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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

I support my noble friend Lady Morris, in particular on Amendments Nos. 37, 38 and 39. I thank my noble friend for her thorough and interesting opening to this part of the debate, and I await with great interest the Minister’s response to the points that she raised. I declare an interest as, for 12 years I was a visiting lecturer at City of London College and Holborn College. In addition to lecturing, I have also written educational material and still often speak at various leadership courses. I have set up awards to recognise and reward the attainment of young people who are rising stars and who, it is hoped, will be our future leaders. I have also been a director of South London Training and Enterprise Council. The United Kingdom lags behind its international competitors: it is ranked 24th out of 29 developed nations for the proportion of young people staying on in education or training after the age of 16. The number of adults in the workforce without the skills needed to succeed in a modern economy is also high: the United Kingdom is ranked 17th out of 30 countries. At the same time, nations such as India and China are rapidly improving their skills base. I welcome any Bill that addresses the need to raise the standards of skills. I believe that is vital as the UK faces a challenge with its ever-increasing skills gap. The Further Education and Training Bill does not have enough content, and I consider that a missed opportunity. Amendments Nos. 38 to 39 would prevent a transfer of the Secretary of State’s power of intervention to the Learning and Skills Council for England in Clauses 13 and 14. The Learning and Skills Council is an unelected body not accountable for its actions and, through this Bill, it will have the power to direct a college to remove principals and senior post holders. It will also have the power to create and abolish colleges in England without the permission of the Secretary of State. The Learning and Skills Council, which spends £11 billion a year on further education and training for young people in England who are not at university, managed to carry out three internal reorganisations in just five years. It is a depressing achievement for a fairly new body such as the Learning and Skills Council to have already accumulated redundancy costs of £54.4 million. A further £61.9 million of taxpayers’ money was spent in the year before its launch, in winding up its predecessor, the national network of Training and Enterprise Councils, bringing the total bill to more than £116 million since 2000. That has threatened to undermine attempts to ensure that young people have the skills they needed to survive in an increasingly competitive job market. The recent report by the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, on skills and training, which was commissioned by the Treasury, warned that the UK needed to find an extra 500,000 apprenticeship places by 2020. The £116.3 million spent on reorganising the LSC and its predecessor since 2000 could already have financed an extra 32,300 apprenticeship places. Surely this would suggest that the Secretary of State should remain the appropriate authority, as he is an elected official and accountable.