---

Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

I have two points. My first point is that this is a second example of my noble friend Lord Norton’s concerns about poachers and gamekeepers. This discussion has gone along those lines; I shall not repeat them, but I am in 105 per cent agreement with the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and others made. I think that my noble friend Lady Morris will also be found to be in support of that thesis. On my second point, I should like to suggest to the Minister a way of testing the clause. He might do well to discuss it with the Mayor of London. If the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Turner, on Tuesday went into the Bill, the strategic leadership would be handed over to the Mayor. I do not think that he, in setting out his strategic leadership—which might of course be somewhat different from the strategic leadership provided by the LSC to other people—would be at all happy or would take a decision that one of his colleges, as he would see it, should be inconvenienced as is described in these clauses. That would be conflict—and on Tuesday we edged around the subject of creating conflict. So that is a test that I suggest the Minister makes.