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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, my main quarrel is with the wording of new Section 56E(2), which is the test that must be passed before a local authority can intervene. The level has been set quite extraordinarily low. For instance, paragraph (b) states, ""that the sixth form college’s governing body have failed to discharge any duty imposed on them by or for the purposes of any Act"." In other words, perhaps it has thrown out a newspaper with the general rubbish rather than recycling it. The LEA can have a tiny excuse for taking total control of a college. There is no appeal and no effective reference to any other body because, although the Secretary of State can set out guidance, all the LEA has to do is to have regard to it. We know exactly what that means: look at it and then ignore it. That happens in many other cases of government guidance. A sixth-form college can take no effective action other than to go to law, but, given the immediacy of this, its finances are presumably frozen the moment the LEA steps over the doorstep and it will have no ability to apply for judicial review. It is an extraordinarily low test when it ought to be a high test. Under paragraph (d), for example, it has to be performing significantly less well, which surely should be set in terms of some Ofsted judgment rather than just at the whim of a local education authority officer.