Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I very much support the amendment. The case has been argued extremely well by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who brings his past knowledge and continuing study of this area to the debate. We are all concerned about control. Certainly, if you look at the work of the Association of Colleges over the years, its standards have been rising considerably, as we have heard. It is interesting to note that it is particularly helping those from the most deprived backgrounds. Something like 68 per cent of those in receipt of education maintenance allowance study at a college; and 13 per cent of the 16 to 18 year-olds are from deprived backgrounds, compared to 7 per cent in maintained schools. There are a number of such figures which really show that the Association of Colleges has increasingly acted as a facilitator of the talents that we all need to see developed to the full in all our children. One part of me welcomes the fact that local authorities are taking over education. I will come to that later. In prisons, as we all know, maybe the governors had other ideas about what the priorities for young people—and indeed older prisoners who would clearly benefit from further forms of education or apprenticeships—should be. It is the business of control that we are all concerned about. The point about moving from one local education authority to another is absolutely basic, is it not? You have to be able to cross boundaries. Clearly a lot of this is happening now anyhow—for example, if you are in a prison in one area and your home is in another. I have looked hard at the section that noble Lords want to change. I originally read it in a rather more positive way, but the more I looked at it, the more it worried me. Perhaps the Minister could take a further look at it, to see if it could be made more reassuring. I just have this instinct that the intention is the opposite of what we have all foreseen.