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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I had not expected the Minister to respond as positively to all the amendments in this group and we are very grateful to her. Obviously we shall await the government amendments before we decide where we stand on this issue. She has promised them for the Report stage and I hope that we shall have a chance to look at them before Report. I do not have the impact assessment with me, but I have one question for the Minister. Some 1,000 members of the LSC are going to work with local authorities. Are local authorities going to be compensated for the cost of employing these people? It is clear that over the past 10 years local authorities have run down their education authorities so that they are now often rather slimline bodies because they are not really involved in the functions of strategic planning and running schools, let alone doing anything in the further education sector, which they came out of some 20 years ago. Local authorities need the resources to employ people with knowledge of these sectors in their departments. Do the figures that have been quoted include the cost to local authorities of having to employ the 1,000 new staff or is it excluded? I should be interested to know.