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Education and Skills Bill

I rise to speak to this enormous group of amendments, mindful that the time in which to do so is very short indeed. I therefore hope that the House will forgive me if I focus on just some of the amendments, rather than try to deal with them all in detail. New clause 6 would introduce learning support contracts, where the young person concerned is failing to fulfil the duty imposed by clause 2. Learning support contracts are modelled on the parenting contracts in clause 34. A learning support contract would contain a statement by the young person that they agreed to comply with such requirements as may be specified in the document and a statement by the local education authority that it agreed to provide support to the young person for the purposes of complying with those requirements. Parents and carers would also be involved unless the young person was living independently. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr. Gibb) and I made clear during the earlier stages of the Bill, Conservatives believe that a learning support contract should always be considered before an attendance notice is issued. By amending clause 39(5)(b), and providing a mechanism for intervening earlier, before—and, ideally, instead of—the enforcement process, our desire is to minimise the chance of enforcement proceedings taking place, because of the damaging effect that they can have on a young person's prospects. I accept that there is a desire shared across the Chamber to encourage participation by as many post-16-year-olds as possible, but I do not think that anyone wants to see young people being prosecuted. The new clause would help to avoid that possibility. Time and again, we heard in evidence sessions that young people could be criminalised by the Bill. That is a great concern not only to the young people but to many of the organisations that work with the most disadvantaged members of our society. As compassionate Conservatives, we make no apology for allocating a disproportionate degree of concern, energy and intellectual capital to the defence of the most vulnerable people in our land. The experience of those who deal with young people—particularly with disengaged and troubled young people—was made clear by their evidence. They believe that, if those young people were stigmatised or criminalised, they could become entirely disengaged and impossible to re-engage. For example, we heard from Martina Milburn, the chief executive of the Prince's Trust, who told us that"““the bulk of the 40,000 people who we worked with last year had issues with drugs and alcohol. What do you do with a young person who is already going down the path of taking too many drugs and drinking too much...The question is how you deal with that. Do you increasingly criminalise young people and just say, 'Right, we're going to lock you all up,' or do you find some way of trying to reach them and sort out some of their issues?””——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 16, Q36.]" That evidence graphically illustrates that the young people in the greatest need are the least likely to benefit from a Bill that coerces them and, ultimately, if they do not abide by their duties, criminalises them. Hence our attempt at this juncture to soften the impact of the part of the Bill that might do just that, by building in an additional protection for those vulnerable young people. The Association of School and College Leaders said in its briefing on the Bill that its preferred approach to achieving full participation was by persuasion rather than by coercion. There is no lack of commitment among those on the Conservative Benches to the principle of increasing the participation of post-16-year-olds in education. Indeed, we regard ourselves as being at the forefront of that campaign. However, we believe that we are most likely to achieve that by inspiring, by encouraging, by moving the hearts and minds of young people, rather than by coercion. Early intervention has long been an aspiration in the delivery of services for children and young people—