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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am delighted to hear that. If we could see and hear that happening, it would be even more encouraging during a debate such as this. The interest of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is well known. I should declare a dusty and rusty interest as having been Minister for the Prison Service for three years in the last century. That makes it sound even longer ago than it was. The practical way in which the problem that the noble Lord described surfaces is when the local authority sends in the teachers with all the information that my noble friend wants them to have—and which I want them to have—but they find that, unfortunately, there are not enough prison officers to unlock the prisoners to get them into the classrooms, so they go away having done nothing. I have seen that happen frequently under existing arrangements. I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that he repeats what he said today practically word for word in the debate on the Queen’s Speech, when it will have the audience it deserves, because it is highly important and the sort of destructive and constructive thinking that we need. I certainly support the objectives of those who have tabled the amendments. They chime in places with amendments that I have tabled later in the Bill, but the group would have been completely unmanageable if we had put them all together, so I make no apology for asking to discuss them later. In the mean time, I wish the amendments well.