Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 5th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendments 2 and 5, to which I have added my name. I declare the fact that I am a teacher. I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister and her team very much for our collegiate and friendly meetings and for their letters on the draft framework. They have gone a long way in calming a lot of the fears that I had about this Bill and about the lack of information. There is still a lot that has not been said, but I am an optimist. I genuinely believe that the Government are going in the right direction but, rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, I would like to hear a little more.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, when a framework Bill comes before the House, you expect to have a series of amendments such as these, asking for more information. I thank the Minister for answering some of those questions, but the fact of the matter is that this is still a framework Bill. I hope that we will get a little more detail when she responds to this group, but we really need a bit more information before we assess a piece of legislation. I thank her for what she has done, but I hope she will take back to her department that the original approach on this really was not good enough.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

My Lords, I echo much of what has been said already, including appreciating everything the Minister has done to meet some of the points and criticisms raised in Committee. However, Amendments 1, 2, 4 and 5 are important because it is very important to have employers and representative bodies in the Bill.

I would like to look back in history to the period in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, when apprenticeships in this country were in raging decline and the quality of much of what was being called an apprenticeship was very low. All three major parties have been involved in turning that around, and we are in a much better place than we were in the early 2000s, let alone the 1990s.

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Tabled by

[Lord Addington]

13: Clause 9, page 4, line 11, at beginning insert “Subject to subsection (6),”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment and another in the name of Lord Addington ensures that all new statutory instruments made in the six months following the passing of the Act must follow affirmative procedures.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I have realised that both amendments in my name have been covered by previous discussions. On those grounds, I will not move them.

Amendment 13 not moved.

Primary Schools: Mental Health Problems

Lord Addington Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness knows, there is strong guidance to schools to develop appropriate policies with respect to smartphones —in my view, ensuring that children do not have access to smartphones during the period of time that they are in school—but there is a whole range of ways of ensuring that that happens, and I think it is appropriate to leave it to head teachers to follow that guidance and ensure that their children are protected from any impacts of smartphones and enabled to achieve and thrive in their schools.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the first thing we need to do is to make sure teachers know when they should start to access extra help and support, even if it is available, because without that guidance, you really are going to waste a lot of time and money?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is right that a key part of our special educational needs and disabilities programme needs to be to ensure that teachers have the continuing professional development and initial teacher training to be able to identify at an early stage those children who are in mental distress and need support. That needs to happen even earlier, which is why children’s mental health and well-being is also an important part of the early years curriculum, and why we have provided support to early years practitioners to be able to identify that early as well.

Free Schools and Academies

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this has been something of a trip down memory lane, because I think just about every single Education Minister of the previous Conservative Government who is in this House has spoken in this debate. I had my run-ins with all of them, and occasionally came round to alliance with all of them—at least on one or two occasions. I would hope that they keep an open mind about the Bill that is coming up, because I do not see it being quite the destroyer that they are talking about; it is just talking about a limitation of expansion. What they are saying seems a little more in the vein of a moment when academisation would be for every school. The Conservative Government then looked around and said, “Wait a minute”, under pressure from a variety of, often, Conservative local authorities saying, “Our local maintained schools are pretty good”. Indeed, they are, according to the stats.

So let us just take a deep breath. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure this House that we are not going to get rid of successful schools. Academisation has had one or two problems. I give you two words: “off rolling”. If you look at the general amount of attention paid to this before the pandemic, with papers published in the House of Commons, you can see what was happening with a group of children. You had a situation where any child who would not pass an exam and was a potential liability was shunted to the side. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, standing in the Moses Room and saying, “This is something we must crack down on”. He got my eternal respect for that—he is a man who displayed great integrity at that Dispatch Box.

Let us just take a deep breath. There is also the fact that we have a system with lots of children not in education. We can put it all down to the pandemic, but the actual thrust was there beforehand. I know that the previous Government tried—Henry VIII powers and the House of Lords do not go well together; I hope the current Government remember that. I also hope that they take on this fact and make sure that we have a registration of what is going on outside. At the moment, there is a subclass of child who is not getting an education; we do not know what is happening to them.

On special educational needs, I draw the House’s attention to my declared interests, although to this audience I think it might be a little bit of a waste of time. We have a situation that does not work for special educational needs—unless you happen to be a lawyer being paid to get people through the appeals process. It is a definition of failure if ever there were one.

We need to make sure that in the Bill that is coming up—basically, this is the warm-up bout before the Second Reading, or something like that—we get something that is better. I hope that parliamentary pressure, and the considerable wisdom such as has been spoken in this debate, is brought to bear on the right targets. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, ran up the standard for good parliamentary monitoring, and I hope that we can all match her, because we want to make this work a little better. There have been things about the current academy system that work, but there are things that clearly have not worked that well. There are people who have been left behind—people who are a liability to the status of a school. If we have the great hand that says, “Yes, you have failed; you will do another process”, there is clearly a cost to that. I hope that we can look at that when we go through the Bill.

Academies have their good points and their bad. They are not perfect. They may have improved in certain places, but there are people who have been left behind. There may be a child who has special educational needs and who will not pass their exams, but why are they not welcome? Why will they not be taken on? That is the situation: the great growth of people who are being home-educated. Can we make sure that we look at this when we go through the Bill? Without that, we will be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Let us make sure that we look at the whole situation. I hope that the Government do not damage what successes there have been. They have been hard won and we have paid a high price for them, but I hope we can get through.

I look forward to what the Minister will say. I remember, a few months ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was about to speak on another aspect of education—I think it was the limitations of Progress 8, and everybody had been against it—I said that I wished her well in her speech but did not envy the task. I think the Minister is in the same position today.

Erasmus Programme

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am not sure that, if you are engaged in a quite important reset as the UK Government are, it makes enormous sense to pick and choose the different issues on which you might negotiate. I acknowledge the noble Lord’s recognition of Taith, the Welsh Government’s international learning exchange programme, which, like the Turing scheme, provides important opportunities.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, David Lammy said that he wanted to reinvigorate our relationship with the EU. Would not the Erasmus scheme, or something very like it, be a good step towards that?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

We are already resetting our relationship with our European friends, to strengthen ties, to secure a broad-based security pact and to tackle barriers to trade. The President of the European Council has invited the Prime Minister to meet EU leaders in Brussels on 3 February, where the Prime Minister is looking forward to discussing enhanced strategic co-operation with the EU. We are also resetting our bilateral relationships alongside our ambition for our wider reset with the EU, as demonstrated by the Prime Minister’s recent visits to France, Germany, Ireland and Italy.

State Schools: Creative Education

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the Liberal Democrat Benches next.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank you for being allowed to speak. Will the Minister take on board that museums often tell you certain things about development, for example, and the importance of design and technology? Unless you can develop the mouse to work with the computer—something we can all use easily—it does not happen and does not become a mass tool. That information is best conveyed by showing it. Can the Minister make sure that this is an important part of the curriculum for those subjects?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord makes an important point about the benefits to children’s learning of being able to see the development and design of ideas; I wholeheartedly agree with him. That will be an important part of our thinking on how we support existing initiatives, so that children can benefit, and so that, through the curriculum, those opportunities are not only available but supported, particularly for disadvantaged children, who have too often missed out.

State-funded Schools: Special Educational Needs

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Addington]

To ask His Majesty’s Government how they will ensure state-funded schools are better able to identify those with special educational needs and better able to meet those needs.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I remind the House of my declared interests.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

My Lords, the majority of children and young people with special educational needs have their needs met in mainstream schools. We are committed to ensuring that schools have the resources and expertise to identify needs earlier and support all pupils to succeed. We are working with experts, parents and carers to strengthen accountability and ensure inclusivity, through reforms to Ofsted inspection frameworks, increasing workforce expertise, evidence-based training and encouraging schools to set up resourced provision, or SEN units, to increase capacity to better support children and young people in mainstream settings.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer, but I remind her that it is estimated that 70% of dyslexics are not identified at school, and the figure is also very high for those with things such as high-functioning autism. Will the Government ensure that there is a coherent pattern of training so that ordinary teachers refer to those with expertise to identify? If you do not identify, you stand no chance of providing the different learning patterns that are required.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right about the need to identify early. We have measures in place to help teachers with early identification and support, particularly for the teaching of reading, including the phonics screening check and statutory assessments in key stages 1 and 2, the English hubs programme, the reading framework, an updated list of high-quality phonics programmes for schools, training for up to 7,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators, and the Partnerships for Inclusion of Neurodiversity in Schools programme which upskills primary schools to support neurodiverse children.

Children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests as set out in the register.

Something that has run through everything we have said about special educational needs is that there is a series of hurdles to get through. The first is to be recognised and the second is to access the help that is required. I will concentrate my few minutes on the first.

If you do not get an identification, everything else is doomed. Oddly, if you have a physical disability that is obvious to anyone, that would probably be slightly less of a problem. If you are on the neurodiverse spectrum—the one that I know best—and you have a dramatic failure, you are much more likely to be identified. The problem is that most people are not in those categories. We need somebody within the school structure who can spot developmental problems, whether it is in very early years or further along.

One-off systems will not work, because virtually everything we have been talking about here comes under the heading of a spectrum. The diversity within spectrums means that people will have different levels in the manifestation of their problems with the education system in front of them. If they do not have a problem with it, we do not worry. Will the Government take the first steps to make sure that there are more people who can spot these problems within the school system? If we do that, we stand a chance of getting that person, their parents and the system to come round and say, “Yes, let’s work differently”.

Once the person has been identified—I am probably again clinging back to nurse and my own group first, but it is applicable—if the school does not have the relevant knowledge, it tends to suddenly says, “Oh, we’ll give you extra help”. If you are a dyslexic with a bad short-term memory and bad language processing skills, and you fail on the work that everybody else is doing in the classroom, you will simply fail some more if you are given more of the work that you failed at. The same will be true of other conditions.

What is needed is somebody who will temper that work to the individual needs of the person. That requires knowledge and, above all, flexibility. Do you have the capacity in the school system not to say what should be being done but to ask what the best result we can get is? If you do not, you are, in effect, condemning more people to fail—and to fail in a way that will probably be disruptive to others around them.

When she comes to reply, will the Minister say what plans the Government have for better identification throughout the school system? There is so much that can be done from this good start, including the accurate engagement of parents. I have heard it said that special educational needs are for posh kids, because they are the ones who can fight through and get the identification. If the Minister wants to leave with one great claim to fame at the end of her time in office or her Government’s, it should be to get the schools to say, “Your child has a problem. Here’s a solution”. Parents should not have to go banging on doors, asking, “Why is my child not succeeding? I have spoken to an expert”. Change that and you change everything.

Higher Education Sector

Lord Addington Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the Lib Dem Benches next, please.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Chief Whip. If we are going to make sure that the universities are accessible to our own students, can we have an indication of what level of support we are expecting to get from foreign students, and have that discussion out in the open quickly?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is already the case that the earnings that come from international students’ contribution to universities are helping to subsidise the cost of domestic students. There is not a lose/lose here. Having international students and welcoming them into this country has benefited our domestic students and benefited universities’ research capacity.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 35 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, to which I have added my support. Although we have only just started this debate, the range of reporting requirements set out in amendments in the group and mentioned in the speeches we have already heard is because we are all concerned about the lack of detail and statutory underpinning for Skills England currently in the Bill. We share concern that there needs to be greater clarity and purpose for the organisation in the legislation. It is certainly that lack of detail about the way the Government will decide their strategic priorities and create new technical qualifications, where IfATE has previously acted independently and consulted with employers and businesses, that is the rationale behind the amendment I am speaking to now.

The amendment is an attempt to understand how the Government will make these decisions and mandate Skills England to publish the process it intends to follow. I hope that, in her reply, the Minister can provide some further detail and reassurance to the many in the sector who are rightly concerned by the uncertainty that the Bill is creating—about the lack of detail, in particular, on what were previously established and well-understood processes. In order for Skills England to have the effect that we all hope, the decision-making process it undertakes and uses to decide which sectors will receive new technical education qualifications needs to be transparent, robust and retain the confidence of employers, training providers and, of course, the students themselves.

I hope that, in addition to Amendment 35, the Minister will give careful consideration to Amendments 23, 31 and 36 in this group, which, if adopted as a whole, would bring some much needed further clarification and credibility to the work of Skills England from the outset and, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, just said, provide a suitable opportunity for parliamentary scrutiny of its work.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it might be an appropriate time to mention my Amendment 22. There seems to be an unwritten law in Parliament that, if the noble Lord, Lord Addington, is taking part in an education debate, he has to mention special educational needs. Yet again, I remind the Committee of my interests in that area.

The opportunity for the cock-up school of history to strike has been pointed out here on numerous occasions. If you do not have an opportunity to write it in, it gets ignored and left behind. I am sure that a lawyer would be rubbing his hands at that, saying, “Yes, we have legislation that will mean you can get into it”, but, as we know, at the moment, special educational needs is an area that is a little too rich with lawyers and court cases. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell me that, in future, the Government will make sure that there is a clear and definable duty—and, indeed, limitations—for where special educational needs and disabilities have to be covered in getting qualifications, and that, where there are practical difficulties, we would find out what is going on.

The technology is moving on all the time. I thought the stuff that I was using for my day-to-day activity was cutting-edge 10 years ago and discovered that it is not, and that I should have an upgrade, often using stuff that is built into computers now. There is a need to address this. Exams are now so much easier to take by means other than pen and paper—indeed, it is the norm—but only if you make sure that the system works and is compatible with what is required out there, which means monitoring.

I hope the Minister will be able to give me an answer that means I can stop worrying, and that we can take the Pepper v Hart reference and use it in any future disputes. Unless we get somebody who is on the ball and being told they have to do it, history says that the aforementioned cock-up school of history will come in and we will make other lawyers happy and certain candidates unhappy.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I never know what the protocols are for when to speak in Committee, but since both the amendments that I have added my name to in this group have been introduced, I will leap in. I hope the Minister does not think I am stalking her, having attended her evidence session this morning with the Industry and Regulators Committee, which was very interesting. I also look forward to reading the Government’s new White Paper Get Britain Working.

I have added my name to Amendment 18 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, which I see as a catch-all for some of the reporting required from the Secretary of State by many of the amendments tabled. Of the 22 amendments we are discussing today, 12 would require the Secretary of State to produce reports, so I very much welcome the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that an annual report might cover most if not all of those requirements.

I have also added my name to his Amendment 23, another reporting requirement, which focuses on many of the central functions of Skills England, identifying skills gaps and shortages and promoting ways of addressing them. It includes looking at training needs. One thing I would add to that is the education side of the picture, not just the training stage: making young people aware of the skills they need to find rewarding employment suited to their abilities and of the range of opportunities available to them.

I also welcome the inclusion in the amendment of working with regional and local bodies. I would expect to see Skills England, as I think the Minister mentioned this morning, playing an active role in consolidating local skills improvement plans, to ensure that, together, they properly address national as well as local needs and seek to forge a joined-up approach between the different government departments, which might otherwise be tempted, as they have been in the past, to develop their own skills policies that may not add up to a coherent whole. I am pleased to add my support for those two amendments.

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Moved by

[Lord Addington]

19: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Report: effect on other Government departmentsWithin six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on the impact of this Act on the remits of all government departments.”Member’s explanatory statement
The amendment requires the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report detailing the impact of the Act on the remits of all government departments.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, noble Lords will not be surprised to find this amendment in this group, which basically says, over and over again, “Tell us what you’re going to do in this new structure”. It starts by saying that, when the new structure is in place, we will find out how it will relate to the rest of government. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, tabled an amendment—to which I put my name—that mentions the departments. Either amendment would do, but, starting with government, at least government can talk to itself quite easily—or it should be able to. We all know that it does not often happen and that there are different agendas, but it should be able to happen. Other amendments in the group track different groups in a similar vein: they all want to know how we will structure this new arrangement for skills, which is necessary for growth going forward.

There is not much point in going on because, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare—who is a contributor to this—pointed out, everybody is in agreement that we do not have enough knowledge. When the Minister answers on these amendments, can she tell us how the Government intend to bridge this gap? If we just say that it is all published somewhere, that will not really do it. It should be published in a place where we can find it out and get hold of it, so that Parliament can discuss it. That is what we are about here.

I hope that, when the Minister responds, she will have an answer that addresses this basic point. We do not know how this body will relate or how it will work, and we do not know how to monitor it. We also do not know how to raise when something goes wrong. Everything goes wrong at some point or does not work as well as it should. I hope that, by having reports coming backwards and forwards, we will have a way to get in, see where the problems are, allow government to change it and allow the agenda to happen. Having said those words, I hope the Minister will give us a favourable response and I beg to move.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have Amendment 20 in this group, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Hampton and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for adding their names to it. I apologise for any repetition that may creep into what I say.

The Labour manifesto states that Skills England will

“bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government to ensure we have the highly trained workforce needed to deliver Labour’s Industrial Strategy. Skills England will formally work with the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure training in England accounts for the overall needs of the labour market. And we are committed to devolving adult skills funding to Combined Authorities”.

My Amendment 20 would require the Secretary of State to report on how it has engaged with these and other bodies in discharging the functions transferred under the Bill. Specifically, it includes the industrial strategy advisory council, since the industrial strategy will provide the overall context for skills policy. It includes the Migration Advisory Committee and mayoral combined authorities, in line with the commitment made in the manifesto. It includes employers through the industry sector skills bodies, as well as the employer representative bodies responsible for developing the 38 local skills improvement plans across all areas of England. It includes education and training providers at all levels, which will need to deliver the skills identified as needed. It also includes other government departments, most of which will have their own skills needs and challenges, as well as trade unions and the devolved Administrations.

Like others, the amendment seeks to spell out the tasks that Skills England should undertake by requiring the Secretary of State to report on them. Taken together, all these reporting amendments underline the breadth and extent of these tasks, from taking over IfATE’s existing functions—which it seems to be performing pretty well—to defining new technical education qualifications and defunding existing ones, and to a wide range of new strategic tasks requiring close engagement with employers, other government departments, local and regional bodies, and trade unions. The only omission I can find is Uncle Tom Cobbleigh.

I cannot help thinking that it might be better if the issues on which we are seeking reports from the Secretary of State were embodied in the Bill. The crucial purpose that the Bill seeks to promote—developing a skills system that will more effectively identify the skills we need and match them with the skills we produce through our education and training systems—will not be reliably met by abolishing IfATE and setting up Skills England as an agency within the Department for Education, with a hugely broad and important remit but no statutory basis and limited scope for parliamentary oversight.

As I have said, I strongly support the concept of Skills England as the key to addressing this purpose, but the Bill seems a somewhat underwhelming first step to establishing it on the right footing. Despite the Government’s laudable desire and commitment to tackle the systemic skills challenges we face, I am not convinced that it will—or about how it will—avoid the fate of so many unsuccessful previous attempts to resolve them.

I hope we may find a way on Report to encourage the Government and the Commons to think about whether the Bill should more clearly spell out the status of Skills England, ideally through a government amendment, as suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in his remarks on the previous group. Much of what the Minister said was extremely encouraging but none of it is in the Bill, which is where I would like to see at least some of it.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I understand why the amendments are formulated as they are, but most of them would create not just the requirement to describe but a condition that would be inserted into the process and that would therefore limit the flexibility and speed with which qualifications and occupational standards could be developed. I contend the suggestion that there is no public or parliamentary accountability in the way we are setting up Skills England. I went through at some length the routes through which both of those forms of accountability will be delivered to Parliament and, more widely, the public—while conceding the point about the requirement for an annual report, for example, and outlining the accountability through the sponsor Minister to Parliament to account for the progress and success in a whole range of areas that noble Lords have talked about.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, as nobody else wants to come in, I will try to bring the discussion to a close. I think the Minister effectively just opened up what the consideration is. I remember saying, in the briefing that the Minister courteously arranged for us, that she would be testing our ability for probing amendments here. I think we have come up with a reasonable pass grade on that. We have found out that, yes, there will be some reporting, but it is complicated, we do not know exactly where to find it and somebody new coming to the field might miss it. That happens all the time. Do the right people know about it? Do you have to be an expert to find out about it? That is one of the problems we have in going through this.

Before I withdraw my amendment, I will say that, if you do not allow us to get at this information easily, certain things will be missed. That is a guarantee. It tends to be that things are missed that it may even be helpful for the Government to address and correct. I hope that, by the time we get to the next stage, the Government will have had a little more time to think about how they can start to address this, because we all wish that Skills England—or what becomes Skills England, or the dark secret that is Skills England—becomes known to the public and functions properly. We just need to know, because that is what we are here for. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 19 withdrawn.

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[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I have added my name to this amendment, inspired by what might be described as the crusade of our much-missed former convener, Lord Judge, to root out unjustified Henry VIII clauses wherever possible. I considered putting down an amendment to make it clear in the Bill that the power under this clause could be exercised only where the provisions to be made by such regulations relate specifically to functions previously exercised by IfATE that are to be transferred under the Bill. However, Amendment 37 from the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, addresses this point in a more straightforward way, so I have willingly added my name to it. I look forward to hearing from the Minister why she feels the power in Clause 9 to be necessary.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I hope to be as quick as I can. My amendments suggest that everything should be under the affirmative procedure when it is reported back. That is just to make sure that Parliament gets a real look and a chance not to have those reports buried in the huge piles of SIs that are brought forward. We should guarantee that we are all looking at what happens in this new body.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, despite the Minister’s dismissal of my concerns about the Henry VIII powers at Second Reading, I have brought two amendments in this group to make sure that the scope of those powers is less broad.

Amendment 38 seeks to restrict the Secretary of State’s powers to amend only the Acts that are already listed in Schedule 3, so that both Houses can appropriately scrutinise the way in which these powers are being used. Surely it is the job of the Government and the department to identify all the Acts to which these powers apply. I cannot see the need for such a clause, unless the Bill has been rushed and the Government are worried that they have failed to capture all the legislation that requires amending with the abolition of IfATE. If this is indeed the case, perhaps there is more redrafting to do than we have already attempted.

My Amendment 39 is focused on the same issue but, rather than restricting the Secretary of State’s powers specifically, it simply removes the power to amend future legislation. Again, I note that all Bills which name IfATE as the body for apprenticeships and technical education have already been passed, so there should be no need to amend future legislation, unless the Government have plans to refer to IfATE in any future legislation that they intend to draft. Given that this seems unlikely, I am once again left with the question as to why this is necessary. I urge the Minister to reconsider this.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [HL]

Lord Addington Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 21st November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

Before the Minister continues, I have been listening as attentively as I can manage. That exact thought occurred to me. Could we get something, such as some guidelines—or, at least, some idea of the current government thinking—on when you would not consult and the criteria around pressure and speed? This would put my mind slightly more at rest.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I hope to provide noble Lords some reassurance by way of guidelines, which I will come to in a moment, but I also hope to convince noble Lords—I shall try—that there is, in fact, a conflict between the idea of doing something as flexibly as possible in order to engage employers and spelling it in the Bill. I will make that argument as I continue.

I turn first to Amendment 1 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, Amendments 2 and 8 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and Amendment 3 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. They all relate to the membership of the group of persons. At present, as I have suggested, there are no statutory criteria that prescribe the make-up of a group that forms or is formed to prepare an occupational standard. Employers play a prominent role and are well placed to define or describe what occupational competence looks like in most cases, but different expert voices might have a role to play in different circumstances. This point was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden —although probably more with respect to assessment, which we will come on to in Clause 5.

We do not see any benefit in seeking to shape or fetter the structure of these groups with criteria that would prevent the membership of a group reflecting the specific factors relating to the need for its preparation. IfATE is under an existing duty to publish information about matters that it will take into account when deciding whether or not to approve groups of persons; I assure noble Lords that this duty is being transferred to the Secretary of State unamended, so it will remain in existence. Novel and additional criteria in primary legislation to specify the make-up of a group, for which noble Lords are arguing, might provide some assurance here. However, it would be a new constraint in the system.

Slowing down groups coming together, and slowing down the development and maintenance of occupational standards, could lead to a focus on ticking boxes instead of flexibly, broadly and inclusively finding the best people to define the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to be competent in the occupation. The optimal composition of a group will vary from occupation to occupation; for example, to represent the breadth of an occupation and the employers in it that will employ apprentices, it may be necessary in new, emerging or highly specialised occupations to look openly at who can bring to bear the relative expertise in the preparation of a standard. Retaining the existing flexibility around the make-up of a group of persons is critical to achieving high-quality occupational standards.

Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, would remove the ability of the Secretary of State to prepare a standard if they are satisfied that it would be more appropriate for the standard to be prepared by the Secretary of State than by a group of persons. I hope I have assured the noble Baroness of the need for this greater flexibility. I reiterate that it is needed for a minority of cases to ensure that standards are kept up to date without a disproportionate burden, given the volume of standards that now exists.

Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, would create a duty on the Secretary of State to consult with the relevant industry skills and standards-setting body when preparing a standard. Such bodies are important to the preparation of occupational standards, and in most cases high-quality occupational standards are developed by an inclusive and independent group. In fact, current guidance states that groups must seek advice and guidance from organisations with responsibility in their industry for defining skills standards in England and the wider UK. We expect this requirement to remain.

I emphasise that in only the minority of circumstances, where the Secretary of State considers it more appropriate, will standards be prepared by them rather than by a group, so there is a role for industry bodies in this process and we expect that they will continue to be engaged. However, this amendment would undo the flexibility and efficiency sought through Clause 4, by placing a requirement on the Secretary of State to consult specific bodies when they consider it more appropriate for the Secretary of State to prepare a standard than by using a group. That would be exacerbated in circumstances where the relevant industry skills or standards-setting body is unable to participate when required. It therefore risks giving them precedence over others, including employers.

Amendment 6, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 7, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, would impose a duty to publish criteria for the preparation of occupational standards by the Secretary of State. To be clear again, employers remain best placed to define and describe what occupational competence looks like in most cases. As I have indicated, the Secretary of State would not convene a group in only a minority of circumstances. Setting criteria for that minority of circumstances would frustrate the necessary agility that this clause aims to bring to the process. It would restrict the Secretary of State’s ability to be responsive and to ensure that the suite of high-quality standards is kept up to date and relevant.

I hope that I have set out the intentions behind Clause 4 and provided some assurance and reassurance for noble Lords. For the reasons that I have outlined, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, will withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, that is quite a challenge to follow, and it is tempting to take the same approach—I think my popularity with the Committee might improve—but, in all seriousness, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, said, my Amendments 10, 11 and 14 are based on a very similar argument to that debated in the previous group about the concerning lack of detail regarding what we mean by “a group of persons” and the potential dilution of employer focus. With that, I commend the amendments.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I rise just to give my much wiser noble friend a break. The assessment plan for any qualification is of the essence. If you get that wrong, you might as well not bother doing it. When you have a group of people looking at this, you stand a better chance than you get from one centre. There are a series of clichés about Secretaries of State, and I will try not to kick and wring every one of them, but the basic one is that if the Secretary of State has spoken to somebody who just does not understand or gets it wrong, the whole thing can go wrong. If you have a group, you stand a better chance of getting a correct result. Nothing is guaranteed either way, but that is what it is about.

I hope that we can get some response from the Minister on where we are going to get this expertise in to check on what is happening. That is it, in essence, because we have had Secretaries of State who know exactly what they want and will talk to a certain group that agrees with them. That is very easy to do, and we have all done it. I hope that we will get some assurance that the Secretary of State will talk to a divergence of opinion to go through these things to make sure that they work. If we do not and start to get them wrong, the price will be huge and we will have nothing useful. Being a little slower and a bit more certain is infinitely better than taking the chance of getting it horribly wrong. I hope the Minister can give us a reassuring answer.

[Baroness Wolf of Dulwich (CB)]

I do not have very much to add, everybody will be glad to hear, except to highlight the fact that assessment is not the same as getting to the end of the standards. We have a complex set of awarding bodies and some assessment standards which require an external qualification and some which do not.

It would also be good to be confident that the department has worked through all the ramifications of this. I am conscious that I do not think I have and am going to go back and look through some of the original legislation, but I do not think the considerations are exactly the same as they are for standards. Because we have a rather strange system in this country, with a lot of formal qualifications and a lot of awarding bodies, it is very easy to get the qualifications wrong or suddenly find that you have a huge political fuss on your hands, as I am sure everyone in this Room will recognise from the current BTEC discussions.

I just flag that it is not just the same as for standards. The complexity of many endpoint assessments and standards for which there are required external qualifications means that we need to be very careful that we have not inadvertently stored up some real problems for ourselves by just moving everything wholesale and saying, “But where necessary, the Secretary of State can cut through the bramble patch”.