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

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 26th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am also slightly uncertain about the order of speakers; I thought it was in the same order as the amendments.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Non-Afl)]

It can be in any order.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It can be in any order. I rise to speak to my Amendments 35 and 36 and to support Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. Before I talk to the amendments in detail, I will reflect briefly on some of the important points that were raised earlier in Committee and that have a bearing on the groups that we will be debating today.

In addition to the fundamental concerns raised about the abolition of IfATE, which we have heard again from your Lordships today, and the absorption of its powers by the Secretary of State, we heard concerns from my noble friend Lady McGregor-Smith about how long it takes for a new body to bed in and gain the trust of employers and, again from her, from my noble friend Lord Johnson and from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about the risk that we lose momentum in implementing the Government’s skills reforms. Similarly, the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf of Dulwich, and the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare and Lord Knight of Weymouth, among others, expressed their doubts about the Government’s approach.

In particular, there was a real sense, as we have heard again today, that everybody wants Skills England to succeed but there is a worry that it will be swamped by the volume of technical work that it will have to do, which could prevent it from delivering on the changes that the nation needs to see. I absolutely echo the earlier words of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in hoping that the Government will bring forward their own amendments to address these concerns on Report.

My Amendments 35 and 36 seek to bring some focus and clarity to the work of Skills England by requiring regular reporting to Parliament. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, on the 12 different versions that he tracked in the Marshalled List. Without this, Skills England might disappear from view, buried under a mountain of technical processes. Importantly, critical accountability disappears with that; we will not be able to name who is accountable for different decisions.

I will first explain my Amendment 35. There are many people in the sector who are concerned by the uncertainty that the Bill creates surrounding previously established processes, such as the granting of new technical education qualifications. As your Lordships know, IfATE was an independent body and new qualifications were decided with the help of employers and businesses, informing them what skills were needed in the economy. However, with the arrival of Skills England we need to understand two things: first, how will the Government decide on its strategic priorities and, secondly, how will this be operationalised in the creation of new technical qualifications? With this transition, it is likely that the processes to decide which sectors receive new qualifications could change, so my Amendment 35 seeks to clarify how these decisions will be made and what will guide this decision-making. We need a level of transparency that retains the confidence of employers, training providers and, crucially, students for this approach to have a chance of success.

Next, I will give details on my Amendment 36, which seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on various skills metrics. Your Lordships will have noted that this is a long list that reflects the complexity of this area. There may of course be better metrics and, ideally, a shorter list, but this is our starter for 10—or perhaps I should say 12, since the list stretches from paragraphs (a) to (l). I will go through these points individually—I apologise to your Lordships for the length of this, but it underlines how many areas we do not have clarity on where we need clarity.

Paragraph (a) in the proposed new clause seeks clarity on the level of need or skills gaps by sector, level of qualification and region. Without this, I fear we will get a generic report with broad-brush headings that might well reflect the national averages but does not give any actionable insight about where to focus or prioritise, or about the amount of progress made from year to year.

Paragraph (b) aims finally to bring some consistency to different qualifications across the sector, particularly as they apply to key core competencies. At the moment, we have a long and varied list of qualifications, and they are not really interoperable. For example, the standard of generic digital skills is not the same in two digital skills qualifications at the same level, and this contributes to the complexity of our system and is a blocker to streamlining it. This would be a key step to achieving the aims also mentioned in paragraph (i).

Paragraph (c) intends to give visibility to the earnings impact of completing different qualifications at different levels and in different regions. I do not think that we could answer that question today with solid data.

Paragraphs (d), (e) and (f) follow the same structure as paragraph (c) but in relation to how the Government are spending their budget in the area and how the landscape is evolving in terms of new qualifications, as well as the impact of both of these on trainees.

Paragraph (g) intends to explore whether the system is still meeting employer needs. We keep hearing from employers an urgent need for more clarity on what would happen if there were a gap in, say, engineers on Teesside, and what the Government, through Skills England, would do about it.

Paragraph (h) turns to the funding of skills training by employers. I thank my noble friend Lord Johnson for his comments on this. As he said, this is an area that we all know has declined significantly in real terms over the past 20 years, and we now lag badly behind other industrialised nations. We hope that there is some way that this can be measured annually to shine a light on this important area, both in financial terms and in relation to take-up by employers of new qualifications. Of course, this will be impacted by changes to the apprenticeship levy that the Government have proposed.

All these elements intend to create a far clearer picture of the impact of technical education qualifications on the people who take them, and the differences that happen through their learning. It also seeks to explore the way in which Skills England will work differently to IfATE and to provide an outcome-based framework by which its efficacy can be judged and adapted if necessary.

The letters after that intend to provide a framework to evaluate Skills England more generally, judged on the factors that matter to both employers and students. As noted above, paragraph (i) intends to ensure that this new system is created in a manner that is easy to understand for employers and students. For example, it is unclear how and where the Secretary of State will get advice on the content, accessibility, assessment and rigour of T-levels. This has much in common with Amendment 30 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

Paragraph (j) seeks to get regular updates on the impact of changes in the post-16 education strategy that the Government have committed to delivering, and its inclusion would commit the Government to detailing how they are delivering the objectives of the new strategy and what difference it is making on the ground.

I hope that, if my noble friend Lord Lucas reads the Hansard of this debate, he will be pleased to see paragraph (k), which looks at careers advice and seeks to ensure that there is a sufficiency—to be clear, I mean quality rather than just volume—of careers information, advice and guidance.

Paragraph (l) mirrors the wording in paragraphs (a) to (c) in subsection (1) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. This would ensure that the Government’s reforms focus on the areas where there is the most urgent need for increased participation.

Finally, I want to touch briefly on Amendment 31 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, which I support; I have already spoken about its proposed subsection (1). The second subsection seeks to get a clearer sense of how the skills and growth levy will operate in practice and to build on the promising start that we have already seen from the local skills improvement partnerships.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on this, but I hope that she has heard the message from all noble Lords who have spoken this afternoon: there is a pressing need to build confidence in the Government’s approach. A commitment to putting Skills England on a statutory footing, linked to a rigorous reporting regime, would be a helpful step in that direction.

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[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I was just looking through my noble friend Lord Blunkett’s Amendments 28, 29 and 30, to which I added my name. I am sure noble Lords will be aware that, since Skills England was announced, the DfE has been using a pretty coloured diagram in five sections to describe the planned functions of the new executive agency. One of the sections says that Skills England

“identifies priorities for and shapes technical education to respond to skills needs”.

Having done that, it will need to update the necessary technical standards and work with sectoral industry bodies to develop them. Indeed, the Government will need to set out which functions currently with IfATE will be delegated to sectoral organisations and regional bodies. That is what Amendment 28 seeks to achieve.

My noble friend the Minister said in Committee last week that there needs to be “a sectoral approach” to the way that skills are developed across the economy. Of course, that is right. With that in mind, it is necessary that the Government’s plans for the powers that they anticipate will be required are set out, and this amendment would facilitate that.

Another of the sections in that DfE diagram says that Skills England will ensure

“national and regional systems are meeting skills needs”,

explaining that this will entail:

“Working with Mayoral Combined Authorities, Employer Representative Bodies, and other regional organisations to align national and regional systems with each other and with skills needs”.


All that seems fairly straightforward, but it is not clear how Skills England will achieve that without the necessary powers and some resources. We do not as yet know what these might be, so it is important that criteria for national skills priorities are set out and that the expectations of departments other than the DfE are made clear. My noble friend the Minister stated on several occasions how important the effect of joined-up government will be for the involvement of a wide range of stakeholders. Amendment 29 offers the opportunity for that to be spelled out.

Finally, there is more than a little uncertainty as to how the plethora of qualifications to be transferred will be subject to oversight. My noble friend Lord Blunkett has covered this, but I will simply say that qualifications at levels 3 and 4 are crucial in allowing young people the opportunity to build their skills in an environment in which they are not intimidated by unrealistic expectations or other barriers to entry, as has been the case too often with apprenticeships. The unfortunate tangle—let me put it no less kindly than that—that we currently have involving the introduction of T-levels and the consequent often rash and sometimes reckless defunding of some BTECs must not be allowed to happen with the transfer of the many essential qualifications validated by IfATE in its short lifetime.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 27 and in support of Amendment 28 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. I start by noting that I support very much the spirit of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the aspiration of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, although I have a certain sympathy with the Minister in trying to actually deliver on that.

My Amendment 27—I thank my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park for adding her name to it—aims to ensure that the Government’s strategy is up to date and relevant for local areas and that the Government do this by consulting the relevant bodies. I suggest local skills improvement partnerships and mayoral combined authorities although, in his Amendment 36B and his extremely helpful, clear and practical explanation of it, the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, raises the relevance of other groups and the importance of making sure that we do not miss out significant parts of the population as we try to aggregate and understand these local views.

What we are trying to do is to balance technical education qualifications that can be tailored, to a degree, and that best support the needs of a local area, with the ability to aggregate and use the data and intelligence from them to inform national policy. That needs to then feed into an ability for the Government and those to whom they devolve their powers to understand where providers are delivering efficiently on these plans and where they are not, identifying gaps and seeking to address them.

I also want to speak to the importance of the Government setting out how they intend to delegate these powers that are being centralised. As my noble friend Lady Evans said, what the Government talk about and what is actually happening in terms of centralisation rather jars, so I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has brought this forward through his Amendment 28. I do not think anyone is suggesting to the Minister that this is an easy task—if it was easy, somebody would have cracked it already—but it is clearly a very important task and the more she can say about how these different groups will interact with Skills England and how there will be lines of communication from the local to the national and back again, the more confident the Committee will feel.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a good discussion on this group of amendments about the importance of ensuring that there is both appropriate engagement across government and improved coherence of the qualifications system, alongside the challenges of ensuring that we get appropriate local and regional input into our skills system while maintaining some coherence across it.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, is right that some of these issues around devolution are not neat government, as I think I said in a committee this morning, but they are nevertheless important in ensuring that local employers can contribute and there can be differentiation depending on different needs in different parts of the country. I will return to that as I address the amendments, but I wholeheartedly agree that it is very important that we are clear about the way in which a range of different stakeholders will be engaged. Some of this is already very clear; other aspects—I will be honest—will be part of the work of developing Skills England in the building of those relationships.

I turn to Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, regarding Skills England’s work with key bodies, in particular government departments. It is really important that we are able to work collaboratively with a whole range of different partners. Extensive work is already under way across departments to ensure that skills sit at the heart of joined-up decision-making across government.

As I probably said on the first day of Committee— I usually say it when talking about skills—Skills England and our improved skills infrastructure will play a key role in supporting the skilled workforce needed to deliver the Government’s five missions: driving economic growth, breaking down barriers to opportunity, supporting our NHS, delivering safer streets and the clean energy transition. Therefore, it is crucial that there is a cross-government approach and input into improving our skills provision.

Skills England will work closely with the industrial strategy advisory council. The chair of Skills England will sit on that council and, although I accept that that is not sufficient on its own to ensure join-up, it is an important signal. It will work closely with the Migration Advisory Committee, because it is important that we identify how to understand the analysis of where migration is needed as well as understand what more we need to do to boost the domestic pipeline of skills development. It will also work with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that the Government have the analysis and advice needed to inform a coherent approach to the labour market. The publication of the Get Britain Working White Paper, which we touched on, is an important example of that joint working.

In order to ensure that Skills England’s first report was informed and took in this need to look at skills needs across government, the report was informed by a skills audit across government departments. The cross-government approach will also be driven forward through the regular mission boards, which bring together Ministers from across government, helping to break down departmental silos and ensure a strategic approach to our mission priorities. Together, these connections are creating a coherent approach to skills, migration and labour market policy.

Amendment 27 was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and Amendment 36B was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale. Regarding consultation with contributors to local skills improvement plans on the introduction and number of new technical education qualifications, it is my view that local skills improvement plans are playing an important role in giving employers a voice in this area. When I was on a visit last Friday and heard from FE principals, one in particular had feared that the development of LSIPs would be just another quango, but she was actually finding it useful to have that engagement with local employers.

Mayoral combined authorities also have an important role to play, using the elements of skills funding that are devolved to them and their convening power, to bring together a clearer view of regional growth needs, through the regional growth plan, and to work alongside local skills improvement partnerships—as well as the other initiatives announced today in the Get Britain Working White Paper—to build a coherent approach to the labour market and to skills development at a regional level.

The assessment of skills needs set out in the first report by Skills England—published in September, as I said—drew strongly on evidence from LSIPs. Skills England has already begun to engage and gather evidence from mayoral combined authorities, employer representative bodies and others on skills needs. This will inform decisions on where standards and, therefore, technical qualifications or apprenticeships are required.

Several noble Lords talked about the challenges of devolution, as I suggested at the beginning. Supporting a more joined-up approach to decision-making on skills at regional and national levels will be central to Skills England’s role, putting the bits back together, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett described it. I accept that there is a challenge, as the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, identified. While there is a very clear remit for those areas that are mayoral combined authorities, those that are not have less devolution of skills funding. However, the Government are preparing a devolution White Paper and we will want to encourage further devolution. We will also want to support local authorities in carrying out their role to input into skills discussions in those non-mayoral combined authority areas. I share the noble Lord’s interest in this, living as I do in the Midlands, in an area without a mayoral combined authority.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I went on at some length in my response to the previous set of amendments to spell out what the accountability mechanisms to both the public and Parliament will be for Skills England, both directly in its publication of an annual report and, via the sponsoring department, to Parliament. In respect of specific amendments, the concern is that what we are trying to do here is create a strategic body that brings together the data analysis and insights with the ability then to inform efficiently, effectively and agilely—if that is the proper word—the development of occupational standards, assessment plans and the technical qualifications that employers tell us they need. Creating legislative requirements in advance of it being able to do so will, the Government believe, limit that flexibility, when we really intend to improve it. That is one of the criticisms that employers have made of the current IfATE process.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have two points. First, if I heard correctly, the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, was asking why none of that could be in the Bill. Secondly, what the Minister just said might be a starter for 10, for the drafters, on what could go in the Bill. Of course, if you are incredibly precise about exactly what would be reported on, that limits you, but if something in the Bill says that this spirit will be aligned, it retains a degree of flexibility. With the level of flexibility that the Bill now affords the Government or any future Government, flexibility trumps accountability squarely, as the Minister has heard. I wonder whether she could reflect on that.

[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.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barran]

24: After Clause 8, insert the following new Clause—
“Report: approval of new technical education qualifications Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a report on mechanisms for employers to apply for the approval of new technical education qualifications and to appeal the removal of any technical education qualifications.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment clarifies the route employers will take to approve new technical education qualifications.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 24, I will also speak to my Amendments 25 and 26. As we heard on earlier groups, there is a lot of concern among experts in the sector about how the Government’s plans will work in practice and whether the proposed changes in the governance of the skills sector will result in confusion and delay—obviously to the detriment of the Government’s growth agenda. My amendments seek to bring clarity to this confusion.

My Amendment 24 seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to explain to employers the way in which they will be able to approve new technical education qualifications and appeal where qualifications are planned to lose funding. It is, obviously, essential that employers know how to get new qualifications approved so that our qualifications can remain up to date and relevant to the needs of businesses, and that the Government can receive the input from businesses on what skills our economy is lacking.

My Amendments 25 and 26 seek to address the delays that will happen when these powers are transferred from IfATE to the Secretary of State, as laid out in the impact assessment that the Government published alongside the Bill. The impact assessment lays out details of how the creation of end-point assessments and the approval of new technical education qualifications will both be delayed. In order to minimise the impact that this has on students who are seeking to undertake a technical qualification, students who are midway through their course and businesses that are seeking to introduce qualifications, I felt it necessary to encourage the Government to give details as to how long this delay will be and the steps they are taking to ensure that it is as short as possible. It is important that businesses and students have certainty about the extent to which any delays will impact them. These amendments propose a timetable, when the Bill is passed, by which the Secretary of State must report on how long these delays will last and what the Government are doing to ensure as minimum a disruption as possible to the qualifications and to the students seeking to undertake them.

I hope the Minister will agree that these amendments are not controversial and may come back on Report with government amendments that look like mine. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Yes, you can. There is a whole range of different types of arm’s-length bodies. Executive agencies are one such type. They are governed by a governance document—the framework document that I have previously described—and by a set of requirements and relationships that I would be happy to spell out for noble Lords.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for highlighting the impact on the groups and communities that could be most affected by delays, as set out in the impact assessment.

I am honestly a bit puzzled by the Minister’s response. She said that my Amendment 24 is unnecessary, but employers are telling us that it is necessary. There is obviously a gap between what the Minister knows and what is being understood, so the more clarity the Government can bring to those specific points, the better.

Similarly, the Minister spoke very confidently about minimal delays—my words, not hers—in approving endpoint assessments and new qualifications. We do not want to frustrate the Government’s plans, but if it is so clear to the Minister that this is a very low-risk area then perhaps she can put that and the exact timescales she expects formally on the record on Report.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I commit to providing to the Committee more detail about the process for transition and some reassurance, which I suspect I have not sufficiently provided, on how that will mitigate some of the risks identified in the impact assessment.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

When the Minister does that, which would be much appreciated, I request that, in addition to more detail about the process, she includes a sense of timescale, which would be most helpful. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 24 withdrawn.

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[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.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin on this group of amendments by reassuring the Committee that the department recognises and takes very seriously the important role that Parliament has in scrutinising consequential amendments. For this reason, we have made every effort to identify all the consequential amendments to primary legislation that are necessary, and to include them as Schedules 1 and 3 to the Bill.

Despite those extensive efforts, there is a risk that in the future we may uncover Acts which need amending because of provisions in this Bill. I reassure the Committee that this is a very limited and narrow power and that any use would be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. We have carefully considered the power and believe that it is entirely justified in this case. In fact, the inclusion of similar powers as a safeguard is well precedented in legislation. Our delegated powers memorandum has been considered by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which has confirmed that there is nothing in the Bill which it would wish to highlight to the House.

Therefore, the amendment, and Amendments 38 and 39 in the name of the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran and Lady Garden, would remove the delegated power to make consequential amendments to primary legislation. If this were accepted, it would be unnecessarily burdensome on Parliament and require greater amounts of parliamentary time should we uncover Acts that needed minor and genuinely consequential amendments to be made as a result of the Bill. It would, of course, require all those changes then to be made through primary legislation.

Depending on the nature of the issue, and to go back to the previous group of amendments, we might see an increased risk of disruption in the functioning of the skills system for learners and employers. I hope it might provide some reassurance to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, although perhaps not to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, that previous legislation, including legislation passed by the previous Government, has included a power such as this because it provides that important safety net should future amendments be identified.

The power is limited to consequential amendments to previous Acts and Acts passed later in the same parliamentary Session. It does not encompass all future legislation, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, seemed to suggest. The amendments would limit consequential amendments to those Acts specified in Schedules 1 and 3 to the Bill, but our approach in relation to amending Acts passed later in the same Session is not unusual, notwithstanding the challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. We have reviewed legislation and identified that including a power to amend primary legislation passed in the same parliamentary Session has been done in at least 20 other Acts since 2020. It may well be that the noble Baroness has now seen the light, but I suspect it is more likely that this is a sensible, narrow and reasonable provision to put into this legislation. That was why the previous Government decided to do it at least 20 times.

Amendments 40 and 41, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, would require regulations making consequential provisions that are subject to the negative procedure by virtue of Clause 9(5) to instead be subject to the affirmative procedure for a period of six months. As is customary, any consequential amendments to legislation other than primary legislation, which would be subject to the affirmative procedure, will be subject to the negative procedure. The limited and uncontroversial nature of such changes means that this procedure provides sufficient parliamentary oversight while enabling changes to be made without unduly taking up parliamentary time.

Consequential amendments to secondary legislation are not included in the Bill as the power to make or amend such legislation is held by the Secretary of State by virtue of the passing of that legislation previously. We have already identified the amendments to secondary legislation that are needed; these are of a similar nature to those included in Schedules 1 and 3 to the Bill. There is a strong precedent for delegated legislation under the negative procedure to be used to make consequential amendments to delegated legislation. Therefore, the amendment seeking affirmative resolution is not necessary.

I have set out in a letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, the chair of the Constitution Committee, how the clause is inherently narrow in scope as it is limited to making amendments that are genuinely consequential on the provisions in the Bill.

Therefore, for the reasons that I have outlined, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.