Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall and Lord Clarke of Nottingham

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall) (Lab)]

I believe I have no further requests to speak after the Minister. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Baker; I am afraid the message arrived rather tardily, but I am sure that that was the technology. I now call the mover, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Clarke of Nottingham.

[Lord Clarke of Nottingham (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply, and I realise the constraints a Minister has in replying to a debate of this kind in the Lords. She was obviously trying to be helpful. I was very grateful for the wide level of authoritative support that the amendment received. I hope that, before we return to this subject on Report, she will try to come back with a little more substance in response to the points that were made.

Very briefly, on the first point in the amendment, that we should put the Government’s lifelong learning guarantee on a statutory basis, my noble friend’s only reply was that she saw no need to put it in the Bill. Well, given the problems that often arise between Governments announcing noble intentions and the actual delivery of things on the ground, I beg leave to doubt that. Of course, one can ask the opposite question: what exactly is the reason for resisting putting it in the Bill if the Government are all in favour of it? Given that I so welcome the lifelong learning guarantee, perhaps the Government would consider signing up to it—not in blood exactly, but at least putting themselves under a legal obligation to those who should be entitled to it.

On the questions of expenditure that we have been asking, it is certainly the case that noble Lords kept referring to my being a former Chancellor. I am also a former Minister of Employment and Secretary of State for Education. As a former Chancellor, I am quite traditional; I am fiscally responsible—a bit of a fiscal hawk, sometimes—but I do think there are two subjects on which it is unavoidable for the present Government to spend more money. That means I would probably be at least as hawkish as the present Chancellor in resisting all the other lobbies which are inevitably piling in as the atmosphere of free money prevails. Social care and skills training—filling the skills gap—are irresistible things to which we must devote more resources.