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Education and Skills Bill

Excellent, some would say—I think that it was very good; I would give it a B-plus. In it, he defined two axes of politics—progressive and non-progressive, liberal and anti-liberal. I would argue, and have argued, that working for higher levels of participation in education is progressive, but making anything compulsory is, almost by definition, unlikely to be liberal. Before discussing the practicalities of what the Bill proposes in terms of compulsion, and since this is the Second Reading, I want to explore the question of the principle. The Bill places a new duty specifically on 16 and 17-year-olds to participate in education or training. In that respect, as I am sure that the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan) understands, it is qualitatively different from previous historic changes to the school leaving age. When previous changes were made—all, it must be said, by majority Conservative Administrations—the duty rested on parents to ensure that their children were being educated, and for very good reasons. Governments were legislating to protect children from the pressures—economic, social, cultural or whatever—which might have drawn them out of school prematurely. Those Conservative Governments, and their Liberal allies and supporters—I should say, for the benefit of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) that we are talking about history: I refer to Conservative Governments and their then Liberal allies and supporters—they recognised that children were not yet in a position to decide on their own futures. They had not yet reached an age at which they could freely consent to a particular course of action, so they needed to be shielded. The law ensured that no child could be pressurised out of education before being ready to make the decision for himself. That was a protective measure. Today, we increasingly recognise that 16 is the age at which young people can take control of their destiny. It is an age at which an individual can marry, pay taxes, volunteer for military service, consent to sexual relations and so on. Indeed, I learned at the weekend that it is now the age at which the Leader of the House would like young people to vote for the first time. It is therefore ironic—I put it no more highly—that just as social trends are moving towards giving individuals more freedom, autonomy and respect at 16, the Government propose to deny freedom and autonomy in respect of education or employment, and the Government recognise that.