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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am not certain that I shall be able to go into the kind of detail that the noble Lord is looking for on his last question. I may be able to give him more reassurance on that by the end of my speech, but I am not confident at the moment. If I cannot reassure him, I give a very firm undertaking to do so as soon as I possibly can. I shall particularly address Amendments 124 and 152. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, has said, these concern funding and commissioning arrangements for the new system of providing education and training for young people in custody. I entirely agree with the intention behind Amendment 152, which would require that funding be earmarked by the Young People's Learning Agency to support education and training for children and young people in juvenile custody and to ensure that it must be spent on this purpose alone. I would argue that it is not necessary to put that in the Bill, but I say very clearly that I agree with the noble Baroness. We are committed to making a requirement through the annual grant letter to the YPLA that the funds dedicated for learning in the juvenile custody setting are, in fact, spent on this by relevant host local authorities. The YPLA will set out both in the conditions of grant to local authorities and through—what I consider to be one of the most important documents that the YPLA will produce—the national commissioning framework, which will issue statutory guidance, that the funds for learning in juvenile custody must be spent on this purpose. So it will be clearly identified funding with a clearly identified purpose and a clear accountability. Turning to Amendment 124, the Learning and Skills Council currently holds, as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, suggested, Offenders’ Learning and Skills Service contracts for the delivery of learning in juvenile accommodation in young offender institutions. The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, was concerned about this, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to it as well. We expect that there will be significant benefits to local authorities in taking over these existing contracts when they take on their new duties under Clause 47. We are keen to ensure that progress made by the LSC and its providers operating in YOIs in recent years is built upon. So there are real benefits to local authorities, as the noble Baroness has described, of taking on these contracts. We expect local authorities to be keen to take on these existing contracts, which will help promote, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, suggested, a smooth transition to the new arrangements. Indeed, a number of local authorities participated in the LSC’s recent procurement process to appoint new providers to the YOIs from August, so they have already been involved. The units of procurement were arranged in the new contracts so that they can be easily novated to host local authorities, without the uncertainty that the noble Baroness suggests would be very unsettling. For other types of juvenile custodial establishment, there are also current contracts in place that cover education and training. We are planning that implementation of these new duties will be phased in across the secure estate from 2010, taking into account the nature and length of existing contracts. I hope I have reassured noble Lords that their genuine concerns will be addressed.