Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, we are grateful to the Minister and to the Bill team for the detailed discussion that we have had on these clauses. I take the point made by the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Baker, that sometimes the length of the detail and description has been somewhat overwhelming. With the benefit of the amendments tabled, the Bill provides for improvement to procedures and systems in some cases. We welcome the Government’s commitment to assessing literacy and numeracy skills when a young person begins a period in custody and we strongly support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his Amendment 51, which suggests that special educational needs should be assessed at the same time and that that assessment should lead to an intensive programme of learning to ensure that young people leave custody with higher levels of skills than when they entered. If they are better equipped for life and work, surely that makes sense for them personally, and it makes social and economic sense. We have listened to the arguments about assessment when young people leave custody. On the whole, we support the Government’s view that repeated assessment might discourage them more and not be the most effective use of limited resources. In previous debates, we have discussed who will do the assessment and how it will be assessed. We have to recognise that assessment resources need to be targeted in the most effective way possible. We support Amendment 55 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Elton, as I indicated when I spoke to a similar Liberal Democrat amendment in Committee. The duty of liaison between host and home authorities should, most appropriately, rest with the governor and if there were a change of governor—the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has raised that before—the responsibility could still rest with that function and the continuity of the young person’s educational programme could be assured. As the Minister said, I feel that we are edging forward in some respects with this Bill and we would support some of the government amendments proposed today.