Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026
House of Lords · Grand Committee · 15 Jul 2026 · 24 speeches · Official Report
Considered in Grand Committee
Moved by
That the Grand Committee do consider the Lifelong Learning (Fee Limits) Regulations 2026. Relevant document: 3rd Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
My Lords, I thank the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments and the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee for the scrutiny of this instrument they have provided. I believe that they were satisfied with it. The draft regulations were laid in Parliament on 18 May 2026. These regulations are the first of three pieces of secondary legislation needed to implement the lifelong learning entitlement-LLE. They establish a new system of tuition fee limits for higher education courses and modules that begin on or after 1 January 2027. The LLE is one of the most significant reforms to student finance in a generation. For the first time, it creates a single flexible funding system for study at levels 4 to 6, spanning both further and higher education-one that supports people to learn, upskill and retrain across their working lives. The LLE was a central element within the Government’s Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, supporting the growth and skills missions as well as the industrial strategy. The case for the LLE is clear. Over a third of job vacancies are unfilled because of skills shortages and at least 80% of the workforce of 2030 are already in work today, yet our current system was designed largely with younger, full-time learners in mind. It does not offer the flexibility for someone who is older, who wants to study part-time, take a short course or module, or retrain mid-career. The principle of a single lifelong learning entitlement was a central recommendation of...
My Lords, I welcome these regulations and, obviously, support the objective of the lifelong learning entitlement. As the Minister said, it originated in the Augar review a few years ago, in which the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, played an important part. I am glad that this Government are continuing the work initiated by previous Governments in this respect. These regulations are really important because they put in place the funding architecture for the LLE, without which it cannot become a reality. However, the real test will be whether, in reality, the architecture translates into substantially greater participation in lifelong learning, which has always been one of the missing pieces of our educational landscape in England. That will become all the more important in the world we are moving into-that of artificial intelligence. As Ministers and others have noted, we will need to enable the retraining of people many times over the course of their working lives. So I would be interested to hear from the Minister how the LLE is intended to operate alongside employer-funded retraining through the growth and skills levy. It is important that we have clarity on the boundaries between these two important funding schemes, and how they relate to one another, so that we eliminate any policy confusion that might inadvertently depress demand for lifelong learning, which, as I said, is already pretty low. If a worker needs to retrain because AI has transformed their role, how should...
I also welcome these regulations. They seem to have taken a while, and it is really good to see them. As the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, pointed out, this policy was the number one recommendation of the Augar review, of which I was fortunate enough to be a member. The cross-party support for that has been really gratifying, because we all recognise the importance both of continuing education and training and of greater flexibility. I thought it might be worth putting on the record some of the things that we were most concerned about, because they lead into the question of how we know whether it is working or whether anything else needs doing. First, we were not particularly looking forward to modular study as such; it was much more about creating a comprehensive change in the student funding system that would build in far greater flexibility. The thing that we were most concerned about was the rigidity of the equivalent level qualification regulations, which had been brought in by previous Governments. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, will probably be able to elaborate. The idea was that you should have people going up and up in levels all the time. We felt that that was deeply misconceived and that one of the things you had to do-for everybody, not just for a few additional people-was to make it clear that what was important was what you were learning, not the level at which that took place.
The other thing it is perhaps worth remembering-which, again, I suspect most people in this Room will remember-is that the whole possibility of the LLE came out of something rather old; namely, the Bologna accord, which nearly 50 European countries have now signed up to. It created a new structure for higher education-the way that we look at it and structure it-which did not exist before.
The reason I emphasise both these things is that one of the challenges we have is that there is a tendency among many people in the wider world to think of the LLE as an addition: you have your basic higher education structure and then you add an LLE on top. This is clearly a misunderstanding. How we know whether the policy is a success is in whether it comes to be seen not as a special policy but as something that people just take for granted-a highly flexible entitlement that you can use at various different points in your life.
That leads me to my main concern, which is nothing to do with the regulations as such-I have ploughed through them and they seem just fine-but with the wider challenge of incentives in the institutions. If you are a struggling further education college or a struggling university, or any university, you have a very strong incentive to keep enrolling people for three-or, even better, four-years. The Minister will know that Augar was very concerned about the growth in foundation years. Government Ministers did not wipe them out in the way we would have liked, though they made some changes. It underlines the fact that we have not only to shift what prospective and actual students can do but to think about the institutional incentives and the supply and demand out there. If you are a university at the moment, you are very concerned, for very good reasons, to enrol full-time students for as long as possible to pay the bills.
My only specific question, which I will take the opportunity to ask, because I think the two are so closely related, is about the forthcoming consultation on whether or not there should be obligations on institutions to offer something other than a straight three-year degree. To shift this and to make sure that the only people who respond to the new opportunities are not the rather marginal players, we need to think about this very hard. If people still end up using up all or most of their entitlement very early on because there are no realistic alternatives, we will have failed. That is what we should be looking for: real shifts in the structure of mainstream institutions, and not just whether there are a few people taking modular courses. But, generally, I thank the Minister and I am delighted to see the regulations.
My Lords, on these Benches we have also long supported the principle of lifelong learning. Because of the rapidly changing economy, where technology, artificial intelligence and the transition to a greener economy are reshaping jobs, people need the opportunity to retrain and upskill throughout their lives. Education should not be something that ends in your early 20s; it should be available for people whenever they need it. I say that as someone who went into higher education in their late 20s. These regulations are important and part of implementing the lifelong learning entitlement by introducing a credit-based fee system for modular studies. Rather than relying solely on annual fee caps designed for traditional three-year degrees, providers will be able to charge fees proportionate to the number of credits studied. This is a sensible and necessary technical reform if modular learning is to work in practice. However, as my Lib Dem colleague Ian Sollom argued in the House of Commons, changing the mechanism for charging fees is only one piece of the puzzle. If the Government genuinely want lifelong learning to succeed, they must also address the barriers that prevent adults from returning to education in the first place, because many adults are balancing work, caring responsibilities and the rising cost of living. Flexible courses alone will not encourage participation if learners cannot afford to take time away from work, arrange childcare and access maintenance support....
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations. Lifelong access to high-quality education is a key component for a successful society. Access to resources that improve the skills and capabilities of the workforce goes hand in hand with a more dynamic economy and a more independent public. It provides individuals with the freedom to engage in subjects that are their passion and to strive for careers in the industries that they desire. This is largely the raison d’être of universities in our country. Undergraduate courses provide a leg-up into the workforce, while postgraduate and part-time courses allow for further specialisation and reorientation. That is indeed a reasonable model, but while the structure of post-18 education is sound, His Majesty’s loyal Opposition believe that the incentives can be improved. Undergraduate course tuition fees are capped and thus allow for a broad uptake; conversely, modular and short courses are not. Therefore, there is a rational financial barrier to further higher education. Particularly in the current, fast-changing labour market, which will only accelerate, there is an eminently reasonable case for changing this current model. People will need to be able to retrain and reorient themselves, bolder and faster. Skilled education will become all the more important. That is why His Majesty’s loyal Opposition support these regulations. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, played an integral part in the Augar review. The previous...
Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.
My Lords, in summary, these regulations should be viewed as positive and we hope that they are effective.
My Lords, I genuinely thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It is always refreshing to debate something with people who were there at the beginning and who were part of the very important Augar review that led to this work in the first place. I appreciate the points made in the debate and I will endeavour to respond to them as well as possible. Before turning to the specific questions, I will restate why these regulations matter. They are a critical and indispensable step in delivering the lifelong learning entitlement. To respond to some of the points made, that reform is not just about how we deliver modular courses, important though those will be as an opportunity, but how we will, for example, bring further and higher education closer together, open up more flexible and modular study, and give people a real choice in how and when they learn and make it easy for them to return to learning throughout their lives. As we have said, these regulations set the tuition fee limits that apply to higher education courses and modules that are funded by the lifelong learning entitlement and that begin on or after 1 January 2027. They are not designed to overhaul the entire student finance system, in terms of some of the controversies that we have seen recently. They address a central weakness in that the current system is too rigid and too focused on traditional full-time study and it does not work well enough for adults who want to retrain or upskill across...
When it comes to the point about expanding student support for distance learning, which I know the noble Lord has made previously, let me be clear: there is an expansion of maintenance support under the provisions that we are making for the LLE, but it remains targeted at courses that require in-person attendance, where a learner’s ability to earn alongside their study is reduced. That is the aim of maintenance support, is it not? For that reason, distance learning courses remain out of scope for maintenance loans at the moment. However, as I say, the LLE actually expands maintenance overall because, for the first time, it extends to part-time and technical study below degree level that requires in-person attendance. Most of that does not qualify for maintenance at the moment.
I thank the Minister very much for her comments in response to my remarks. I make just two observations. In relation to the Minister’s point on the master’s loan, it is, I think, still the case that the master’s loan is not available in a modular, flexible form; it is still for a year’s worth of funding. So the flexible goals of the regulations will not apply at level 7, even through the master’s loan. On the Minister’s point about maintenance funding, I think that it is probably a mistake to think that, just because someone is studying online or at distance, they do not need support. Even if they are not incurring the same living costs as someone who has physically moved to study a higher education course, they are none the less incurring the opportunity cost of not earning. That is the principal loss of income to them, which the maintenance loan is traditionally supposed to meet.
It is of course the case that, even for distance learning, if you had a disability, for example, you would have access to the disabled students’ allowance. However, with limited resource, we have to make decisions about where we want to focus maintenance support. I do not think that it is inappropriate to focus it on those who find it much more difficult to earn alongside their learning. I understand the point that the noble Lord is making-anybody who has done an OU course understands precisely how much time it takes to do that-but the Government have focused in the way that I have described. The next set of issues, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Johnson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, relate to what we see as success, where we see the future of this measure and how radical we think it should be. It is important to say that this is not a short-term fix; it is a bold long-term investment to support the creation of a student finance system that is fit for the challenges of the future. We have made a deliberate decision to phase in the delivery of the LLE, placing quality and learner outcomes ahead of an immediate large-scale rollout, but we want to see education providers using the LLE to innovate, driving deeper collaboration between further and higher education institutions and supporting smoother learner transitions across levels. The student finance system must also meet labour market needs, which is why we are calling on employers to be active partners. We want...
It seemed like the least I could do.
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I am clearly one of the guilty people who did not turn up to the briefing sessions, but I am sure my question will be answered. There is a view that success will look like more people moving in and out of higher education-doing a course for a time and, through the more modular structure, withdrawing and then doing some more. On the other hand, as she well knows, there are a lot of measures of quality by the OfS that focus on so-called drop-outs, non-completions and B3 requirements, which all assume that leaving a course is a bad thing. How will the modular agenda and this wider B3 agenda be reconciled?
The noble Lord makes an important point. I think the noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, asked how we change regulation to support what we want to see here. It is a fair point that the regulation at the moment is designed around that traditional three-year course. Part of how we expand the opportunities through the LLE will include looking with the OfS at that regulation, to make sure that it does not act against the more flexible way of learning that the LLE can support. Linked to that, to return to another point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, I reiterate that we believe that the way we are approaching this builds in flexibility. It is not simply an add-on of modular courses. The shift from only-
Just to clarify, I know that that is the case, but there seem to be a lot of people out there who have not quite grasped that. That is the only point I was trying to make.
To be fair to them, that might be because I am frequently banging on about the opportunities of modularity and different ways of providers being able to offer courses. The noble Baroness also raised an important point about the proposed consultation on break points that we will bring forward. We have to develop a system where you can gain credit for learning short of having done a full three-year degree. The Prime Minister’s target for two-thirds of young people getting a level 4 or above qualification obviously puts an emphasis on qualifications at level 4 and level 5 in a way that the student finance system has perhaps not supported previously. The noble Lord, Lord Mohammed, made a point about maintenance support. I note that the LLE provisions will expand maintenance support for those in part-time learning. Maintenance loans will become available for all courses and modules that require in-person attendance, including part-time and technical study below degree level that does not qualify today, on top of other actions that the Government are taking to upgrade maintenance loans and to introduce maintenance grants. This demonstrates our commitment to broadening access to and participation in higher education. On implementation, several noble Lords asked what support will be given to providers to develop modules. There will be some upfront costs in setting up modular study, but these costs are voluntary: there will be no regulatory requirement to offer a greater provision of...
Motion agreed.