---

Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I shall try to be helpful. I shall speak about directions several times in subsequent amendments. Directions raise constitutional issues; they are not issues of process only. Directions are not subject to any parliamentary procedure, and when given people must comply. There is no room for manoeuvre and directions classically are not the subject of negotiation. If the Bill team, with whom I have had exchanges about directions, were to look at Craies and Bennion for the constitutional position of directions, they will find that they have been used for administrative matters, such as Treasury accounting and other matters of that sort, and as a power of last resort, which the Minister referred to. But it has to be last resort, and not in the middle of a normal set of transactions if we are to stay somewhere near the constitutional precedent. It would be interesting to have a series of precedents about non-departmental public bodies having the right to give directions with which local authorities must comply, but I am not aware of such precedents, and what is included in the Bill is very unusual if not itself a precedent.