Clause 40
10:30 am
John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
It is a pleasure to welcome you back to the Chair, Mr. Chope. After a brief respite in our rigorous scrutiny of the Bill, we return to our work with renewed enthusiasm and consider the amendments that stand in the name of the hon. Lady and her hon. Friends.
Amendment 250 is the key amendment in this group. As she argued, it seeks to amend subsection (1), which states that local education authorities must secure that enough education and training is provided to meet a person’s reasonable needs, by qualifying that requirement further and referring to proper facilities for suitable education and training, married to the requirements of the individual. That is further underlined by a proposed subsection (2), which stipulates that facilities are to be considered proper if they of a quality sufficient and adequate to meet those needs. Amendments 251 and 253 follow on from that and would leave out the word “reasonable” when referring to needs. Indeed, the hon. Lady has reinforced that in her brief contribution today.
Although I entirely endorse the sentiments that lie behind the amendments, I think that the difficulty with them is that though it is not easy to define what is reasonable, equally, it is not particularly easy to define what is proper, sufficient or adequate. The risk is that we would be laying down three concepts on which local authorities have to come to a conclusion, rather than one. I have said before in earlier considerations that “reasonable” is frequently used in legislation as a catch-all for “proper, sufficient and necessary.” Although I entirely understand their purpose, my concern is that the amendments might further complicate a Bill that is complicated enough already.
If the hon. Lady wants to intervene, it might be helpful if she could say a little more on what exactly is meant by “proper, sufficient and adequate” and perhaps cite other examples of where those terms have added greater clarity to legislation than the word “reasonable.” That might be a tall order, and I emphasise that I am not trying to be difficult, but I just wonder whether the hon. Lady might say something further on that.