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Education and Skills Bill

My Lords, we are particularly lucky to have my noble friend Lady Warnock in her place and to hear her endorsement of the proposals and her backing of the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Elton. I join others in expressing the gratitude that we all felt to the Minister for the time and detailed attention that she gave us last week on this whole issue and for the valuable range of experts whom she brought with her, all of whom addressed the subject and were working as hard as they could for the right solution. I am entirely in favour of what everybody else has said. However, on prisons, I have considerable sympathy with the frustration of my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham at what has happened over so many years. Again, I suspect that it all has something to do with the churn of Ministers and sometimes even the churn of civil servants; a lot of the experience gets lost. We will hear a lot of our points answered when the Minister replies. However, we know that prison governors are autonomous in their own prisons. They can decide what to do about pay, for example. Equally, a lot is being done to improve prison education, which one hopes will be rolled out—if not, we will all quickly be on the trail yet again. However, if prison governors can pay their inmates more for working in the kitchen, or wherever, than attending the education and skills training that would better equip them for the outside world, that battle will be lost. I hope that the Minister will address that issue as well as others.