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Education and Skills Bill

My hon. Friend is exactly right. We must make sure that the qualifications and accreditation are relevant to the needs of young people, and that they have a real economic value. We do not want to end up with a system that simply creates paper qualifications for the sake of the Government being able to meet particular targets. We support the aspirations in the Bill, and will give the Government the benefit of the doubt by not dividing the House on the matter today. We will, however, bring forward many amendments in the course of the scrutiny of the Bill. In particular, those will deal with the problems of compulsion and criminalisation, and will be based on some of our concerns about the Government's draconian and top-down approach to implementing the legislation. We hope that the Government will heed some of the warnings raised today in order to get a Bill that can command support and consent from both sides of the House.