Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Wall, has already said that we have a series of other groupings in which we will talk about consultation. It will come back time and time again. I pick up on her point. It is of course true that the sector skills councils are employer-led, and have been created expressly in order to be able to co-ordinate activities within each trade and sector of the employers. This is one of the reasons why, in the earlier debate about sector skills councils, I was so anxious to see that they were consulted. I felt that, having created them to express the will of employers, it was important, as I said, that we give them the courtesy of consulting them on these occasions. Time and again one gets in legislation, as we have here, things like, ""the Chief Executive must consult such persons as the Chief Executive thinks appropriate"." It is always tempting to put in a long list of all those that the chief executive should think appropriate. Equally, the point of the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, is there: the CBI and the employers have been lobbying us all, saying, "Our voice must be heard". There is a felling that we are creating this bureaucracy, and the employers will be carried along by it and not really be able to make their point on it. There has been extensive consultation on the apprenticeship specification. One of my responses to the employers was, "Have you replied?". They have, and that is one reason why the Government had 400 responses. However, it is important that, since we want the system to be employer-led—and nobody disputes that—they are given the courtesy of being involved in the consultation.