Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, we now move on to a very important group of amendments. I think that there are 18 altogether in the names of my noble friends and my noble colleagues in the Liberal Democrats, and they all address a further complex and significant area of the Bill—namely, the establishment of the Young People’s Learning Agency for England. In the Bill, the Government propose to abolish the Learning and Skills Council, which was responsible for all post-16 education, and instead to divide up responsibility for education by age. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill state that local education authorities will have a duty to secure education for all those who are of compulsory school age but under 19 and for those persons who are between 19 and 24 and for whom a learning difficulty assessment has been carried out. Responsibility for post-19 education and training will be given to the chief executive of Skills Funding. That is the impression that I garnered of the Government’s intentions and I hope that the Minister can correct me if I am not representing the case correctly. Therefore, the purpose of the YPLA will be to support local authorities and to provide national frameworks, which should help them to carry out their duties with regard to education for 16 to 19 year-olds. Notes provided by the Bill team state that this new and "slim line" body will help local authorities to carry out their duties by, ""ensuring coherence of commissioning plans, managing the national funding formula, and providing strategic data and analysis"." Therefore, the YPLA will check the plans that local authorities have produced and channelled through the sub-regional and regional groupings. It will then fund local authorities to meet these plans and it will retain powers to intervene if it looks as though local authorities will not be able to produce the plans in the time available. Earlier today, the Minister said that in extreme cases it will have powers to intervene more generally. Will it? I should be very pleased to have a little more explanation. The purpose of all the amendments is to probe what this new body—the YPLA—will be like and what it will do. I have already shared with noble Lords the concerns that we have about the convoluted, confusing and incoherent nature of much of this Bill and the quangos that it produces. The abolition of the Learning and Skills Council and its replacement by different quangos, institutions and authorities to carry out its duties, with the division based on age, will cause a great number of difficulties. I hope that the Minister will go into a detailed explanation of how she hopes that it will work. We think that it is vital that the arrangements for funding and management of skills are coherent, consistent and effective. Our preference would be for a simple and streamlined system with clear lines of accountability. Amendments 144, 147, 148, 149, 150 and 151 attempt to probe why it is not possible to place the duties of the YPLA under the Skills Funding Agency. Our Clause 58 stand part move is to allow a debate on the whole nature of the YPLA and its relationship with the other bodies that the Government would like to create. This would allow the SFA to provide the central and overarching authority. That is in line with our own desire for a simple and streamlined system. We acknowledge the importance of local authorities in education. Nevertheless we would not devolve responsibility for educating those above the compulsory school age but below 19 to them. I suppose we would then remove the need for the YPLA altogether. Instead, our preference is for a central Skills Funding Agency that would have responsibility for educational funding both above and below the age of 19. Of course, we acknowledge the importance of local authorities in education and the help that they provide, so our Amendment 169ZC would make local authorities a mandatory consultee for the chief executive of the SFA in carrying out his duties in that capacity. Does the Minister agree that that would help reduce the bureaucracy and confusion that would result with two separate agencies dealing with a system of education that in all my experience does not easily divide neatly between under 19 and over 19? Concern has been expressed by many groups, and we have heard them. The Local Government Association, for example, states: ""Despite the Government’s stated desire to keep the new system bureaucratically simple the complexity of the proposals means the reality may not match this aspiration"." The Government appear to have acknowledged the arguments of those expressing concern but the reaction seems to be only to call this YPLA slim line. That is said wherever possible to emphasise that it will not cause the bureaucratic muddle of which we are all afraid. The Minister referred to it as a "light-touch national body" in her Second Reading speech, if I have got it right, but we have yet to hear a proper explanation of how the lines of reporting, funding and accountability will work in this slim line body, to avoid these difficulties. We concur with the worry of the Local Government Association and hope that the Minister can answer that concern in terms of practicalities rather than in terms of her vision, her dream, or her aspirations. Does she acknowledge that legislating for a new system is not enough to make up for the failures of the Learning and Skills Council? She may be able to explain what the SFA and the YPLA will do, but it is even more important that she explains how they are expected to do it. To that end, will the Minister answer our amendments that probe why the YPLA could not just come under the SFA? Does she not accept that an overarching body might help to simplify the lines of accountability and strategy while still allowing the YPLA to fulfil its obligations in providing funding to local authorities? Of course, lots of other bodies have expressed worries about the nature of the Government’s reforms. The National Union of Teachers, for example, said that it was worried about, ""the creation of a plethora of new agencies, with the Skills Funding Agency and the Young People’s Learning Agency. We are in danger of exchanging the bureaucracy of the LSC for two new agencies"." The NASUWT referred to the establishment of this body as, ""an unnecessary tier of bureaucracy and administration"." The British Chambers of Commerce commented: ""The government’s planned abolition of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and replacement with a number of new agencies for the sake of organisational efficiency is bizarre"." Need I go on? There is widespread opposition. I hope that the Minister has a well-prepared answer. Knowing her advisers, I am sure that it has been well prepared. I hope that it will outline the necessity and benefits of replacing some of the functions of the LSC with the YPLA. I have carefully studied the impact assessment—both volumes. It says that, ""in order to ensure that any potential increases in bureaucracy are minimised, the DCSF and DIUS have been working closely with representatives of the provider sector"." I am a bit confused about that. Perhaps the Minister can say what potential increases in bureaucracy are contemplated. I am merely quoting from the impact assessment. What potential increases in bureaucracy have been under discussion? Will she update us on the progress of these talks? John Hadwin, on behalf of the Surrey area liaison committee, university and college union has commented on the difficulties of division by age, particularly as regards FE colleges. He has written of a former colleague who taught two full-time courses, two part-time day courses and an evening class. Apparently his classes split 18-4 and 19-3 between 16 to 19 year olds and 19 plus students. In the part-time day courses the split is 5-10 and 8-6 and the evening class is divided 3-14. Will the Minster tell us whether it is her assumption that the passage of this Bill will mean that two different agencies, responsible to two different government departments, will want records of those students and may perhaps also have different criteria for their funding? We have tabled the amendments to express our deep concern about what we regard as the further confusion that the Government are bringing into the education sector. The abolition of the LSC is already under way. Perhaps among her other remarks, the Minister can give us an update on progress. Our Amendments 145, 146A and 169A are designed to probe the nature of the abolition of the Learning and Skills Council and its replacement by the YPLA and SFA in terms of how much the transition will cost and how many people will be employed by each of these new agencies. Page 33 of the impact assessment states: ""We expect the new system will at worst be revenue neutral for providers and there could potentially be significant benefits in terms of a more informed and integrated commissioning of their services by authorities"." I hope that we will get some facts and figures that will back up that remarkable statement. It is rather disingenuous of the Government to keep referring to a slim line agency and light-touch bodies when the Bill seems to be introducing more bodies and more bureaucracy. The fear of those in the sector, and the fear on these Benches, is that it will all mean increased spending, more staff, more bodies, more consultation and more cost. We look for reassurance with some firm facts and figures. Those concerns were raised in another place—I have been carefully reading through the Committee report—when Ministers struggled to come up with any solid figures. The updated impact assessment produced as the Bill entered your Lordships' House has provided some preliminary figures of transition costs, with the proviso that final figures would be produced closer to September. Here we are. I think that it is October. I have seen nothing so far. We need all this urgently. Can the Minister provide us with an update on the new figures? The constant emphasis on the very rough and initial nature of the principal figures gives us cause to doubt their reliability. It is all too easy for the Government to hide behind their claims of cost-neutrality, which I must say has an air of hope, rather than of reality about it. It is interesting to note the difference between the two impact assessments. In another place, the impact assessment stated: ""We expect the ongoing costs of operating the new system to be revenue-neutral compared to the current system in the short-term, with savings and efficiencies through a more integrated service at local authority level in the medium to long-term"." However, by the time that the impact assessment reached your Lordships' House, it talked only about maximising any potential savings. What has caused this change of emphasis and apparent decline in certainty about cost savings? Has further analysis undermined the Government’s confident claim that there would be savings and efficiencies in the medium to long-term? I think the Minister will have to admit that there has been ample opportunity for the Government to defend their assertion that there will be cost savings, yet we have had no solid figures. At this stage of the Bill, I do not think that that is adequate. Amendments 145 and 169A probe the Government on the number of people employed by the YPLA and the SFA. Amendment 145 states that the YPLA is not permitted to employ more than 500 people in total; Amendment 169A states that the chief executive may not employ more than 1,800 people in total. In another place, the Minister stated that he expected about 500 staff to transfer from the LSC to the YPLA and about 1,800 to transfer to the YPLA, which would then leave about 1,000 to transfer to local authorities. The Minister was, however, rather cagey about putting what he termed a straitjacket on the bodies, which would not allow them to employ more people than that. He said that he did not expect there to be a reduction in the head count. Of course, that calls into further doubt the Government’s assertions about cost savings. Does the Minister in fact expect an increase in numbers? After all, if the staff from the LSC are simply being divided between two bodies, does she accept that it is very likely that there will be more functions required and, consequently, more staff? It would be very useful if the Minister could expand a little on the structural changes that we might expect. As I said, the impact assessment informs us that the transfer will be cost-neutral. Both the SFA and the YPLA will have their head offices in Coventry, which currently houses the head office of the Learning and Skills Council, so, on paper, the Government will have achieved little more than dividing one institution into two. Can the Minister inform us of all the benefits that we should hope to see from the change? I must say that I look forward to her response. I beg to move.