Why Labour's lifelong learning commission matters

This week, the Labour Party launched our lifelong learning commission that has been months in preparation and discussion, and several years in the making.It was back in 2016, during debate about the government’s higher education and research bill, that we introduced our new clause 15, which contained the embryo of that different path to lifelong learning that has now brought us the commission launched this week.This lifelong-learning commission will support individuals, communities, and our economy, locally, regionally and nationally, by defining an inclusive system of adult education that enables people to upskill or retrain at any point in their lives and helps to close the gap between the skills people have and the skills our economy needs. But why are we doing this now? Because the moral and social arguments that have long been advanced for prioritising lifelong learning are now coalescing with the economic ones alongside the unprecedented speed of the digital world and the fourth industrial revolution, which is now affecting all of our generations "from cradle to grave" – to use the words that accompanied the launch of the NHS in post-war Britain.