Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, as always I am enormously grateful to the Minister for the care that she has taken in answering. I am particularly grateful for the offer that she made in her opening and closing statements to return to Amendments 51 and 52 at Third Reading, suggesting that she might be able to amend them. In a way, that takes some of the wind out of the sails of these things. The fact that she is prepared to do this demonstrates her realisation that all around this House is a sincere concern that we are in danger of passing legislation that would not do as well as it ought for those covered by the Bill. The noble Baroness mentioned that a special educational needs assessment takes 16 weeks. I accept that and I hope that during the dialogue we can discuss the proven test done by the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. This was trialled in young offender establishments for two years and, as I have said many times in the House, was reported by the University of Surrey. It has also been successfully repeated by the Probation Service in Leeds with people under intensive supervision orders. It is quick and effective and although it is not 100 per cent detailed—you will never get 100 per cent—it identifies all the problems that we are looking at under the heading of learning difficulties and learning disabilities. As far as the Auftragstaktik, I think it is essential to have in the Bill something on which the statutory guidance can be based. Let us have something simple and clear and the guidance flows from it. Finally, I am enormously grateful that the guidance will be signed by the two Ministers because it is hugely important. We should remember that when we are talking about special educational needs and learning difficulties, a third ministry comes into it because the Department of Health is responsible for the speech and language therapists who have to carry out this assessment. It must be included because at the moment, its finance is being committed to doing a task on behalf of the other two ministries. Amendment 51, as an amendment to Amendment 50, not moved. Amendment 50 agreed. Amendment 52 not moved. Amendments 53 and 54 not moved. Amendment 55 Moved by