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Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]

Clauses 17 and 18 transfer and extend the power to intervene in FE colleges. Clause 17 transfers such power to the Learning and Skills Council, and clause 18 transfers it to Welsh Ministers. I have said today and previously that I celebrate the work of FE colleges, and it is not just me who takes this view. FE colleges do particularly well in Ofsted inspections: Ofsted deems 90 per cent. of such colleges to be satisfactory or better. Students report high levels of satisfaction—67 per cent. are either ““very”” or ““extremely”” satisfied with their experience of college life. We take pride in what those colleges have achieved in the years since they were incorporated. The Bill is a missed opportunity, however, to advance the agenda recommended by Sir Andrew Foster in his report. He argued that there should be less centralisation and a move towards greater self-regulation. Clauses 17 and 18 move in the opposite direction, however, to that recommended by Sir Andrew, whom the Government commissioned to consider these matters. We are disappointed that they feel that must extend the LSC’s power to interfere in the life of colleges. Such micro-management is unhelpful and further diminishes the morale of those missioned to run and manage our colleges. Underperformance in the sector is rare, by Ofsted’s and the Minister’s own admission. Indeed, I challenged him on this point in Committee, and he agreed that FE colleges are doing a good job, for the most part. There is no evidence of growing problems, and no evidence that Ministers have had to use their existing powers to intervene in respect of college principals to deal with underperformance. Indeed, and as the Minister knows, when I asked him how often the Government had used those existing powers since they emerged in statute to sack college principals, he revealed that not once have they ever been used. The Government have never had to use them to interfere in the lives of colleges as a result of underperformance, yet they are seeking to extend them and to transfer them to the LSC. As I said, performance is deemed to be satisfactory or better in the overwhelming majority of colleges. Where it is not, we have been offered no evidence to suggest that that is due to inadequate leadership, or that the powers that the Government are seeking to create would be likely to solve the problem. We have reached the point where a sensible Minister—one who has listened and made concessions in respect of concerns expressed by Opposition politicians and third parties—is, frankly, dancing on the head of a pin. The powers are now so qualified as a result of his listening and responding that they are barely worth introducing at all. Ministers already have powers and if they choose to use them they can do so. There is no need for the detailed powers proposed. Of course, there must be accountability where public money is spent, and of course a long-stop power is needed, because the public interest is involved and we all want to ensure both rigour in respect of standards and probity in our colleges. The Minister is right to say that the standards are in learners’ interests but, given that the existing powers have not been used, the concerns expressed in colleges about their extension and the lack of evidence that they would improve standards, I really do not understand why he insists on maintaining that part of the Bill and why he will not give way and accept the amendments. There is a particular issue about the powers being vested in the LSC. All the evidence is that there is too much regulation and too much micro-management in the lives of colleges. This is yet another statutory power over colleges, which sends out an important signal about how the Government see the future. We see the future in the shape of self-regulation, but the Government clearly do not, despite the fact that the Minister tells me he has a working party looking at just that subject. A working party is looking at how colleges can self-regulate, yet the Bill says they need to be regulated by a third party—they need a third party to decide not only whether their principal is up to the mark but whether their governors, senior managers and members of staff are up to the mark. Surely, in a mature organisation that is being well managed and led, those judgments are best made by people close to the action on the front line who understand the circumstances of their colleges and the needs of learners—the community of interests. I really do not see why the LSC, which when all is said and done is a quango, not a democratically elected body, and certainly not vested in the local community, should take those powers. I have one or two further questions—as if my previous words were not enough to damn the clause. First, the regulatory impact assessment states that there will be an additional burden on the LSC in terms of administering the new intervention strategy. The Minister is a diligent man and will have the figures to hand, so will he estimate the cost of that additional burden and tell us whether new staff will be involved to implement the strategy, whether existing staff will handle it, and how often he anticipates using it? He will have modelled those figures because that is the sort of man he is; he is a Minister who has done his work so he will have the answers for the House. What impact will the strategy have on existing staff, how much time will it take and what will it cost? Moreover, the Minister must have a notional view of how many colleges are in such a state that he expects the powers to be implemented. Does he expect the powers to be used regularly? What kind of colleges does he expect will be subject to the powers? He will have the details to hand—the number, and probably the names and addresses, of the colleges he expects to be first in the firing line of the new, draconian powers. Furthermore, what are the proposed savings in the Department for Education and Skills—although I should have called the Department by its new name—of transferring the intervention strategy to the LSC? There must be a concomitant saving and I am sure the Minister has those figures at his fingertips, too. How can we judge the effectiveness of powers that have never been used? Why do powers that have never been used need to be extended to college managers? I ask that question specifically because the provisions apply not just to principals but to other managers in colleges, too. Finally and definitively, once again I ask the Minister, as I have both privately and publicly, whether he expects the powers to be used more often once they have been transferred to the LSC. If he does not—he shakes his head—and as the existing powers have never been used, why should we waste any more time debating the clause? It should simply be struck out of the Bill. I commend the amendment to the House.