Written evidence to be reported to the House
Further Education and Training Bill [Lords]
10:30 am
Sarah Teather (Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills, Education & Skills; Brent East, Liberal Democrat)
I, too, welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Atkinson. This is the first time that I have had the pleasure of serving under your chairmanship. I am pleased to see the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills, the hon. Member for Corby on the Committee and hope that he will not find it too unpleasant an experience. This is a relatively brief Bill and, with the exception of the provisions relating to foundation degrees and intervention powers, it is also relatively uncontroversial, so I suspect that we will be able to deal with it rapidly.
In common with the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I am disappointed that the Bill does not herald the implementation of the recommendations in the Leitch report, but we assume that we will be back in Committee soon to debate those.
We are happy with the programme motion. If we are all brief and to the point, we should be able to get through this by the end of Thursday. Today, we will seek to probe issues relating to the relationship between local authorities and the Learning and Skills Council, and on Thursday we will express our serious concerns about the proposals regarding intervention and foundation degrees.