Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

May I add to what the noble Baroness has said? The amendments attempt to pin down the responsibility of the local authority to make sure that it will do what the Bill sets out for it to do. Many local authorities might be dilatory in exercising these responsibilities, which are irksome and very expensive. I would like some estimate from the Government of what the cost will be of transferring to local authorities the responsibility for education and training of 16 to 18 year-olds who are held in custody. Have they estimated the costs, which will be considerable? They have to devise training plans and ensure that they are implemented, and—who knows?—a local authority might have a young offender in an offender institution at one end of the country and another at the other end of the country. When it comes to special educational needs, as my noble friend has just said, who will bear the cost of following up the assessment? A young offender with special educational needs—for example, if they are partially blind, partially deaf or autistic—will, if they are not in custody, be in either a special school or a special unit of an ordinary school. Of course, they cannot attend those if they are in custody and will require individual tutoring in skills relating to blindness, deafness or autism. That is a truly expensive operation. Then their progress has to be measured, which is another expensive operation. Have the Government made an estimate of the overall cost of this obligation on local authorities across the country? I think we all agree that this is an excellent duty to perform but it is an expensive extra duty, and the question is: where will local authorities get the money? Will it come from the local council tax payer or from a government grant?