I wholly support what my noble friend Lady Morris has said. There is an emphasis on local skills plans, but even if they are working well with good representation from across the board of employers, we are not certain in the Government’s plans how that will happen. So the first problem is whether these bodies will be representative. The second problem is whether they will have the capacity. My fear—which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—is that even if they are good at it, they will focus on present needs rather than future ones. In a rapidly evolving economy, with artificial intelligence changing everything in the next 10 or 20 years, our education and skills system has to have some leadership from the centre to indicate how education and skills needs are going to change.
There is nothing terribly socialist about this kind of idea. When it comes to government investment in research and innovation, we have elaborate national
structures that look at what the key technologies are going to be and invest in what they decide are likely to be the key innovations of the future. If you are doing that with technology and science, do you not also have to think in those terms for education and skills? I find no evidence in this Bill that the Department for Education—I am not going to criticise Ministers—has that long-term vision.