Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Eccles for his characteristically detailed scrutiny of the Bill. It is quite clear, as he said, that the Secretary of State should not have the power to direct the chief executive of skills funding on every aspect of the day-to-day management and administration of his organisation. We have just been probing the status of the SFA; in Committee in another place, the Minister suggested that by putting duties on the statutory post-holder, we would somehow arrive at a greater separation between him and the Secretary of State. This seems rather unlikely under the current terms of Schedule 4, so I am looking forward to the Minister’s response to my noble friend.