Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I too welcome what the Government have done in responding to some of the concerns that have been expressed about the Bill. They have shown their willingness to listen and to make amendments and I commend them for that.

I just want to raise an issue around secure accommodation. My warning lights always start flashing on the subject of children’s secure accommodation. It is very difficult to regulate this area and to ensure that good care is provided, because the unit costs tend to be extremely high. If we have now got to the point where we have to take children over the border—where they have to cross the Tweed to get their secure accommodation—we should start to be concerned. This sector has shrunk and shrunk and shrunk in England. This was starting when I was chairman of the Youth Justice Board, up to 2003, and it is very difficult to get people to work in it, to set the systems up and to ensure that they continue to be safe.

There is something to be said, not just for the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, but for taking an independent look at this sector and its economic viability. This is an area where, in effect, you almost have to pay for spare places to be available because you do not know when a child is going to require that accommodation. The Government now need to have a long, hard look at this. The sector has been shrinking for some time; it has proved difficult to get the finances right and to secure good staff. People are doing their best, but things can often go wrong in this sector. It is very difficult to ensure that these places are regulated properly. The Minister might want to write later, rather than responding today, but will he and his department consider whether a review of the sector is long overdue?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has paid due tribute to Members of this House for their contribution as the Bill was scrutinised some months ago. In return, the Minister’s willingness—and that of his colleague in the other place, Mr Edward Timpson—has been commendable and is much appreciated. There is no doubt that the Bill has changed quite considerably. I particularly welcome the fact that regulation of social workers is now to be undertaken by an independent body, subject to the oversight of the PSA. I also welcome the Government’s decision to accept that the innovation clauses which the Lords took out would not be reinserted in the other place. Essentially, they involved giving local authorities the ability to override primary legislation, so we have maintained an important principle.

The Minister has introduced a number of interesting amendments. I will follow other noble Lords in asking one or two questions. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, have raised important points in relation to secure children’s homes in Scotland and the amendments brought forward by the Minister. There can, of course, be no objection whatever to dealing with the technical deficiencies which have been identified, but there is a concern that, across the last six years, there has been a, I think, 22% reduction in secure accommodation places for children. There would be a concern if these provisions were used inappropriately to transfer young people across the border because there were not sufficient resources in England. I hope that the Minister can assure me that this is purely a technical provision, that the Government are actually committed to ensuring that there are sufficient places in England, and that young people are not sent unnecessarily long distances from their homes. As the noble Lord and the noble Earl said, that cannot do very much to improve the quality of their lives, which is the purpose of secure accommodation.

I recognise that the provisions on improvement standards for social workers are a logical outcome of the Government accepting the proposition that social worker regulation should come under an independent regulator. The noble Lord said some welcome words about the Government’s desire to encourage the development of a sector-led improvement body. Clearly, efforts have been made in this regard in the past that have not been deemed to work, but the Government are right to try to inspire another go at getting this right. The noble Lord will probably know that both BASW and UNISON have raised concerns about the Secretary of State setting standards and whether they are linked to the national assessment and accreditation scheme. I shall not go into that in detail, but clearly there is a concern among social workers about the way in which the scheme could be used potentially to penalise individual social workers. I hope that the noble Lord will set my mind at rest on that.

In taking forward these proposals on the establishment of a new regulator and the setting of standards and their assessment by the Secretary of State, I hope that there will be, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said, full engagement with the sector, including with UNISON, BASW and other bodies. There is a particular role for the chief inspector of children’s services here. I look across the Floor of the House at the noble Lord, Lord Laming, who was a most distinguished chief inspector of social services a few years ago. It is a very difficult role comprising being a principal adviser to Ministers and being head of a profession while upholding the public interest. The chief inspector of children’s services has a very strong role to play in trying to pull the stakeholders together rather than necessarily just confronting them. I hope that she and the Minister will take this suggestion as one that is meant in the best possible way. In the end, if this provision is to work effectively, it is very important that we take the profession with us as much as we can on this journey of improvement. The Opposition fully support the Government in seeking to improve standards in the profession. That is why we support the broad thrust of the Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, talked about training providers. There has been concern, particularly in the light of the debate on the higher education Bill, about who the providers might be. If the Minister could give some assurance about the quality of provision in social work training, that would be very helpful.

I am grateful to the Minister for his work on the Bill, the amendments he has brought forward and for the overall thrust of where we are now going, which we support.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their helpful comments. I repeat that these amendments, although important, are, for the most part, relatively minor. However, I will attempt to answer the points that were raised.

On the point about the role of higher education institutions, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, as I said, the amendments in this group already include provision for financial assistance for organisations, including HEIs, providing social work training. The Government already play a role in ensuring that adequate initial HEI training is available and are absolutely committed to continuing to do this. This clause allows for this funding to be provided to HEIs, and the Government are committed to continuing this support.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, asked about funding. We have published a new burden assessment of the Bill’s provisions, including a commitment to provide additional funding where appropriate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talked about issues that some parents face when their child transfers from primary to secondary education. I would be delighted to meet her and the parents concerned to discuss this matter further.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Warner and Lord Hunt, also talked about secure placements in Scotland and generally. Placements in Scottish secure homes have happened, commonly, over time. These amendments are necessary to fill a legislative gap relating to secure placements in Scotland by English and Welsh local authorities—a technical point. While important, they do not seek to change policy; as I say, they are a technical fix.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

18: Before Clause 41, insert the following new Clause—
“Constitution of further education corporations
(1) Section 20 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 (constitution of corporation and conduct of the institution) is amended as follows.(2) After subsection (4) insert—“(5) An instrument must provide for the role of the Clerk to include providing advice to the corporation with regard to matters including—(a) the operation of its powers,(b) the conduct of its business,(c) matters of governance practice, and(d) general procedural matters.””

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, we had a very interesting debate in Committee about the role of clerks in FE institutions. It is clear from our debates on the Bill that these institutions face many challenges. We have agreed that it is important to have the highest quality of people appointed to their governing bodies and that clerks can be very helpful in giving advice to them. The Minister said he would give some consideration to this and I look forward to his response. I beg to move.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to continue our discussion in Committee, about the importance of good governance in FE colleges, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has referred. As I said in our earlier discussion, I fully recognise the important role played by clerks as expert advisers to governing bodies of FE institutions. As the Minister responsible for governance in schools, I have made it a priority to improve this vital area, including the important role of clerks. However, we believe that it is essentially a matter of improving practice, not legislative change, for reasons that I will outline.

We are supporting the role of clerks through development programmes run by the Education and Training Foundation. The noble Lord will also have received a copy of a letter from the Association of Colleges setting out some of the steps it is taking to strengthen governance. Hard copies of that letter are available for noble Lords today, should they wish to see it. I note from the letter that the AoC is currently undertaking a review of the existing code of practice on governance, to which many colleges adhere. I will be meeting it shortly to hear what further action it intends to take. There is clearly a strong and shared aspiration across this House for strengthening governance. The sector is keen to engage and it is only right for others, including government, to take up that invitation, and to offer the right combination of challenge and support. While legislation might appear attractive, it should not be something that is reached for without good evidence as to the nature of any problems, and full consideration of the most appropriate solutions. In an area as complex as governance, simple legislative approaches are unlikely to be effective in delivering real improvement.

The effect of the noble Lord’s amendment would be to reinstate one element of model articles for colleges that applied prior to the Education Act 2011. That would deliberately limit the freedom that colleges currently have in respect of the contents of their instrument and articles, by requiring them to retain provision in those articles regarding the role of the clerk. I have significant doubts about the efficacy of such an approach. A recent sample of the contents of the instrument and articles of 10 colleges, carried out by my officials, found that in every case the relevant documents already contained a provision similar or identical to that proposed in the amendment. If that sample is representative of the sector as a whole then it would suggest that the amendment will have no substantive effect—certainly not in terms of delivering the improvement to standards of governance which I believe is the noble Lord’s intention—particularly as all 10 colleges in the sample had been subject to intervention by the Further Education Commissioner. In many cases, the commissioner found significant failures of governance. Although I will not read out the relevant sections from the commissioner’s reports, which are published on GOV.UK, there is more than one instance of unsatisfactory clerking arrangements being a significant contributory factor. Those failures occurred despite the role of the clerk being set out in the instrument and articles.

This evidence strengthens the argument that setting out the role of the clerk in the instrument and articles, as would be required by the amendment, is by no means a guarantee of good governance in practice. Nor, unfortunately, is it an effective protection against poor governance. Our focus has to be on good practice in governance, and what more we can do to share good practice, not introducing additional box-ticking measures.

In conclusion, I stress that strengthening governance clearly remains a priority for the sector and for the Government and we will continue to drive this. In the small number of cases where there are significant failures in governance, we will continue to intervene swiftly and effectively to ensure that governing bodies are held to account, and that lessons are learned. We must continue to drive up the performance of all governing bodies. This approach strikes the right balance in helping to ensure a robust and well-governed sector that is in the best position to deliver its important mission for learners, employers, and the community. For these reasons, I believe that greater statutory prescription, as set out in the amendment, is unfortunately unlikely to be effective in achieving those goals. I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, as the Minister mentioned the ETF, I remind the House of my declaration that my wife is a consultant to it. I am grateful to the Minister, particularly because he is going to meet the AoC to discuss the outcome of its review. I accept that good practice is probably the best way forward. However, I hope the Government will keep up the pressure on the AoC and colleges to ensure that they employ good people who can provide robust advice. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her full reply on all this, but I am left as confused as at the start. There is this curious thing that the institute can grant a licence back to the awarding body that actually created the materials in the first place or can give them to multiple awarding organisations. I find that a curious concept given that awarding organisations have to have a commercial structure and to make ends meet, and the materials with which they trade are very often their assessment materials. The Minister has made great play of the fact that there is flexibility in the Bill. But the trouble is that, by the time the Bill goes through with these measures enshrined that copyright is transferred to the institute, there is not much flexibility there if copyright is once lost to the institute.

There were a number of other things that I will read in detail in the Minister’s reply. I will not go through the different points that I have scribbled down because they merit a lot of thought. I also pick up the request made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that we will need some serious conversations about this because it will come back at Third Reading for a vote unless we can get some clearer reassurance.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Can we be clear that this can be brought back at Third Reading and that we can have a debate on principles? That would be very important in bringing this to a conclusion tonight. It is essential that we know that we can bring this back at Third Reading.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Yes. It will definitely come back at Third Reading.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

There is no guarantee at all because the clerks are tight about what they will allow. The Government have to agree that they will allow us to bring it back. That is why I made the point.

[Lord Nash]

I should make it clear that if the noble Baroness and the noble Lord wish to test the temperature of the House, they should do so now.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

64: Before Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—
“Constitution of further education corporations
(1) Section 20 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 is amended as follows.(2) After subsection (4) insert—“(5) An instrument must provide for the role of the Clerk to include providing advice to the corporation with regard to matters including—(a) the operation of its powers,(b) the conduct of its business,(c) matters of governance practice, and(d) general procedural matters.””

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interest in that my wife is a consultant at the Education and Training Foundation.

The very fact that we have been debating insolvency measures in the Bill underpins the responsibility of the boards of FE institutions. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, referred to the issue of financial competence and the initiatives being taken on governance, which are welcome. We should certainly pay tribute to the public-spirited citizens who undertake these roles, which have become ever more onerous in the past few years.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, will know that my main experience is in the National Health Service. Between 2011 and 2014, I chaired the board of an NHS foundation trust. In many ways, the way that FE colleges and NHS foundation trusts have developed is similar. They are very similar institutions: they both provide a public service and are almost entirely dependent on public funding, although the routes by which it reaches the institutions are a little different, but increasingly they have to stand on their own two feet and, if you like, the buck stops with the board. That is very different from the way that FE used to be, with institutions that were owned by the local authority. It is the same for NHS foundation trusts.

However, there is a difference in governance. In the NHS there is essentially a two-tier structure. As chairman of the board of directors, I was appointed by the governing body, which was elected by the members of the foundation trust—in my case, 100,000 of them—who were essentially patients, members of the community and staff. As chairman of the board of directors, I had regularly to account to the governors in public meetings every other month and meet them individually as well, as did the chief executive—whose appointment had to be ratified by the governing body—the executive directors and the other non-executive directors. I and the non-executive directors had a term of office that was subject to reappointment, but only at the pleasure of the governing body.

We also had a senior independent director, a non-executive director to whom any member of the board could go if they were concerned about anything to do with the running of the board, the performance of the chairman or indeed the performance of the chief executive. When outside regulators came to review the performance of the organisation, they would be able to talk directly to the senior independent director. In addition, we had a highly qualified and experienced company secretary who was charged with ensuring that the trust acted within the law and exercised good governance, and acted as an adviser to the chairman on difficult issues, including the performance of the chief executive and the executive directors. This was not an issue in my case but if, for instance, I as chairman had decided along with my non-executive colleagues that we wished to remove the chief executive, it is to the company secretary that we would have gone, and he would have advised us on the way to do it. He would have done so without informing the chief executive, except where due process would at some point be required.

Looking at governance in further education, I just do not get the sense that there is that robustness. In too many colleges, the members of the governing body tend to be self-perpetuating—it was interesting to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Buscombe, about financial literacy among those governors—the principals often play too much of a role in deciding who the members of the governing body will be, and the board’s members are of course accountable to no one but themselves and do not meet in public. So there is very little transparency about the performance of the boards of FE institutions, and there has to be some suspicion that, at least at some colleges, they do not exercise challenge and scrutiny as much as they should.

This therefore makes the role of the clerk to the governing body very important. However, there is a problem, to which I referred at Second Reading. The Minister will know that one of the reasons we are having these insolvency provisions is that some institutions have got themselves into trouble financially. We also know that in some cases that is because principals have decided to undertake ventures that, if they were subject to proper scrutiny, I do not think they would have been allowed to. There is an instance in Birmingham where basically a principal was going on foreign adventures—there was a fashion in FE for colleges to try to open up and do deals abroad—without the kind of expertise and scrutiny that we are talking about, and almost all those adventures ended up in trouble. There is evidence that the college’s board of governors did not exercise due scrutiny and diligence when it came to those issues.

There was a paper by the former Learning and Skills Improvement Service identifying a number of issues with governance. It stated that in FE there can be too much polite consensus to avoid conflict, with insufficient challenge, a business focus at the expense of core educational performance, a taking on of big risks but not managing them, with the clerk being undervalued in being able to stimulate and facilitate good governance. This is where I come to the role of the clerk. These days, I do not think the word “clerk” aptly describes what needs to be done. Unfortunately, some principals seem to have mistaken the role of clerk for that of secretary, and that is a big problem. At national level, I have no argument at all with the Minister’s department, the FE commissioner or Ofsted, all of which have on a number of occasions given their support to professionally qualified clerks at a high level.

On the ground, there is a suspicion that that has not always been reflected. There is some evidence that, when clerks leave, it is not unusual to see the role offered at a lesser salary with lesser hours and for it to be offered internally, to an administrator. Unbelievably, there have been reports of examples of the principal’s secretary being asked to undertake that role. That is completely unacceptable, and I am surprised that the national regulators have not ruled on that. It reflects the fact that governing bodies are poor and simply do not challenge principals when they make decisions that are totally unacceptable, such as that one.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I recognise the very important role played by clerks as expert advisers to governing bodies of further education institutions, and I pay tribute to the contribution by clerks and governing bodies up and down the country. As the responsibilities of those bodies increase, we must also support the development of the capability and professionalism among clerks. As the Minister responsible for governors in schools, I can completely see the importance of this matter. That is why we support the Education and Training Foundation in the delivery of a new professional development programme for clerks to be rolled out this year. Sector representative bodies also deliver a range of activities to support clerks, including a very active clerks’ network and best-practice materials. The ETF is also supporting the increased professionalism of clerks through the improving clerk to company secretary programme to take account in changing college structures and clerks’ responsibilities, whereby clerks can attain company secretary qualifications. We are supporting chairs of boards of governors through the national leaders of governance programme, where experienced chairs mentor others who need support.

There is a well-established statutory requirement for the instrument of an FE institution to make provision for there to be a clerk, and for provision for the responsibilities of that role to be set out in the instrument. That is set out in Schedule 4 to the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. This means that the importance of the clerk’s role, which I know is recognised by members of this House, is also reflected in law.

While further statutory prescription in relation to duties and responsibilities of the clerk may appear attractive, I do not believe that it is the right approach in this case. I will elaborate. The amendment proposes a few high-level matters relating to advice that clerks should provide and, as proposed, overlooks certain features that would reasonably be expected to be an important part of any clerk’s role. These include, for example, independence from the senior management team at the institution and a duty to take appropriate action if the board, the chair or one of the committees appears to be at risk of acting outside their powers or to be proposing actions that may be unlawful.

The 1992 Act sets up high-level requirements for the instrument and articles, including a requirement for there to be a clerk and for the clerk’s responsibilities to be set out in the instrument. Since 2011, colleges have not required the consent of the Secretary of State to amend their instruments. The detailed content of the instrument, including the details of the responsibilities of the clerk, now largely rests with the governing body of the FE corporation rather than with Ministers.

In my view, the existing balance between the requirements set out in legislation and the responsibilities of the governing body is the right one. We should be very careful about removing from colleges the necessary flexibility that enables governing bodies to adapt and tailor their governance arrangements to fit the circumstances of their institution. That is particularly important in a sector as varied as further education. It is obviously important to guard against the possibility that greater prescription has the unintended effect of undermining the responsibility and thus the accountability of governing bodies. The careful balance set out in the current legislation in relation to matters of governance, including in respect of the role of the clerk, remains important going forward.

Principals do not appoint board members. Governors are appointed to the board by the board itself. A good principal will have a strong interest in having a capable body. When there is a material pre-existing relationship between the principal and a member of the board, it should be declared as part of the appointment process. The Association of Colleges’ model job description states that the clerk should be independent of the senior management team and should provide unbiased advice.

We do not think this amendment would add materially to the conduct of clerking or to governing bodies of FE colleges. We believe clerking is generally working well, and the quality of clerking has undoubtedly improved significantly in recent years. However, as I have spent part of the last four years attempting, I think with some success, to raise the importance and effectiveness of governance in schools, and in view of what noble Lords have said, I will go back and investigate their concerns and see what more we might be able to do in this regard, because it is important. Legislation may be a very blunt instrument, but I will go back to look at it further.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am very grateful to the Minister. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 64 withdrawn.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

15: Schedule 1, page 21, line 7, at end insert—
“( ) After subsection (5) insert—“(5A) In the exercising of its functions, the Institute must cooperate with—(a) Ofqual,(b) Ofsted,(c) The Office for Students,(d) The Skills Funding Agency, andany other body identified by the Secretary of State as having an interest in the delivery or monitoring of apprenticeships.””

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, at the heart of many of our debates so far there has been a desire to ensure that there is clear accountability for ensuring that at the end of the day we see the development of high-quality apprenticeships. Given the number of bodies involved and the complexity of the organisation and regulation of apprenticeships and technical education, I do not think there is any surprise that we see some ambiguity around this area. The question raised just now by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, about the definition of an apprenticeship and how to change it showed some of the complexities that we are struggling with.

The Minister very kindly sent us a chart showing where current responsibilities lie. In summary, they seem to be as follows. The Education Funding Agency funds provision for pre-19 students. The Skills Funding Agency funds provision for students over 19, plus apprenticeships, and operates the apprenticeship service. Ofqual regulates the qualification and awarding bodies, including certain apprenticeships. The Institute for Apprenticeships determines the scope of technical education, sets the criteria and awards licences for the delivery of technical education qualifications; it approves and reviews standards and ensures they are upheld through contractual arrangements. Then there is Ofsted, which inspects the quality of training for level 2 and 3 apprenticeships. The information from the Minister is that HEFCE’s role in relation to levels 4 and 5 is still to be determined.

On any reading, that is a pretty complex picture. Is any one of those organisations responsible, in the end, for high-quality apprenticeships? Which of those bodies does the Minister hold ultimately accountable? For instance, which would be called in by the Education Select Committee, or, as I suspect, would they all be because no one is actually going to take ultimate responsibility?

What about the actions of employers? We know that some apprenticeships fail because of a lack of commitment from employers. My noble friend Lady Cohen described this very eloquently on our first day in Committee. What enforcement powers can be taken against employers who, for instance, undermine the apprenticeship schemes which their employees are on, for one reason or another? Ultimately, if the institute is the nearest we have got to an oversight body, does it have enough clout to ensure that it can influence all the other agencies involved? If the answer to the question is Ministers, what mechanisms do they have to give strategic direction and oversight? My noble friend doubted whether the noble Lord liked to bang heads together. I assume he does like to, but can he and how is it going to be done?

The amendment is a modest but, I hope, useful contribution to this. I have borrowed the concept from health legislation, where we are used to having a number of national bodies—either quangos, quasi-independent or to a certain extent independent—which are under a statutory duty to co-operate with each other. It might be useful to have a similar concept in relation to apprenticeships and technical education, given the diffusion of responsibility among many different organisations. The amendment is modest, but behind it lies the plea that, in the end, there is some organisation that can clearly be held to account for the quality of apprenticeships in future. At the moment, I have some doubts as to whether we can actually do that. I beg to move.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I have a couple of questions to add to those of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. It is important that a single organisation should keep a list of approved qualifications. At present, it is unclear whether this is going to be IFATE or Ofqual. I hope the Committee can have an answer to that. Secondly, I am unclear how far IFATE’s remit goes into the world of commercial qualifications: the sort of things where a commercial training provider will persuade an industry that this is a particular bit of training they should have for their staff; it has some sort of qualification name attached to it but is completely outside the government-funded system. Will IFATE have any influence in this area, or is it entirely outside its remit?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt, for this amendment. I could not help but notice that the moment the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, made the very inappropriate comparison with Superman that I appeared, according to the annunciator anyway, to be in two places at once, as was pointed out to me by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie. I am not sure that even Superman managed that, but at least I am back now.

It is essential that all the public organisations that have a role in the delivery of apprenticeships and technical education, as elucidated by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, work together to ensure a coherent system which delivers a high-quality result.

The noble Lord asked the perfectly fair question, “Who is in charge?”. The Government will work to ensure that the system works and will keep this under review via the accountability statement, which we will share with noble Lords.

The noble Lord asked what the Minister’s role in this was. I guess, if the system does not work, Ministers will intervene to change the system, but individual bodies are responsible for their individual part of the system. The strategic guidance document will ask the institute to carry out a leadership role—a co-ordination role—across the system.

In response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on quality versus quantity, I repeat a point I made on the first day of Committee that our target is 3 million. We believe it is a realistic target, but quality must come first.

Paragraph 10(1)(b) of Schedule A1 to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which will be inserted into that Act by the Enterprise Act 2016, will allow the Institute for Apprenticeships to co-operate with any organisation that it deems necessary for it to carry out its specific functions. It is therefore unnecessary to include the requirement in the Bill.

The Bill includes a data-sharing provision to allow the named organisations freely to share data and information between them, to ensure that they can all deliver their functions properly. This, in addition to the legislation referred to above, is all that is needed in primary legislation to allow those bodies to work together.

In addition, the amendment would require the institute to co-operate with the named organisations but, without a similar requirement on them in return, the effect would be unbalanced. However, that is not my main point.

It is in the interests of all of the organisations named in this amendment to work well together to enable them to fulfil their statutory duties. Past experience demonstrates such a willingness. As the legislation will permit this, we see no need for a further requirement. In preparation for the launch of the institute in April this year, these organisations and others are working together to agree an accountability statement which sets out each of their separate roles and responsibilities in relation to apprenticeships. There is a very positive working relationship between them and a palpable desire to ensure the institute is a real success.

In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, about how Ofsted will carry out its risk assessment approach, I am meeting Ofsted later this week and will discuss this with it in some detail and write to the noble Lord and copy my letter to other interested Peers. I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough by what I have said to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. We always thought that he had super powers and are glad to have confirmation of it. This debate has been helpful.

The Minister has promised an accountability statement and it would be helpful to have that before Report. He said that Ministers will intervene and, importantly, that the institute will have a leadership and co-ordinating role. One question is whether it would be helpful to have that backed up by some legislative provision to reinforce it, which is perhaps something that we can come back to.

On the question of the 3 million and quality, I hear what the Minister says. I take his point that 3 million is deliverable but that quality comes first. The question I would like to ask him is whether the Treasury and No. 10 Downing Street share that view. My experience is that, when push comes to shove, the key indicator on which his department will be held accountable will be the 3 million, rather than the quality indicator. Essentially, we are trying to give some cover to the Government to say that at the bottom line quality is more important than the numbers.

I take the point about the drafting of the amendment —that the duty should have been reciprocal—and we can probably come back to it, but this has been a very helpful short debate. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in saying that, at heart, we want to hear how this will operate, because that will inform our future debates. Like my noble friend Lord Knight, I have no problem at all with competition where it can drive quality and innovation. However, that depends on the nature of the market and the capacity and nous of the commissioning body. Frankly, my concern is that government procurement has not usually shown itself able to have the agility that my noble friend asked for. The constraints put upon public sector procurement drive you to award tenders on a crude price basis. Ministers always sign up to concepts of value for money and outcomes, as the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. But as anyone dealing with the Government will know, the reality is that it always comes down to price. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, made a very convincing argument on the principles, but the real question is on the practice of procurement and licensing.

There was a tension in what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said. He had two worries: one was that the franchising system envisaged would allow too little time for a provider to invest morally, intellectually and financially in the very long term; equally, the other was that because of the single-provider approach, there will be little competition at the end of the franchise period. I suppose he would say the risk is that we end up with the worst of all worlds, with low-quality provision and a provider that is not interested in the long term, and the institute having no choice at the end of the day.

It comes down to capacity. We are talking about an institute with 80 people. I hope that most of their time will be spent overseeing standards, because I for one simply do not trust the approach that is being taken. How can we rely on employers, given that their record in this country is so dismal? I hope the institute will have people who can talk to and challenge the panels. But who will be left to oversee these contracts? The record of government and public sector bodies in procurement is dismal.

My other question is to the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. In its deliberations, did the review look at the ability of the public sector to commission in a sensible, grown-up way, rather than the usual crude way that is taken? My noble friend Lord Adonis is in his place, and I am tempted to invite him to talk about some examples of that in rail franchising. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, mentioned this at Second Reading, and clearly there are a number of examples of where the Department for Transport has gone for a bid that was overambitious from the company concerned and has had to come to the rescue. There are also examples of the argument around whether a franchise can be extended to enable the train operator to invest in the future development of services. I hope that the Minister’s department will look at that experience before getting into this sort of system. For me, it is not so much about the principle but about the capacity of the institute to handle what could be a very difficult issue.

[Baroness Buscombe]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords, and in particular my noble friend Lord Lucas, for this very helpful debate on these amendments. My task is to try to reassure all noble Lords that we are on the right page and that we are not talking about what we have had in the past, which was all about a race to the bottom. That was the reason the Sainsbury review was set up in the first place. I hope I can reassure noble Lords that we are trying to achieve the right thing, and I shall explain in more detail how this is going to work.

On Amendment 17, good-quality standards developed by employers and other relevant experts are at the heart of the apprenticeship and technical education reforms, and we must ensure that they are fit for purpose. In future, standards will form the basis of both apprenticeships and technical education qualifications in the reformed system, and they must be appropriate for both pathways. One of the cornerstones of the apprenticeship reforms has been to move away from a qualifications-based system—in the past, apprentices have collected a number of small, often low-quality, qualifications throughout their apprenticeship—to a single end-point assessment that tests all-round competency in the occupation.

By mandating, as the amendment proposes, the inclusion of a technical education qualification in each standard, we would be moving back towards this system, and reintroducing something which was a significant factor in the decreasing quality of apprenticeships in the past under the framework model. There may be some cases, such as degree apprenticeships, where including a qualification is appropriate, but we should not require it in every case. The purpose of the apprenticeship reforms is that they are employer led, so employers and other experts should have their input for each standard.

In addition, this approach may also blur the lines between the two pathways, which are intentionally different. For those on an apprenticeship, the individual primarily gains the knowledge, skills and behaviours set out in the standard through learning on the job and 20% off-the-job training, which is then tested through a single end-point assessment. A technical education qualification is taught largely in a college environment, often supplemented by a work placement and other steps leading to the new TE certificate. By including a technical education qualification in all apprenticeships—which would be the effect of the amendment—we would lose the essential flexibility of standards developed by employers and others and limit the breadth of skills that can be obtained through an apprenticeship.

I noted that a number of Second Reading speeches, particularly that of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, were very strong on this point of flexibility. Several noble Lords have touched on this this afternoon. We do not want to lose flexibility through this process, and we must have some clarity.

The apprenticeship end-point assessment is the equivalent of the technical education qualification for those who have undertaken an apprenticeship, but also captures a wider range of skills and behaviours as well as knowledge. It needs to be given time to gain the value and worth with employers that many currently associate with qualifications. Including a technical education qualification would undermine this by narrowing an apprenticeship so that the measurement is more focused on a knowledge-based qualification and less on occupational competency.

I can, however, reassure the noble Lord that our apprenticeship system is flexible and that qualifications can be included in apprenticeships where that is what employers need, in circumstances, for example, where failing to include a qualification would put the learner at a disadvantage in the workplace or where it is a statutory requirement. We do not believe that technical qualifications should be included in all apprenticeships.

Amendments 26 to 30 relate to copyright. I understand the concerns my noble friend Lord Lucas has raised on copyright, and I hope that I might be able to provide an explanation that will put his mind at rest. My noble friend has proposed that the institute should retain the copyright for standards and common qualification criteria rather than for relevant course documents. Amendments in the Enterprise Act, due to come into force in April, already make provision for the copyright for standards to transfer to the institute upon approval. It follows that the institute would own the copyright for any common qualification criteria that it has produced. By common criteria, we mean design features of the qualifications that are the same, irrespective of the route studied.

The qualifications system in England is unique. Qualifications that attract public funding are developed and supplied not by the Government but by awarding organisations. Our reforms will see the institute taking responsibility for ensuring that only high-quality technical qualifications that match employer-set standards are approved by the institute. This will see the institute working with employers and other relevant stakeholders to set the content of qualifications. There will be a number of people involved in this, on the different panels, including ex-apprentices.

While we recognise that it is a departure from the current system, the transfer of copyright for relevant course documents is an important feature of the reforms. The scope of the licences for the delivery of qualifications and the details of relevant course documents will be established in due course. These may well include a specific technical assessment design specification, as well as other documents that are key to the make-up and assessment of a qualification. We would expect the institute to work closely with key stakeholders, as we propose to do, to make sure that the detail is right. This will, of course, include the organisations that develop qualifications.

If copyright for relevant course documents does not reside with the institute, we could end up with a technical education system where any innovation and employer needs are undermined by commercial interests. While we believe absolutely in competition, we want competition to raise quality and standards. If an organisation other than the institute holds the copyright for a particular qualification indefinitely, this would effectively create a stranglehold that would make it difficult for other organisations to enter the market. This would clearly not be in the public interest or fair value for the taxpayer.

However, we do not want an inflexible system. The institute will be able to grant a licence to an organisation or person for use of documents for which it owns the copyright. This could include granting a licence back to the organisation that has developed the qualification. There are also important safeguards provided for in new Section A2DA.

Amendments 28 and 29 seek to clarify that the institute may grant more than one person a licence or be assigned a right or interest in any copyright document. I would like to reassure noble Lords that it is precisely our intention that more than one person may be assigned a licence if in particular circumstances this is appropriate. I would also like to draw noble Lords’ attention to Section 6 of the Interpretation Act 1978. This stipulates that, unless it is clear that there is a contrary intention, wherever there are words in the singular these include the plural and vice versa. This means that the institute may grant a licence, right or interest in any copyright document to more than one person, should this be appropriate.

I hope that that goes some way towards reassuring noble Lords. In addition, I would like to touch on one or two of the questions—all of them if possible. If I do not reassure everybody, I would be very happy to write to noble Lords. My noble friend Lord Lucas questioned this single route, but each route will include a number of qualifications, each based on a cluster of occupations. If an awarding organisation fails, the institute’s copyright arrangements will allow another awarding organisation to step in. What is important is that this primary legislation does not tie our hands. Panels will be starting work this summer on the detail of the different courses. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, who is, sadly, not in her place, has explained in detail why the commission decided to depart from the existing system and say that it is much better to have one organisation.

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I say to the noble Lords opposite that the one thing we are not doing is leaving it to the public sector—I look at the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and hope that he is listening. He talked about it all coming down to price. Absolutely not. That may have been the situation under his Government, but if it was, we want to move away from it.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

With the greatest respect, that is a ridiculous comment, and I do not know why the noble Baroness said it. We have not heard whether the institute, with its 80 staff, has the capacity to handle what looks to me like a very complex procurement situation. In fact, we have heard very little about the institute’s capacity, when it must also be concerned with whether the panels producing the standards are doing the right thing. I have yet to hear any explanation of why the contracting process that has been undertaken will ensure that quality is at the forefront. What I said was that public sector procurement tends not to go down that route. If the noble Baroness wants an example of what the Government are doing at the moment—I must declare my interest as president of the Health Care Supply Association—I would say that many of the current procurement processes in health are very much about price at the expense of quality.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

First, it is not being handed over to the Government but to the institute, which is funded—

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, there is no such thing as independent bodies in this area. All the bodies listed are going to be in one way or another under the heavy influence of government. The very fact that we are legislating for it means that, in the end, Ministers will take responsibility for what the institute does. There is no other way the Government can discharge accountability. Clearly, the Government will use the usual public sector tendering approach, which is a dead hand and will not, in my view, allow for innovation.

I do not know what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, is going to do, but one thing that has struck me about the meetings we have had so far is that we have not really met the institute or its acting chief executive or the board members. I think it would be invaluable to listen to them to understand how they are going to take this process forward. We have not been convinced that the institute, to which I assume all the usual public accountabilities will apply, will have the actual capacity to handle the kind of sophisticated tendering that is required. That seems to me to be the problem.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I am sorry that the noble Lord seems to be taking quite a negative approach to this. As I said earlier, this Bill is for primary legislation to set a framework. Of course, there may be a situation where Ministers may have to have oversight, but the reality is that we want this to work as charged by the Sainsbury review. We are responding to a situation where we want to turn around something that has clearly not worked, and has clearly not been successful or provided the best outcomes for young people going into the world of work. We are trying to change that.

All I can say at this point is that we are happy to write to noble Lords to explain in more detail what we are trying to achieve through this process. As I said earlier, the legislation will not tie the hands of the institute. Flexibility and quality are key words in how this will develop.

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Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

20: Schedule 1, page 25, line 23, at end insert—
“(1A) A technical education qualification approved under this section, which is undertaken by a person over compulsory school age but under 19, must support the person’s entitlement to the core entitlement under section 17C of the Education Act 1996 (the core entitlement).”

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, Amendment 20 is designed to ensure that 16 to 19 year-olds in danger of an endless cycle of resitting maths and English GCSEs have the right to a full technical course in those fields. The background to this is the decision of the Government that, from August 2014, all students aged 16 to 18 who are starting or have already started a new programme of 150 hours or more and do not hold a GCSE at grades A to C in maths and English, or the new GCSE grades 9 to 4 equivalent, are required to study those subjects as part of their study programmes in each academic year. In 2015, this was changed so that the requirement applies also to all those with a grade D in those subjects—I am not quite sure who I am addressing at the moment on this; usually one addresses hot air, but there we are.

One can understand why the Government went down this route, but the problem is that figures released in August 2016 by the Joint Council for Qualifications show that almost 122,500 learners aged 17 or above did not get at least a grade C in maths, while 93,000 failed to secure at least a grade C in English. I looked at the comment of Mark Dawe of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, who said:

“this is evidence … that hitting students over the head with the same form of learning and assessment is not the way forward. Functional skills, designed to develop core maths and English skills but with the learning contextualised and relevant, is proven to engage and motivate these learners, particularly those who have been turned off these subjects by their school experience”.

Anyone who has come across teachers who have to teach and meet these students, resit after resit, will know that it can become a totally depressing exercise for everyone involved.

This was discussed in the other place and I note the comments of the Secretary of State, Justine Greening. She said:

“We have been clear that we do not want children to be left behind by not getting a GCSE in maths or English when they could have achieved one, so we want those who score a D to take resits. For others, however, there is the option to study for functional skills qualifications, and it is important for employers that we make sure those functional skills qualifications work effectively”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/11/16; col. 41.]


I understand that the Minister, Mr Halfon, has pointed out that the Secretary of State has directional powers over the institute to achieve this.

No one doubts the need to ensure that relevant literacy and numerical skills courses are available to young people aged 16 to 18 that clearly support further technical education and apprenticeships. Clearly they are an opportunity to get employment. There is, however, a real concern that at the moment too many young people are having to go through a very dispiriting process of repeating studies that they have already failed, and which many of them will continue to fail.

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure me that the Government are looking again at this area, in parallel to Sir Adrian Smith’s study into the feasibility of compulsory maths being continued for all pupils to the age of 18—the two very much run together. I beg to move.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 21, 24 and 25 in my name in this group. I pass on apologies from the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf. She has had to leave for an emergency meeting and has said that she will bring her Amendment 23A on Report.

Amendments 21 and 25 deal with issues of copyright. The Minister addressed issues of copyright in the previous group and I have been left somewhat confused. Issues of copyright were not referred to in the skills plan. It appears that the Government wish to retain copyright and intellectual property rights of qualifications, thus enabling them, if they should so choose, to transfer delivery of qualifications from one awarding body to another. It is not clear why the Government should wish to do this. It is hard to think of another market in which a supplier would freely cede ownership of copyright of its product for no material benefit. The model offers no incentive for any provider of regulated qualifications to enter into a market or take the responsibility for developing and supporting a qualification for which the copyright ownership has been transferred to a third party.

The issue of copyright is complex. The policy intention here seems to be one of control and safeguarding delivery of a consistent qualification should the Government wish to remove a supplier from the market. Surely adding further complexity to intellectual property ownership is not the best way to meet this policy objective. There is no detail on how the process might work. A lack of clarity in this area, especially if export earnings were put at risk, could be a further disincentive to awarding bodies to engage.

If the proposal is that the qualification should be wholly owned and developed by government, we would counsel some detailed research into previous forays by central Government into the vocational qualifications market space, including individual learning accounts or as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, has mentioned, the 14 to 19 diploma. I bear the scars of the development of GNVQ, which nearly bankrupted BTEC when the Government came up with a new design of the qualifications, and it was not at all clear that any promotional material had gone into convincing the public, pupils, teachers and learners that this was a good qualification. GNVQs did some good things, but they had such rotten publicity that they never had the chance really to get off the ground. A great deal of time and money were spent in trying to promote those. If we are to learn anything from the past, surely it is that qualification and assessment ownership, and design and development work, are better left to professional bodies with specialist expertise in qualification and assessment rather than being controlled centrally by civil servants or quangos or, dare I say, even by politicians.

Government ownership of qualifications is not a feature of other qualifications, or of undergraduate or postgraduate qualifications offered by the higher education sector. No evidence base has been provided to support the proposal to move to nationalisation of qualifications, nor any assessment of the intended benefits, costs or risks of any such model. If an awarding organisation did not wish to hand over its intellectual property, it would be in a position where the institute would not approve its qualification for use in the funded market. This effectively closes the 16 to 19 market to awarding organisations which do not wish to relinquish their intellectual property.

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[Baroness Buscombe]

Yes, that is right. It would be absolutely outside the scope of the Bill.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, this has been an interesting debate, with two completely separate discussions. On the issue of copyright, a meeting would be helpful. I am puzzled, because the Government are saying they would encourage those people who wish to bid for work to be innovative in the bids they put forward, but actually the reward for innovation is to be stuck in a competitive tendering exercise—and, by the way, at the end of the tendering period we will nick your ideas. That does not seem to be quite what we want. Surely we want some partnership here and some commitment from the private sector to commit to R&D and innovation, but they must have some share of the proceeds. The idea that they can get that back in the short tender period that is going to operate is, at the least, problematic.

It seems that the Government are relying on the institute to be the innovator and then to tender that out. Okay, if that is the way it is going to work then we should be explicitly told that, but I do not think they can have it both ways. It would be interesting to have that debate.

On Amendment 20, regarding resits, I take what the Minister has said—that many of those young people who resit their GCSE maths and English as a result of the new policy introduced in 2014 now have grade C —and that is a good thing. However, we know there are thousands and thousands of young people who resat but are never going to get their GCSE maths and English. My point is that this can be a very discouraging process for both students and teachers, and I am looking for a more imaginative approach. I acknowledge it is important that someone going into employment can add up and understand percentages and percentiles, but this does not necessarily mean they have reached the GCSE qualification.

Some clarification is required as there is a point I am not entirely clear on. Is it the case that for someone who goes on to an apprenticeship under the auspices of the institute and continues to resit, and can satisfy the employer at the end-point assessment, because they do not have their GCSE maths they are not going to be able to qualify as an apprentice? I may have got that wrong, so having a letter in response to that would be helpful—I am certain I have got it wrong because officials are telling me so.

[Lord Young of Norwood Green]

That is good news.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

It is. I look forward to getting the letter. I think this has been an extremely useful debate, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 20 withdrawn.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd February 2017 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

2: After Clause 1, insert the following new Clause—
“Careers education: duty to publish strategy
(1) The Secretary of State must publish a strategy for the purposes of improving careers education for persons receiving education or training—(a) in the course of an approved English apprenticeship;(b) for the purposes of an approved technical education qualification; or(c) for the purposes of approved steps towards occupational competence.(2) The strategy shall be laid before each House of Parliament.(3) The strategy shall specify provisions under which the Secretary of State will seek to—(a) ensure that persons receiving education or training under subsection (1) receive information, advice and guidance relating to their future careers, and that such information, advice and guidance is delivered in a way which meets each person’s needs and is impartial;(b) ensure that such information, advice and guidance may be taken into account by relevant authorities and partners to meet the needs of local or combined authority areas;(c) ensure parity of esteem between technical, further and higher education; and(d) monitor the outcomes of such information, advice and guidance for recipients.(4) The provisions specified in subsection (3) shall have specific regard to particular needs of different groups of persons receiving education or training under subsection (1), including—(a) persons with special educational needs;(b) care leavers;(c) persons of different ethnicities;(d) carers, carers of children, or young carers, as defined by the Care Act 2014; and(e) persons who have other particular needs that may be determined by the Secretary of State.(5) The strategy shall include guidance for the purposes of improving careers education, to which the following bodies shall have regard—(a) the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills;(b) the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education; and(c) the Office for Students.(6) The Secretary of State shall by regulations designate relevant authorities and partners for the purposes of subsection (3)(b).(7) The Secretary of State may by regulations designate—(a) further groups of persons under subsection (4)(e); and(b) further national authorities or bodies under subsection (5).(8) Regulations made under this section—(a) must be made by statutory instrument; and(b) may not be made unless a draft has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, as this is the start of Committee, I remind the Committee that my wife is a consultant for the Education and Training Foundation.

In our discussion at Second Reading, and in the very helpful meetings we have had with Ministers and officials since, there has been a unanimity of view that people, and young people in particular, should have every opportunity to consider a quality apprenticeship as a serious option. My eyes were opened when I visited the Skills Show at the NEC in Birmingham some three years ago under the auspices of David Cragg, who did so much to develop this concept. It was an amazing experience. The exhibitions by some of our best companies were of high quality, ranging from aeronautics to car motor engineering and from catering to the media. It was fantastic to see the opportunities available to young people, if they choose to go down the apprenticeship route. Thousands of young people and their parents have been to the Skills Show and to similar events in other parts of the country. They have had their vision widened. However, many young people and their parents have not had that opportunity. Therefore, the lack of robust, high-quality and, dare I suggest, impartial advice to young people about the possibility of apprenticeships is a worrying issue that we need to tackle if the Bill, and the actions taken by government, are to be successful.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, asked at Second Reading: how do you get knowledge of apprenticeships over to young people? He said that you cannot expect schools to do the job and pinpointed a weakness in the current situation. First, schools often have very limited knowledge of apprenticeships, and, secondly, they have a vested interest in keeping their bright young people in school, ready to go into their sixth form. By the way, this is also an issue in relation to young people who might be better off going to a sixth-form or FE college to do A-levels, rather than staying in a small sixth form that offers a limited variety of A-levels. Again, the issue is about the pressure that schools put on young people to stay, even though it is against their best interests.

The Minister accepts the issue. There is no doubt that since the Education Act 2011 and the stripping away of the grant connections, we have seen a huge reduction in the quality of the careers advice available to young people. At Second Reading, the Minister promised a government strategy. In essence, Amendment 2, in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Watson, seeks to flesh out the strategy and ensure that young people receive high-quality and impartial advice.

In dealing with this group, we will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and his colleagues on Amendment 11, which covers much of the same ground and which clearly, given its drafting, the Government will support. I welcome the noble Lord’s amendment, although I think that between now and Report there is room for more discussion. Perhaps in speaking to my amendment I will put a few points to the noble Lord to enable discussion. My reading of his amendment is that it does not apply to institutions in the further education sector. If that is so, there is a not inconsiderable number of 14 to 16 year-olds in FE colleges who would not benefit. That is my first point.

The second is the question of enforcement. As I see it, there is no provision for making sure that this really grips and makes education providers ensure that, in the end, young people receive quality advice. Thirdly, there is still an issue about whether adequate facilities may be made available. I know that the noble Lord’s intention is to make education providers set out a policy statement and the terms on which external providers of technical education can gain access, but I have to say—with apologies to all current or past head teachers who are in your Lordships’ Committee today—that heads are ingenious at ensuring that if they do not want something to happen in their school, it will not.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I was saying—with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Storey—that heads are ingenious at finding a way round things if they do not want something to happen. I understand the intention of publishing a policy statement about the ability of providers to come into schools, but I am concerned about whether you can really make it happen in practice if heads do not want it to. This is where our amendment comes in and where the Government—in the end—have to take ownership of it. The Minister has already promised a strategy but we need to hear that there is going to be some beef to it.

We also need some recognition on why schools should be reluctant. I am interested in what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said. If students are leaving at 14 to go to UTCs, clearly we want bright young people to do that where it is appropriate. We do not want schools resisting or offloading the students that they do not want to stay in their own schools. That has been a problem with some UTCs. Equally, you have to accept, if you are a head, that losing young people means a financial loss. The Department for Education needs to think about a sensible approach that will provide some incentive to schools to encourage young people to go to UTCs at that age if they think it is appropriate. It would be a great pity if the UTC approach went under because parents and young people are not getting the right information about what UTCs have to offer. That is but one example of the issues that we face.

Amendment 9 takes its remit from the industrial strategy Green Paper recently published by the Government. Page 43 of Building Our Industrial Strategy talks about the creation of a course-finding process for technical education similar to the UCAS process. That is very welcome. I see this as being in parallel to impartial advice and encouragement of young people into the apprenticeship approach. The strategy says:

“Effective information and support should be available for everyone, regardless of their education and training choices. People choosing apprenticeships or courses in colleges currently face significant complexity when selecting and applying for a course. Applications for higher education institutions, in contrast, are much more straightforward, with a way of searching and applying for courses similar to the UCAS process”.


The Government say they will explore how to give technical education students clear information and better support throughout the application process, with a similar platform to UCAS. This is very welcome and my amendment merely provides a useful vehicle for the Government to establish this and I am sure the Minister is going to accept it. I beg to move.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Amendment 11 is also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley. It is very important that when one is proposing a significant change, which is what the amendment does, one should seek to get all-party support for it because that will secure acceptance across the party lines. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that providers of technical training and apprenticeships will have the right to go into local schools and explain to students at different levels and of different ages exactly what they have to offer. The ages will be 13, 16 and 18.

The key to the success of the Bill is not only providing first-class apprenticeships and technical education routes but ensuring that young people recognise them as worthy career paths. The curse of our education system at the moment is that secondary schools or comprehensives seem to have only one target: three A-levels and university. You go and speak to heads and they will tell you about the students who have got into university and the ones they want to get into university, and for the rest it is middle-distance interest, frankly. There are many pathways to success and it is our duty to try to open them to more people. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, we cannot expect teachers, many of whom have no experience of industry or commerce, to advise their students. They have simply left school, gone to a teacher training college and gone into education, and they do not realise the enormous range of skills and interests that is needed in the industrial and commercial world.

The amendment will strengthen the Bill significantly by giving all young people the chance to hear directly from providers of apprenticeships and technical qualifications about what they can study. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, the phrase in the amendment that covers FE colleges is “education … providers”, as referred to in subsection (1) of proposed new Section 42B. So FE colleges are included in the amendment. This will help our young people make better-informed and more confident decisions at important transition points.

The age of 14 has become a transition point because university technical colleges have now been promoted for some time. I am one of those who believe that that is a much better transition point than 11. The reason we have 11 is because in Victorian England the school leaving age was 11 and the only schools that went beyond that were grammar schools. After the great 1870 Act the elementary schools started the post-school leaving age and it happened to be 11. That is why we are landed with 11-to-18 and 11-to-16 schools. I personally believe that the two ages of transfer in the education system are round about nine and 13 or 14, which is what the private sector does and what many other countries in the world do.

Of course, having the transition at 14 presents marketing difficulties because youngsters, having gone to an 11-to-16 or 11-to-18 school, do not expect to make another choice until they take GCSEs. Certainly, UTCs have had difficulty recruiting at 14. It gets better each year as the UTC movement expands and gets better and more widely known, but as the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, said, many schools resist anybody who comes in and tries to persuade a pupil to go on another course. It is a loss of money—about £5,000 a head—and they are very hostile.

We had one classic case when the head of a UTC went to a school to explain to the students what the UTC was about. He was met at the door by a teacher who said, “You can go over there to the 16 year-olds”. The head said, “Yes, but what about the 13 and 14 year-olds?”. The teacher said, “You can’t go to those at all”. The head said, “What is your role in this school?”, and he said, “I am the careers adviser”. You can see an instinctive and permanent hostility to anything that will attract students to a different course—which in many cases may be more appropriate for them.

For the past three years, we have been pressing the Government to help us with recruitment at 14. We asked for two changes to be made, both of which required legislation. The simpler one involved laying a statutory instrument, which was laid and has now come into force. It requires all local authorities in the land to write to all year 9 parents telling them of the existence of choice at 14 and, specifically, that UTCs, studio schools and indeed FE colleges are available for them. We really did not get very far until Justine Greening became the Education Secretary; she is the first in seven years who actually likes UTCs. She visited one in Didcot and described it as brilliant and, when I took her to open another in Scarborough, she said that it was also brilliant. Last week she went to see JCB—also brilliant. So the mood in the department changed, and a statutory instrument was laid.

The other change we wanted is contained in this amendment. Legislative action was needed—there was no general education Bill in this Parliament. When I saw the Long Title of this Bill, I asked the Public Bill Office whether it would be appropriate to table an amendment, and outlined what I wanted. The office said that it would be. An excellent clerk, Susannah Street, not only said yes but presented me with a brilliant amendment—five lines long—which was absolutely perfect and did everything I wanted. Then of course I showed it to the Minister and the department. They liked it and redrafted it to a page and half, which only goes to show that the parliamentary draftsmen in the department today are just as good as they were when I was there more than 30 years ago. The drafting is very clear. Subsection (1) of the proposed new section states that:

“The proprietor of a school in England”—


which covers all schools in England, but not private schools—

“must ensure that there is an opportunity for a range of education and training providers”—

including university technical colleges, studio schools, career colleges, FE colleges and providers of apprenticeships—

“to access registered pupils during the relevant phase of their education”.

This is really at the heart of the clause.

By this, we wanted to achieve a recognition of the importance of technical and vocational education. As one knows, for the better part of 150 years, it has never had the same sort of rating as academic education in England does. This is a great pity. When we started the UTC movement, we asked a team at Exeter University to explain to us in a report why every attempt to improve technical education since 1870 had failed—and every attempt had failed. At the end of that presentation, we were told that there were two that would be approved by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and we had to decide whether to have two experimental schools or a movement. If we had accepted just two experimental schools, I would have thought that, by this time, we would probably have half a dozen UTCs operating. Ron Dearing and I decided no, and that we should start as many as we could as quickly as we could—all with the approval of the department, I must say. We do not just turn them on. There is a very demanding process of selection, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will know: we have to persuade him that they are in fact worth funding. We now have some 48 UTCs open, with nearly 12,000 students.

One thing we are most proud of in the UTC movement is the destination of the students. The destination data for students in ordinary secondary schools are farcical—the students are tracked 18 months after they have left, through national insurance numbers and tax records. When the figures are published, no one pays any attention to them, including the heads of the schools, and they disappear into the distance. Our destination data are taken in the four months of July, August, September and October. We trace what happens to each of the students; it is not too difficult for us because, from the very beginning when students join the UTCs, they are thinking about what their destination is going to be. That is a very thorough and proper analysis.

Last July we had 1,292 leavers and of those only five were NEET. Literally no other group of schools in the country can match that. Our unemployment rate at the age of 18 is 0.5%, while the student unemployment rate in this country is 11.5%—something that is often forgotten. When it comes to the destination of our students, 44% go to university, which is higher than the English national average of 38%, and we also produce 30% of apprentices at 18 years old where the national average is 8.6%. That is a remarkable record of achievement for UTCs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson of Invergowrie and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, for the first of four amendments relating to the important matter of careers education and guidance.

We are committed to transforming the nature of careers guidance to underpin our reforms to technical education and apprenticeships. This will give everyone the necessary skills and training to open up opportunities and jobs for their future. We set out in the industrial strategy Green Paper that we will publish a comprehensive careers strategy for all ages. The Minister, Robert Halfon, set out the key principles of our approach in a speech last month. The strategy will look carefully at the role of careers provision in supporting people from primary school right through to retirement. It will look at how we can ensure widespread and high-quality support, and how that leads to jobs and security. The strategy will focus on giving people the information they need to access education and training through their working lives. This will include steps to raise the prestige of technical education and make it easier for people to apply for opportunities.

Our careers strategy will be at the heart of the Government’s focus on social justice. We want to nurture the aspirations of those who are disadvantaged and ensure that everyone, regardless of background, has the opportunity to succeed in life. I do not accept the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, that stripping advice away from Connexions resulted in a decline in careers education. I have spoken to many young people who engaged with Connexions and I have to say that I found few fans. As the noble Lords, Lord Storey and Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, acknowledged, there is no previous golden age of careers education. It has always been pretty poor. What is clear is that the more engagement with the world of work that students in school have, the more engaged they become in their studies, and the more they realise why they are at school. McKinsey carried out a good study across Europe, which concluded that one-to-one careers advice was generally of little value and that the best experience was project-based working with employers.

That is why we have made such a significant investment in this area, including £70 million or so in the Careers & Enterprise Company and nearly £80 million in the National Careers Service. The work of both organisations provides an excellent base on which to build. The National Careers Service’s website receives over 24 million visits a year and supports more than 650,000 people in community locations with face-to-face advisers. The Careers & Enterprise Company, ably run by Claudia Harris, has made a great start. As my noble friend Lord Aberdare said, it has made good progress in rolling out its enterprise adviser network. Some 1,500 schools and colleges now have an enterprise adviser, helping them connect with local employers to provide experience of the workplace for young people. The company is also scaling up the number of business mentors—a subject close to the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—who work with young people at risk of underachieving or dropping out of education. Our goal is for 25,000 young people a year to benefit from this by 2020.

We will carefully evaluate the effect that our work has on careers provision. As of January, we are including destination data in national performance tables. They will help ensure that schools and colleges place an even greater importance on helping their students transition successfully to positive destinations. We fully acknowledge the importance of strong partnership working. As we develop the Government’s careers strategy, we will work with a diverse group of stakeholders, such as the Institute for Apprenticeships.

I welcome the obvious commitment to high-quality careers provision that noble Lords have shown in proposing this new clause. The Government share that commitment. However, it is our view that because we have set out the principles of our approach to careers and have confirmed that we will publish a strategy later this year, the proposed new clause is not necessary.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said that people moaned about teachers—I am not quite sure in what context. Certainly, this Government are not moaning about them in the context of careers. Teachers are busy people and it is important that they identify the passions, interests and aptitudes of their pupils, but they cannot be expected to keep up with the rapidly changing world of work and make those important links to businesses that are so necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, said how important they were. It is important that we link schools to the world of work. That is what the Careers & Enterprise Company and its advisers are all about. I personally believe that all schools should have one person focused purely on engaging with careers, the world of work and all those wonderful, free resources available to schools, if they would only engage with them, from many charities and employers. We do this in my academy group and I recommend it. The payback in terms of pupil engagement is massive and we should engage with this model in more detail. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, asked how we might revise the various pathways and qualifications. Obviously in this rapidly changing world we need to revise them on a regular basis.

I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for tabling Amendment 9 and I am pleased that they share the Government’s enthusiasm for a new system that would give prospective technical education students clear information and better support throughout the application process. We consider this new system to be key to ensuring that technical education is more on a par with academic education. Therefore, it is important to get it right. While I appreciate the keenness of noble Lords to have detailed proposals for the new system as soon as possible, it is important that we take the time to explore all the options. This will allow us to ensure that the new system meets the needs of the students who use it. We are considering the scope and implications of the new system, including working with a number of key stakeholders to discuss the potential options. It is crucial that the new system can support our ambition to increase the number of people pursuing quality technical education options. This is too important to rush. We intend fully to deliver on proposals for the system as set out in the industrial strategy Green Paper published just last month, but it would not aid the development of this complex project to commit to particular timescales at this stage. For these reasons, I hope that the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to not move the amendment.

I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for tabling Amendment 11 and pay tribute to him for his work in developing the UTC programme, which is now offering young people a technical education at 48 UTCs across the country. I particularly enjoyed his unbiased commercial for them. The amendment would require schools to give education and training providers the opportunity to talk directly to pupils about the approved technical education qualifications and apprenticeships that they offer. I agree that it would strengthen the Bill by promoting technical education and apprenticeship opportunities more effectively so that young people can make more informed and confident choices at important transition points.

As a number of noble Lords have said, the range of information on education and training options that young people receive is too narrow. Ofsted’s 2013 careers survey, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, found that college-based technical education, training and apprenticeships were rarely promoted effectively. We need to address this if young people are to benefit from the Government’s ambitious skills reforms which are supported by this Bill. We want institutions to co-operate in the best interests of young people. A school that chooses not to invite a local UTC or an FE college to speak to young people denies them information about opportunities which might be better suited to their long-term career goals, and does them no favours at all.

We need to tackle the myth that apprenticeships and technical options are not suited to high-achieving pupils. A study by the Sutton Trust in 2014 found that 65% of teachers would not advise a pupil with the grades for university to pursue an apprenticeship. I agree with noble Lords that it is time to end this outdated approach. We must get away from a two-tier system of careers advice where the information that young people get from their schools fails to correct or even reinforces the impression that college-based technical education and apprenticeships are second best to academic study. Schools will be required by law to collaborate with UTCs, studio schools, further education colleges and other training providers. This will ensure that young people hear more consistently about alternatives to academic routes and are aware of all the routes to higher skills and into the workplace. This is vital if we are to set our technical education on a par with the best in the world. I thank my noble friend for this thoughtful amendment and I accept it.

Amendment 61 was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Storey. I begin by saying that I appreciate the intent behind this proposed new clause. Our careers strategy will not be effective unless schools and colleges are held to account for the quality of their careers provision. Ofsted has an important role to play in this regard. However, I do not believe that the amendment is necessary because the current inspection grading structure provides appropriate coverage of careers provision. Ofsted has already sharpened its approach to the inspection of careers provision. As part of standard Ofsted college inspections, inspectors make graded judgments on: effectiveness of leadership and management; quality of teaching, learning and assessment; personal development, behaviour and welfare; and pupil outcomes. Matters relating to careers provision feature in all four of these judgments.

It is important that, in reaching judgments, inspectors are able to balance their considerations on a range of aspects to form an overall view, rather than this being determined by one specific aspect of a college’s provision. Furthermore, Ofsted evaluates provision offered by the college, including 16-to-19 study programmes, apprenticeships and traineeships. Judgments about all the types of provision within the inspection framework are informed by consideration of the quality of careers provision, work experience and the development of employability skills.

Destination data are now a more significant part of college accountability. For the first time last month, destination data featured as a headline measure in 16-18 performance tables. This encourages a sharper focus on how well colleges prepare their students to make a successful transition. I hope I have provided sufficient reassurance that colleges are held to account properly for the quality of their careers provision. I urge the noble Lord to not move his amendment.

Turning to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I thank him for his interest in this important matter. I agree that it is essential that the careers information, advice and guidance provided covers the full range of options available so that young people can make important choices about their future pathways. Schools and colleges must secure independent careers guidance. In doing so, they should provide access to a range of activities such as employer talks or hearing from young apprenticeship ambassadors. However, it would not be appropriate for the Government to distort the independence of careers advice and guidance by finding recruiters who promoted a single pathway over others.

The Secretary of State already has very broad powers to fund education and training. Funding for schools is provided by the EFA, and it can implement any policies that require adjustments to government funding for schools. In addition, we do not think the amendment is necessary from a legal perspective. The Secretary of State can fund matters connected to apprenticeships under Section 101A, which was inserted into the Deregulation Act 2015, and we are able to fund matters connected to technical education under Section 101B, which is provided for in the Bill. In view of what I have said, I hope the noble Lord will not move his amendment.

Lastly, I shall comment on remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, about the extension of the succinct five-line amendment produced by my noble friend Lord Baker. I would be happy to set up a teach-in with the draftsmen in the department as to precisely why this is necessary, but I am assured that it is. With regard to her general comment about the number of policies that she seems to be burdened with, I would be delighted to hear from her—I am sorry to see that she is not in her place—about how we might reduce these. I always welcome suggestions for reducing bureaucracy. To take a leaf out of my noble friend Lord Baker’s book, when I finish this job I think I shall try to jump on the next piece of education legislation and try to bring in a law that precis should be taught in schools again at every possible opportunity. In view of what I have said, I hope noble Lords will feel able to respectively withdraw or not move their amendments.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. I am very pleased that he has accepted the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. Like my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the UTC movement; I agree that UTCs are a force for good. It may have been an advert, but I thought the destination analysis that the noble Lord referred to—the fact that so much information is available—was good, and on the face of it the statistics in relation to apprenticeship and university places are impressive. All I would say to the Government is that I hope they hold their nerve in supporting UTCs in the future.

We are all agreed that we want to see quality advice given to young people and their parents. The careers strategy is going to be very important, and the Minister has set out some of the things that are going to be in it. I thought the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were important, because often schools are burdened by many regulations and requirements. I guess in the end it will be made clear to schools in the statute guidance issued by the Minister—succinctly, I hope—what is required, without having to go into enormous detail about how that is going to be done. I recognise that that is difficult, but we come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Morris: we have to recognise that in the end we will want schools to wish to do it. Statutory intervention is necessary because that is not happening at the moment, but in the end we somehow have to get to a stage where schools want to do the right thing.

I agree with my noble friend that teachers are not going to be experts in careers advice—the Minister is absolutely right about that—but they can be very influential in setting the terms in which young people will listen to that careers advice. Perhaps we are mistaken: it is the teachers who should go to the Skills Show. Part of this has to be an educational programme with teachers about the opportunities for apprenticeships, alongside the links with business and employment that the noble Lord has talked about.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for tabling this amendment. I understand that they wish to ensure that all technical or work-based qualifications are included within these reforms and can benefit from them. I assure them that all relevant and appropriate occupations in the economy will be covered within the technical education routes and the qualifications offered to students following these routes. However, having thought carefully about how to achieve this, we hope to address it in the following way.

Each route, of which there are currently 15, provides a framework for grouping together occupations where there are shared training requirements. Each route will have an occupational map. Each map will identify all the occupations in the scope of that route, such as the digital route or the engineering and manufacturing route. These maps are currently being developed through a robust, evidence-based process, with input from employers, employer representatives, industry professionals and professional bodies.

It is important to be clear, however, that it will not be appropriate to include some occupations within the routes. The independent panel of the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, established the principle, which we have adopted, that technical education must require the acquisition of both a substantial body of technical knowledge and a set of practical skills valued by industry. As the panel made clear, there are some unskilled or low-skilled occupations which do not meet this requirement, as they can be learned quickly and on the job; such as that of a retail assistant. Therefore, it is not necessary or appropriate to offer technical education qualifications to people wishing to work in one of these occupations. It would not be the best use of their time or of taxpayers’ money.

With this exception, I can assure the noble Baroness and the noble Lord that within the technical education routes there will be comprehensive coverage of the skilled occupations that are vital to the success of our economy. I can also assure them that the occupational maps will be reviewed regularly to ensure that they continue to reflect the needs of industry. We will listen to any evidence-based case from an employer who identifies a gap, if it meets the above criteria and they can demonstrate employer need and a genuine skills gap. I hope that the noble Baroness and the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw this amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

Before the noble Baroness responds, I have two points. The Minister quoted from the Sainsbury review the definition of “technical” education. Why has that not found itself in the Bill? If the Sainsbury definition is going to set the boundaries of the 15 pathways, would it not have been helpful to pin it down some more? The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, is absolutely right to say that it would have been helpful to have that in the Bill.

My second point comes back to the issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. Sadly, in this country, “technical” does not have the status that we want it to have. You cannot legislate for that, but as we go through this it would have been interesting to hear from the Government how, in general, they think we are going to raise the status of the word “technical”, so that when young people in particular consider a technical education, they see it as something to aspire to.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I am sorry that this has become more complicated to involve occupational maps and routes. I thought it was a very simple explanation: that there are different emphases in different vocational routes, for the want of a better word. Actually, included in the routes there are such things as “hair and beauty”. There are technical elements to that, but there is a tremendous amount of personal skills and creativity also. Also included are “creative and design” and “catering and hospitality”. There are technical aspects in just about all of these, but that is not their prime activity or focus. The people who go into those sorts of fields are not doing so because they love doing technical things but because they like working with people and creating things, and doing things that are not primarily technical.

I am sorry if the word “technical” has now been downgraded, but we really are running rings round this. We apparently do not like and have abandoned the word “vocational” because it is considered downmarket. The word “technical” was supposed to raise the profile and be a lot better, but now, suddenly, here are the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Aberdare, saying that “technical” is a pretty rubbish word too. I always quite liked “work-based”, which is one of the terms that we used, as well as “practical”. There are other terms that might not be deemed quite so lower class as “technical”.

As I said, my amendment was intended simply to try to protect all those people working in fields where they think of themselves primarily not as technical but as creative, with personal skills and so on, which is what the Government are trying to include in the Bill. I accept that the Institute for Apprenticeships has to encompass all those routes too. I am sorry but I may have to bring this back on Report. We will perhaps have a discussion before then to see whether the noble Lord can think of a really upmarket word to take in all the different aspects of practical skills that we are looking for.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I start by declaring that my wife is a consultant with the Education and Training Foundation and by thanking the Minister for the extensive briefings that we have already received from him and officials on the Bill. It is a great pleasure to wind up for the Opposition. This Bill is clearly very important; it goes to the heart of one of the major challenges that we as a country face and builds on the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, and my noble friend Lord Sainsbury by laying some of the foundations that they set out. The House as a whole clearly welcomes the provisions; there is consensus in support of the Government’s main aim in relation to apprenticeships; but a number of issues have been raised that I hope we can debate in Committee.

The first issue is the quality of apprenticeship programmes. There is a concern that the target of 3 million may override the importance of quality in the programmes that will be offered. The second issue is the question of who is ultimately responsible for driving the quality of apprenticeship programmes. This is not clear and I believe that we need to tease it out in our debates. There has been a challenge over the levy and the potential for perverse incentives—my noble friend Lord Young raised it—and also questions about SME participation. We have also heard a great deal about the focus on the need for young people to receive good-quality and objective careers advice from the ages of 14 to 16, and concerns about the long-term funding viability of the FE sector after a long period of funding cuts.

Overall, the debate has shown how pressing the need is to improve technical education, in which apprenticeships play an important part, if we are to do anything about our poor performance in basic and technical skills, which is surely key to the UK’s persistently low levels of productivity compared with other advanced economies. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, suggested, we have an alarming shortage of high-skilled technicians and, more generally, a shortage of people coming to work in sectors that depend on the STEM subjects.

The Government are investing much in an expansion of the apprenticeship programme as a core response to these worrying problems. They do so against a background of hard evidence that the current apprenticeships programme is not working. The Ofsted review in 2015 found that,

“in a third of the 45 providers visited, apprenticeships did not provide sufficient, high-quality training that stretched the apprentices and improved their capabilities”.

The review also found:

“The quality of the apprenticeship provision reviewed during this survey was too variable and … poor … The growth in apprenticeships in the last eight years has not focused sufficiently on the sectors with skills shortages … Leaders of the apprenticeship provision reviewed did not focus sufficiently on improving the quality and impact of apprenticeships”.


So the big question is whether the Government’s approach will turn this around; we all certainly hope so. However, the IFS report yesterday was somewhat worrying in its suggestion that it had concerns about whether the approach would provide sufficient value for money. The most telling criticism was the question of whether the target of 600,000 new apprenticeships a year will risk quality at the expense of quantity—my noble friend Lady Morris raised this point. I put it to the Minister that the clear risk is that in the end, because the 3 million target has been set, his officials and the bodies responsible will have that as the core target. We know that once you go for a mathematical figure, quality tends to take a back seat. I plead with the Minister to accept that the numbers are less important than the quality.

We know, too, that the Government are putting much on an employer-led approach; I understand that. But, as my noble friend said, this is not the first time that employers have been put in command. The fact is that some of the failures of the past are due to employers themselves lacking sufficient interest or investment in training and apprenticeship programmes. I know that the board that has been appointed to the institute is of very high quality—there is no question about that—but it will need to carry with it the whole employer sector, and that is where we must express some concerns about the proposals.

The second major question that has arisen today is about trying to get to the bottom of who, in the end, is responsible for making this work—for the promotion of apprenticeships, for quality, and for making sure that all the agencies involved can pull together in a cohesive approach. This has been raised with Ministers and officials in briefings. The noble Baroness, Lady Cohen, and my noble friend Lady Morris asked these questions and, essentially, we have been told that the Secretary of State is responsible for policy, the institute is responsible for designing standards, Ofsted is responsible for inspecting provision and Ofqual will inspect the assessments. My worry is that this sounds like a very diffuse approach to responsibility.

I acknowledge that the Government have appointed a very fine board, but will it actually have the capacity, the leadership and, indeed, the courage to take on a core primary leadership role? I believe that this is essential. I take the point of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the Youth Justice Board being a model of where one agency has to be responsible in the end. I do not think that it should be Minsters. The board should be able to say what it thinks about what needs to happen and what is going wrong. In Schedule 1, there is one paragraph that imposes a duty on the bodies concerned to share information. I would have liked to see a duty of co-operation—a statutory duty on all these bodies to work together in relation to apprenticeships and technical and further education. I hope that the Minister will consider that.

The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked why insolvency measures appeared to be so up front in the Bill. There are in fact only one or two clauses that are not to do with insolvency of the further education sector. I know that the finances of FE colleges in particular are somewhat vulnerable, but this Bill does have a rather unbalanced approach in terms of its provisions.

There is no question that further education has taken a big hit in funding over the last few years. It is not surprising that the sector as a whole is financially vulnerable. In thinking about the challenges facing the FE sector, particularly FE colleges, in the future, I would like to ask the noble Lord a few questions about the governance of FE colleges. Over the last few years those corporations have taken on more and more responsibility, yet it is clear from the colleges that have run into great financial difficulty that often their board has not been on top of the issues. There is also evidence that some principals have rather lost themselves in foreign adventures, if I can put it that way, to the ultimate financial detriment of those colleges. Indeed, a college in Birmingham is facing problems at the moment.

I was very interested to read a paper by the former Learning and Skills Improvement Service which identified a number of issues with governors. The paper stated that in FE there can be too much polite consensus to avoid conflict, insufficient challenge, a business focus at the expense of core educational performance, taking on but not managing bigger risks—and with the clerk, who essentially is the company secretary in FE, being undervalued in being able to stimulate and facilitate good governance. In the light of the insolvency provisions, which put even more responsibility on individual and corporate governors in those colleges, what is being done to strengthen governance? Company secretaries play a vital role in other public bodies and in the private sector in ensuring good-quality governance. Does the noble Lord accept that the number of FE clerks has been reduced, as have their pay and hours, and that sometimes principals appoint their secretary as a clerk? Will he look into ways in which we can strengthen that governance?

Clause 14, on student protection, is very welcome. However, the University and College Union points out that there may still be problems, particularly in relation to students continuing their studies when their provider has fallen into financial difficulty, and that they may be required to travel long distances. The union also points out that in a transitional situation and administration process it is vital to retain experienced staff to ensure that students continue to be taught by experienced teachers. So I have questions on Clause 14, but the broad principle is very welcome indeed.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, talked about the interface between schools and all the opportunities that lie outside. There is strong consensus on the need to strengthen the careers service. Part of that must be about UTCs and the FE sector having access to schools. But we should not underestimate the problem. It is not in the financial interest of those schools for their students to move to other providers. Although I support the relevant amendment, somehow we have to find a way to make the heads of those schools understand that it is in the public interest, and certainly the interest of their students, that the students have access to careers advice. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, made the very interesting suggestion that Ofsted might have a role here, and we need to look at that.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I have recovered from my astonishment at the Minister’s concession on Report. I am delighted to support this amendment, which is far more elegant than the one that I produced.

While am on my feet, I thank the Minister for all his efforts throughout the passage of the Bill and for the constructive way in which he has approached what has sometimes been a robust approach from some quarters of the House to some of his proposals. That has always been done in a thoughtful way, and I am grateful to him, to Edward Timpson and to his officials for the way that they have approached the Bill and the amendments we have proposed.

Before I sit down, in listening to the debates on the importance of personal relationships, it occurred to me that he might draw the importance of personal relationships to the attention of those Ministers who are interacting with their counterparts in Europe because there could be some useful lessons to be learnt from the debates in this particular House.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not think I will follow that comment.

If the noble Lord, Lord Warner, was astonished, I was certainly very pleased with the way in which the Minister acknowledged on Report that this is an important issue. I welcome the amendment. I take the opportunity of thanking the Minister, the honourable Edward Timpson in the other place and officials in both the Minister’s department and the Department of Health for the tremendous amount of work they have done in response to the issues raised. We are very satisfied with the outcome.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, we are all aware that social workers play a critical role in our society. It is in order to protect the public that we need a strong bespoke regulator committed to the social work profession. With noble Lords’ assistance and engagement, I am confident that we have arrived at a strengthened position and an improved model for the new regulator.

I believe the provisions in Part 2 of the Bill will lead to the establishment of an effective and successful bespoke regulator for social workers, with appropriate independence from government and clear oversight from the Professional Standards Authority. It is right, though, that these provisions be reviewed, and this amendment will ensure that that happens. I therefore hope noble Lords are able to accept this amendment. I am pleased that we are able to finish on such a positive note.

Before I sit down, I take this opportunity to say a few words of thanks to the House. Your Lordships’ House has been unwavering in the rigour and attention to detail that it has brought to bear as we have debated the Bill. I know that on occasion there has not been as much time as noble Lords would have liked to consider the provisions of the Bill before they have been debated, and I know that I have made further demands on noble Lords’ time through meetings, briefings, letters and policy statements. I can only apologise and say how grateful I am for the efforts that have been taken to bring the House’s expertise fully to bear on these matters.

I also thank my ministerial colleagues, particularly of course the Secretary of State and the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, who will now be taking the Bill on its next steps. I join noble Lords today in thanking officials, and I shall certainly take back their kind words to everyone involved in the department. In closing, I note the co-operative approach that has been taken on all sides and thank the House again for its constant efforts to find common ground in the best interests of all our country’s children.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ponsonby of Shulbrede (Lab)]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. As a family lay magistrate who sits in central London, I hear many of the kind of cases about which we have heard today. It is worth repeating the point made by my noble friend: when we sit as a family bench we think primarily about what is in the best interests of the child. We are well aware that while it may be in the best interests of the child to be taken into care, it is not in the best interests of the mother. Many such mothers are themselves children. It is an obvious dilemma when we sit.

My noble friend was right that young women who lose their children, or have them taken away into care, need as much support as possible so that the tragic situation is not repeated again and again, as we see so often in our family courts.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend has made a convincing case for action in this area. We discussed this in Committee and the Minister was sympathetic to the principal points made by my noble friend. However, he put his eggs in the basket of encouraging innovative good practice and referred to his department’s innovation programme and the funding that has been put into the Pause project to support women who have experience or are at risk of repeat removals of children from their care. He argued that it was better to support good practice than to mandate local authorities. I get that up to a point.

However, to pick up on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, the problem is that we have been talking about innovative good practice in this area for a considerable number of years. As the Family Rights Group chief executive, on behalf of the Your Family, Your Voice alliance and the Kinship Care Alliance, has pointed out, looking at the country as a whole, we are not covering sufficient vulnerable people in the way we know can be successful, as these examples of good practice have shown.

This leaves us with a dilemma. I take the noble Lord’s point about the risks of mandation, but if we cannot see from the Government a determined programme that will ensure that good practice is spread throughout every local authority area, we are forced back into the area of mandation. I hope the Minister will come forward with distinct proposals for how his department will make sure that, in every part of the country, the vulnerable people we are talking about will get the kind of support my noble friend has proposed.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, for her amendment, under which local authorities would be required to provide counselling and therapeutic support to parents who have had children taken into care to prevent any further children being taken into care. This is an important issue and, contrary to the noble Baroness’s introductory remarks, I am pleased that she has raised it and I am grateful to her, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Hunt and Lord Ponsonby, for their contributions to today’s debate.

As their Lordships will know, the Government believe that children are best looked after within their families, with their parents playing a full part in their lives, unless intervention in that family’s life is necessary. One of the fundamental principles of the Children Act 1989 is that children should be brought up and cared for within their families. Indeed, Section 17 of that Act embodies that principle, with local authorities under a statutory duty to provide services for children in need and their families to safeguard and promote the welfare of such children and promote their upbringing by their families. Local authorities also have a duty to return a looked-after child to their family unless this is against their best interests.

The noble Baroness is right to emphasise how important it is to support parents who have had children taken into care. They need the right type of intervention to allow them to be effective parents for that child if they are returned to them, any other children in their care and any children they may have in the future. We share this commitment, and the legislation and our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, reflect this. Working Together is clear that any assessment of a child’s needs should draw together relevant information from the child, their parents and any other professionals in contact with them. Every assessment of need must be child-centred and must acknowledge that many of the services provided as part of a child in need or a child protection plan will be to support the parents to make sustained change so they can look after their children well.

Alongside the child’s needs and wider family and environmental factors, parenting capacity is a crucial element of a good assessment, as Working Together makes clear. If support is needed to improve parenting capacity, a good assessment will identify this and enable the specific support needs identified—which will vary depending on the circumstances of each case—to be provided. If a child is removed, their parents should continue to receive help and support. If they go on to have further children, Working Together is clear that the level and nature of any risk to the child needs to be identified at a pre-birth assessment and the appropriate help and support given to these parents to support them with making a sustained change.

The noble Baroness might be interested to read, if she has not already done so, the research Assessing Parental Capacity to Change when Children are on the Edge of Care: An Overview of Current Research Evidence, published by the Department for Education in 2014. Among other things, the research sets out the parental factors that are known to be associated with a risk of significant harm to a child, the factors that can reduce the risk of harm and the likely nature of that harm. The report highlights the extensive body of research that shows that a range of problems can impair parents’ ability to meet the needs of their children. These include, but are not restricted to, poor mental health, problem drug and alcohol use, learning disability and domestic abuse. This underscores the need to make sure that parents receive the right type of support to meet their particular needs and circumstances.

Of course, there may be circumstances where counselling will always be appropriate. Because adoption, unlike any other permanent option, involves the ending of a child’s legal relationship with their parents and family, and the creation of a lifelong relationship with new parents, adoption agencies have a legal duty to provide a counselling service for the parent or guardian of the child. Local authorities and voluntary sector agencies that provide these services often, where appropriate, also use the service to support birth parents whose children have been taken into care. In the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, for example, Ofsted inspectors found:

“In all cases seen by inspectors where placement orders had been granted, there was evidence of birth parents being offered referral to support services and mothers were offered referrals to commissioned services to avoid repeat pregnancies where proceedings were likely to result”.

We know that the cycle of care too often continues and that parents who have a child taken into care may well be more likely to have another taken into care later. The noble Baroness referred to some depressing statistics in this regard. The Department for Education’s innovation programme has supported the Pause project, to which the noble Baroness referred, to the tune of £3 million to support women who have experienced, or are at risk of, repeat removals of children from their care. The project aims to break this cycle and give women the opportunity to develop new skills and responses that can help them create a more positive future. Early indications are showing positive results for all 150 women Pause is currently working with, and in some instances the project is enabling them to engage in positive and consistent contact with their children.

Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that, given its success since Committee, the Secretary of State announced last week that further support is to be offered for programmes such as Pause to build on early successes of the programme, and that the programmes’ reach would be extended from six to 47 areas, with up to a further £7 million. This will provide much-needed further evidence on which we can assess our proposals. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is pleased to hear that.

Through the innovation programme, we are also continuing to fund the family drug and alcohol court service, which provides therapeutic support to parents whose children are at risk of being taken away from them. Again, often these are parents who have had other children taken into care in the past.

Changing practice like this provides a more effective means of ensuring that we break the cycle. Mandating that local authorities provide counselling or therapy may help some, but it will not be the answer to all the complex problems in this context and will not provide the right support to all parents.

Given that the existing statutory framework is clear that local authorities must provide services to support children in need and their families to stay together, and the innovative ways that we aim to change practice, including further support for Pause and other projects, so that we can build up further evidence, I hope the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the supportive work and consultation across the House since Committee, which has substantially strengthened the Bill in this regard. I speak on behalf of both the Department for Education and the Department of Health in saying how much we value the expertise that noble Lords across the House have added to the debate. We have listened carefully to their concerns and have tabled a number of amendments to reflect them. I hope noble Lords will recognise how far we have come.

I shall now pause to hear the responses of noble Lords to what I have said and to allow them to speak to their amendments.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, his ministerial colleagues and officials because we had the opportunity for a series of meetings between Committee and Report which have culminated in the amendments the noble Lord has brought before your Lordships’ House tonight. I am grateful to him and his colleagues.

Clearly we now have an independent regulator, overseen by the Professional Standards Authority, and we are happy with that outcome. For the social work profession, the improvement agenda and the regulatory agenda this is a sensible way forward.

I have couple of points to mention to the Minister to which he may wish to respond in writing. First, on the issue of the transition, there is a question of whether the cases now being held by the existing regulator will remain with that regulator or will transfer to the new regulator when it has been set up. My advice to the Government would be to leave those cases with the existing regulator so that the new regulator can start with a clean sheet. The Government will need to consider this and I would be happy for the Minister to write to me in due course.

Secondly, the PSA feels that the powers have perhaps been too widely drawn. I understand the Government are looking at this issue. Perhaps the Minister could confirm that. Thirdly, can he confirm that the consultation on the establishment of the regulator will be extensive?

On fees, I understand from the note that we have seen that, in essence, the setting-up costs will be met by the Minister’s department, which will also meet the additional costs of the new regulator, and that the commitment is to the next Parliament. If he could confirm that, I would be extremely grateful.

Overall, I am happy with the outcome.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, on behalf of the Members here I thank the Minister for the significant changes that have been made to social work regulation. They have gone a great deal of the way towards satisfying the concerns that were raised at both Second Reading and in Committee. It is good that the Minister has listened carefully and has responded in a positive way. I thank him for that.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I will try not to detain the House for much longer on this Bill, but Amendment 117 in my name and those of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, does no damage whatever to the Government’s wish to progress the establishment of a new social work regulator in the way now proposed with the new government amendments. Instead, it gives the Government the chance to review progress after a decent interval and in the light of experience and, as I will come to briefly in a moment, likely changes in the regulation of other health and care regulators.

In essence, the amendment would impose a pause after five years of all the changes in the amended Part 2 of the Bill and the associated schedule and regulations made under these provisions, unless the Government have met three relatively modest conditions. The first would be an independent review of the effectiveness of the changes that includes consultation with the social work profession and relevant interests. The second would be to lay the review’s report before Parliament, together with the Secretary of State’s response. The third would allow the Secretary of State to make such changes to Part 2 as she thinks appropriate, having full regard to the findings of the review.

As I have said already, I welcome the way the Government have responded to the many concerns about Part 2. I regret that the Government were unwilling to go a little further and keep the governance of the new regulator under the Privy Council Office, as is the case with the current social work regulator and all the health and care regulators. However, that disappointment is not the main reason for the amendment, which the clerks helpfully framed.

Behind the amendment are two main concerns. First, the history of social work regulation has not been a happy one, as everyone knows only too well. The introduction of a new regulator has itself not had a very orderly birth. A review after a few years would seem a sensible precaution, given the history of this area. Secondly and perhaps more importantly is my concern, shared by the Professional Standards Authority, that a high proportion of social workers to be the concern of the new regulator do not work in children’s social care, whose problems have driven the reform in the Bill. These other social workers work in adult social care and mental health, where their main working relationships are usually with adults and the NHS and nothing whatever to do with the DfE.

There is a totally different change agenda going on for these adult social work staff that is bound up with the integration of the NHS and adult social care under the Department of Health’s oversight, plus integrating better mental and physical healthcare. These are the agendas that one half of the social care workforce are engaged with. Until the Bill came along, the regulation of all social workers had been under the same governance and oversight as all the other health and care professions. All these professions were on the cusp—and still are—of further regulatory reform following a Law Commission report. That programme of reform is still on track for public consultation and new legislation, quite possibly in this Parliament. It is quite possible that these changes would have implications for the new social work regulator, Social Work England. In its evidence and briefing for this debate, the PSA has expressed its concerns about whether there will be proper alignment between further regulatory reform of all these other health and care professions, and the work done by the new Social Work England regulator.

In these circumstances, it would seem wise to prepare for a pause and review within about five years to see how things are going with the new social work regulator and with this wider regulatory reform agenda for the health and care professions, with whom social workers’ future is, in many regards, deeply embedded.

That is what my amendment would do. It would not stop the Education Secretary pressing on with the changes in the Bill, but it would ensure that, across Whitehall, social workers were not lost sight of in the wider health and care professions regulatory reform agenda.

I hope that the Minister will see this as a constructive amendment and that he and his colleagues will consider it sympathetically and perhaps discuss it further with me and others who are interested in this area—and possibly the PSA as well—before Third Reading. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and hope that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will be prepared to meet him in the next week to discuss it. We wish the new social work regulator all the best in its difficult task. I hope that it will be able to learn the lessons of the failures of the past and give the profession the kind of stability and leadership in regulation that it requires.

We also know that the Department of Health is gearing up to a review of and potential legislation on health regulation, which is bound to have an impact on adult social workers—the noble Lord, Lord Warner, set that out very clearly. We want the integration of professional workers to be encouraged as far as possible across health and social care and for there to be consistency in regulation more generally. Given that this major work is to be undertaken over the next few months and years, the amendment provides a backstop which essentially says that there should be a time limit on the arrangements being taken forward, unless the condition, which is an independent review to be considered by the Secretary of State, gave assurance that the Government collectively were making sure that the integration and consistency that we want would be implemented in full.

The noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his ministerial colleagues have been exceptionally kind in listening to noble Lords on this Bill. I hope that he might be prepared to do the same on this amendment.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I welcome these amendments and support them. I agree with the Minister about his Amendment 45: that is a better way to do it. It gives a certain amount of flexibility, which is clearly required because no one today can specify which organisations in 10 years’ time are likely to be involved. Affirmative regulations give us some safeguards.

Amendment 36 agreed.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 37, 38, 41, 46 and 47.

These relatively minor refinements, through Amendments 38 and 47, to the terminology used provide greater specificity and focus to the clauses. The Government believe that this will more precisely clarify the overall purpose of the new local and national reviews. Clauses 12 and 20 refine and strengthen the description of the purpose of local and national reviews, to be conducted by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel and the safeguarding partners respectively. Amendments 38 and 47 provide more specific detail around what should be published following those reviews, where it might be inappropriate to publish the full review. The amended wording states that the purpose of a review should be to identify,

“improvements that should be made”,

rather than,

“to ascertain what lessons … can be learned”.

Amendment 37 relates to the national child safeguarding practice reviews, and requires the identification of improvements that the safeguarding partners should make to improve safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, following the review. Amendment 46 relates to the local child safeguarding practice reviews, and requires the identification of improvements that persons in the local area should make to improve safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children, following the review.

We have listened to noble Lords’ comments in Committee, and heard consistently that reviews of incidents of serious harm to, or death of, children should focus on what can be done to reduce the chances that such incidents will be repeated. We therefore feel that it is necessary to step away from the broad language of “lessons learned”, which all too often has focused on what went wrong and who is to blame, rather than focusing on why things went wrong, and what can be improved to reduce these incidents in the future. Amendments 38 and 47 are linked to this.

In the unlikely event that it is deemed not to be appropriate to publish the full child safeguarding practice review following an incident, Clauses 12 and 16 require the panel and safeguarding partners for national and local reviews respectively to publish certain information about the case. Amendments 38 and 47 specify that the information published, in the absence of the full report, should relate to the,

“improvements that should be made”,

rather than the “lessons to be learned”.

Amendment 41 adds to new Section 16B(9), inserted by Clause 12, a definition of who the safeguarding partners are. This is necessary as Amendment 37 introduces the safeguarding partners into new Section 16B(2). I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I think we should welcome this and thank the Minister for listening to what was said in Committee. I take it that in setting out an improvement agenda, which is to be welcomed, the Government will, of course, draw on lessons that will have been learned from cases that have gone wrong. As I understand it, these should be used in a non-punitive way, as much more a learning experience.

Amendment 37 agreed.

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[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, clearly there are huge constitutional issues around the independence of the judiciary and there would be a very strong view in your Lordships’ House of the need to protect at all costs that independence in the judgments they make. Equally, what we would like from the Minister is some assurance that, in the generality of judicial actions in this area, there is at least some work in relation to lessons to be learned. The change in the wording from “lessons learned” to “improvement” reinforces the case that the impact of judicial decisions must surely be considered as part of a general improvement agenda, without in any way seeking to interfere in the role of the judiciary and, of course, its judicial independence.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for this amendment and for the important issue that he has raised. As noble Lords will recall, in Grand Committee he raised the role of the judiciary in serious cases involving children, with particular reference to the tragic case of Ellie Butler. I have since written to him further on this matter, as he said. Noble Lords will also recall that, in the Butler case, Ellie’s father had his conviction for grievous bodily harm in relation to injuries suffered by Ellie overturned by the Court of Appeal. Later, a finding of fact judgment, which took place as part of care proceedings, was also overturned. That led to the return of Ellie and her sibling to the care of her parents, a process overseen by an independent social work agency under instruction from the court, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said. Tragically, within a year of being returned to her parents, Ellie was murdered by her father.

No one can fail to have been moved by the circumstances of that case, and it is understandable that queries have been raised about the impact of judicial decisions in particular cases, and the role of the judiciary in the serious case review process more generally. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has mentioned, the judiciary is independent and, for constitutional reasons, it cannot and should not be held to account by the current serious case review process, or, in future, by the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. This does not mean that there is no process for responding to decisions made by judges—which may be appealed at the time. Alternatively, if there is concern about a judge’s conduct, a complaint may be made to the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office.

I appreciate the noble Lord’s concern—which he has also put in writing to me— about the potential impact of judicial decision-making on the ability of local authorities to discharge their statutory functions. I agree that this may be a matter which reviews carried out on behalf of the panel could highlight. The noble Lord will appreciate that, through this Bill, it will be the role of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel to identify serious child safeguarding cases that raise issues which are complex or of national importance and to supervise the production and publication of reviews. The panel will certainly be concerned to make recommendations, through its reviews, as to what improvements should be made by safeguarding partners or others in respect of the safeguarding and welfare of children. Where such recommendations relate to, or could relate to, judicial practice, the Department for Education will continue to work closely with colleagues from the Ministry of Justice to communicate these recommendations to the judiciary, so that the judiciary can consider what, if any, impact there should be on judicial practice. Judicial practice does, of course, remain a matter for the judiciary itself.

It is not that the panel cannot review and make recommendations; it can. It just cannot direct the judiciary, although we will work with it to make sure that lessons are conveyed. Given the panel’s remit and concerns that have been expressed regarding the need for the panel to be independent of the Government, I do not feel that it would be appropriate to include guidance from the Secretary of State to the panel on this issue. The panel must be free to set its own terms of reference for individual reviews, and I would expect this to include consideration of how a local authority has discharged its safeguarding responsibilities under all circumstances—or if, indeed, it had had difficulty in discharging them for whatever reason. Indeed, this consideration would also apply to all other agencies and could be a significant finding in a review leading to improved practice across the country. However, as each case will be different, general guidance to address what will be a case-by-case consideration is not likely to be beneficial or practicable.

On whether independent social workers are regulated, I assure the noble Lord that all social workers are professionally regulated. In view of this, I hope that he will be reassured about the scope of the panel’s functions, including the need for the panel to be able to treat each situation on a case-by-case basis and make the recommendations it sees fit, and therefore will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I start by responding to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the preparation for the Bill and consultation. The Bill has been very widely consulted on, and impact assessments have been conducted, including a full assessment in respect of children’s rights. Ministers and officials meet regularly with representatives of local authorities and the voluntary sector to discuss all aspects of the Bill, and their views are always listened to very carefully. In relation to the provisions on looked-after children and care leavers, we have spoken to the ADCS, the LGA and approximately 20 local authorities on the corporate parenting principles and local offer. Our thinking was also informed by eight meetings of care leavers organised by voluntary sector organisations as we developed Keep on Caring. However, I take the noble Lord’s point about, at certain times, the rush of correspondence and the flurry of activity, for which I apologise. It has not been easy for any of us, and I will take his points back, again, and ensure that they are taken very seriously.

I now turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, which would place a duty on local authorities to promote the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers. I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy, to the noble Lords, Lord Warner, Lord Watson and Lord Judd, to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and to the noble Baronesses, Lady Murphy and Lady Benjamin, for their contributions to today’s debate.

All mental health-related amendments have been discussed with the co-chairs of the expert group for mental health for looked-after children. One of the co-chairs, Alison O’Sullivan, attended a meeting with some noble Lords in September to present the work plan and ambition for its care pathway project. Assessment, and how children access the right support, will be at the very heart of its work. The next stage of the group’s work will see the development of options for a care pathway along with models of care and quality indicators for the mental health of looked-after children. A care pathway is an evidence-based journey that outlines possible treatment options, timescales and the professionals involved in a person’s care. It will consider, explicitly, the pros and cons of carrying out a full mental health assessment on entry to care.

The expert group plans to share the evidence base behind the chosen models and the pathway with interested parties, including noble Lords, in the spring. We are committed to acting on the findings of the expert group, and will fully consider all the recommendations it makes, including any recommendations to legislate. Every local authority is already under a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of the children it looks after. That means not just keeping them safe but considering their emotional well-being. Looked-after children already must regularly receive a comprehensive health assessment by a registered medical professional on entry into care.

Where there is concern about possible mental health or special educational needs issues which require further investigation, local authorities must ensure the appropriate professionals undertake necessary next steps. Access to NHS services is based on the clinical needs of each individual. The current approach of undertaking further specialist assessment where there is an established need allows resources to be targeted appropriately.

Transition between children’s and adult mental health services needs to be managed effectively. However, prescribing the age at which a young person leaves CAMHS fails to recognise looked-after children as individuals with varying needs. NHS guidance is clear that the transition must be carefully planned with the young person and should take place at the time which is right for them. Services should, wherever possible, accommodate this flexibility.

Co-operation between local authorities and clinical commissioning groups is vital. That is why CCGs are relevant partners under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 and must co-operate with local authority arrangements to promote the welfare of children. That includes those looked after and care leavers in their area. Innovation projects such as No Wrong Door in North Yorkshire show what can be achieved through multiagency team approaches.

There are numerous examples of joint working across local authority and mental health teams: North Tyneside, Kensington and Chelsea, Croydon, Hartlepool, Sheffield and Trafford to name but a few. So what we want to see is already happening, but just not everywhere. Through initiatives like the Innovation Programme, the Government are supporting this work and will be helping the wider sector to learn about what really works in this area. Services are improved through better planning and commissioning. The needs of this vulnerable group should be addressed through local health and well-being boards and the local transformation plans that all CCGs have produced with local authorities, together with other local partners.

I completely agree with the importance to be placed on identifying and responding to the mental health needs of children in care. That is why, as I have said, every looked-after child is subject to regular physical and mental health screenings. Where any potential issues are identified, a more intensive specialist mental health assessment should be pursued. But we must remember that around 50% of looked-after children have a mental health problem; 50% do not require intensive specialist assessment—these assessments should be used where there is cause for further investigation, not indiscriminately. As I say, if the expert group on mental health recommends that we reconsider this position, we will do so, properly considering all its recommendations, including legislation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, clarified some of her concerns and who she proposes would carry out these assessments, which I personally found extremely helpful. I will commit not only to meet her to discuss this matter, but also to try to ensure that the co-chairs of the expert group are also at that meeting to listen to and discuss her points.

I turn to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, which focuses on the needs of looked-after children and care leavers with neurodevelopmental disorders or neurodisability needs. The ability to communicate in order to access learning and improve life chances is something to which the noble Lord is deeply committed. The Government share that commitment, both to looked-after children and care leavers and those with special educational needs. However, we need to take a proportionate and targeted approach to assessing and meeting needs.

The amendment includes a long list of issues that a proposed mental health assessment should cover, all of which may require a specialist assessment. We do not think that screening all children for every condition on that list is appropriate, with children only being sent for specialist assessment where the earlier general assessment has indicated this is necessary. An assessment framework for looked-after children and young people is already in place to ensure their needs are addressed.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I am trying to work out whether he has agreed that the issue about mental health assessment can be brought back on Third Reading.

[Lord Nash]

Well, I have committed to having a meeting with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and the co-chairs of the expert group, to discuss this further. We believe it would be inappropriate to bring this forward now in advance of the expert group making its findings, but it would be helpful if the noble Baroness spoke to the group about her concerns and its direction of travel, and then we can discuss this issue in more detail.

I was dealing with the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. For looked-after children and young people there is already an assessment framework in place to ensure their needs are addressed. This focuses on the whole child’s needs: physical, mental, emotional and behavioural development as well as identity, relationships and social presentation and self-care skills. It draws on expertise from health and education partners and is sufficiently comprehensive to identify children with unmet needs who require further specialist assessment. Where children have or are suspected to have special educational needs or disabilities, social workers should be working with professionals who are experts in addressing those needs and identifying the support needed.

The central approach that underpins the Special Educational Needs and Disability Code of Practice is to use the term “children with learning difficulties”. It is a very broad term, to be applied to any child who has difficulty with learning for whatever reason, including neurodisabilities. It is also intended to identify social, emotional and behavioural issues that are hard to screen for because they are context-based and develop over time.

Under Section 20 of the Children and Families Act 2014, a child or young person has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability that calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her. That definition includes any condition that amounts to a neurodisability, such as autism or dyslexia. The statutory guidance for virtual school heads emphasises this and stresses the importance of the social care and SEND professions working together so that referrals can be made in a timely way and the right support put in place. To that end the department has, for example, been working with the Communication Trust, a consortium of over 40 voluntary and community sector organisations active in the field of speech, language and communication, to build on existing resources and programmes to ensure that practitioners are supported, and to suggest new opportunities to meet the needs of children and young people with speech and language difficulties.

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[Lord Ramsbotham]

My Lords, my Amendment 29 seeks to use Clause 8 to mitigate the possible impact of provisions elsewhere in the Bill on a group of children described by the phrase,

“there being no person who has parental responsibility for the child”—

in other words, looked-after children. I refer in particular to looked-after children in custody, of whom the noble Lord, Lord Laming, in his report, estimated that there were approximately 400 at any one time, 100 of whom were on remand. Although this is not in itself a large number, it adds up to slightly less than half the numbers of children currently in custody. This ratio accentuates the need to consider their position.

Currently, all children remanded into custody are automatically granted looked-after status for the duration of their time on remand. Children in care retain this status throughout their custody. However, in Grand Committee the Minister suggested that this could be removed by other clauses in the Bill. Looked-after children in custody show greater levels of mental health needs than other incarcerated children, need greater levels of emotional and practical support, and respond less well to behavioural incentive schemes and resettlement planning. As a group, they already face problems in engaging local authority support, and it would appear to be at best counterproductive to enable local authorities to opt out of their duty to support those looked-after children who happen to be in custody. This is yet another cross-government matter, and I wonder whether the Department for Education has discussed the possible effect of this with the Ministry of Justice, which aims to reduce reoffending.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I, like my noble friend, am very grateful for government Amendment 20, which we fully support. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and my noble friend Lady King spoke eloquently about children adopted from care outside England who are now resident in England, and on the need for educational equality. We, too, very much welcome the Minister’s intention to bring forward amendments in the other place. Obviously, they will come back to your Lordships’ House in the new year.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made a very telling point about the particular challenges of looked-after children in custody. At heart, it is a question of whether the Minister’s department’s intention is consistent with that of the Ministry of Justice. It would be very helpful if, between now and Report, the Minister would enable some discussions to take place with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, just to make sure that there is absolute consistency, because I very much take the point that he raised.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I join in welcoming government Amendment 20, which seems to fill an important loophole. In passing, as I did not have an opportunity in the previous grouping, I also thank the Minister for his previous amendments, which are important and which we raised in Committee. As is so often the case, the Minister listens and takes action, and I am grateful to him when he does so, as he did earlier and in this case.

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Moved by

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

30: Clause 8, page 8, line 42, leave out from “child’s” to end of line 2 on page 9 and insert “or a person with parental responsibility for the child;
(ii) long-term foster care, with a connected person, existing foster carer or other person;(iii) adoption, with an existing foster carer, foster to adopt carer or other person;(iv) long-term care not within sub-paragraph (i), (ii) or (iii);”

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I will speak to my own amendment and perhaps come back when we have had a debate on the other amendments in the group. This takes us back to an interesting discussion that we had in Committee about fostering and the risk that fostering will be placed in a lower hierarchical category in relation to the provisions of the Bill. Let me say at once—if the Minister is paying attention—that I welcome the issue of the clause, looking at the long-term needs of the child, and developing a plan that will assess their current and future needs and a permanent plan to meet those needs. We all agree that this clause places these issues at the forefront of decision-makers’ minds when assessing the care plan. Clearly, it is important to ensure that all permanent options benefit from this clause. That is why all options should be written explicitly into the Bill.

What is concerning, particularly to those involved in fostering and the fostering network, is whether we can get clarity in the law to avoid some options, particularly adoption, being seen as more important than others in a hierarchy of care. I do not at all underestimate the importance of the need to encourage more adoptions. I have no doubt that this is the right way to go. But it should not be at the expense of prioritising adoptions over fostering.

A legal framework is in place. A legal definition for long-term foster care was introduced subsequent to the passing of the Children and Families Act 2014. The Care Planning and Fostering (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2015 amended the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010 by providing for the first time a legal definition of long-term foster care and setting out the conditions that must be met. This step rightly strengthened the importance of foster care as a permanent option for children and young people in care.

As the Government have placed long-term foster care on a legal footing, the opportunity should be taken in this legislation to include it as a permanent option. The Children Act 1989 Guidance and Regulations Volume 2: Care Planning, Placement and Case Review June 2015 includes reference to the range of options for permanence and this could be used as a basis from which to amend new subsection (3B) to reflect the range of options for permanence that already exist in law—all of which can deliver good outcomes for individual children.

In Committee in the House of Lords, the Government said that the amendment would duplicate wording in Section 22C of the Children Act 1989 that sets out how looked-after children are to be accommodated by local authorities. That is something that I would like to clarify with the Minister. The fostering network disagrees with this because it believes that Section 22C(6) of the Children Act 1989 does not mention long-term fostering and the term has no legal meaning prior to the Care Planning and Fostering (Miscellaneous Amendments) (England) Regulations 2015 that I referred to. Section 22C(6) specifies only the range of ways in which a looked-after child may be cared for, including foster placements. It does not focus on permanence. As the Bill stands, Clause 8 is inconsistent with the statutory guidance on permanence planning. My amendment would ensure that all permanence options were recognised with equal status across all relevant primary and secondary legislation. We should bear in mind that currently three-quarters of looked-after children are fostered, so this is an important question.

I understand that I have raised some technical issues, but the core importance of this is the need to avoid a hierarchy of care. In addition to responding to the technical questions that I have raised, if the Minister can say that there is no intention of having such a hierarchy, it would indeed be very helpful. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my Amendment 31 in this group would add the child’s wishes and feelings to the list of matters that must be included in the local authority’s Section 31A plan under the Children Act 1989. Permanence has just been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The permanence provisions of a care plan must be considered by a court before a care order is made—or in some cases not made. The court must additionally consider contact arrangements and the views of parties to the proceedings about contact. The child is a party in care proceedings, so his or her views would be elicited about contact. To ensure that their wishes and feelings are elicited and reported on all aspects of permanence, it is necessary to specifically include this in Clause 8.

The Department for Education has defined permanence as follows:

“Achieving permanence is multifaceted. It requires children to experience not only physical permanence in the form of a family they are a part of and a home they live in but also a sense of emotional permanence, of belonging and the opportunity to successfully build a strong identity. Legal status may also impact on children’s sense of permanence”.

Without an explicit and specific requirement, it would be quite possible for the part of a care plan dealing with permanence to omit the child’s wishes and feelings about the relationships they value, their sense of belonging and stability and their hopes and dreams for the future. This is not to give undue weight to the child’s wishes and feelings or to place unrealistic expectations or pressures on them; it is just to ensure the child’s rightful place at the centre of proceedings as a human being whose lived experience, wishes, feelings and perspectives should be at the heart of the court’s consideration.

In Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, said that,

“this principle is already captured in existing legislation”.—[Official Report, 6/7/16; col. GC 214.]

However, he referred to provisions in Part 3 relating to local authority consultation duties in respect of the children they look after. This issue is separate from the court’s consideration of the permanence provisions of the child’s care plan. It could be argued that the court’s duty in respect of the permanence provision coalesces with its general duty under the welfare checklist to have regard to the ascertainable wishes and feelings of the child concerned—considered, of course, in the light of his or her age and understanding. However, this is one of many aspects of the checklist; there is a whole long list of things. My amendment seeks to ensure that the local authority seeks and reports on the child’s wishes and feelings specifically on the permanence arrangements, in addition to their wishes and feelings on any other matter affecting them.

Statutory guidance on care planning already refers to the child’s wishes and feelings, so placing the child’s wishes and feelings into this part of the legislation accords with national policy, professional standards and children’s rights under the UNCRC. So I hope that the Minister will be minded to accept the amendment.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 30, 31 and 34, which concern the decision-making process about how a child becomes looked after and where they should be placed, and the state benefits which families of adopted children should be entitled to. There is also the matter of wishes and feelings. I am very sorry to disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Warner, but I understand that after very helpful discussions between the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and my officials, she—or somebody on her behalf—plans not to move her Amendment 31. I believe she now recognises that it is not necessary, although my officials found the meeting with her extremely helpful. The child’s wishes and feelings are taken into account by local authorities when a child is looked after. This is a legal requirement under Section 22(4) of the Children Act 1989. When any decision is taken with respect to a child who is looked after, the local authority must ascertain their wishes and feelings.

Amendment 30, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, proposes new wording for the permanence provisions of care plans in the context of care proceedings. As I stated in Committee in response to such an amendment, I recognise the concern that adoption should not be seen as more important than other long-term placement options. In answer to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I can state clearly that there is no intention to create a hierarchy here between placement options. We want all children in care, or entering care, to find placements that provide stability and suit them. This is what we mean by permanence; there are different ways to achieve it for different children.

Clause 8 seeks to improve the decision-making process about where a child should be placed, whether that be adoption, with a special guardian, with foster parents or in a children’s home, by having particular regard to the child’s needs and how any placement options would meet those needs. The amendment seeks to explicitly set out in Section 31 of the 1989 Act a list of placement options, such as foster care. However, all placement options, including foster care, are already included within the current legal definition for permanence provisions. Section 22C of the Children Act 1989 and the accompanying statutory guidance set out clearly how all looked-after children, including children subject to care orders, are to be accommodated and maintained by local authorities. This includes a hierarchy of placements with parents, relatives, friends or other persons connected with the child, kinship foster placements with local authority foster carers and placements in children’s homes.

Local authorities and courts are very clear about what placement options they need to consider during care proceedings. Amendment 30 is therefore not necessary and would not add to the existing legislative framework. It would simply duplicate what is already set out elsewhere in the Children Act 1989, which is something that Governments always try to avoid. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, Section 22C clearly says that foster care is an option set out for local authorities and courts to consider, and this includes long-term foster care. Local authorities and courts understand this, and I am advised that no one is confused in practice on the issue. On that basis, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Amendment 34, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady King, and the noble Lord, Lord Warner, proposes a new clause so that child-related benefits would be payable to adopted children regardless of any limit on the number of children to whom those benefits are usually payable. As noble Lords will know, the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 legislated for the child element in child tax credit and universal credit to be limited to two children from April 2017. I was delighted to announce in my letter to noble Lords on 11 October that where a family adopts a child from local authority care and this increases the number of children in the family to three or more, all third or subsequent adopted children will attract the child element of either tax or universal credit. This will be provided for, along with the other exemptions, in regulations and is good news for families who come forward and give a loving home to some of our most vulnerable children. It represents another example of the Government’s ongoing commitment to support these children and their families.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady King, for her kind words. As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, I may not be unique in listening to rational arguments but I may be unique in being incapable of resisting the noble Baroness’s charms and the powers of her arguments. I am sure that we will all miss her and I wish her and her family all the best in California. I hope that it will not be long before we see her back on those Benches.

Amendment 32 would simply ensure that Clause 9 will now apply to adoption agencies in Wales, whereas the previous draft of this provision applied to courts in England and Wales and adoption agencies in England. It will also mean that the provision of the new duty will come into force at the same time in England and Wales. The department has agreement from the Welsh Government to lay this amendment, in anticipation of the Assembly scrutinising the required memorandum before agreeing a legislative consent Motion.

In conclusion on all the amendments that have been discussed, I hope the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, will feel reassured enough to withdraw or not press their amendments, and that the House will support the Government’s amendment.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister and join him in congratulating my noble friend Lady King on her new adventure, if I may put it that way. I also congratulate her on her success in persuading the noble Lord to change policy, which is very welcome indeed.

On Amendment 30, I hear what the Minister says about the technical arguments, which I hope are reassuring. He clearly said that there is no intention to create a hierarchy of care, which is very welcome. He also said that he thought that no one in practice at field level is confused. I do not disagree at all with the emphasis that the Government have given to improving adoption procedures, but there is a possibility that practitioners may feel that fostering is no longer seen as an equal option. The guidance that will be issued by his department when the Bill is enacted will no doubt give an opportunity to make that point. I am very grateful for the response and beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 30 withdrawn.