Education Bill

My hon. Friend is right. We ought to declare that we share an interest in that topic and that we might have some personal interest in ensuring that there are sufficient craft skills to maintain our historic vehicles—although his demands in those terms are considerably more numerous than mine. The sector has welcomed the proposals to offer colleges more freedom. Colleges have long called for such an approach. In the long years that I spent in the shadows before the electorate elevated me to the light, I remember hearing from colleges across the country that they hoped, wished and longed for a Government who would recognise that power is best vested in the hands of those closest to where it is exercised. Colleges should be able to respond to their learners and employers in the way the Bill facilitates. It is therefore unsurprising that, in the public evidence sessions of the Bill, the Association of Colleges said in written evidence that the legislative requirements removed by the Bill,"““will strengthen rather than diminish the historic community role of Colleges and strengthen the importance of strong governance””." I wholeheartedly agree. Lords amendments 47 to 71, changes which I recognise were made late in the Bill's passage through the other place, have been made in the context of a changed further education landscape. In October 2010, the Office for National Statistics announced its decision to reclassify FE colleges to the public sector for the purposes of the national accounts. That decision exposes colleges to the full rigours of the Government expenditure regime and means that they will lose the flexibility to phase expenditure between different financial years and that they will need to work within a financial year that does not line up with their academic year. Such a decision also makes it likely that the very freedoms that were introduced to enable them to borrow without seeking permission will need to be taken away from them, and that even tighter constraints will need to be introduced. I would like to thank Baroness Sharp for raising those issues in the context of the sterling work she is doing as chair of the inquiry into colleges in their communities. In debating these important amendments, it is vital for me to emphasise the significance of the ONS decision. We were already well on the way to freeing the sector from some of the diktats, bureaucracy and unnecessary regulation that had so hampered and inhibited people from exercising their long-cherished desire to respond proactively to the interests of learners in the way I have described. Nevertheless, the ONS's reclassification has turned our desire into an imperative and we are working closely to try to persuade it to rethink that classification, because it will have profound effects on the FE sector. The late changes made in the other place, which we are debating for the first time in this House today, were made because of that ONS classification. Those and other controls would all act as significant barriers to college growth and would stifle innovation and creativity in our further education sector. As I said, it is our intention to make the necessary legislative and administrative changes to encourage the ONS to reclassify colleges back to the private sector which, as my noble friend Lord Hill said in the other place, is where successive Governments have wished them to be. I want to mention the ability that Lords amendments 49, 58 and 69 will give colleges to modify or replace their instruments and articles of governance. In the world I have described—the picture I have painted—the additional freedoms that colleges will enjoy necessitate a new approach to governance. We need colleges to rise to the occasion. I am confident that they will, but it is partly a case of rethinking how colleges are governed. Colleges will continue to be required to comply with a statutory governance framework, but that has been significantly simplified to allow colleges the freedom to decide how best to shape their governance arrangements to meet the needs of their learners, employers and the local community. May I say a word about the work that the Association of Colleges is doing in that regard? The association is working on a set of model instruments and articles that are framed in the new environment of greater discretion and freedom. There is immense human capital in colleges but, too often, it has been locked up because of the approach taken by previous Governments. There was a view that it was best to dictate, predict and provide from the centre. That is not this Government's view. For example, as a result of the amendments, colleges will no longer have to seek the Government's permission to add more members to their governing body or to determine whether a job vacancy should be advertised nationally. Those are important aspects of a college's governance, but they are not things in which the state should be involved. The use of that power will not be compulsory. If colleges are content that their existing arrangements support them to meet the needs of local learners and employers, they will not have to change them. The benefit of the changes is that the decision over when and how colleges exercise those powers sits firmly with them. I mentioned that such measures have been welcomed by colleges themselves. They were, for the most part, also warmly welcomed in the other place.