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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, while we share the Government’s ambition to see each and every 17 and 18-year old receive the best education or training to help them realise their full potential, our main concern throughout the Bill has been the issue of compulsion and the attendant sanctions this brings. Our desire in all this was to ensure that no young person received a criminal record simply because they were disaffected with the system, especially at such a critical age and stage of their life, when a criminal record could be disastrous. We had hoped that this could be dealt with by the civil, rather than the criminal, courts, but after hours of discussion that proved unworkable. We then thought we had cracked the problem by writing into the Bill that the sanctions would not constitute a criminal act for the purpose of the Bill and so would not lead to a criminal record, but that would have introduced changes to the law that would have resulted in much wider implications than this Bill alone, and it would have been very late in the Bill to introduce such changes, not to say somewhat above my pay grade—or non-pay grade, as it is in your Lordships’ House. The Government constantly reassure us that the checks and balances put in place by the Bill will make criminalisation extremely rare. We hope that it will not happen at all. However, we welcome the independent review offered by the Government. We thank the Minister, the right honourable Jim Knight MP, the Bill team for its help throughout the Bill but particularly on this issue, and the officials at the Ministry of Justice for their time and patience in reaching this conclusion. I also thank noble Lords across the House who have been staunch supporters of our attempt to avoid criminalising young people. I sincerely hope that all will be done to help young people to take up learning and training before any damaging sanctions are imposed.