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Education and Inspections Bill

I, too, welcome the amendments. In a sense I feel rather guilty, in that we did not discuss this matter in our Committee stage. Going through the copies of Hansard for the other place, I had to get right back to Second Reading to find out where the amendments had come from. It is good to realise that the Government are following through points made on Second Reading and including them. Personal and social development is obviously important and yet it is quite difficult to define what activities fall into that category. I interpret it to include some of the typical youth service outreach projects, which might involve working with a group of young people on their territory, rather than somebody else’s territory. That is important. Because of the cuts in youth services that have taken place over many years—way before 1997, as well—it was important that there was not a diversion to, say, activities at a leisure centre, thereby losing the traditional youth work that has been of such great value to us over many years. We strongly support the measure.