My Lords, I can only second what has been said this afternoon. I was interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Baker,
that he started off with a five-line amendment that seemed to encapsulate what this issue is about. Will the Government reconsider whether they need to put all of Amendment 11 into primary legislation?
I will give the Committee an example of why I read the whole thing with mounting grief, after thinking that the five lines were splendid. I am the governor of a small specialist sixth-form academy. We have a small group of young people who have already chosen a specialist route, in this case mathematics. I am very proud of the fact that our first class included one young lady who went off to be a Dyson apprentice at 18 with her extremely good A-levels, and your Lordships will not be surprised to hear that we have been visited by people from the Dyson Institute of Technology who are very keen that we should send them some more apprentices.
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We already have 67 policies on our website; I guess we will now have 68. Do we really need regularly to update, and therefore be inspected constantly on, the exact details of the premises and facilities to be provided to a person who is given access to talk to our young people? I suggest that this level of detail is not necessary and it diverts very scarce time and resources from the heart of the matter, which is providing information and careers advice oriented to the particular young person.
It is really important that we bear in mind that our schools are hugely stretched and that at 16 to 19, and indeed at other ages, they are clearly underresourced. This is something that officials and Ministers will agree is not going to change in a hurry. Therefore, before we pass anything like this into law, we really need to think about what needs to be made very clear and where we want schools and colleges to place their attention, and not create artificial barriers to following through on the intent of making sure that every young person gets the advice they need, by diverting more attention and resource into meeting formal requirements, which, because they are in primary legislation, we will not get rid of for at least a decade, if ever.