Clause 2
Education and Skills Bill
10:30 am
David Laws (Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Children, Schools and Families; Yeovil, Liberal Democrat)
Good morning, Mr. Bercow, to you and all Members of the Committee. It is a delight to be back again considering clause 2. I will speak relatively briefly on the amendments, because we covered quite similar ground—our concerns about the compulsion and criminalisation elements of the Bill—under clause 1. However, I would like to express the Liberal Democrats’ support for amendments Nos. 4 and 15, which would turn the provision into an entitlement rather than a duty.
That is very much in keeping with our approach to the Bill, and specifically our three concerns, the first of which relates to the Government’s approach to 16 and 17-year-olds in assuming that compulsion is reasonable, in spite of their adult status in many other respects. Secondly, we are concerned about the lack of flexibility and support for many vulnerable young people, which we discussed under clause 1. Thirdly, we are concerned about young people’s employment prospects, which we may discuss later. For those reasons, and because we believe that young people will engage more effectively with education and training if they do so on a voluntary basis, we support the amendments and await the Minister’s reply with interest.
I want to pick up a couple of points made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton when he moved the amendments. He raised the issue of the sanctions which would follow if the amendments are not successful and if the provisions in the Bill remain an obligation rather than an entitlement. In his evidence to the Committee, the Minister stated his view that the Government’s estimates regarding the use of sanctions were at the bleak end of the scale of enforcement. We asked whether he would be willing to set out for us in detail in a written note, or perhaps in an oral response, what assumptions were used. In oral evidence, there was an indication that the assumptions
“are based very precisely on the nearest equivalent we can find in the existing system for the rates of default and so on.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 208, Q481.]
The Committee will remember that we had some very precise estimates of the effect of the sanctions, including 111 default orders, 667 parenting orders and 33 breaches of parenting orders. It would be interesting to know what the assumptions were and what were the nearest equivalent enforcement mechanisms that were used to produce those estimates. The Committee will want to consider whether those equivalent mechanisms for enforcement are comparable, given some of the challenges that will be faced as a result of the Bill.
Will the Minister say more about the relationship between the various categories of sanction that he set out in numerical terms in his evidence to the Committee? The following figures were given by the Minister: attendance notices, 6,000; fixed penalty notices, 1,500; youth court fines, 278; youth default orders, 111; parenting orders, 667; and breaches of parenting orders, 33. Looked at in very broad-brush terms, those figures suggest a compliance rate of 75 per cent. with attendance notices—I may be missing something—and 75 to 80 per cent. in relation to youth court fines. Many of us would feel that those estimates imply a high success rate in enforcement. We wonder whether those estimates of the effectiveness will be realised. Will the Minister say something about the underlying assumptions?