Clause 24
Education and Skills Bill
6:45 pm
David Laws (Shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, Children, Schools and Families; Yeovil, Liberal Democrat)
I beg to move amendment No. 180, in clause 24, page 12, line 32, at end insert
‘during that employee’s normal working hours’.
I shall not detain the Committee by reading out the explanatory notes on clauses 24 and 25 because they are rather long, but I refer the Committee to them. We are about to deal with a number of amendments that deal with the degree of flexibility that employees will have to take up their education and training obligations at times that suit both them and their employers. In some of the evidence that we took earlier, as well as in the Bill, there is an understandable desire for flexibility to ensure that employers are not discouraged from taking on young people. That is particularly the case in clause 25, which seeks to ensure that the education and training option is taken up flexibly.
We would like to have some reassurance about the burdens that will be placed on young people as a consequence of the responsibilities in the Bill, and the understandable desire that there will be among employers not to lose young people at a critical time. The amendment would ensure not only that the employer must permit the employee to stay in training or education, but that that should be during normal working hours. In other words, the employer would not be able to foist unreasonable responsibilities on employees and to require them to take up their training and education options outside the time that they are working, particularly if they are working full time.
Although we understand Ministers’ desire to have young people undertaking a combination of employment and education or training at the same time, we would be concerned if the effect of the Bill were that some young people would have to be doing full-time jobs and all their education and training outside that. Perhaps that is not the Government’s intention, but that is what we are hoping to explore with the amendment and I would be grateful for the Minister’s reassurances or recommendations on that point.