules were around £700 each. Even that was too expensive for me. It was not until I realised that I could pay for my modules using Tesco Clubcard vouchers that I finally took the plunge and enrolled.

The choice was this: every few months, a booklet from Tesco would come through the post, and I would have the option of getting 50% off a Pizza Express bill, or free cinema tickets, or potentially transforming my life through higher education. Given the context, it was no choice at all—it was obvious what I should do.

Funding is never easy, but we need to redouble our efforts to ensure that the principle the OU was founded on—that education should be affordable and accessible to all—holds true not just for the last 60 years, but for the next 60 years.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the impact of the University of the Air White Paper on lifelong learning opportunities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

5. What steps she is taking to help increase the number of students undertaking vocational training courses.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)]

Further education is vital in breaking down barriers to opportunity, driving growth and generating clean energy. The Budget allocated £300 million to support young people and improve skills development. In September, the Department launched a new phase of the “It all starts with skills” campaign to promote programmes such as apprenticeships and T-levels.

[Patrick Hurley]

After 14 years of Tory decline, there is much to do in this country to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure. A lot of people need jobs to help us achieve that. I am glad that the new Government are working to increase the number of students being trained in the industries of the future, but will the Minister tell us how she is working across Government to make sure that more young people can find those opportunities locally, rather than having to move away from their local communities?

[Janet Daby]

Central to our opportunity mission is that where someone is from should not determine where they end up in life. This Government are serious about supporting young people. We are working across Government to ensure that young people are supported in their communities through devolution, local growth plans, local skills improvement plans and the youth guarantee.