Education and Skills Bill

I know that the Minister will be disappointed if I do not speak to this group of amendments, especially when doing so gives me an opportunity to praise my colleagues in the other place. I believe that they were the moving force behind Lords amendments Nos. 40 and 32. I shall not detain the House too long, as the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) has already done a comprehensive job in speaking to this group. I am sure that the Prince of Wales will be moved by the hon. Gentleman's tribute to him, just as we are all are moved by the hon. Gentleman's modesty. Most of us here thought that the hon. Gentleman was the greatest living Briton, so it was remarkably generous for him to give the accolade to someone else. Let me deal first with Lords amendment No. 40, which introduces what the Government now call learning and support agreements. Those agreements sound remarkably similar to the learning and support contracts that my party sought to include in the Bill, and which I believe have Conservative support. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what was convincing about the learning and support agreements that was not similarly convincing in respect of the learning and support contracts. The Minister will recall from earlier discussions on this issue, to which we returned on a number of occasions, that one of our concerns was that there should be an alternative to being in education and training for young people who really needed support for a period, perhaps on account of mental or general health issues, family issues and so forth. The Minister included some of those issues in a letter to me, which helped me to anticipate the Government's thinking. Will the Minister clarify precisely when and how the learning and support agreements will be used? Our hope all along was that they could be used in place of education and training in circumstances where it was difficult, because of other problems, to get a young person to engage in education and training. I am still somewhat unclear from Lords amendment No. 40 about the precise circumstances in which the learning and support agreements could be used. Subsection (4) of the new clause set out in the amendment states:"““The learning and support agreement must include provision (whether or not in the form of a learning and support condition) relating to the young person's participation in education or training.””" Does that mean, as I fear it may, that the learning and support agreements are to be used only to support a young person who must be in education and training at the same time as engaging in the agreement, or does the Minister envisage the possibility of a young person, with the agreement of the local authority, being in a learning and support agreement that provided the sort of support necessary for going into education and training, but before formally engaging in the education and training that were previously a condition and requirement of the Bill? Clarification on that point would be helpful. We also welcome the Government's attempts to avoid the custodial option for young people against whom enforcement action is being taken under the Bill. That obviously goes nowhere near as far as we would like, because of our fundamental concerns about the Bill. We continue to worry about the effect of taking this enforcement action against young people who may not be complying—in some cases, for perfectly good reasons—with the measures in the Bill. Removing the custodial option is very welcome indeed. Ministers made a further concession to my excellent colleagues in the other place regarding Lords amendment No. 32, which promises a review in 2016. That might seem a somewhat modest achievement, but we hold out the hope that the review may cause the Government at least to rethink if serious problems come to light in the policy of applying criminal standards to young people for failing to comply with education and training requirements. The explanatory notes suggest that, as the Minister indicated earlier, the report is to be made in 2016, but I may have missed some detail that clarifies that that is a certainty. I note, however, that the proposed subsection (2) set out in Lords amendment No. 32 states:"““The person appointed must make a report to the Secretary of State on the review within a reasonable period after the school leaving date for 2016.””" Have the Government already determined that ““a reasonable period”” means that the review will take place in 2016? Given the description in the explanatory notes of the type of review that the Government envisage, will the Minister put it on record that there is nothing to prevent the review's conclusions from leading to a fundamental rethink by the Government about the policy of applying a criminal standard to young people who fail to comply with education and training requirements? The amendments fall a long way short of what we would really like to see in the Bill, but they are welcome concessions none the less, and we hope that after the Minister has spoken we shall be able to welcome them even more warmly.