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Education and Skills Bill

I support all the amendments in this group. As we explained on the first day in Committee, we support the concept of an entitlement and we support the Government in wanting to raise the participation rate, but we are unhappy about the compulsion element. We also share the noble Baroness’ worries about criminal offences and about imposing fines on young people, particularly since many of the young people concerned are likely to be on unemployment benefit and not to have any resources of their own, in which case fines could cause great poverty. We have tabled a series of amendments relating to that issue on behalf of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust. They are due to be debated in the next group, so I shall not say anything at length now. I am slightly surprised that no one from these Benches put their name to the noble Baroness’ amendments, because we are very much with them in spirit.