Work: Lifelong Learning — House of Lords, 2017-11-27
Topic: Education
Archibald Kirkwood (Liberal Democrats, Centre to centre-left): My Lords, it is a great pleasure to contribute to this debate, and I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, who has been doing an enormous amount of work on this subject. I admire him because I am still stuck in a Scottish framework of further education and adult education. He seems to have mastered the English algorithms, which takes some doing, and he demonstrated that earlier in the debate I cannot but agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, that having only eight speakers in a debate of this strategic, long-term significance to the nation is a little disappointing. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson. I think that we should collectively lobby for a longer term look, once we have had a chance to reflect on both these important documents, which have come from government today. He made a very good suggestion that we should take time—maybe before Christmas or earlier in the New Year—to look at these documents. Taken together, they are a significant piece of public policy that the House would want to come back to. The opportunity costs of Brexit are costing us dear in all sorts of ways that are hidden and not obvious. I declare an interest in that I am a non-executive director of the Wise Group, which does job creation schemes in the north-east of England. That is in the register of interests. My interest in adult education derives almost directly from the two ad hoc committees on which I have recently served in your Lordships’ House. I first served on the ad hoc Digital Skills Committee, which was an eye-opener for me, in terms of the skill and transformation that the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, reflected on. I had no idea of the positive disruptive effect on economies that digital skills can have. That was followed up a year later when I had the privilege of joining colleagues on the Financial Inclusion Committee. The inability of the ordinary, average citizen to deal with digital skills and financial scrutiny of things like bank accounts was an eye-opener. I had no idea of the extent to which the primary and secondary education system was failing a lot of our citizens to enable them to engage and take part in society I have spent all my time pursuing social security and social policy areas, but I have now come to the conclusion that this is basically a question of inequality. If we cannot get our adult population into a position in which they can be active, independent and engaged, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said—he captured it well—we are failing our citizens. Another instructive point that the noble Lord made was that, if his employment and education report in 1998 was setting out some of those points as priorities for the nation, it reminds us that it is not what Governments say, no matter how many documents they produce, but what they do that counts. For me, this is a question of inequality, and dealing with inequality From my social security perspective, I formerly believed that cash transfers would provide enough for families to be able to survive and flourish in a modern economy. I have changed my mind—we need to have literacy and numeracy and digital and financial skills, and we need to give our average citizens and households the ability to look after their own health and well-being. That is obviously failing just now, considering issues with obesity, diabetes and some of these other illnesses. This is a crucial part of dealing with inequality, along with the work that we have been doing in social security I remind noble Lords that universal credit—I am sure that they understand this point—introduces work progression into our social protection systems in a way that it has never done before. So we need the ability to support claimants who come into universal credit who are in work but are told that they cannot stand still in the occupations and the levels of income they are on at the moment. They are required, under threat of sanction, to make work progression through into better jobs and, eventually, into careers. My ambition, from a DWP point of view, is that every job coach in every Jobcentre Plus office rolling out universal credit could guarantee an option for a client involved in work progression to have a quality adult education place The real challenge is in the regional disparities, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said—and I think that she is right. If we do not do something in some of these regions, nothing will get done, and it is not just a question of productivity but of drop-out towns and regions. I took the liberty of sending a couple of Financial Times clippings to the ministerial office, although they may not have reached the Minister’s desk yet. There has been compelling evidence from Martin Sandbu and Sarah O’Connor recently in that newspaper about the level to which some of those communities are suffering. It is not the fault of the citizens who live there. What I did not understand—I really need to learn more about it—is the effect that flows from globalisation, whereby clusters and patterns of economic activity act as magnets in cities where there are hubs, clusters, catalysts and all those other clever things. It is sucking out from some of the more regional and peripheral communities and neighbourhoods all the best young talent, who now live in cities. I suppose that is to be expected—that did not come as a great surprise. What did surprise me was the evidence that those disadvantaged areas are acting as a magnet for people who are struggling healthwise or from an education or skills point of view. So there is a double whammy—regions are losing their young talent and having to absorb medically, economically, socially and, indeed, politically, people who are struggling. You can measure that by the level of anti-depressant use. I did a pharmacy degree, and I studied these things more than most. You can tell very clearly from the map and the league table of anti-depressant prescription dispensations where those problem areas are My plea to the department is that we cannot just concentrate on formal qualifications and the high end. I am not saying that that is not important. People like the noble Lord, Lord Bhattacharyya, are experts on this; he is part of a world-class institution, and the Government need to recognise that and concentrate on it. I understand that, but it is equally important to look after the people who are left behind. There is evidence that is clear as anything to me that the disillusion, lack of trust and lack of hope in some of these communities, of those left behind, are expanding and increasing just as we go into a withdrawal from the European Union. We heard in the industrial strategy Statement about productivity. As a country, we are likely to be facing 10 very lean years. If it is lean just now for some of the people struggling in those remote neighbourhoods across the United Kingdom—some are in cities, but some are more peripheral, in seaside towns and the like—they will really need help. I hope that this debate will help to spur the Government on to balance the amount of resource and energy that they devote to the clusters and the hubs, as well as to the disparate areas The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, has a very good idea. I would support having, by next summer, what I think he called an action plan for lifelong learning, across the DWP, BEIS and the Department for Education, and involving the devolved authorities as well. That is an excellent idea, which is entirely achievable if the departments put their minds to it. We can then look at how we play the lifelong learning pilots and the digital skills for adults. The idea of lifelong accounts, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, have been discredited recently, is used perfectly well in other countries. All of that could be part of the mix, with an action plan by next summer which did not just focus on the winning, successful areas—they are important—but concentrated, on the basis of natural justice, on some of the communities which are really struggling in today’s circumstances and are likely to get worse unless the Government do something more.