---

Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

We are all broadly agreed in the Committee on the need to eliminate inadequate provision, and that cases of inadequate provision are thankfully rare. We also agree that in the overwhelming majority of cases, these issues will be resolved by the college itself. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said that we should be working through colleges, and that will be the almost invariable practice. Where that is not possible because of the reluctance or unwillingness of the college to take action, when it is believed by the Learning and Skills Council on the basis of objective evidence that it should be taking such action, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that the council will have other means in addition—the kind of informal means that he set out, which he knows about, having occupied these positions himself—to bring about that objective. I should note in passing that, although those are alternative means, particularly threats that there might be about funding, or other processes the LSC might set in train, I would not necessarily suggest that they are less onerous. My noble friend Lady Warwick said that further education colleges were self-governing institutions, which is of course true, but the overwhelming bulk of their money comes from the public purse. The LSC has an absolute right on behalf of the Government as the funder to take an interest in the effective management and value for money being provided by colleges. The power will be exercised in very rare cases. There must be some process for seeing if ultimately they believe, as custodians of those public funds on behalf of the taxpayer, that those funds are not being effectively used. There must be some redress. At the moment, of course, there is redress on the part of the Secretary of State. The issue we are debating is not whether there should be some ultimate redress; Parliament has accepted that there should be. We do not accept the principle that the self-government of colleges is an absolute right that holds in all circumstances, however great the level of failure. When we strip away those rather grand statements, we are debating the much narrower point about whether that ultimate power of intervention should be exercised by the Secretary of State, or whether it is appropriate that those powers—