Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, raises some important points. We have already held extensive debates on the merits of the transfer of duties of education of 16 to 19 year-olds to local authorities, not least on the previous group of amendments. Noble Lords will be relieved to hear that I do not propose to rerun these debates now. However, the noble Baroness has raised some important related issues in this group. If these duties are to be transferred to local authorities, which already have strained budgets and capacities, we must ensure that certain safeguards are built into the structure. As the Committee will be aware, as I have said before, and as we will be discussing later, we on these Benches have serious misgivings about transferring these functions to local authorities. Nevertheless, if the Bill as it stands is accepted, we would wish to support those who intend to ensure that safeguards are in place to protect those who might be most at risk from budgetary or staff constraints. Amendment 92 widens the scope of the local authority’s obligations, asking that it should have regard not only to diversity, but to inclusion, with which we have some sympathy. Amendment 97 requires recommendations from its own audit process and from Ofsted to be taken into account and seems sensible. In an ideal world, we would hope that local authorities would regard this as an implicit and obvious function of their duties. Will the Minister confirm that he would expect that to happen? Does he have any concerns that it might not? Will he assure us that local authorities will see this issue as a priority in order to ensure that the highest standards of education are provided? Amendment 99 also raises concern about the delegation of those powers and duties to local authorities. It demands that they must take into account provision of information, transparency, assessment, participation of disabled children and feedback and complaints procedures. Those all appear to be sensible to ensure that if local authorities cannot cope under the strain of those duties, it does not go unnoticed. We would all agree that it is of vital importance that if a lack of capacity in a local authority has the consequence that people are not receiving the education to which they are entitled, an open and transparent process would allow that to be brought to the attention of the appropriate authority. Will the Minister tell us whether, as the Bill stands, the appropriate authority to deal with an underperforming local authority would be the YPLA? Amendment 100 seeks to ensure that those who have learning difficulties or other disabilities are not excluded from provision simply because it may give rise to increased expenditure. I hope that that will not be the case and look forward to the Minister’s response.