My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for her reply, and I realise the constraints a Minister has in replying to a debate of this kind in the Lords. She was obviously trying to be helpful. I was very grateful for the wide level of authoritative support that the amendment received. I hope that, before we return to this subject on Report, she will try to come back with a little more substance in response to the points that were made.
Very briefly, on the first point in the amendment, that we should put the Government’s lifelong learning guarantee on a statutory basis, my noble friend’s only reply was that she saw no need to put it in the Bill. Well, given the problems that often arise between Governments announcing noble intentions and the actual delivery of things on the ground, I beg leave to doubt that. Of course, one can ask the opposite question: what exactly is the reason for resisting putting it in the Bill if the Government are all in favour of it? Given that I so welcome the lifelong learning guarantee, perhaps the Government would consider signing up to it—not in blood exactly, but at least putting themselves under a legal obligation to those who should be entitled to it.
On the questions of expenditure that we have been asking, it is certainly the case that noble Lords kept referring to my being a former Chancellor. I am also a former Minister of Employment and Secretary of State for Education. As a former Chancellor, I am quite traditional; I am fiscally responsible—a bit of a fiscal hawk, sometimes—but I do think there are two subjects on which it is unavoidable for the present Government to spend more money. That means I would probably be at least as hawkish as the present Chancellor in resisting all the other lobbies which are inevitably piling in as the atmosphere of free money prevails. Social care and skills training—filling the skills gap—are irresistible things to which we must devote more resources.
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I shall consider the Minister’s reply carefully. She explained some of the financial help that is now given. Somebody—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but it might not have been—gave the figures on the effect of the levy scheme in practice; the decline in opportunities and the number of apprenticeships for younger people seems to show that this is somewhat inadequate. I hope that, between now and Report, she will see if she can put more substance on her response to the very large number of young people who really are not going to do well if they think they are going into the lifelong employment market, as they leave their youth, completely lacking the level of skills that so many have. The figures have been given, and they are pretty bad. Of course, I will withdraw my amendment, but I think we should return to this because it is a hugely important social and economic issue.
Two groups of people have been particularly hit by the Covid pandemic, which has made things worse. The first are the young people leaving education expecting to go into the job market. They could not have had a more terrible time to blight their prospects; there is no worse time to leave education—school, or even university—if you have a rather inadequate level of skills. The others are those made redundant at the age of 50, or thereabouts, who thought they had secure, lifelong jobs and desperately want to get back into employment but need the retraining that my noble friend Lord Baker emphasised.
I hope that the Government can come back on this. As I said before, it is plainly in line with the Government’s stated principles and intentions, but there can be a big gap between policy declarations and substantial delivery on the ground. Some more substantial response to these amendments might reassure us that the Government are more likely to achieve that.