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Education and Skills Bill

I thank the Secretary of State for his speech. I enjoyed all 40 minutes of it. [Hon. Members: ““Thirty-seven minutes.””] Indeed. I particularly appreciated the first 32 minutes, when he laid out his reasoning and the thinking behind the Bill. I am sure that the whole House will have found that helpful. However, the final five minutes, when he went into partisan, Punch-and-Judy mode, was an unfortunate coda to an otherwise interesting and analytically compelling speech. It is a great pity that someone with the Secretary of State's intellect feels the need to indulge in partisan knockabout when we are discussing the Second Reading of the Bill, but I can forgive him that, because I recognise that his intentions are honourable. In advancing any piece of legislation, the Government have to ensure that it passes a series of tests. Any Bill should pass three general tests before we can all have confidence that it will make good law. First, does it serve a desirable end? Secondly, does the legislation do violence to any valued principle; and if it does, is the end so transparently good that the damage to that principle is a price worth paying? Thirdly, are the mechanisms through which the legislation proposes to achieve the end the most effective that could be designed? I want to consider the Bill as set against those three tests and then propose some areas where greater clarification or amendment might be required to improve the effect of the legislation. On the first question, whether the Bill serves a desirable end—[Interruption.] I see the Secretary of State proffering what I think is a note of apology to the Liberal Democrats' Front-Bench spokesman for some unmannerly words. We know that, when the Secretary of State descends into partisan mode, he is only putting it on and that, in his heart, he regrets it, so we can entirely forgive him on this occasion. To the first question—does the Bill serve a desirable end?—we say yes. We believe that getting more young people to participate fruitfully in education for longer—and not just to age 18—is an unalloyed good. Our ambition is to see more and more people over time progressively broadening their horizons and participating in education. We believe in the democratisation of knowledge and in making opportunity more equal. We want to see more people going to university—and, indeed, more people acquiring level 4 qualifications in every way possible. We also want to see what has become known as lifelong learning become second nature for many. The acquisition of new qualifications after people have left school, whether as a means of improving employability or simply of enriching their mental lives, is a good that is worth pursuing. That is why my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr. Willetts) has been so eloquent in expressing his concern at what the Government might be doing through their policy on equivalent and lower qualifications. We want to ensure that people who want to acquire new skills that complement their existing qualifications are given every possible encouragement to do so. That was part of the noble impulse behind the creation of the Open university, and it is a pity that the party that set up that institution appears now to be in the process of limiting access to it.