Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with my noble friend’s last speech. It seems to me that the noble Lords on the Benches opposite ought to have sympathy for those many of their colleagues in another place who might find themselves needing to reskill at some stage next year, just as I had to reskill some 12 years ago. It seems to me that, as my noble friend says, individual flexibility is needed—that is, the ability to look at individual cases and say, "Yes, it is reasonable even for someone who has got to degree level to go back and get a vocational qualification in something for which there is actually a demand". This is particularly important for people in the last 20 years or so of their working lives where the original career in which they set out may no longer have room for them. They will have been displaced by younger, more recently trained people. However, there may be many occupations where their accumulated wisdom is appreciated, but at a substantially lower level than the qualifications that they have reached. It is important that we have a system that offers individual flexibility. I also have great sympathy for the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord De Mauley, which is very much on the same grounds. I do not have much time for the amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. The problem is that this clause conflates the general run of adults aged over 19 with those who are in prison. If we go down the route proposed by the noble Baroness, we would end up with the DCSF paying half the rebuilding costs of the prisons in England because there is no way, with the kit that we have on the ground at the moment, that reasonable educational facilities can be provided, let alone proper ones. There have to be considerable let-outs in this clause to allow for the current condition of the prison estate. In this context I should declare that I am married to someone who runs a charity that works in prison education, so that gives me a particular interest in this clause. I have two questions. First, what is the implication of the word "and" at the end of line 40 on page 55? It suggests that the two sub-paragraphs should be taken together so that the education that the chief executive is allowed to provide must be suitable for both groups. If that is the case, a pretty restricted range of education will be allowed. I would have thought that the proper word to use here is "or" so that the provision is for education that is suitable for either of the two groups. No doubt the noble Lord will inform me about this. I do not require a response to my other question now if none is available, but will await some later thoughts. One of the problems with the old arrangements has been the focus of the Learning and Skills Council on education and qualifications that lead directly to employment. That is quite appropriate in its work outside prisons but within them there is a concentration of learners who have not even reached level zero. They have rejected education. They are illiterate, innumerate and do not want to be anything else. A suite of programmes designed specifically for prisoners is needed to get them on the ladder. It has been a long and difficult fight to persuade the Learning and Skills Council that such programmes are required. I think that the council had at last begun to accept it when it was told that it was about to be abolished. I would like to be sure that the new body picks up where the council got to rather than starts again at the position that the council was in when it was founded.