Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I hope that I can offer some reassurance, although, given the remarks that I have just listened to, I am not sure that I am necessarily going to be able to give all the reassurance that noble Lords are looking for. I will try very hard. I start by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his kind and generous opening remarks and both opposition parties for their constructive engagement with us in what has been a very busy few weeks. I want to be clear on the critical point of what might trigger an intervention by a local authority in a college. As with the Learning and Skills Council now, local authorities can intervene only on the grounds currently set out in Section 56A(2) of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992. These include mismanagement by the governing body, failure to carry out a statutory duty, acting unreasonably or underperformance of the college. Those are quite significant triggers. The local authority will have to notify the YPLA and the Secretary of State of the decision to intervene and the grounds for intervention and then inform the college. Just to be clear, we expect intervention to be proportionate and to follow reasoned triggers—it is helpful, perhaps, to put these on the record—such as underperformance where there has been serious misuse of public funds, where there have been previous attempts to intervene that have failed, where there has been fraud and where there have been significant failures in management that would put learners’ health and safety at risk. So these are very significant triggers.