Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

This is a small and unassuming amendment. It came upon me rather by surprise, as if I had been walking on a pavement in an otherwise well conducted borough and suddenly found myself tripping heavily over a raised paving stone. I made what was, to my eye, the natural assumption when reading the passage referred to, that the word "specification" referred to a process. No, first, I assumed it was a verb. I ask your Lordships to note that I am speaking also to Amendment 32, which addresses a similar problem. I shall read the passage: ""The English issuing authority may issue an apprenticeship framework that the authority is satisfied meets the requirements specified, by the specification of apprenticeship standards for England"." It goes on. If it had read "specified in the specification of apprenticeship standards for England", it would have been clear that I was looking for a theme rather than a process. However, when we get to Clauses 22 to 26, we find that the people doing the specification are, in England, the chief executive of skills funding—with the endorsement of the Secretary of State—and, in Wales, the Welsh Ministers off their own bat. It would be convenient to name them here and get around that little difficulty. If you try to pass the sentence as I first saw it, there is a perfectly clear object in the requirements, but no visible subject for the verb. That is the maze that I got myself into. I am suggesting a way out of it that does not do violence that I can see to any of the Government’s principles, and is, by three or four syllables, a fraction shorter. It also postpones conveniently the question of what this crucial document is going to be called, which I hope your Lordships will allow me to raise when we get to Amendment 36. I beg to move.