Further Education and Training Bill [L ords]

Part of Orders of the Day – in the House of Commons at 4:57 pm on 21 May 2007.

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Photo of David Willetts David Willetts Shadow Secretary of State for Education 4:57, 21 May 2007

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I want to hear whether the Secretary of State agrees with paragraph 7.39 of his Government's own White Paper:

"A college, led by its governing body, is responsible for determining its own mission, managing its own affairs, meeting its statutory responsibilities and improving its own performance."

We accept that definition of the role of a college. If that is how a college is to be run and how the corporation functions, how on earth is that consistent with taking that strange power to intervene? That is inconsistent with the Government's own statement about how they see a college. Concern has been expressed by many principals and others involved in further education. The Association of Colleges says:

"The appointment or dismissal of a principal are amongst the most important decisions a governing body has to take. The intervention of a third-party into the relationship between a governing body and a principal would have made it more difficult for governors to take action, particularly as this might create grounds for an individual to argue they have been unfairly dismissed."

That was the crucial point made by my hon. Friend Dr. Lewis, which has not been dealt with by the Secretary of State. We will look with a beady eye at the proposals that he says he will bring forward during further consideration of the Bill.

Another feature of the Bill that has generated controversy—for such a short Bill, it has got Ministers into one or two scrapes in the other place—is the power for FE colleges to award degrees. It is odd that that was not seriously proposed in the White Paper. One of these days we will discover the origins of the proposal—where it came from and when. It suddenly appeared very late in the day, although the Minister has done a great job of providing a retrospective justification for it. We do not object in principle to FE colleges having powers to award degrees, but there are still serious concerns about how it is to be done. As Members on both sides of the House have argued, it would be a tragedy if the new powers had the perverse effect not of strengthening progression from FE into higher education but of reducing the number of opportunities that FE students have to progress from FE to HE. Paradoxically, many universities are worried that as a result of these provisions fewer students will come to them from FE. What assurances can Ministers give us on that point?