My Lords, I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. I am very pleased that he has accepted the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. Like my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley, I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the UTC movement; I agree that UTCs are a force for good. It may have been an advert, but I thought the destination analysis that the noble Lord referred to—the fact that so much information is available—was good, and on the face of it the statistics in relation to apprenticeship and university places are impressive. All I would say to the Government is that I hope they hold their nerve in supporting UTCs in the future.
We are all agreed that we want to see quality advice given to young people and their parents. The careers strategy is going to be very important, and the Minister has set out some of the things that are going to be in it. I thought the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, were important, because often schools are burdened by many regulations and requirements. I guess in the end it will be made clear to schools in the statute guidance issued by the Minister—succinctly, I hope—what is required, without having to go into enormous detail about how that is going to be done. I recognise that that is difficult, but we come back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and my noble friend Lady Morris: we have to recognise that in the end we will want schools to wish to do it. Statutory intervention is necessary because that is not happening at the moment, but in the end we somehow have to get to a stage where schools want to do the right thing.
I agree with my noble friend that teachers are not going to be experts in careers advice—the Minister is absolutely right about that—but they can be very influential in setting the terms in which young people will listen to that careers advice. Perhaps we are mistaken: it is the teachers who should go to the Skills Show. Part of this has to be an educational programme with teachers about the opportunities for apprenticeships, alongside the links with business and employment that the noble Lord has talked about.
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Finally, I thought the Minister’s response to the challenge set by my noble friend certainly met the precis test by being very succinct, but this is a major issue. We all realise that the world of work is going to change dramatically and it seems to be happening very quickly indeed. Yet when you look at arrangements for what is going to happen in vocational qualifications, the translation of the 3,500 at the moment to the 15 pathways that the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, set out, the first routes are going to be available for delivery only in September 2019.
The Minister sent us a very helpful letter today. He then set out the responsibilities of the different agencies. We will come back to this: it is very clunky and it is very difficult to see, in the end, who is the person to whom the Minister turns to sort it all out. My concern
is about this, but also a response to my noble friend Lord Knight’s speech: if we have this great clunky apparatus trying to deal with a legacy of failure over many years, how on earth will we be able to respond quickly to the kinds of challenges we face? Fortunately, my noble friend Lord Knight will table an amendment, I hope, on Report which will help us set that out. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.