Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, for bringing this important matter to our attention. I welcome that and hope that she sees what I say as a constructive assessment of the amendment, because there is no gap between us on the problem. It is a question of how we address it. I hope that I shall go a long way towards reassuring her on capital funding and the importance of a coherent approach. With regard to Amendment 138, I agree that it is critical that the capital investment plans are coherent across areas so that investment decisions for FE capital and 16 to 19 capital are able to support development of the infrastructure necessary to deliver increased participation, the full curriculum and qualification entitlement and the skills required by employers in our changing economy. However, the setting of overarching strategy is actually the responsibility of the two departments in consultation with the two agencies which in turn will instruct the two respective agencies to implement that strategy. In practice this will be done by the remit letter to the Young People’s Learning Agency and the framework agreement between the Skills Funding Agency and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. We will require the Young People’s Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency to work together and with local authorities to ensure that capital funding decisions take account of commissioning plans and regional skills strategies and that providers of post-16 education and training are consulted on the development of those plans. I appreciate the noble Lord’s desire for statutory provision to be made for a single capital strategy and for this to be produced by the two respective bodies, not least by way of addressing previously debated concerns about the future administration of capital programmes and the recognised need for a joint approach between the two new bodies, as identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. However, I do not consider it necessary to enshrine that in the Bill, particularly as the proposed amendment would impinge on the responsibilities of the respective departments for setting strategies. In asking the noble Baroness to consider withdrawing the amendment I will make this further commitment. I am happy to commit that the Government will produce an overarching, single capital strategy for post-16 education and training in England, excluding the higher education sector, and that we will consult both the Young People’s Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency when doing so. There are some technical problems with the amendment but I do not want to focus on them. My concern is the same as the noble Baroness’s concern: we need a coherent strategy and we need to give an explicit assurance that consultation with both the Young People’s Learning Agency and the Skills Funding Agency will be required in deriving this single capital strategy for post-16 education and training in England, excluding the higher education sector.