Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

Clause 169 says: ""The QCDA’s objective is to promote quality and coherence in education and training in England"." How can anybody do that without going off and doing their own thing? How can you find the line between policy and the delivery of policy? My father was twice the Secretary of State for Education and I thought that the Department of Education was a great department of state. I cannot accept that it should not have anybody within it responsible for any part of the delivery of the Government’s policy. That seems the most extraordinary statement—that in some way we must separate the creation of policy from its delivery. It is not done in this Bill; if the QCDA’s objective is to promote coherence, that is a major policy decision, I should have thought. But I cannot see how you can separate those things in such a way, which leaves one with the question of why there is a wish to separate them. Why is there a wish to erode the accountability of Secretaries of State to Parliament? How does that go down on the "Today" programme? The more one thinks about it, the more it simply does not work.