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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

I thank the Minister for his careful response and other Members of the Committee who have supported the approach that we are taking in Clause 17. We do not want to remove it completely, but we do propose to take some of the more draconian powers away from it. The Minister said that we were talking about outright failure, but I do not think that we are. We are also talking about performance that is, "““significantly less well than it might in all the circumstances reasonably be expected””," to be. I still say that that is a woolly expression and that there is no definition. We are all agreed that we would be talking about only a small number of colleges, particularly in light of the fact that colleges now are required to have a strong self-evaluation process. In most colleges, that works pretty well. We all also accept that organisations that get 80 per cent of their funding from the public purse should, of course, be accountable for that money. But the difference between us is that we believe an elected representative of the citizens of this country—whose money it is—should make that final decision, not a quango appointed by the Government. It smacks of passing the buck from the elected Government—the Secretary of State for Education and Skills—to the LSC, which is absolutely wrong. The Minister made my point for me. When I said that the system seems to be much more draconian than that in place for schools or higher education, which the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, expanded on, he talked about a system for schools where the local education authority can intervene. That is an elected body. The local education authority is absolutely the right organisation to intervene when dealing with schools. Because it is an elected body it has the authority of the citizens it represents and for whose children it provides education. In this case it should be the Secretary of State that takes the power and the responsibility, obviously with the advice of the LSC and any other appropriate person, but ultimately it should be that elected body which takes the responsibility to intervene. The Minister has made my point for me, and I am quite sure that we will return to this issue at the next stage of the Bill’s scrutiny. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 41 to 44 not moved.] Clause 17 agreed to. Clause 18 [Intervention: Wales]: On Question, Whether Clause 18 shall stand part of the Bill?