Further written evidence to be reported to the House
Education and Skills Bill
10:30 am
Alexander Ehmann: I am happy to do so. The first point is that if we accept provisionally that Alison Wolf’s document is correct in suggesting that 20 per cent. rather than 10 per cent. of the cohort would be in reach of the Bill, it would boost the cost of employer checks from £8.4 million to £16.8 million. That £16.8 million is based on an estimate from the Department that suggests that a process of discussion, checking, any changes to rotas and/or agreeing an employee’s needs will take a maximum of 10 minutes. Doing some very rough work in the IOD before the meeting, we think that that is a very conservative estimate. It is much more likely to be something in the region of 20 minutes, so that doubles again the figure up to £33.6 million.
Any understanding of the guidance that would be necessary for employers about what they can and cannot do or ask of their employees is also missing from the figure. Conservatively, I assume 20 minutes to read any guidance; that is based upon my reading of the document on the “Raising Expectations” consultation last night, which took me 17 minutes. So, that doubles the figure yet again, and we end up with a figure, very roughly, of £67.2 million. The interesting thing is that if it were imposed before 2010, it would eradicate all of the Government’s efforts within the Department to remove the administrative burdens of regulation. In fact, it would add 7 per cent. to the current regulatory burden on business. So, we have some serious concerns about the impact of the regulation.
Let me add that the upshot of our argument is that the necessity to check the status of an employee—if they have registered at a college—seems to us an unnecessary process. I am happy to elaborate on that in some detail later.