Clause 47
4:00 pm
John Hayes (Shadow Minister, Innovation, Universities and Skills; South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
It is good to be back after a splendid lunch. I had a glass of champagne. I do not know what you had, Mr. Chope, but I am sure that the Minister is equally fortified and ready for this afternoon.
Having accused the Minister for Schools and Learners of being limacine in respect of the progress towards self-regulation in further education, I fear I will now be rather slow myself. We are about to deal with a large group of amendments on an important clause, and there is much to be said in the interests of improving the legislation and representing the interests of learners and others.
Clause 47 inserts new section 18A into the Education Act 1996. The new section will affect the local education authorities for England and Wales in respect of the relevant use of accommodation in their area. Hosting authorities will be required to secure that
“enough suitable education and training is provided to meet the reasonable needs”
of children and young people in the youth justice system who are held in those establishments.
Amendments 127 to 129 and 132 to 134 probe the reason for provision through local authorities in new section 18A, questioning why the responsibility cannot be transferred to the Young People’s Learning Agency. A theme emerged before lunch, before the hon. Member for Yeovil joined us, and I feel that it is necessary to acquaint him with that theme so that he can better do his job here. In essence the theme was about the Opposition challenging the new involvement of local education authorities through this legislation and Government resolutely defending that backwards step.
In a sense, the group of amendments continues that theme. As I have argued—I thought pretty persuasively but clearly I did not persuade Ministers earlier—it seems that by involving more agencies in the management and funding of skills and training we are likely to end up with a system that is less cost-effective, more insensitive, less responsive to need, more bureaucratic and more opaque. Once again in this part of the Bill, we see that opacity in a new role for LEAs in dealing with youth detention, which is currently the responsibility of the Learning and Skills Council. We believe that it would cause the least disruption and have maximum effect if those young people who are already disengaged are not put through the upheaval of being passed from and between different local education authorities.
Bear in mind that many of the young people will not have had a happy experience of education earlier in their lives. Often they have been failed by the system the first time round and deserve better. The Young People’s Learning Agency would be a better place to deal with young offenders serving their sentence outside their own local authority area.