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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

It is good to welcome the Minister back to his job, albeit in a new Department, and I look forward to exchanging various comments and ideas with him over the coming weeks and months, in the happy spirit that has pervaded our previous exchanges. I digress from that sentiment in no way by saying that the new clause and amendments seem to highlight a fundamental flaw in the Government’s thinking. In a sense, the amendments prise open a gap between the Bill and the Government’s strategy. The hon. Member for Brent, East (Sarah Teather) was measured in her comments; she could have been altogether more direct. She might have asked why we were debating a Bill in isolation from the Government’s approach to the Leitch review of skills. We still await the Government’s response to that fundamental review, which, we think, will come out next week—it has been delayed three times already. We understand that one of the reasons for the delay was that the first draft was simply not up to scratch: one agency told me that it could have been written by a seven-year-old child with chicken pox. Given the paucity of the Government’s approach and the delays suffered, it is unsurprising that we are debating in isolation a Bill that might contradict some of the Government’s response to Leitch, and which certainly contradicts much of Leitch’s analysis. The new clause and amendments relate to the departmental reorganisation and its implications for the LSC. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), asked the hon. Member for Brent, East what she thought about the LSC, and in doing so prompted the question of what the Government think about it. Leitch does not mention the LSC until about page 75 of his report, and then talks about further rationalisation in that body. We are not clear whether the Government see a long-term future and a central role for the LSC. We certainly do not know whether the Government’s response will merely be to bolt on a new structure to the existing one. I suspect that we might end up with that, and that would be thoroughly unsatisfactory. As the hon. Lady said, the decision to create two new Departments to cover education and skills has significant implications for FE colleges because of the plan to route funding for 16-to-19 education via local authorities. That is what the new clause and amendments address.