I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, because he has provided a specific example of precisely the issue that has led us to table the amendment.
Amendment 22—I give notice that we will be pressing it to a vote—would ensure that further education bodies with a track record of accruing assets publicly could not be transferred to a for-profit private company. We had a significant discussion about that in Committee. For the benefit of those who were not in Committee, and indeed those who were, I will try to summarise it as briefly as possible, because I think that the principle is extraordinarily important.
The current situation raises some significant questions about what would happen to the transfer of assets. The information states that assets should be transferred only to charitable bodies, and it is on that point that I wish to focus my remarks. Where the bodies are not
charities, assets must be transferred in accordance with the charitable purpose of the trust. It then links to a list of prescribed bodies to which assets could be transferred, including sixth-form colleges and governing bodies. The point that I am making is that it is expected that all transfers should be made to charitable bodies, but that is not the same as saying that that is required.
When colleges were incorporated in 1992, it took them formally outside the aegis of local authorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) spoke eloquently about that in Committee. We have to take into account that the asset base in many cases was built up with local authority support and funding over 20 or 30 years. I reminded the Minister in Committee about my own local college, Blackpool and the Fylde College, which he has visited. He went to the Bispham campus, which has buildings and elements that go right back to the 1950s and ’60s. When the Building Colleges for the Future process took place in 2000, we did not get the new college that we hoped we would for a variety of reasons to do with where we were in the food chain. Nevertheless, I am illustrating that the estates of many buildings we are talking about have been accrued either on an active financial basis or by the ceding of land by local authorities and other organisations.
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