Education and Training (Welfare of Children) Bill

Lord Addington Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, this is one of those odd Bills where, when you look at it, you think, “You mean you actually need this? We missed this as we went through?”. I have probably been here too long and become cynical, but I said, “Right, what is the horror story behind this? What has gone wrong?”. Apparently, nothing has. This may be more by luck than by judgment, but nothing has gone wrong, so I commend everyone involved in this for taking action before they absolutely had to, because we are far too often very reactive.

I hope that, if we see something like this, all of us will bring it to attention and that the Government will respond in the same way. Everyone involved in this should take some credit for this: the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, the people who did this in the House of Commons and those involved going forward.

When she sums up, can the Minister—or the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, whichever is more appropriate—give us a bit of an idea about how it came to be and was spotted. That would be helpful going forward. Looking down at education, especially further education, and when you look through this and some of the changes that have taken place, it is understandable that it happened. However, the fact that we went through this without something going badly wrong does not mean to say that we will get away with it next time. Responsibility and being able to have an overview will be very important.

Further education is a very complicated area that spills into both secondary and higher education and connects in odd ways. This should have been done in the first place. I congratulate all those involved on seeing this and changing it, and I congratulate the Government on not fighting it but helping it get through. However, please can we have an overview of the process of finding this and what we will do to make sure that other oversights like this do not occur in the future?

Having said those rather grumpy and petulant words, I hope that the Bill gets through quickly because it is clearly needed.