Committee (5th Day)
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill
5:30 pm

Baroness Garden of Frognal (Liberal Democrat)

I shall speak also to Amendment 152, which is grouped with this one. Both amendments deal with the transfer of funding under new structures and new organisations, and reflect concerns raised by the Association of Colleges.

New offender learning contracts between education providers and the LSC are due to begin on 1 August 2009. These contracts are for five years. The process of recontracting is inevitably time-consuming and costly, so it is welcome that the contracts will be for five years as that will provide some relative stability for the providers, for the institutions and, perhaps most importantly, for the young offenders themselves. However, with the abolition of the Learning and Skills Council, it is important that this relative certainty is not lost. As well as the funding and commissioning responsibilities for 16 to 19 education, local authorities have new responsibilities for the education and training of young offenders aged 18 and under. It would be advantageous for all concerned if the contracts recently signed were continued by the relevant local authority. Will the Minister confirm the legal position on this? Will the contracts automatically pass over to local authorities, or will they have the right to renegotiate? It will be a real pity and a waste of scarce resources if, after the long process of agreeing new contracts, colleges and others have to restart the procedure.

Amendment 152 would ensure that funding for young offenders was ring-fenced. As part of its responsibilities, the Young People's Learning Agency will pass funding to local authorities in order for them in turn to fund education and training in young offender institutions. As we have discussed, young offenders are often the least well educated among their age group, with the most desperate need for an improvement and enhancement in their skills and qualifications. We know how important education is in this context and the part that it plays in avoiding reoffending on release. The amendment would ensure that local authorities were not tempted to divert some of the funding provided for young offender institutions into mainstream funding elsewhere in their area.

We can already see that there will be considerable pressures on local authorities to fund the 16 to 18 provision in colleges and schools. There is a danger that there will be little equivalent pressure to fund the education for young offenders. What reassurance can the Minister offer that funding will be ring-fenced for this most vulnerable group of learners?

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