My hon. Friend is absolutely right: there are those who perhaps did not relish being in the classroom at the time. There are also those who go through their whole lives regretting not having had the opportunity to pursue further studies and feeling that they have somehow missed out on something. This Bill should provide a solution for both groups.
As I was saying, in my father’s generation, higher education was available to the few; it was a luxury withheld from the vast majority of the population. However, his generation also recognised that there should be no limits to where aspiration and hard work could take an individual. In his case, they took the lad who left school at 16 and who took his insurance exams while doing his national service to success in finance, politics, the Cabinet and eventually the House of Lords. However, he always recognised that, in missing out on the higher studies and university education that so many of his peers had enjoyed, he and many of his generation lost out on something of real value. He wanted to create the opportunity for people to study later in life, and to keep open the offer of vocational and academic study to adults throughout their lives.