Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage
Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes and to hear of her practical support for career hubs.

I support those who have emphasised the importance of careers guidance in schools and colleges, particularly technical options and employer engagement. These are one of the issues that I always mention when I do Speakers for Schools. I make a point of visiting the arts, crafts, music, photography and other non-academic facilities because the creative sector is hugely important to individuals and to UK success.

The issue is particularly difficult for those who do not have parents who know much about career options. You can find yourself on the wrong path unless you talk early on to a knowledgeable adviser. Funnily enough, I know this from my own experience. Having been to Oxford University, I wanted to set up a landscape gardening business but discovered that I would have to go back to an educational institution to fill the science gaps in my convent education before I could do the necessary training. Eventually I joined the Civil Service instead.

Many people less fortunate than me fall through gaps in the education system. So I should add that I very much endorse the thrust of what my noble and learned friend Lord Clarke of Nottingham said earlier, in a brilliant speech, about the need to find a way of helping those who missed out, particularly at levels 2 and 3—some of them no doubt because they did not receive careers advice at the right stage of life.

I am not sure that the answer to the problem is yet another strategy, as proposed in Amendment 83. We just need Ministers to require all pupils to be given careers advice—for example, a minimum of twice in schools, once before they start GCSEs and once before A-levels or, in either case, the equivalent. Technical colleges and universities should also be required to have career hubs of some kind, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has argued. Visits from businesspeople and other role models should be positively encouraged as part of a rich curriculum. Such a system might also require some extra funding.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s plans. I will listen carefully to her responses to the various options, including the mechanisms that would be needed for enforcement, particularly the idea of a statutory duty that was put forward by my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking, who has given us a lifetime of educational innovation and achievement, for which are most thankful.

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness’s remark that she wanted to become a landscape gardener but ended us as a civil servant could make the brilliant first sentence of an autobiography, with us all intrigued as to how the intent to become the one ended up in the more humdrum reality of the other. I only hope that, maybe by utilising all the opportunities of lifelong or lifetime learning, she is able to indulge her passion. She has great artistic genius and this may be the moment when she could set up a new enterprise.

There are two issues here. The first is the careers guidance to students in schools and colleges about what should happen after they leave that institution. The second is the more specific issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, of advertising options to students in secondary schools for moving to alternative providers, including between the ages of 11 and 16—when they might be better served by, for example, one of the noble Lord’s university technical colleges—and seeing that that advice is made available to them.

We need to accept that, as is the experience of all of us in the House, careers advice and guidance has never been done well. The truth is that schools with a more academic bent—which I am glad to say is now most schools, but even until quite recently, they were in the minority—have always been pretty good at giving advice and guidance on universities. That is because teachers are graduates and know about universities, and schools are judged on the university destinations of their more able students. However, those schools have traditionally been poor or worse at providing options for technical and further education. That is partly because they are not incentivised to do so, since public authorities and the inspectorate mostly do not notice whether they do or not, but also because teachers by definition have very little experience of these areas. There are almost no teachers who themselves have done apprenticeships or gone on to further education.

So we need to accept that this has never been well done. I suppose that in all areas of policy there is golden-ageism—“30 years ago it was done brilliantly and it has all degenerated since”—but we must accept that the old-style careers service was not great. It did not turn up in most schools, and when it did it was pretty haphazard. It was not regarded as a high priority by local authorities, and schools’ engagement with it was generally a low priority too.

The various incarnations of the careers service—up to and including the Careers & Enterprise Company, which came partly from the wholesale privatisation of the old careers service and the requirement that it be disbanded, which was a draconian step that I would never have taken—have not led to great careers guidance in schools. All those who do good work in this area should be applauded, and the Gatsby benchmarks are great. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the Careers & Enterprise Company, which I hear some good accounts of and some accounts that it barely infringes on the work of schools at all, are to be encouraged. However, there is a systemic problem that we have never properly addressed, which is how we ensure that within each institution there is a facility—which in my experience always means a person—responsible for delivering careers guidance, including technical education guidance.

Business and Planning Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Report stage & Report stage (Hansard) & Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 20th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, it is good to follow the noble Lord, Lord Rennard, and to hear of the progress that has been made with so many people giving up smoking during lockdown. I rise, however, simply to lend my voice to those who applaud the care being taken in this difficult area by my noble friend the Deputy Leader. I could not support Amendment 15—or the introduction, in emergency legislation, of what amounts to a new smoking ban. This would be a real slap in the face to the hospitality sector, which is already on its knees. The measure could also displace customers into other trading areas, blocking access and achieving the near opposite of what is desired. The government amendment, which I support, requires proper provision for non-smoking seating. This will allow customers to sit outside whether they want to smoke or not and aid the observance of social distancing. We should not delay the Bill by trying to work the issue further. The government compromise should be agreed to forthwith.

[Lord Adonis (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, leaving aside what colleagues have said about their support or non-support for particular amendments, the right policy here is very clear. In fact, it has been supported by 15 of the 17 noble Lords who have spoken before me in the debate.

That policy is this: licensed outdoor premises, where they replace indoor premises where smoking is currently not allowed, should not be licensed for smoking. As the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—a former Health Secretary—said, anything less than this is a retrograde step. This is emphatically not a new smoking ban, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, just suggested. It is the replacement of indoor premises by outdoor premises, and those indoor premises do not currently allow smoking.

I applaud everyone who has helped get us to the halfway stage: my noble friends on the Front Bench who have done an excellent job in negotiations with the Government; the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who first raised this matter at Second Reading; and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, whom we hold in very high regard, and whom I know has worked hard to get to a compromise position.

The compromise is a compromise. The House needs to address this question: on an issue as fundamental as this, to the public health of England and to people’s ability to enjoy and access licensed premises, should we settle for a compromise or should we move to the right policy which—as I have said—almost everyone who has spoken in this debate supports? This policy would simply replace the existing prohibition on smoking indoors in licensed premises with a prohibition on smoking outdoors, in respect of those licenses. Contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, said, this would not affect existing outdoor smoking facilities.

I have listened carefully to this debate, and to representations which have been made to some of us outside of it. I cannot see a single good argument for not agreeing with this amendment. I applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, on bringing it forward and pushing it so strongly. Without people like her, we never make progress on these fundamental issues of public health and civil liberties. I will simply end with the great injunction of David Lloyd George: “When traversing a chasm, it is advisable to do so in one leap”.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Lord Adonis and Baroness Neville-Rolfe

Committee stage & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 16th June 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am glad to follow my noble friend Lord Blencathra, chairman of the Delegated Powers Committee, and other experts on delegated powers. I am sure that we will get a helpful response from my noble friend the Minister on these wider powers. As has been said, I will speak on Clause 39 stand part and the Northern Ireland equivalent, Clause 40.

I tabled these amendments with the help of our excellent Bill clerks, alongside my Amendments 68 and 74, which I may not now need to move as my questions are exploratory in nature; that may help us to make progress. I want to open up a discussion on time limits, particularly of the emergency measures. As I said at Second Reading, I support all these measures, but they change the balance of corporate law and can make life more difficult for the lenders and investors that businesses need for success.

I am very concerned about the powers of extension, which I do not believe will be properly scrutinised if used. Some are more contentious than others; the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, raised a good point about wrongful trading, and, as I said, even delays in annual general meetings and corporate filings are unwelcome. These provide vital transparency and the opportunity for probing questions to be asked of companies. If the Opposition’s proposal to extend the emergency measures to the end of September is accepted, I see no need for an extension to the various emergency powers, and certainly not of the easy kind proposed. So that I can consider my position on Report on the various amendments that we are discussing, I would like more details from the Minister on the use of the powers of extension; more of an analysis of the downsides of the emergency measures, as well as their obvious advantages; and details of the criteria that will be applied if and when an extension of power is used, how any costs will be assessed and when the arrangements will sunset completely.

Clauses 21 and 22 seem very elastic—a pseudo-sunset clause, as my noble friend Lady Fookes said—which is not what we are looking for on these emergency measures.

[Lord Adonis [V]]

I have nothing to add.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe [V]]

My Lords, I have not yet seen the email or of course the amendments, so I have nothing to add at this stage but look forward to studying them.

[Lord Adonis [V]]

I have nothing to add on this group.