Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I, too, support this series of amendments, and Amendment 2 in particular. The more I look through the document on the National Apprenticeship Service, the more the service seems to have a great deal of responsibility; it will evaluate what is going on the whole time to see that it really is value for money and so on. However, we suddenly find out that it actually has very little authority of its own. It must work indirectly, really. Perhaps even more important, it does not seem to have quite enough accountability to the rest of us, other than what we are going to be told by the government department, BIS. The more I have listened, the more I think that there is a lot to be said for the amendment, which would set up a body that was rather more independent and responsible to all of us: the National Apprenticeship Service in a rather stronger form.