Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I think I can safely say that this has been a rather wide-ranging debate—somewhat wider perhaps than even the noble Lord, Lord Elton, intended. I hesitate to engage in a sort of syntactical analysis with the noble Lord because I have a horrid feeling that his expertise in that area is superior to mine, which did not even extend to an O-level in English language. However, I shall endeavour to answer the point that he makes because I generally pay respect to his concerns in trying to ensure clarification and order in a Bill. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, we would not want employers to have to pore over the legislation to find out their rights and responsibilities; I genuinely hope that guidance and other documents will do that job. However, that is not to avoid the main issue of ensuring that what is in the Bill is as clear as we can make it. The references to the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England, or SASE, in Clause 12 and its sister document in Clause 17 come earlier in the Bill than the relevant clause that explains what the SASE and its sister document are, but that is an unavoidable consequence of the interlocking nature of the four key elements of the statutory apprenticeships programme which the Bill develops. Although I understand the problem that the noble Lord’s amendments seek to correct, Amendments 21 and 32 would give the chief executive of skills funding and Welsh Ministers the power to determine the requirements that an apprenticeship framework must satisfy without recourse to the Specification of Apprenticeship Standards for England or its sister document for Wales. These are designed to safeguard minimum entitlements and requirements to ensure that all apprenticeships offer the individual a well balanced and high-quality programme of training. They have been the subject of a huge consultative process. We think it is right that these consistent standards should be set out in the SASE, which will ensure that these matters are subject to full consultation and subject to the normal parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Elton, will reflect on that and consider withdrawing his amendment. I turn now to—