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Business of the House

You, Mr. Speaker, will have been as shocked as I was when David Sherlock, the chief inspector of the adult learning inspectorate, condemned a £2 billion Government drive to improve basic literacy and numeracy levels as a ““depressing failure””. Ministers have crowed that their skills for life programme was on target. Now we know that half the people included in the target number were 16 and 17-year-old college students who were already enrolled on basic literacy and numeracy courses. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a Minister to come to the House to explain why the scheme failed and why the Government claimed that it was on target when it was clearly far from that? That is a disgrace, and the Leader of the House should acknowledge it and do something about it.