Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, it is very difficult to find a central theme in the Bill; the reasons for that have been well exposed in our debate. I offer three thoughts: first, how easy is it to find a fit between the talents of young people and the opportunities available to them? I hope that we are not too beguiled by the idea that if only we will it, it will happen. I think that the fit is very difficult to find, and I will offer some reasons for that. Let us take the apprenticeship scheme and the dialogue between my noble friend Lord De Mauley and the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, on numbers, or the leave-well-alone- and-continuously-improve-what-we-already-have approach of my noble friend Lord Baker. I go back a long way. I was some years ago a premium apprentice in the engineering industry. The benefit of being a premium apprentice was that you were allowed to use the tools—and very helpful, it was. I learnt quite a lot about what one did in foundries and engineering shops, and I learnt a lot about the way of life in them, much of which I would not dare to tell your Lordships about. However, when I became manager of a steel foundry in Light Pipe Hall Road in Stockton-on-Tees, the question of apprentices did not arise. We wanted apprentices; and there were parents who brought in their boys—usually the mothers—who wanted their boys to be apprentices. We had in the foundry, for example, moulders and coremakers, both of which were skilled trades. We knew that we needed to take on the boys because some of the moulders were getting older. Those were days of full employment, and there was plenty of work about. Some of those apprenticeships worked very well, and some not so well—it depended very much on the interaction between the apprentice and whoever the charge-hand or foreman was. We were as basic as that in those days. It came down to who was responsible for making sure that the apprenticeship worked. We would not have doubted the right to day release or the need to try to make the apprentice go to night school in addition. The ones who did really well went to one of those colleges that my noble friend Lord Baker found so dilapidated, the foundry technical college in Wolverhampton, and became the managers of the next generation. There was no government intervention. However, the circumstances have changed. Whereas in those days the primary requirement of Harry Chadfield, who had been on a farm in the hills, came into the town, became a moulder and taught me how to mould, was manual. It is different today. Steel foundries are full of machinery which requires you to be able to read, write, do digital read-outs and know, when you have some problem on a complicated disamatic, what you should do next, who you should send for and what is going on. The other problem is that there are very few steel foundries left. The circumstances have changed and the problem is that Governments will always lag behind the ball. They are the referees who try to solve yesterday’s problems. Governments do not drive science; governments do not drive technological change; and they do not drive economic development. Therefore, they do not drive the fit between young people and the job opportunities available to them. We delude ourselves if we think that they can. Why, then, do we have government intervention? We have regulatory impact assessments and, very often—certainly, when it is secondary legislation—we get the description "modernisation". It is used as a friendly word, but it is neutral. We get "cost savings" or "benefits of centralisation". Are there no limits to government belief in intervention? Is there no theory for, or academic explanation of, the background which means that government intervention is likely to be sensible? I assume not. The problem with this Bill is that it will not find the fit between the talents of apprentices and opportunities for them in the economy. Its proposals are costly, bureaucratic, impractical and unenforceable. The second thought is that bodies are created and bodies are abolished. As if by magic, new bodies can be expected to be better than existing institutions—for example, better than the LSC—but it is the same people who go into them. I was taught at a school that was founded in 1392, so I am afraid that I believe in the adaptability and continuous improvement of existing bodies and not in constant change. As my noble friend Lord De Mauley reminded us, we are now reorganising the reorganisations; we are tightening the mechanistic screw; we have not done very well, so we are trying again. But it may be that the direction of travel was always wrong and we are now in danger of making matters worse. Thirdly, I return to a subject developed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I refer to the independence of bodies. I add to what she said—and she nearly said it—that where you find directions with which a body must comply, you can be pretty sure that there is no independence. I know this from experience, having been subject to directions—not often, it is true—which, crucially, removed for a time my independence to manage. What can be done once can be done again. Let us take the establishment of Ofqual as a Crown body. Does this shift confer more independence on the QCDA? At first, it might look as if it does, but if we follow the story we see that the QCDA has Clauses 182 and 183 devoted to it, which enable the Secretary of State to give general and specific directions to the QCDA with which it must comply. The body must also pay attention to every piece of guidance that he gives to it. Under Schedule 11, the Secretary of State controls the appointment of the chairman and can confer on the chairman some of the functions that the QCDA had conferred on its chief officer. So the chief officer will be in a pretty difficult situation if he does something which seems out of turn, because some of his job is to be given to the chair. I cannot believe that anybody who was the chief officer would ever believe that they were the chief officer of an independent body—I have, as some of your Lordships will know, been a chief executive of a public body. Is Ofqual different? In paragraphs 2 and 6 of Schedule 9, one reads much the same things. Of course, the Crown appoints the chair, but, as we know, it does not do so until No. 10 has said, "Well, that’s all right". Where does the true difference lie? There are other aspects of the schedule to which we shall no doubt return in Committee, but the real killer is in Clause 126(6), which states in terms: ""In performing its functions Ofqual must also have regard to such aspects of government policy as the Secretary of State may direct"." That means that the Secretary of State can at any time completely change the rules of the game for Ofqual. I have no doubt that Ministers will say, "Oh, these are reserve powers and we would not use them unless we absolutely had to", but what they ignore is the psychological effect on the body. If you know that that can be done to you, you must take account of it, and you certainly do. Any of your Lordships who have been in that position will have been met by a senior civil servant who says, "Well, of course, I don’t want to make too much of it but you will remember that your Minister has this power, won’t you?" That is the end of the independence. I do not believe at the moment that Ofqual is genuinely independent, and I am sure that we will have a very interesting time in Committee, if we get there.