Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for his response and to other noble Lords for their substantive contributions. The Minister has made three points in response. The most important is that, in answer to the question of why the SFA and why this complicated system under it, it gives greater system coherence to the skills agenda. He talked about a more coherent system of learning and employment. I am not sure that it does; it is split between the YPLA and the SFA, so there is already a split between under-19s and over-19s, which actually complicates the whole apprenticeship area. A great advantage of bringing the National Apprenticeship Service into one body is that there is then a single body to champion apprenticeships and run the clearing house service that is so necessary. The notion of having a single body gives it greater coherence rather than less, particularly because apprenticeship is such a satisfactory way for young people to learn by doing. That was another point that came up in your Lordships’ report on apprenticeships: it is the most satisfactory form of work-based learning. We want to see an expansion of apprenticeships and we want a champion; we want something that pulls together all the different bits so that it is not split between pre-19 and post-19 in the way that it is. There is coherence there. Secondly, the Minister said, "Why on earth do you want to make another quango when we already have so many?". If he looks carefully at the Bill he will find that we, alongside the Opposition, do not want to see quite so many of them. Part of what we are about in the Bill is to try to ensure that there are not so many quangos in the offing. There is coherence in what we are proposing because it puts the National Apprenticeship Service under a single body. He says that the SFA is about devolving responsibilities, not micromanagement. He says that all the instances where I accuse him of micromanagement were already written into the Learning and Skills Act. One reason why the Learning and Skills Council failed so badly was that the Government kept putting their nitpicking fingers into the council and telling it what to do. It might have done somewhat better if it had been left alone to get on with the job. I am not sure about that—it really did make a mess of its capital programme, didn’t it?—but I do not think that it is a good example of how this should be done. Thirdly, there is the whole question of accountability. The Minister says that of course it is going to be accountable: its chief executive officer will be its accounting officer, and he will be accountable to Parliament. That is true, but only through the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills or his Permanent Secretary. As we know perfectly well, the chief executive officer for skills funding is going to be a civil servant sitting within the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, not a Minister. We are asking for a degree of accountability directly to Parliament. The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, is a telling one: we want to see if we can get centralisation. "Let’s have centralisation around Parliament"; this is what people are asking for now. We do not want more centralisation around the government Benches; we want to see Parliament being able to scrutinise to a greater degree what is going on. This has been an interesting debate. We have opened up a number of fascinating areas here, and we will have to ponder this issue further. I put it to the Minister that there is coherence in what we are proposing. As he says, the National Apprenticeship Service is already set up, like so much that is in the Bill; it is already there in shadow form. We are being asked ex post to pass the legislation for what is already happening, and this occurs too frequently. Having said that, I am pleased at what the National Apprenticeship Service, which has been going for six or nine months, has been doing. It is doing the right things, but I would like it to have greater autonomy. We will think more on these things, but for now I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 2 withdrawn. Amendment 3 not moved.