My Lords, I have found this a thoroughly absorbing, enlightening and encouraging debate. I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken, from so many different perspectives. I particularly look forward to hearing more in the future from the noble Lords, Lord Marks of Hale and
Lord Elliott of Mickle Fell, following their splendid maiden speeches. I am also grateful to the Minister. I very much echo the tribute by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, to her knowledge and commitment to this area, and thank her for her characteristically comprehensive response to such a broad debate. I am certainly not going to try to summarise in any sense, but I very much look forward to reading it in Hansard. It has very much confirmed to me the importance of skills as an issue, the breadth of areas it covers and the scale of the challenges we need to address. It is much too broad for a single debate, so I hope we will have other opportunities to discuss it.
My noble friend Lord Clancarty spotted the fact that I had omitted “education” from the Motion. That was because I wanted to focus in particular on the skills aspect. Other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Addington, commented that skills are not taken seriously enough. It seems that for too long education has been a powerful horse pulling a rather ramshackle skills carriage, when what we need is for them to work in harness with other horses: employers, other departments, parents—all the groups we have talked about—and they should be pulling a first-class, golden carriage accommodating both education and skills. So I was very glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, talk about a vision for skills, which perhaps is the design for that golden carriage that we need. This is an issue that I will certainly wish to push further, but I reiterate my thanks to all noble Lords for a really inspiring morning.