Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill: Bishop of Sheffield makes maiden speech supporting efforts to increase access to higher education

The Bishop of Sheffield made his maiden speech during a debate on the Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill on 19th June 2023, speaking on his experience in Sheffield Diocese and highlighting potential challenges in the implementation of the bill:

The Lord Bishop of Sheffield: My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak for the first time in this Chamber, and in support of this Bill’s aim of widening access to higher education. I look forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sewell of Sanderstead. I record my thanks to Members and staff for the consistently warm and generous welcome I have received and the helpful induction I have been given. If my experience of introduction to this House is typical, it speaks very well of the culture of this place.

On Thursday, it will be exactly six years since I was consecrated as a bishop at York Minster and took up my present responsibilities. The wonderful diocese I serve is made up of former steel-making and coal-mining communities across much of south Yorkshire, farming communities in parts of the East Riding and even a port in the town of Goole. I had never lived in south Yorkshire before but have found the city of Sheffield astonishingly green—I believe it to be the only city in England with a national park within its boundary.

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