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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

I associate myself with the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Turner of Camden and with the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. London is unique. It has special factors in terms of skills. There is no doubt that some of the problems associated with unemployment in London relate to the mismatch of skills with the requirements of business. The issues of the creation of skills and the demand for skills from business have been divided up across the capital. That is one of the failures of the existing system. There is clearly a need to bring together all those obligations under one body, which would involve both London’s government and the business community in London. We cannot say that London is a series of completely separate labour markets because obviously it is not. There will be different focuses in different parts of the capital but essentially there is a substantial movement of the workforce across London. Therefore, this matter clearly should be addressed on a London-wide basis. One of the problems has been the mismatch between skills offered in London, primarily to young people, and the skills required for the available jobs. I, too, have fallen foul of the may/shall debate on various occasions in your Lordships’ House. I anticipate that we shall cover the same ground yet again on this occasion. But my worry is that we have suffered too long from quick fixes when trying to deal with the issues of skills in London. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talked about a future Government being able to change primary legislation. However, that is a little more complicated than a Secretary of State saying that a Government will no longer exercise the option of having such a London-wide body. For that reason I believe that the change should be made to require the Secretary of State to create this body and provide the necessary support. There is now real commitment and enthusiasm from business to try to make the new structures and arrangements work. If we could confirm in statute that these arrangements are expected to remain and that they will not be removed just on the whim of a future Secretary of State, that would be helpful in dealing with some of the underlying problems of the skills mismatch in London.