Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

I thank all who have contributed to what has proved to be an important issue in the structure of the YPLA. I am not entirely sure that anyone feels that they have had a complete answer to the concerns they have expressed. There is a yawning hole in the assumption that a remit letter to the chief executive and the council of the YPLA will somehow magically translate itself into the right kind of oversight of what presumably will be quite a large budget. Although the remit letter is a part of it, it must be taken delivery of by someone or some part of the organisation that will actually have to see it through, and my amendment was an attempt to secure that. Just a letter sent to the YPLA could produce exactly the same kind of situation we had with the LSC where there was a committee without expertise or any particular project management skills and which, as we all know, made a fair old mess of the job it was given to do. To say that one committee did not help does not mean that therefore you should never have a committee again, but perhaps that is a rather trivial objection. Much more important is something that perhaps I did not make clear enough in my opening remarks to move the amendment. I refer to the point made so pointedly and accurately by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. The Skills Funding Agency and the Young People’s Learning Agency will both have money for capital projects that will have to be spent in one place, so to speak: on the organisations and buildings that are to provide education. It is vital that there is one point between the two bodies which takes responsibility for that. It is sensible that it is the YPLA not only because it will get the remit letter—again as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said—but because the agency will be in close touch with the huge body of the further education and sixth-form colleges which the Skills Funding Agency quite clearly will not be. I am not claiming that the wording of the amendment is perfect but something like it should be in the Bill, not tucked away in a schedule or in advice and guidance that comes out after the Bill is passed, if it comes to pass. There should be something there which says that, for the two responsibilities that the bodies have—for revenue funding, yes, but also for capital funding—there needs to be a point where responsibility is shared. It would be nice if Ministers, just once, would say of something that has a great deal of agreement in the Committee, "Okay, we will take it away and think about it". It would help a great deal. It would make those of us who have worked away—and we are grateful for the meetings that we have had over the summer with the Minister—feel good if the Minister could do that.