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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I do not think that the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, was in the Chamber when the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, was speaking, I assure her that she mentioned local authorities and host authorities repeatedly. If she had been here, she would have heard it. She can hear it from me now. That is the dichotomy of this arrangement. I do not think that it can work administratively. After the Youth Justice Board has worked out what it has to do with the host authority, it has to get the approval of the children’s trust, the sub-regional groups and the national regional groups. That extraordinary bureaucracy has been created by this part of the Bill. When a young offender is released, the local authority where he is supposed to have lived has to devise a training programme for him wherever he goes, even if he does not go back to Essex. Who devised that policy? I cannot believe that it came from the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office or the Prison Service. Did it come from the education department—the DCSF—or the business or skills departments? In those days, I think business and skills were under the education department. It is clear that this has not been thought through very carefully. It is an immensely bureaucratic structure. At Third Reading, it would be sensible for the House to postpone for two years the implementation of these clauses relating to the training of young offenders aged 16 to 18. The Minister shakes her head. Read these details and understand the complexity of it. Who will pay for it? There will be an annual grant to the host authority for the provision but will that be per capita or an annual grant? If it is per capita will that allow for the prison population to go up from 2,600 to 4,000? If it is an annual grant, they could not possibly meet that extra cost. That is the complexity of this aspect of the Bill. It is up to Ministers to explain it more fully, if not now, certainly at Third Reading.