Committee stage in the Lords
- Speaker
Lord LucasConservative- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 14:
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Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative- Quote
- I endorse everything that my noble friend said. We also have amendments in this group: Amendment No. 29 is a probing amendment on the issue of full-time occupation. The clause defines full-time occupation as “at least 20 hours” a week. On what basis was that figure derived? The Government’s consultation paper states that no specific questions were designed to consult on whether 20 hours per week should constitute full-time employment, nor was there even a general question seeking views on where the threshold should lie. The consultation sheet simply asked whether those who are not in employment for a significant part of the week should participate in full-time education. It would be helpful to know why there was no consultation on the number of hours constituting full-time work for the purposes of the legislation. Why could it not, for example, be 16 or 35 hours? There was specific consultation on whether full-time education should be set at 16 hours per week. Why, then, should 16 hours constitute full-time education when 19 hours per week would not be regarded as full-time employment? Why consult specifically on defining full-time education but not full-time employment? It seems that while those in full-time education are able to undertake appropriate learning opportunities that do not necessarily lead to a qualification, those in a full-time occupation must undergo relevant training or education—in other words, leading to a relevant qualification or course of study that is of use to the employer but not necessarily of interest to the young person. We wish to make it possible for people to choose what training or education to take; after all, they may well have an eye on their prospects, not just their current employment. I am sure that all of the Committee can agree that that sentiment sits well with the aims of the Bill. The use of “relevant” means that the study must lead to accredited qualifications. The Government seem to have a prejudice against non-accredited learning, as demonstrated by the cuts in adult and community learning over the past few years. Different people have different needs, and the best route toward employability may not necessarily be an accredited course. My parents had a small cake shop in Farnworth, in the north-west. The young people they employed received first-class training, but it was not accredited. When my parents could, they allowed the young people to go off on day release; when they came back they spent a great deal of time trying to put right the college learning which had no practical application when they were working. Our amendments, therefore, are designed to assist the Government by improving the Bill to take account of in-house training.
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Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat- Quote
- We have some sympathy with these amendments, particularly Amendments Nos. 30, 32, 34 and 113. We share the desire of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, for more clarification on what constitutes full-time and part-time—for example, why the figure is 20 hours—and that sort of thing. The CBI and the Institute of Directors made it quite clear, in the briefing that we received from them, that in-house training does not necessarily have to lead to accredited qualifications but often involves much learning of skills. They are somewhat wary of all learning having to be accredited. We are getting into a culture of accreditation. As the Minister may know, there is quite a lot of criticism of Train to Gain, where, in many cases, the problem is that employers are doing no more then they did before but are bringing in the assessors so that they can accredit their people with an NVQ level 1 or 2 and claim money from Train to Gain. In Alison Wolf’s essay on this issue she emphasises the fact that these days many 16 and 17 year-olds—the top 10 per cent of the 25 per cent who are not participating in education post-16—may not receive formal training but are learning many useful skills. Her great fear is that the duties imposed on employers under the Bill will cause them to shy away from employing young people of 16 and 17, so that these young people will no longer acquire the “learning by doing” skills that they had gained from such jobs. Having talked with the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who is not in his place at the moment, I think that the really important route to try to develop is apprenticeship—we are probably all agreed on that. Yet if apprenticeships are not available, the danger is that those young people who do not go into jobs will be on what are termed programme apprenticeships in colleges. Those are fine: you train off the job and, if you are lucky, you get a little work experience. However, the employers do not find programme apprenticeships at all satisfactory, and we know that very well from all the information received from them. Alison Wolf is really worried that the young people who had been getting quite useful “learning by doing” training will now get a really unsatisfactory second best.
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Baroness Perry of SouthwarkConservative- Quote
- It is an odd grouping of amendments which brings together the question asked by my noble friend Lord Lucas about how many hours constitute part-time or full-time and the issue of accreditation. It is worrying that accreditation is being used as a blanket and that all education and training has to be accredited to have any valency in the context of the Bill. I chair the quality and standards committee for the City and Guilds of London Institute. We were recently shown statistics for failure rates in different qualifications. The figure for the plumbing qualifications was particularly interesting. There is quite a high failure rate. We asked for more detail on why there was such a high failure rate and were shown a spread of the different items of the course and what was failed. While the plumbers were doing wonderfully on their practical plumbing and could fix your boiler, put in a central system or fix your leaking tap, they could not write essays. Because the course is accredited and leads to a qualification, the excellent academic standards that come into play as soon as one starts accrediting require that they have to be able to write. I think that most noble Lords in this Committee would agree that, when you call for a plumber when your heating is not working, you do not mind whether he can write an essay about your plumbing; you would quite like him just to fix your boiler.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Children, Schools and Families (Lord Adonis)Labour- Quote
- I am glad to have the opportunity to spell out more fully our position on accreditation, because, as ever, it is too complex to be reduced to a few sentences, as I was trying to do in our earlier debates. I shall then deal with the threshold between part-time and full-time. All part-time education and training needs to be accredited to qualify under the Bill, because it is important that young people gain qualifications to help them progress in their career. It is important, too, as a guarantor of quality, because employers could otherwise offer any education and training regardless of the quality, and it would count without there being any external check on the process. However, full-time education and training under Clause 4 does not have to lead towards an accredited qualification, because we wish to allow for other categories of education that might be provided, including home education, independent school education—as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, keeps reminding me, they do not have to offer just accredited qualifications—and non-formal education. In practice, the Learning and Skills Council funds mainly accredited learning, but other forms of learning may be publicly funded through other local authority funding streams. That may include, for example, the parenting classes about which we spoke earlier. It is possible for parenting classes funded by local authorities not to be accredited but still to attract local authority funding. Developments such as the foundation learning tier and entry to learning will make it easier to get good, non-formal learning programmes recognised and publicly funded. I hope that that clarifies more fully the position on accreditation. Why have we set the bar at 20 hours? More than 90 per cent of young people who say that they work full time as their main activity work for more than 20 hours. Some 93 per cent of those who say that they work part time while studying full time work for 20 hours or fewer. Taking those two factors into account, 20 hours seemed to us the right threshold. By contrast, if we had drawn the line for full-time work at 16 hours, as suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, it would catch around 15 per cent of those who study full time and work part time. So it was on the basis of what we regarded as a reasonable assessment of the impact of existing patterns of working and studying that we introduced the threshold that we did. I should mention that, with one day a week in training, work plus training would occupy most of a young person’s week—around four days—at the 20-hour threshold. If the threshold was much lower than this, the young person would not be occupied for most of their time and it would reduce the potential benefits. We have taken all those factors into account when deciding that the 20 hours was an appropriate threshold.
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- Lord LucasConservative
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- I am grateful to the Minister for that elucidation. He is allowing himself to pursue a structure that is too rigid and will not really adapt itself to what individuals need. But that is part of a larger problem. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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Baroness WalmsleyLiberal Democrat- Quote
- moved Amendment No. 15:
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- Lord LucasConservative
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- Perhaps I had better explain. I cannot do better than to refer to the last speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, when he described how accreditation would work. He said that the LSC would fund the courses that it approved of but, if it was appropriate for someone to have a parenting course, that money would have to come out of other funds that the local authority had available to it. That is exactly the problem with accreditation as it runs now. There is presumably, when the Minister puts the LSC's budget together, the thought that it will be providing education for all these 16 to 18 year-olds and that is how that budget is calculated. So there is, at least notionally, a pot of money available there for every 16 to 18 year-old. But, if that 16 to 18 year-old ought not to be following one of the courses that the LSC chooses to fund, it has to persuade somebody else, out of some other hard-pressed budget, to spare the money necessary to fund that course, while the money that is in the LSC budget gets used for other purposes. That seems entirely inappropriate. If you have a system that is carefully determining what is right for a particular young person and you have a pot of money that is available to fund whatever is right for that particular young person, the two should coincide. It is therefore important that the local authority, as the body making the decision at the end of the day on what it is prepared to sign up to as being right for the young person, should be able to use the money which has in effect been allocated to that young person by central government for the purposes that are right for the young person and not be bound by whatever prejudices and fashions sway the Learning and Skills Council at that particular moment.
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- We support the Liberal Democrats on the new clause on learning and support contracts, as we did in another place, and my name is attached to the amendment. I also listened to my noble friend Lord Lucas, who seems to make a great deal of sense. The learning and support contracts will be used where the young person concerned is failing to fulfil the duty imposed by Clause 2. We believe that a learning and support contract should always be considered before an attendance notice is issued. By providing a mechanism earlier, before and ideally instead of the enforcement process, our desire is to minimise the chance of enforcement proceedings taking place, because of the damaging effect that they can have on a young person’s prospects. Time and again in the evidence sessions in another place we were told that young people could be criminalised by the Bill. That is a great concern not only for the young people, but for many of the organisations that work with the most disadvantaged members of our society. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, I have spoken to many such people in recent weeks who are greatly concerned that if those young people were stigmatised or criminalised, they could become entirely disengaged and impossible to re-engage. We are far more likely to achieve increased participation by inspiring and encouraging than by coercion and compulsion. These new contracts would provide a framework for a local authority to agree with a young person and their parent or carer how that young person was to fulfil their duty to participate and how that arrangement was to be supported. By intervening early, we hope to stave off the worst possible outcomes. For that reason I give my wholehearted support to this new clause.
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Lord DearingCrossbench- Quote
- I rise briefly to support Amendment No. 50. This seems to me to be a constructive and positive approach to intervening with a young person who is showing all the signs of not complying with the provisions of Clause 2. It gives him or her some standing to have a contract. He or she has never had one before. Parents will take an interest in something like that and if, as I would hope, young people who are clearly heading into difficulty have a mentor to help them, this is the kind of document that would give a basis of reference for discussions and encouragement and going to the local authority and saying, “You are not doing your part adequately”. If there is to be an element of compulsion, I welcome this as an important step to try and avoid the need for it.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- I start with Amendment No. 50 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, which inserts a new clause to enable local authorities to enter into a learning and support contract with a young person who is subject to the duty in Clause 2 to participate but is not participating. We are very grateful to the noble Baroness, along with Barnardo’s and Rainer, for highlighting this approach and its benefits. We will be happy to look further at how we can take this forward in concrete terms and I will reflect further on the arguments that she set out. We know that an agreement that a young person has signed up to, where they understand their obligations and the consequences of not fulfilling them, can be very effective. That is how the education maintenance allowance works and it has been a great success in boosting both participation and attainment. We have also extended the conditions for EMAs so that from this coming academic year providers will take into account a young person’s behaviour and progress rather than just their attendance in deciding whether they have fulfilled their obligations for receipt of the EMA. Contracts or agreements are already widely used with success by voluntary sector organisations, including Barnardo’s and Rainer, in their programmes to re-engage young people and support their transition back to formal learning. The idea has been popular with young people. This something-for-something approach is also the model for our activity agreement and allowance pilots. In these, aimed at 16 and 17 year-olds who are not in education, employment or training, the agreement is tailored to the individual, following an assessment of their needs, and is designed and agreed with them. We would encourage local authorities to pursue this approach, or similarly successful measures that have been developed locally, before considering taking any more formal enforcement action against a young person under the Bill, and we could specify this in guidance that we will give to local authorities. I will consider whether there is a case for any reference in primary legislation, but our current thinking is that guidance is the appropriate place for emphasising this approach. The noble Baroness will have heard my concern many times in the past, but it applies here too. If we were to set out requirements in primary legislation, they might risk making learning and support contracts too inflexible to respond to the specific needs of individuals, too formal to be effectively supportive and too prescriptive to allow for other innovative solutions that have been developed locally. However, as I say, I will consider this issue further. The noble Baroness’s Amendment No. 15 goes further in proposing that participating in a learning and support contract should count as a way in its own right of fulfilling the central duty to participate. While we very much encourage local authorities to pursue a learning and support contract approach or similar measures where appropriate, we do not believe that this should be an alternative route, a way of fulfilling the duty to participate on a par with existing routes. A learning contract is not a form of learning in itself. The contract needs to describe a programme of learning, along with the support needed. It is a tool and approach that can be used to help re-engage young people who have struggled to engage in one of the other routes. In addition, informal, tailored learning programmes of the kind often provided by voluntary sector organisations, including those we have mentioned, will count under the terms of Clause 4, and the entry to learning approach announced in the Children’s Plan in December will help to ensure that good-quality provision which supports progression into mainstream learning is encouraged and recognised. While we are glad to see this important practice highlighted, and we are prepared to offer clear assurances that we will continue to seek to promote this contract approach to re-engagement in learning—I will look at whether there is a case for strengthening this in the legislation—we do not think that it should constitute a learning route in itself. As regards Amendment No. 56 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, at present, the Learning and Skills Council is responsible for ensuring that there is appropriate provision for all 16 to 19 year-olds, and for funding that provision. The overall 16 to 19 budget is planned and allocated by the LSC to respond to learner demand so that all 16 to 19 year-olds who choose to do so have access to suitable provision. However, we have announced that in future responsibility for commissioning and funding 16 to 19 provision will be transferred from the LSC to local authorities. We published our proposals for consultation in March and, subject to that consultation, will bring forward the necessary legislation in the next session. We expect that the calculation of funding for 16 to 19 courses will operate in the same way when local authorities take over responsibility from 2010-11. Once that change happens, local authorities will indeed have the power to decide what provision in their area should be funded and to pool budgets in precisely the way that the noble Lord said was desirable. Therefore, we are moving to precisely the regime that he described where budgets are pooled much more effectively at local level, but we require legislation before we can transfer the funding from the Learning and Skills Council to local authorities. That will be forthcoming in the next parliamentary session.
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- Lord LucasConservative
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- I am delighted at that good news and at the good news that we shall have an education Bill next year.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- That is subject to decisions on the Queen’s Speech.
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- Baroness WalmsleyLiberal Democrat
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- I thank noble Lords who supported these amendments or at least one of them. I thank the Minister for his further consideration of whether Amendment No. 50 should be included in the Bill. As regards his concern that it might be too prescriptive, by their very nature these learning and support contracts are exactly the opposite of that. I do not want to be too prescriptive about the way that local authorities work with young people to put the appropriate package of learning and support together. The very fact that they must be personally tailored militates against the possibility of their being too prescriptive. Therefore, I do not share that concern. I understand the distinction that the noble Lord drew between Amendment No. 15 and Amendment No. 50 and between the learning and support contracts and the other kinds of education specified in the Bill. However, I notice that Clause 4(1)(b) ends with the words “or otherwise”. Might not a learning and support contract be regarded as “or otherwise” provision? I hope that he will consider that. Perhaps he is able to answer me now.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- It depends what is in it.
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- Baroness WalmsleyLiberal Democrat
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- It is supposed to lead on further and to be a gateway for those young people who are not ready for a course that leads to an accredited qualification. These young people may lack the social skills or study skills necessary to take part in training leading to an accredited qualification. Learning support contracts might provide them with a gateway to the very thing the Minister is hoping for. That is why we think they are so important. I thank the Minister for his further consideration and other Members for their support. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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- Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat
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- moved Amendment No. 16:
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, is right about the swathe of change going on at the moment. She is also right to say that much of the success of this Bill will be predicated on the success of diplomas. We do not yet know what is going to happen there. These amendments would have the effect of delaying the coming into force of the duty until certain conditions have been met. This is necessary to avoid swathes of young people being caught out by a system that was not ready to take them, while they would be left to deal with the consequences. If the Government are going to press ahead with compulsion, we must make sure that it is not the system which is at fault for any avoidable failings. As we have already made clear, many of these young people have been failed by the educational system before they reach school-leaving age. It would therefore be unforgivable to sweep them up under compulsion into a system that might let them down again. It would be unfair to compel a young person to participate, if in fact he or she was unable to do so. These delaying amendments switch the onus to the state so as to ensure that the necessary funding, framework and organisation is in place before the duty comes into force so that 16 and 17 year-olds are not left scrambling for places to avoid falling foul of the law. In our amendment, one of the Government’s justifications, indeed if not the primary one, for sanctions, is that 100 per cent participation cannot be reached, but 90 per cent can. If that is so, there should be no need to impose a duty before that 90 per cent target has been achieved. If the Government are serious that the criminal sanctions in the Bill are to be reserved for only the most hard-to-reach 10 per cent, then why allow any of the others to risk being penalised? I would argue that the Government will never realistically reach more than 90 per cent participation and they are likely to get that far with inducements and encouragement alone. Imposing a criminal sanction is, in reality, extremely excessive.
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- Baroness Perry of SouthwarkConservative
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- I have only a brief word to add. I have been around in education for a long time. While five years seems like a long time, it is not in education terms. I entirely support what the Liberal Democrat spokesman and my noble friend said. It would be common sense to allow the current 11 year-olds to run through with all the innovations that the Government have introduced, many of which we wholeheartedly support, and see what happens at the end of that process, before attempting to implement anything new for those who come along two years later. Seven years is still quite a short time in education terms. The nine year-olds who are currently in primary school will surprisingly quickly reach the age of 16; they will go through all the innovations and it may be that the harsher, punitive, provisions of the Bill will simply be unnecessary.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- In response to Amendment No. 16, we absolutely acknowledge that we could not require all young people to participate in education and training until we believe there is a suitable route available for them in every area of the country; and this is already built into the policy and the legislation. That is precisely why we are not raising the participation age until 2013 for 17 year-olds and 2015 for 18 year-olds when the national entitlement to the new diplomas and the apprenticeship guarantee will be in place and the foundation learning tier for provision at entry and level 1 will be established. Furthermore, the September guarantee, which was implemented for the first time in every local area last year, guarantees an offer of a suitable learning place to all young people leaving year 11. This year it will be extended to 17 year-olds. In respect of planning, the Learning and Skills Council currently has a duty to ensure appropriate provision for all 16 to 19 year-olds. This role includes preparing assessments of the sufficiency of education and training in an area, assessing demand from young people, and planning provision to meet that demand. In March, we published a White Paper which set out our intentions for transferring the funding and responsibility for commissioning provision for 16 to 19 year-olds from the LSC to local authorities. So in future, assessing the sufficiency of provision will become the role of the local authority, which we believe is best placed to make these judgments, which would, under the amendment, fall to central government. We believe it is appropriate that these judgments should be made by local authorities, which, of course, are the strategic commissioners of provision in their areas. We agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, in respect of her Amendment No. 17, that it will be crucial to successful implementation that participation is as high as possible immediately prior to the new compulsory requirements coming into effect. All our policies that I have described, including the learning agreements and activity agreements that we discussed in the previous group of amendments, are geared to that end. I am in danger of repeating myself, but the latest statistics show that post-16 participation rates are at their highest level ever and are very encouraging: 90.8 per cent of young people currently participate at 16, the first year after compulsory schooling, up from 87 per cent last year; 78.4 per cent of 17 year-olds were participating in education and work-based learning in 2007—up by 1.5 percentage points over the year. The proportion of young people not in education, employment or training has fallen substantially at all three ages and the proportion of 16 and 17 year-olds has declined from 8 per cent to 7.2 per cent. While we are making good and steady progress towards the 90 per cent participation rate, it would not make sense to link the commencement of the duty on young people to the publication of reports and data, which would inevitably lead to confusion and uncertainty about what the requirement means and precisely when it will come into effect. We believe that we must balance the improvements in train and the judgments we make about the follow-through effects during the next five to seven years, with the need for certainty about what will happen and when, which all of those engaged in planning will require—not least the young people themselves and their parents. Making that judgment about getting the balance right between the need for certainty in the system and ensuring that we have the improvements in train necessary to achieve our objective has led us to setting 2013 and 2015 respectively as the dates for increasing the education ages to 17 and 18. To repeat myself, when it comes to enforcement, that is subject to the requirement in Clause 39 that local authorities should have regard to reasonable excuses. As I said in the letter, which I once again promise to circulate to Members of the Committee, on 9 June, on what could constitute reasonable excuses, it could be that, “if a particular learning difficulty has been identified and the right support to address it is not yet secured or in place, it would be reasonable to expect that the young person could not begin their learning programme until that support was in place”. If we take into account the measures in train to meet the fuller range of learning needs, the evidence of increased participation at the moment and the enhanced role for local authorities to plan locally with the provisions in the Bill, which give a proper balance between compulsion and reasonable excuses for not participating, we believe that the dates of 2013 and 2015 are appropriate.
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- I am most grateful for what the Minister said about our amendment; I think that we are all looking forward to getting to Clause 39. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said the most important thing of all tonight just before we broke for dinner-hour business. I wish that the Government had more faith in what they are already doing. You will get there; you will reach the 90 per cent; and we wholeheartedly support you in all that you are trying to do.
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- Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat
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- Critics will say that we are putting the cart before the horse; I still think that the Government are jumping the gun on the issue. Yes, lots of reforms are in hand and yes, we wish them very well, but given the history of failure on the introduction of practical, more vocational courses, we want to see that the new diplomas are working well before we introduce compulsion and the potential criminalisation of those who are not motivated and do not participate. The same applies to the apprenticeship group. There will be a duty, initially on the Learning and Skills Council, but it will be transferred to local authorities, to ensure that apprenticeships are available for those who want to take them up. We know that there is a lack of apprenticeships at the moment. It is difficult to persuade employers to enter into apprenticeship schemes. We are well aware that a lot of reforms are at hand, but it is sensible to wait to see whether they are satisfactory before trying to push people to stay on in compulsory education. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, five years is quite a short time in education. We do not necessarily need to have a five-year lead-in. I recognise that one reason why we have a five-year lead-in is that it is this year’s 11 year-olds who will be affected and who, in 2013, will be expected to stay on until they are 17 and then, in 2015, two years later, those who are nine at the moment will be expected to stay in education or training until they are 18. If we look back to the raising of the school leaving age, there was not a very long lead-in then. If you have successful reforms in hand, you do not necessarily need a five-year or seven-year lead-in; a three-year lead in would be perfectly adequate. Three or five years is a very short time in education. However, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendment No. 17 not moved.]
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- moved Amendment No. 18:
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- Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat
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- On these Benches we have a great deal of sympathy for these amendments. As I mentioned on the previous set of amendments, in many senses apprenticeships are the most satisfactory route for young people who have a more practical bent and wish to learn by doing. At present there are far too few apprenticeships and considerable excess demand. The Government are coming forward with new proposals, which will be contained in the Bill that we will see next year. They are setting up a national apprenticeship service. I am not sure how far the Government are moving in this direction but if we are to see an expansion of apprenticeship places there has to be, first, some subsidising of apprenticeships, particularly for small and medium-sized companies. At the moment there is a degree of confusion because, through the train to gain programme, companies can receive funding for putting their employees through NVQ level 2 qualifications and yet, by contrast, they have to pay apprentices an apprentice wage and have to make a contribution towards their training costs. On the evidence we have received from the CBI and the Institute of Directors, both large and small companies find that there is excessive red tape surrounding apprenticeships. The CBI noted that 81 per cent of large companies, which have the capability to handle these matters, find that there is excessive red tape and a lack of suitable candidates for their apprenticeships. I am aware that the introduction of functional maths, functional English and functional ICT may help in providing more suitable candidates. There is not a clear route at the moment between diplomas and apprenticeships. It is not clear whether young people from the age of 14, if they opt for one of the diploma routes, will have preferential consideration for going into apprenticeships. This needs to be clarified, both for the employers and for the young people. We do not necessarily want a dedicated route in this development. However, because many small and medium-sized companies find not only that there is an excessive amount of red tape but that apprentices are rather expensive to cope with, the notion of some sort of subsidy is appropriate. Perhaps the Government will consider introducing in the Bill that they are going to bring forward the notion that all companies that have public sector contracts should be required to take on apprentices and to declare how many apprentices they are training. I know that that proposal is not appropriate for this Bill, but I hope the Government will consider putting it in the next Bill. We have a great deal of sympathy for Amendments Nos. 18 and 21 but, as we said on a previous occasion, we will have to wait and see how the diplomas work. The apprenticeship route is important but at the moment we have no idea whether we will be able to ensure the supply of apprenticeships that we are promised. I assume that the requirement will transfer from the LSC to the local authorities. On Amendments Nos. 54 and 55, again the sufficiency and diversity of local authority provision is an important issue. We have raised it in Amendments Nos. 59 and 61A and we shall discuss it subsequently. I do not want to say more than that at the moment but it is an issue that we are concerned about.
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- Lord LucasConservative
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- On the question of requiring suppliers to the public sector to take on apprentices, when I have tried that out on industrialists I get quite a good response. As long as the burden is imposed universally, they are prepared to accept it. They all see the need in current circumstances to increase the supply of skilled labour. The first set of employers who ought to take this on board is the public sector. It is quite extraordinary, for instance, that local authorities moan on and on about the lack of planning officers to help them carry out their planning but they do not, as far as I know, train any of them. So the public sector ought to do this first.
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- Lord DearingCrossbench
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- Hear, hear!
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- That was a commendably succinct contribution. Since 1997, apprenticeship starts have increased from 65,000 to 180,000 in 2006-07 and are projected to grow to almost 210,000 by 2010-11. I acknowledge what the noble Baroness said, that the overall number of apprentices in learning declined slightly in the past year. However, this needs to be seen in the context of very significant improvements in completion; it is completed apprenticeships that carry most value. The number of apprenticeship completions has risen from barely 40,000 in 2001-02 to nearly 100,000 in the current year. This represents a rising completion rate from 24 per cent.
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- Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat
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- I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. Am I not right in thinking that, while the number of apprenticeships has risen quite considerably, there has been a very disappointing increase in the number of apprenticeships for NVQ level 3? The apprenticeships have been largely in NVQ level 2. To achieve craftsman status you need an NVQ level 3. There has been a disappointing drop recently in the number of young people going in for NVQ level 3.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- My information is that the proportion of apprenticeships at level 3 has remained at around 30 per cent in recent years. However, I will look at the specific point raised by the noble Baroness and see if I have any further information. The information I have is that the level 3 proportion is holding up. Given the increase in the number of apprenticeships over the past 10 years, plus the improvement in the completion rate, we believe that our ambitions in respect of apprenticeships are realistic. The apprenticeship review was jointly published by my right honourable friends the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills on 28 January. It not only restated our intention to put in place an apprenticeship entitlement for every suitably qualified young person who wants one by the time this legislation comes into effect, but also introduced other reforms to improve the regime for apprenticeships including, crucially, the creation of a new national apprenticeship service, which will provide a single point of advice and guidance for any employer interested in apprenticeships, alongside the Apprenticeship Ambassadors Network, which we hope will continue its good work in promoting apprenticeships to employers. But I accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that the public sector has an important part to play in this, too, and its contribution will be fully galvanised by the national apprenticeship service. We are also looking for a more flexible and responsive model for apprenticeships to be developed by the national apprenticeship service. Employers will be allowed to submit their own frameworks for funding by drawing from a sector skills council bank of qualifications. All apprentice experience will be recognised as an apprenticeship, meaning that apprenticeship training that does not rely on public funds will still be recorded and recognised and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, more apprenticeships will be delivered through Train to Gain, which is the Government’s primary skills service for employers in England. Taking all these factors into account and in the light of the remarkable growth that we have seen in apprenticeships in the past 10 years—both in overall numbers and in completions—we believe that the goals we have set are realistic. The commitments that come in for apprenticeships alongside the raising of the education and training participation age make this increase credible.
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- Baroness Sharp of GuildfordLiberal Democrat
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- Can the Minister clarify the Train to Gain situation? My understanding had been that money going to companies under the scheme was not to fund apprenticeships but was expressly to enable the qualifications of those already in employment in the firm to be expanded up to level 2, so that you encourage those who are already in the company’s employ. But from what the Minister was saying, perhaps there has been a change in the rules and they can use this money to fund apprenticeships.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- I shall need to come back to the noble Baroness on the precise relationship between the two, but my advice is that more apprenticeships are to be delivered through Train to Gain. I shall need to elucidate more fully precisely what the term “delivered” means, and I shall return to the noble Baroness on that point.
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- I am most grateful to the Minister and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, for her support. I think that the noble Lord said that completed apprenticeships had risen to 100,000, but that leaves a great number of young people who are not finishing them. It is still possible to complete an apprenticeship without going anywhere near a workplace, which turns many young people off. A lot of it is still too classroom based. We are also concerned that a number of employers are just not engaging in providing more apprenticeships, especially in small and medium-sized enterprises. I shall read with care what the Minister has said in Hansard and, given the hour, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 19 to 21 not moved.]
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- Baroness WalmsleyLiberal Democrat
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- Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that, although I cannot promise to be quite as succinct as the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, with his two-word response a few moments ago, I have no intention of wearying the Committee by going through all the arguments again. They have already been debated very effectively. I shall summarise the three main points. Clause 2 is at the heart of the compulsion element of the Bill, with which many of us have difficulty. I shall do something I do not often do: give the Minister an opportunity to shut me up and possibly even shut up some of the Official Opposition Front Bench as well. I say that because this issue is one of the two main points on which both main opposition Benches are united, so the Minister could get through the Government’s business a lot quicker and save us trouble if he accepts that this clause should not stand part of the Bill. The first of the three main arguments is that we believe that compulsion is wrong in principle because it moves the duty from the parent to the child. It is contrary to both the spirit and the letter of a number of international conventions to which this country is a party. The other two points are that compulsion is not necessary and that it could do harm. It is unnecessary because a number of changes are in the pipeline which we have debated in the last couple of groups that may well continue to reduce the number of NEETs, at which this Bill is targeted. The Government should certainly wait and see how well their initiatives work out before introducing compulsion. I say that particularly in the light of the fact that compulsion will not necessarily lead to quality participation and actual achievement of qualifications. It could simply secure bodies on seats behind desks. The point about it possibly being harmful is that compulsion could turn young people off learning for life, a point made most effectively earlier this evening by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. That is the last thing we want. If we really want children to benefit from their entitlement to levels 2 and 3 tuition, we should let them choose how, when and where to do it. Any of us who have taught will know only too well that young people who choose to do so learn effectively, while those attending under sufferance do not.
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- 21:45
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- We share the aspirations of the Government but feel that compulsion is the wrong route. I agree with much of what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- I sense that we are going through the motions slightly, having had an extremely long debate that went through all the arguments, so I shall simply recap what I said earlier. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, so rightly put it, we need many more carrots than sticks, and the whole emphasis of government policy is to provide more carrots for young people to participate. We believe that by doing so we will significantly improve participation rates; indeed the evidence already shows that those rates are improving. However, it is our view that no young person should be outside the education and training system before 18 unless there is some compelling reason which would constitute a reasonable excuse under Clause 39. As we have teased out the arguments more fully this evening, I am left wondering quite where the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, stands on this, as she and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, appeared to support the Government’s view that increased participation is a good thing. It is difficult for a politician to start making judgments on the quality of participation, and it is hard enough tracking the figures. If we assume that increased participation is a good thing, the question then arises—and the noble Baroness is sitting resolutely on the fence—whether increased participation is a good thing. The evidence is that having carrots and sticks together will increase participation, including the sticks. In an earlier debate I understood the noble Baroness to be saying that she accepted that sticks, as applied in legislation in other countries that I set out as operating on a similar basis to here, might improve participation. Is that then a price worth paying to improve participation? If the noble Baroness is saying that her party would settle for significantly lower rates of participation in return for not having the ultimate sanction of compulsion, then I would be glad if she said so on Report, because then we can have a straightforward argument about whether this country requires higher rates of participation if the next generation are going to be economically and socially successful. I shall make the argument, with all the power I can bring to this Dispatch Box, that it is absolutely vital for the future of this country that as near to 100 per cent of young people as possible should be engaged in education and training. That investment will repay dividends many times over for them if they are engaged in education and training. As a Parliament we should not start permitting young people to drop out simply as a matter of free will when the evidence is that providing the courses and providing an ultimate sanction would encourage them to invest in their own education and training, which will repay dividends for them economically and socially.
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- Baroness Morris of BoltonConservative
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- I agree with everything that the Minister said, but is he telling us that he is happy to criminalise young people? If you take the sanctions to their ultimate conclusion, that is what you are saying.
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- 21:45
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- The noble Baroness uses emotive words. Am I saying that there should ultimately be a sanction for those who are not participating, in the context of significantly improved provision and of Clause 39, which ensures that reasonable excuses will be entertained and that there is a proper process? Yes, I do believe that it is appropriate that there should be such a sanction in the context of the overpowering need for higher rates of participation in education and training for the good of the individuals concerned and of the country. Finally, at this late hour, I return the question to the noble Baroness. I would be very interested to know whether she thinks it would be good for the country and for the individuals themselves that they do not participate in education and training simply as a quid pro quo for our not having to take on board the duties set out in the Bill. If that is her view, we have a fundamental disagreement, which I look forward to rehearsing further on Report. The arguments that she would then set out about the freedom for people not to engage and about this being a matter for the individual and not for the state were precisely those used against raising the school leaving age in the 1960s and the move towards compulsory primary education by the late Victorians. I have no doubt that when future generations look at these debates, they will realise that the cause of progress lay on the side of those who were prepared to invest significantly in increased education and training provision for 16, 17 and 18 year-olds and were ultimately prepared to make it a responsibility of those young people to invest in their own future.
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- Baroness Perry of SouthwarkConservative
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- Before the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, replies to the Minister, can we clarify that in one of the Minister’s earlier answers he was clear that some countries with no compulsion or sanctions whatsoever have achieved better participation than those with them? The facts that the Minister gave us are absolutely clear. Some countries with sanctions are ranked seventh or even 15th in the OECD league tables; others that have none are right up in second, third or fourth place. The noble Baroness might wish to take on board that, by saying that we do not wish to see compulsion, we are not condemning this country to having a residue of young people who do not participate.
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- Lord AdonisLabour
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- That was, in a sense, not the point I was making. It is not that other countries have been unable to achieve higher rates of participation than us without compulsion post-16; I fully accept that some have. The issue which we have to address—and will do further on Report—is whether, taking a full judgment of the case, this country is likely to get significantly improved rates of participation in education and training by setting out the requirements in the Bill. Most of those requirements, of course, apply to public authorities to make provision to meet the real needs of young people, and so on, but that package of reforms ultimately includes a sanction. The issue for us is whether, taking account of international practice and a judgment that we make about the likely effect of reforms here, it will significantly improve participation. My contention, on the basis of the evidence that we have, including evidence from those parts of Australia and Canada that have reformed recently, is that we would be likely to see a significant increase in participation if we implemented the whole package of measures in the Bill, which includes the ultimate element of compulsion. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, wishes to be regarded as a progressive on these matters. That being the case, does she think it better to have lower rates of participation, with fewer 17 and 18 year-olds engaging in education and training and attaining the qualification levels that they can by so engaging, in order not to have to address the issue of compulsion? That is a respectable position, but it is precisely the one that has been used in the past, not by progressives but by reactionaries who have not wished to extend rights to education and training meaningfully over the past 100 years.
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- Baroness WalmsleyLiberal Democrat
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- I do not accept that the two options that the Minister puts before me are the only two tenable in this situation. Let me be clear: I believe that, for most young people and for society as a whole, increasing their educational qualifications is a good thing. In a free society we can offer good things to many citizens, yet we should not force them to accept them at any particular moment. Despite the fact that I agree with the noble Lord’s objective, I feel that, while it is vital to upskill and increase the qualifications of as many members of society as we can, there is more than one way of skinning a cat. The Minister puts before me only two options: compulsion, or people deciding that they are not going to upskill or increase their qualifications. He suggests that I might for some reason think that a good thing. I do not, but there is a third option that we should do everything we can to encourage: to enable and to remove barriers for all our young citizens to increase their qualifications and get into the workforce as productive members of society, not least because, if they do not, they run the risk of being idle and then getting into the criminal justice system, which none of us wants. If a young person decides that they do not want to continue in some form of education and training between 16 and 18, it is not necessarily the case that they will never come back to education and training. They very well may. We are obliged to do everything in our power to convince them and make the case. One of the joys of debate in your Lordships’ House is that, on the whole, the Government do not get their business through unless they have won the argument. That is what I should like to see with young people. We should do everything that we can to provide the options and the support, and to ensure that the quality is right. We should also convince them that it is in their own interests to participate in some form of further education and training beyond the age of 16, because it is for their own good—most people ultimately have self-interest at heart. That is what we should want to see. I say in answer to the Minister’s question that I do not accept either of his options; I think that there is a third way, which is the direction in which the Government are moving. They are doing everything they can to provide the options and the support, and to ensure that people’s special needs are taken into consideration. However, we all need to see those firmly in place as an entitlement before any suggestion of compulsion. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said forcefully that it is the implementation, not the rhetoric or even the legislation, that matters most.
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- I beg to move that the House do now resume. Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to. House resumed.
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