I am very grateful to everyone who has spoken on the amendment and for the explanation given by the Minister. If I may, I shall walk through my understanding of the process, so that the Minister can interrupt me if I am getting things dreadfully wrong.
Let us suppose that a local authority, as part of whatever grouping—perhaps the Minister could let me know what is the grouping around Greenhead College in Huddersfield, so I can see how that meshes with the actuality of travel to learn in that part of the world—decides that it wants to commission, say, 20 new places in strawberry-growing. I chose that because of the badge that the Minister is wearing. It has two FE colleges that might provide this course. They discuss it, and one of the colleges does not want to do it but the other does, so the grouping commissions the second FE college to put on this course. At that moment, the course is commissioned and no money or obligations have changed hands, except that the second college now has to put in place the facilities and the teaching staff to provide the course.
If the thing has been commissioned, it has to set up the course in some way or other. If the local authority has commissioned a course, presumably there is now a provider ready to provide it, which means recruiting someone who knows about strawberry-growing, and giving them an office and the equipment they will need in order to teach the course.
So the course is then commissioned, at which point the first FE college decides that, actually, it will put on one of those courses too, because it does not want to be left out of this wonderful new market. It recruits somebody to teach strawberry-growing—
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill
Proceeding contribution from
Lord Lucas
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Thursday, 2 July 2009.
It occurred during Committee of the Whole House (HL)
and
Debate on bills on Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill.
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Proceeding contribution
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712 c392 
Session
2008-09
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