Clause 39
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill
3:15 pm
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole, Liberal Democrat)
I will, of necessity, be rather brief, as you, Mrs. Humble, will appreciate that a handover is taking place, which was not exactly planned, because of the timing of the debate. I will make my points clearly and concisely.
All four amendments in the group aim to make the tests clearer, and provide them in such a way that a clear judgment can be made, where a challenge can either be answered or accepted. Amendment 246 simply adds
“has reasonable grounds to think”.
to the clause, and that seems much clearer than the employer just thinking, because employers can have all sorts of thoughts, which would be difficult to challenge or rebut in any way. Amendment 247 makes that same point. Amendment 248 is particularly important. If a permissible ground for refusal is the burden of additional cost, how much is that? Is it £1, £2, £10, £10,000? We have to have something to tighten that up and add
“unreasonable in proportion to the value to be derived from the proposed study or training.”
I have no doubt that that needs to be tightened up, even if the Minister finds it impossible to accept the amendment today. On amendment 249, it is easy to add weasel words to “insufficiency of work”. It would be much clearer to make the test “inability to provide sufficient work”. I hope that the Minister will regard those comments favourably.