Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will be brief. First, we are probably facing a renaissance in further education and vocational education, and maybe the starting point is this Bill.

Secondly, I want to thank the Minister—if I could catch her eye—and her predecessor for the thorough and courteous way in which they have handled this Bill. It has been an exemplar of how to take a Bill through this House. Listening is always so important.

At the end of the day, two things matter. One is that the funding is there; the other is that we need to see a cultural change in how society views further and vocational education because if that does not happen, then all our hard work will be for nothing.

I end by thanking my own colleagues, who do not happen to be here, for the support they have given me—particularly when I was away in the Bahamas during Report, but I will keep that quiet. I also thank the Minister’s staff again for the thorough way they have dealt with any requests for information. I hope that the amended Bill—it has been amended by two former Secretaries of State, by Labour and by my Lib Dem Benches—will be agreed by the Commons.

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, briefly, it has been a great pleasure for me to participate from the Cross Benches in these debates, along with so many much more distinguished experts and a wisdom of former Education Ministers, if that is the correct collective term. This is a very important Bill and I very much echo what the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett and Lord Storey, have said. I hope that the Government will listen to the issues raised in our debates and think about them carefully as the Bill progresses. I add my thanks to the Minister, to her predecessor and to the Bill team, not least to the current Minister for going beyond her normal duties to help me with my maths abilities, which clearly need some improvement. I very much hope that this will be the Bill that delivers the skills and post-16 education system we need, unlike so many of its unfortunate predecessors.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I have prepared a few words that I intended to say on the Motion that the Bill Do Now Pass. I thought that the Minister would have moved that but we seem to have got there anyway, by whatever route. I am sure noble Lords will not be too unhappy about that, although perhaps the clerk may be.

As noble Lords have demonstrated over four days in Committee and two on Report, the Bill as drafted was not fit for purpose and required considerable improvement. In addition the Minister herself has introduced three concessions, not the least of which concerns net-zero emissions targets, which of course we welcome. Noble Lords have supported eight amendments; what was most remarkable was the extent to which they were the product of effective cross-party planning and execution. Of course, as noble Lords know, no win in your Lordships’ House can be achieved without some cross-party co-operation. But we believe that the number of noble Lords from the government Benches who made clear their dissatisfaction with various parts of the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, has just suggested, ought to give the Minister and her Government pause for thought.

With three of their defeats involving amendments in the names of former Conservative Secretaries of State for Education, the Government need to accept that with regard to the Bill they do not possess a monopoly of wisdom on matters as diverse as universal credit conditionality and the withdrawal of BTECs. My noble friend Lady Sherlock has a unique ability: she can explain universal credit in an understandable manner. I have never found anyone else who can achieve that feat.

It would be unkind to press the Minister any further on the mystical missing amendments on the lifelong loan entitlement, because I suspect that in her private moments, she asks herself the same questions as noble Lords: do they really exist? Will they ever appear? We have been promised them so often that on these Benches the suspense is now killing us. We also await details of sharia student finance for both higher education and further education to be announced as part of the spending review, as well as an announcement on fees, which the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, the then Minister, promised in Committee.

However, I would like to record my admiration for the Minister’s ability to pick up the baton on the Bill after it was, I think I can say, thrust at her midway through its consideration in your Lordships’ House. I should say that the change of Minister caught us on these Benches by surprise, because we thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, had coped admirably up until then—although it would appear that was not the view shared by the Leader of the House and the Chief Whip. On my behalf and that of my noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Wilcox, I say for the record that we want to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for her work on the Bill and for her openness and willingness to engage with us. I also say on our joint behalf that that is not to suggest that the Minister—the noble Baroness, Lady Barran—is any less so in that regard.

I also add my thanks to the Bill team for the briefings it facilitated and its willingness to discuss with us, openly and in detail, aspects of the Bill that were unclear or about which we had concerns. It certainly helped to put us more in tune with the thinking on the Bill, even if we were not always convinced by the arguments.

I thank all noble Lords who have been involved with the Bill at various stages. Of course, the Public Bill Office has, as ever, been extremely helpful. All Ministers, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Barran, Lady Berridge, Lady Chisholm and Lady Penn, have been most helpful and always pleasant to deal with. Given that my team has also contained two noble Baronesses and a female legislative and political adviser, I have clearly been the token male in all this.

I thank my colleagues, my noble friends Lady Sherlock and Lady Wilcox, for their support and advice, particularly last week, when the change of date for the second day of Report made it impossible for me to participate. They achieved five wins out of five on that occasion, which perhaps suggests that I should have absented myself more often.

As noble Lords are aware, Ministers have a vast array of officials behind them at times like this, and rightly so, but, as the Opposition, we have just one person: Rhian Copple, the legislative and political adviser for our team. She has been an endless source of ideas and support in so many ways, not least in drafting amendments and negotiating with the Public Bill Office, representatives of other parties and Cross-Benchers. We all owe her a huge debt of gratitude.

I wish the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill good luck in another place. It will need it.