Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister and to everybody who has taken part in this wide-ranging debate. On my own amendments on fee capping, I have not tried to set any particular price. As the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, rightly said, you would not want anything like that. But I have tried to set some sort of hurdle before the fee-capping power could be used. I am a little concerned about the phrase "value for money" in government Amendment 165. I am mainly concerned here about innovation and competition. I can envisage a situation where a new qualification is introduced and, without the economies of scale that might come later if it becomes popular, the awarding body may have to charge quite a high fee at first. I would not want innovation of that sort stifled by Ofqual jumping in right away and saying that the fee is too high, thereby causing the awarding body to withdraw the qualification because it is not profitable. We on these Benches accept that Ofqual should have the ability to cap but we want to ensure that it does so judiciously. I was reassured by the Minister saying that they would have to review the efficiency of the market before fee capping and that it would all be published. On the two different kinds of reviews, the Minister said that the independence of the people doing the review would be assured because their names would have to be published. That would be all right for fee-capping decisions but it may not be all right for decisions relating to the possible withdrawal of recognition of an awarding body. The awarding body may not want the whole world to know that it is being reviewed because that might affect its reputation. Indeed, if it comes out that the decision to withdraw recognition was not justified, then the awarding body would go out into the world again with its reputation damaged. So we need to be very careful about publishing something like that. On fee capping I am not so worried. The noble Baroness is right that publication of who is doing the review would certainly help, because Ofqual would not want to have its reputation damaged by publishing the fact that it is having a review done by somebody who is not independent. I accept what the noble Baroness said about that and would trust Ofqual. I am also reassured that government guidance on fee capping will be published and that those decisions will be in the public domain. These are very complex issues, but with those slight additional concerns, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 158 withdrawn. Amendments 159 and 160 not moved. Clause 128 : General duties Amendment 161 Clause 128 : General duties Amendment 161 Moved by