My Lords, we should all take notice of what my noble friend Lord Young of Norwood Green says on these matters. He has vast experience in this area, as a trade union official and as a Minister in the field in the last Labour Government, so I would not dismiss a word of what he says. However, I think he is being a little overgenerous about this Bill, which seems very vague in some of its key points.
We support—certainly I do, and I think my Front Bench does—the principle of a lifelong learning entitlement and reform to our qualifications structure to allow modules. That is a very important reform. We support a stronger role for employers in determining skills. All of that is fine at the level of high principle. The question is how this is going to work in practice. I still have very severe doubts about that. Here we are talking about the role of the Secretary of State in relation to the plans that are produced locally. Can the Minister tell us precisely what that role is going to be, because it relates to these amendments?
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I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say in last week’s Committee, and I think that she said that the role of the Secretary of State was not to comment on the substance but to verify the process. What does
that mean? Does it mean that the Secretary of State will not interfere with the judgments that have been made about what skills to prioritise? Is it simply the Secretary of State checking that a proper consultation has been carried out among employers in the area, checking that all the known facts have been gathered and assessed and that a thorough job of work has been done, and then giving it a tick or saying “You need to do your homework a bit better”? What actually is the role of the Secretary of State in relation to these local plans? The amendments that have been proposed try to give that question an answer. I am not sure that they have got it right perfectly, but they try to give that question an answer—but I greatly look forward to the Minister’s reply.