Baroness Twycross:

Moved by Baroness Twycross

3: After Clause 2, insert the following Clause— “Review of the operation of the Act(1) The Secretary of State must conduct an annual review of the operation of the provisions of this Act.(2) The review must consider the impact of the provisions of this Act on—(a) learner uptake of modular study;(b) learner uptake of non-modular part-time study;(c) adult learner uptake of Level 3, Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 study;(d) access to higher education for students with disabilities; (e) access to higher education for students from lower- income backgrounds;(f) access to higher education for students from ethnic minority backgrounds;(g) uptake of modular study amongst learners between the ages of 30 and 60;(h) employer spending on lifelong learning, retraining and upskilling opportunities for their employees;(i) the provision of courses offered by higher education and further education providers;(j) the financial sustainability of the tertiary education sector;(k) differences in higher education provision across different regions of England;(l) skills gaps in the United Kingdom.(3) The Secretary of State must lay the report on the findings of the first review before Parliament within one year of the introduction of the Level 4 lifelong loan entitlement provision.”Member’s explanatory statementThis new Clause would require the Secretary of State to annually review the impact of the Act on various aspects of higher education and adult learning, starting within one year of the rollout of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 3, standing in my name and the names of my noble friends Lady Wilcox, Lady Thornton and Lord Blunkett. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans, for giving his time yesterday to meet to discuss the Bill, and I thank the Minister for her own engagement in correspondence on the Bill.

As my noble friend Lady Wilcox stated in the debate on the previous group of amendments, Labour supports the aspiration in this Bill, and we want the change to work. However, we think that the Bill could be strengthened, and all the amendments we have tabled have the aim of making sure that it succeeds.

Labour wants students to have access to funds and to have a lifelong loan entitlement and the opportunity to learn throughout their careers. I have found the cross-party consensus and debate on aspects of this Bill of great interest, and one of the most compelling points in the debate in Committee was from the noble Lord, Lord Willetts. To paraphrase—and I apologise to him if this is an incorrect interpretation—he stated that one of the main issues for the success of the Bill’s measures will be whether or not those who are thinking about deferring their entitlement believe and trust that the funding will still be there in the future. I think it was a really well-made point. We need enough trust in future Governments keeping the entitlement to ensure that people do not instead decide to use it all at an early stage of their career to ensure they do not lose it, thereby negating part of the point of the Bill.

Labour believes that reviewing the impact of the Bill on various aspects of higher education and adult learning annually, starting within one year of the rollout of the LLE, would make it more likely that any issues would be identified and more likely to succeed and to be there for the future learning needs and aspirations of students. It might arguably, therefore, improve confidence on the part of students and potential students in future entitlements. I would welcome the Minister’s view on how the Government intend to carry out reviewing the impact of the Bill in the absence of formal review, as the amendment would provide. How will the Government ensure confidence in the future-proofing of this entitlement?

The amendment would ensure ongoing analysis of the impact of the Bill on higher education uptake, the financial stability of the higher and further education sectors and our current skills gap. The Government’s related announcement on higher education just prior to the Summer Recess was concerning in many ways. It completely reduced the value of the course to graduate salaries, ignoring the wider reasons why we value higher education, and risks higher education provision, often for local people in areas of the country the Government claim they want to level up. The courses and institutions targeted by these changes could seriously impact particular groups, especially disabled students, students from ethnic minorities and those from lower-income backgrounds.

The Minister has pointed to the lifelong loan entitlement as something that can help those seeking flexible and part-time studies or looking to retrain or build further skills, but we absolutely need to ensure that students seeking flexible study are not limited in choice by using this entitlement or how it works in practice. Can she outline how flexible learning will be supported?

It is also essential that the Government ensure that this entitlement does not become simply a fund for employers looking to push training costs back on to their staff; it must be in addition, not instead of. I hope to hear from the Minister on how the Government are working with both prospective students and employers to prevent that, as well as on the other points raised in this debate. I hope the Government will be able to give a very positive response to the amendment, and I beg to move.

My Lords, I start by apologising for my bad timing in not arriving for the previous set of amendments to which I was a signatory. I was caught on the hop, and it takes a few hops to get here from my office in Millbank House, so I apologise to the House.

It is important that some of the issues to which my noble friend Lady Twycross referred are emphasised. The impact of the Bill’s provisions on a number of education sectors is considerable, and I return again to the impact on the access to higher education for students from lower-income backgrounds. I shall not rehearse the arguments about BTECS and AGQs, the Minister will be relieved to hear, but that is one issue that needs to be borne in mind as the legislation proceeds.

I can no longer speak on behalf of the party as I am no longer on the Front Bench, but I very much hope that an incoming Labour Government would retain much of this legislation, because I think it is very positive and it would be a great shame if that was not done. I think it will; I think common sense will mean that that happens. Some of how we shape the Bill now, therefore, will have an impact further down the line, whatever happens at the next general election. I particularly mention the skills gaps in the economy, mentioned at the end of subsection (2) of the new clause proposed in the amendment; it is very important that we bear that in mind going forward.

The Minister, in response to the previous set of amendments, talked about impact assessments: the one done before the Bill was published and one in, I think, March this year. I was surprised that she did not mention—at least, not when I was here, and I think I was here when she was speaking—the report issued just under two weeks ago by the Permanent Secretary of the department on the assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement, which I thought was potentially rather worrying. The Permanent Secretary was questioning the ability to complete the rollout by 2025, as is intended. She said, and I quote from her report, that the biggest risk to feasibility of the lifelong loan entitlement is “significant delivery challenges”.

I will not go through all of those, as I am sure noble Lords will have seen them—this is the report issued on 25 August. It is all very well to talk about an impact assessment, but an assessment has been made of whether the deadline can be met, and I would like the Minister at least to comment on it, because we are getting fairly close to the time when, if certain preparations for the implementation of the lifelong loan entitlement are not completed, that 2025 introduction date will slip. That would be very unfortunate, to say the least, and could have considerable knock-on impacts.

Coming to my final point—perhaps I am being a little unfair to the Minister, but I am going to say it anyway—I referred, in my Oral Question in July, to a thematic report published by Ofsted which raised some questions about T-levels. I know that this is not the same thing, but I think the way that T-levels roll out will have an effect on the number of people who are properly prepared to take up some of the options under the lifelong loan entitlement. Could she say whether—if she thinks it is not appropriate to do so now, I should be very happy if she could write—she and her officials, having had more time to study the Ofsted report, have any other comments to make on it? I thought it unusual for His Majesty’s inspector to be as openly critical on such a fundamental part of the Government’s education and skills policy. If she would prefer not to rise to that today, I would be very happy for her to write, but it would be helpful to have some comment on that thematic report issued in July.

With those remarks, I think that the issues covered in Amendment 3 are important, and I do not really see why the Government should be unhappy about the Secretary of State conducting an annual review considering the various issues listed in the amendment.

My Lords, I support the amendment, to which my name is attached, but I also echo my noble friend’s remarks on this matter. As I mentioned to the Minister, the rollout will be very important, and the three to five-year assessment of whether the legislation has worked will not serve, because it will be a moving feast. Indeed, I thank the Open University for writing to us to draw our attention to the accounting officer’s assessment, which my noble friend mentioned, which highlights concerns within the department that the rollout might be a problem.

There are two things here, really. First, I seek some clarity on how this will be promoted. This partly echoes the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, in Committee, which we rather liked; they were about trust and how this will be sold to people as something that we would want them to take up in the long term. The second point is about addressing the concerns that have been expressed within the department by the accounting officer.

My Lords, we have here a fairly formidable list of things, all of them important. I want to focus on subsection (2)(j) in the new clause proposed by Amendment 3, which concerns:

“the financial sustainability of the tertiary education sector”.

We note that student fees have not gone up in all the years they have been there and that universities now face intense financial pressures. I note that, in Committee, the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Johnson, put forward a suggestion that student fees should rise with inflation; that has not gone further but I wonder whether the Minister could give some succour to university vice-chancellors, who are desperately worried about how on earth they can balance their books as costs go up but income does not.

My Lords, I now turn to Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Twycross, Lady Thornton and Lady Wilcox of Newport, and the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This amendment would require the Secretary of State to publish an annual review of the operation of the provisions of this Act and specifies several areas that the review must cover, including learner uptake, access to higher education and financial sustainability in tertiary education more broadly.

As mentioned in relation to Amendments 2 and 4, the Government published an impact assessment upon the introduction of this Bill in February and an extensive impact assessment of the lifelong loan entitlement more broadly in March. The Government intend to publish an updated impact assessment covering all aspects of the LLE, including the measures in this Bill, when regulations are laid.

There will be continued scrutiny of the Bill and the LLE via existing parliamentary accountability mechanisms, for example post-legislative scrutiny and the Education Select Committee. In addition, there are already systems by which the areas mentioned in this amendment are monitored. I will take each area in turn to provide reassurances as to the existing work being undertaken in these areas and the mechanisms in place for review.

In relation to the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about three to five years, I was speaking specifically about post-legislative scrutiny. It is in the Cabinet Office guidance from 2008—a period that I imagine the noble Baroness might support. Obviously, as I have just listed, there are a number of other mechanisms for scrutiny.

The amendment lists a number of areas relating to uptake. I want to take this opportunity to refer noble Lords to the publications produced by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, which will continue to include data on learner uptake and enrolments. For example, the Higher Education Statistics Agency website allows anyone to view information about higher education student enrolments broken down by year, level of study, higher education provider, subject, mode of study and more. High-level national results are also published in its annual statistical bulletin.

Regarding uptake of modular and part-time study, the Government expect to see a shift in how, what and when people study as the LLE provides support for alternatives to full-time study. For example, Universities UK polling in 2020 on modular study indicated that 82% of prospective students polled who were either unemployed, at risk of unemployment or looking to learn a new skill would be keen to study individual modules of a university degree.

Turning to access, tackling inequality in higher education is a central part of the Office for Students’ mission. The OfS shares information through its access and participation data dashboard, which allows it and the public, alongside registered universities and colleges, to identify gaps between groups. The OfS also maintains an equality of opportunity risk register, which identifies key sector-level risks to equality of opportunity in higher education and highlights the student groups that are most affected by each one.

The Government recognise the importance of supporting access, which is why maintenance loans will be available for all eligible courses and modules that require in-person attendance under the LLE, as will targeted support grants such as the disabled students’ allowance and the childcare grant. The impact assessment published alongside this Bill notes that learners who will particularly benefit from the introduction of fee limits for short courses and modules are more likely to be older, female, from ethnic minority backgrounds or from lower socioeconomic groups.

The noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, was critical of the Government’s recent announcements on higher education reform and focused purely on salary. Let me just remind the House that the issues we are looking at include the continuation of students from one year to the next and the completion of courses as well as graduate-level salaries. The focus is very much on courses, but the question that we all need to ask is this: why does the same qualification at different institutions result in very different continuation and completion levels as well as very different salary levels? I know that the noble Baroness agrees with me here, but it is exactly those disadvantaged students who need to know which institutions are the ones where courses do not lead to the kind of outcomes that we would all hope for them.

Regarding employer spending on lifelong learning, employers are at the heart of the Government’s reforms that seek to improve the prestige, profile and uptake of high-quality technical education at levels 4 and 5. The lifelong loan entitlement will not substantively change the balance between workplace training and loan-funded study. It will sit alongside the opportunities afforded through apprenticeships and employer skills funding, meaning that people will have a wider choice in how and when they study to acquire new skills. The department will continue to engage closely with stakeholders, including employers, as part of the development and delivery of its reforms.

Regarding the financial sustainability of the tertiary education sector, which was also raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, this Bill’s impact assessment notes that providers may see increased tuition fee revenue if the LLE encourages more people to engage with lifelong education. As is currently the case, providers will be free to assess the potential profitability of any course however they see fit and will offer only those that they see as beneficial to their institution. The Higher Education Statistics Agency collects and publishes finance data from English HE providers as part of its annual financial return. The data includes the income and expenditure of higher education providers, key financial indicators and change over time.

With regard to skills gaps, the Government made clear in their response to the LLE consultation that they will take a phased approach to modular funding, focusing on higher technical courses that have the clearest employer value or where they address skills gaps to support learners into jobs that employers need. It is important to note that fee limits are not in themselves a means to address skills gaps; they are there to ensure that students have affordable access to HE provision provided by those higher education providers that receive government funding to support course delivery.

I turn now to timings. The proposal to review with no end date, as this amendment seeks to do, would be an undue and disproportionate burden. In addition, introducing ongoing reviews into primary legislation before policies have been fully implemented or had sufficient time to bed in would be of limited, if any, value.

I reiterate that it is unlikely that the fee limit provisions in this Bill will, in themselves, have substantial impacts on, for example, employer spending on lifelong learning or skills gaps in the UK. These and other impacts must be considered in the context of the LLE as a whole and not through the narrow lens of a single policy issue.

I want to return to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I will write to him about the T-level point but I want to quote from the conclusion of the Permanent Secretary’s report. She writes:

“As accounting officer for the Department for Education, I have considered this assessment against the 4 accounting officer standards, and I am satisfied that the LLE programme meets the standards of managing public money and accords with the generally understood principles of public life, represents good value for money for the Exchequer as a whole, and is feasible to deliver (with significant delivery challenges to meet the 2025 launch)”.

I think that she is still saying that it is feasible. However, it is a major programme, and any major programme would have significant challenges in that regard.

For these reasons, although the department understands the sentiment behind this amendment, it would be unnecessary and burdensome as there will be mechanisms in place to provide such a review. Therefore, the Government cannot accept it.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed response and thank all those who participated in this short debate. It is regrettable that the Government do not view this as a useful amendment. In Labour’s view, it would improve the likely outcomes of the Bill and the outcomes for the students who the Bill intends to help. Notwithstanding that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 3 withdrawn.

Clause 3: Extent, commencement and short title

Amendment 4 not moved.