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Education and Skills Bill

Yes, indeed. Excellent. Then we will have unimpeded progress to the Second Reading. There are many issues to be discussed, not least those on which—rightly, in some respects—the Front-Bench spokesmen have concentrated. The possibility of the criminalisation of 16-year-olds has been raised, and my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman)—the Select Committee Chair—and others have given their views on votes for 16-year-olds. No doubt those issues will be hotly debated in Committee, and will be the subject of amendments and new clauses. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on what I consider a courageous measure, but my worry is that it poses an historic challenge to us to achieve something far beyond anything that we have achieved in the past 20 or 30 years in seeking to depoliticise this period of people's education and concentrate on the cultural aspects. We all agree that skills are vital, and Lord Leitch's report crystallised that national consensus, but I am less preoccupied with his target of the attainment of graduate status by 40 per cent. of the population than with those at the bottom end of the scale. All who have spoken so far have stressed that our real problem is the 20 per cent. who still leave school at 16 with no skills, although we have considerably increased the percentage of people who gain GCSEs. I cannot remember what the figure was before, but it is now about 71 per cent. If we are to make sense of this opportunity we must refocus our attentions as a nation through social policy, taxation policy and, not least, the education system itself. The one disappointing aspect of the present position, around which we must somehow find a way, is the division of responsibility between my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. I happen to consider them both very sensible and co-operative Ministers, and I think that if they give a lead the civil servants will choose not to indulge in a turf war, but the danger exists none the less. I mean no disrespect to the civil servants concerned when I say that given the huge amounts that we spend on skills—some £11 billion a year, £7 billion being spent by the Department for Children, Schools and Families and £4 billion by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills—we are not receiving anything like the return that we should receive.