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Further Education and Training Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has retabled two amendments that were tabled in Grand Committee. Amendment No. 12 would require the London Skills and Employment Board in preparing its strategy to consult the Assembly, and to have regard to any response. Amendment No. 13 would make statutory provision about public access to the body’s meetings and papers. On Amendment No. 12, we fully accept that the views of the Assembly are important and need to be taken account of by both the Mayor and the London Skills and Employment Board. That will be the case, and it is made clear in the draft directions, which I read out in response to the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, and which we have made available to the House. These state: "““In formulating the strategy, the Board must consult the following consultation bodies””," Including the Greater London Assembly. The draft directions also state that the strategy must include a summary of the main issues raised by those consulted and how they have been addressed, so there must therefore be a formal response to that consultation as well. However, I reiterate that we do not accept that the Assembly has a different role from that of other consultation bodies in respect of this strategy. The skills strategy will not be a strategy like the mayoral strategy set out in the Greater London Authority Act, which make up the Mayor’s strategic framework for London. Rather, the role of the London Skills and Employment Board is to formulate a skills strategy for Greater London that sits within the framework of legislation that concerns the Learning and Skills Council and its functions in relation to education and training. The Learning and Skills Council will be under a duty to carry out its functions in accordance with the skills strategy. We believe that this makes it a very different strategy from the mayoral strategies. The skills strategy for London will be produced by the Mayor and the London Skills and Employment Board working together, with the Mayor as its chairman. The board will be under a duty to comply with directions and to have regard to guidance given by the Secretary of State, and the skills strategy will form part of the national skills strategy. All this means that it is different in kind from the Mayor’s other strategies. For this reason, although we believe it right that the assembly should be consulted, it would be wrong to say that the assembly’s role should be exactly the same with regard to the skills strategy as with the mayoral strategies in the GLA acts. On Amendment No. 13, we have considered this point further. It is still our view that it would be unduly prescriptive to set out in regulations or directions whether and how the public and press should be given access to meetings and documents of the London Skills and Employment Board. If the noble Baroness were willing to withdraw her amendment, I can undertake to seek to develop guidance on the need for transparency and openness in the conduct of the business of the board. On the board’s actual practice, although as she said the early meetings have been held in private, I understand that as the members of the board become more accustomed to their new role, it is likely that they will want to move towards having meetings in public rather than in private. If we were to develop guidance of the kind I have just indicated, this would give them a strong lead in this direction. There is no disagreement between us about the desirability of having meetings in public wherever possible. However, we believe this decision should be left to the judgment of the board members, most of whom are London employers and well aware of their responsibilities to the wider community in their city and anxious to serve it. Guidance is a better route to go down than directions of the kind envisaged by the noble Baroness in her amendment.