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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, this is another probing amendment which will raise questions for clarification. It is, as the Committee will see, about a paragraph in this schedule that contains directions. First, why is it necessary to include the power to direct, ""other management … and administrative arrangements"," as the schedule does? The chief executive is a civil servant, as we have heard, reporting to the Secretary of State and not to Parliament. He or she will follow departmental rules with which he or she will be familiar, which will cover administrative and management matters. If by some chance they were not being followed, the Secretary of State would have no trouble finding somebody else in the department to point out that this was how it should be done. Why, indeed, is a paragraph on directions needed at all? Financial arrangements will need to be in accordance with Treasury rules, and in all other matters the chief executive reports to the Secretary of State, who sets the agenda and can change it at any time. Directions are a draconian power and should not be used where they are not needed. They are not needed in any way in this schedule, which covers the detailed arrangements for an executive agency’s chief executive. Indeed, Schedule 4 does not indicate any likelihood that the chief executive will be able to act independently. The only thing left is whether there is, somewhere within this arrangement, a need for a back-stop power. I, for one, cannot begin to understand why there ever would be a need for such a power to bring the chief executive into line, because if he or she was not in line I suppose that they would be disappointed—somebody else would be put in their place, and we would only hear about it later. If there is any way in which I could be helped to understand why this paragraph is included in the way that it is, it would be if there were an agency precedent on which Parliament might rely. If so, which agency is it? I beg to move.