---

Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I have considerable sympathy with most of these amendments. It is essential that there is a route for complaints for parents and particularly for children. Under the rights of the child, this side needs to be taken much more seriously than it has been previously. In particular, the advocacy clause needs thorough endorsement, because children in care who have special needs, for example, must be properly represented when there is a complaint. I emphasise that those with a genuine complaint—nobody is advocating the encouragement of vexatious complaints—must have the right to go down the route, albeit not directly, to the Secretary of State. I support the amendment.