Education and Skills Bill

Public Bill Committee, 5 February 2008.

Further written evidence to be reported to the House

Clause 2

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

I remind the Committee that with this we are taking amendment No. 15, in clause 10, page 5, line 35, leave out from ‘applies’ to end of line 36.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Good morning, Mr. Bercow, to you and all Members of the Committee. It is a delight to be back again considering clause 2. I will speak relatively briefly on the amendments, because we covered quite similar ground—our concerns about the compulsion and criminalisation elements of the Bill—under clause 1. However, I would like to express the Liberal Democrats’ support for amendments Nos. 4 and 15, which would turn the provision into an entitlement rather than a duty.

That is very much in keeping with our approach to the Bill, and specifically our three concerns, the first of which relates to the Government’s approach to 16 and 17-year-olds in assuming that compulsion is reasonable, in spite of their adult status in many other respects. Secondly, we are concerned about the lack of flexibility and support for many vulnerable young people, which we discussed under clause 1. Thirdly, we are concerned about young people’s employment prospects, which we may discuss later. For those reasons, and because we believe that young people will engage more effectively with education and training if they do so on a voluntary basis, we support the amendments and await the Minister’s reply with interest.

I want to pick up a couple of points made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton when he moved the amendments. He raised the issue of the sanctions which would follow if the amendments are not successful and if the provisions in the Bill remain an obligation rather than an entitlement. In his evidence to the Committee, the Minister stated his view that the Government’s estimates regarding the use of sanctions were at the bleak end of the scale of enforcement. We asked whether he would be willing to set out for us in detail in a written note, or perhaps in an oral response, what assumptions were used. In oral evidence, there was an indication that the assumptions

“are based very precisely on the nearest equivalent we can find in the existing system for the rates of default and so on.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 208, Q481.]

The Committee will remember that we had some very precise estimates of the effect of the sanctions, including 111 default orders, 667 parenting orders and 33 breaches of parenting orders. It would be interesting to know what the assumptions were and what were the nearest equivalent enforcement mechanisms that were used to produce those estimates. The Committee will want to consider whether those equivalent mechanisms for enforcement are comparable, given some of the challenges that will be faced as a result of the Bill.

Will the Minister say more about the relationship between the various categories of sanction that he set out in numerical terms in his evidence to the Committee? The following figures were given by the Minister: attendance notices, 6,000; fixed penalty notices, 1,500; youth court fines, 278; youth default orders, 111; parenting orders, 667; and breaches of parenting orders, 33. Looked at in very broad-brush terms, those figures suggest a compliance rate of 75 per cent. with attendance notices—I may be missing something—and 75 to 80 per cent. in relation to youth court fines. Many of us would feel that those estimates imply a high success rate in enforcement. We wonder whether those estimates of the effectiveness will be realised. Will the Minister say something about the underlying assumptions?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

To facilitate the proceedings of the Committee, let me say that I intend either to speak in detail to the point that the hon. Gentleman has raised when we discuss chapter 5, which deals with attendance notices and enforcement, or to have written to the Committee by then setting out my thinking. I do not intend to respond in detail to those points today because I think it is more appropriate to deal with them under chapter 5.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful for the Minister’s response. I raised those points because they came up when the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton moved the amendments. I am happy for the Minister to respond as he wishes, but if he is going to produce something in writing, I urge him to do so as soon as possible. In other Committees, which have not always met the high standards that I am sure he sets, documents have had a habit of turning up rather late—sometimes on the final day of the Committee, if not later. It would be welcome to have the information well in advance.

Will the Minister also confirm that the figures that he cited regarding the enforcement mechanisms are based on the assumption that the take-up of education and training places among these cohorts will increase in line with the Government forecasts between now and 2013 and 2015? If that does not happen, and the Government are not successful in raising participation among that age group up to 90 per cent. from 80 per cent., the numbers could become much bigger. I hope that he will also say something about the relationship between parenting orders and breaches of parenting orders, where there seems to be even more optimism than about attendance notice enforcement.

As the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton pointed out, the non-attendance rates for young people in education and training are already incredibly high for those coming up to the age of 16. About 10.5 per cent. of the year 11 age cohort are persistently absent. Although the Committee discussed what that meant—the new figures from the Government will shed some light—such statistics give us cause to be sceptical about the extent to which an enforcement mechanism will work with the most hard-to-reach cohort—the top 5 per cent. We must pause for thought about how effective these sanctions will be in terms of pursuing those individuals. That is one reason why we believe that an approach based on opportunities and entitlements, with appropriate provision offered, is not only more in keeping with Liberal Democrat philosophy, but is also likely in the long term to be more effective and meet the concerns of not only liberals and liberal Conservatives but some of the other Conservative Members.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I have listened with care to the debate. Hon. Members have rightly identified the amendments as central to the debate about the Bill. The question I would put to you, Mr. Bercow, is this: is the status quo enough? Is it enough to say that we want every young person to have the benefits of participation but not to will the means to achieve that end? For the truth is that the status quo is what the amendments would leave us with. By taking away the element of compulsion, they would take away the most important elements of the Bill: its impact on the wider system of education and training and its ability to galvanise the system to achieve change.

The Committee does not need to take my word for the central importance of compulsion to achieving the result that we want. We heard it time and again from witnesses representing many different parts of the system. The National Union of Teachers said:

“The fact that it is a requirement to stay until 18 triggers a culture shift on its own.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 145, Q335.]

Barnardo’s said

“ultimately, after all the safeguards within the Bill, our position is that we support compulsion as a means of ensuring that the most disadvantaged young people have their horizons broadened and are prepared for a world of work, rather than a world of benefits and long-term poverty.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 4, Q1.]

The Association of Directors of Children’s Services said:

“In our view, without the end point of the legal duties, and the compulsion through the law, the remaining changes to culture, the NEETs strategy, and things such as diplomas and apprenticeships, will have an effect, but there will not be the expectation that”

participation

“is genuinely and seriously the norm and that it is the way to do things.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 72, Q174.]

We see that the picture is perhaps not as clear as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton would have liked to present it. The Association of Learning Providers, for example, said:

“The message clearly embodied in raising the participation age to 18 is that it is in every young person’s interest to be on a quality route with quality training. Clearly, that is the right message,”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 122, Q299.]

The Local Government Association said:

“We do not disagree with the intent, but that intent should be seen in the context of the overall direction in which to go—not as one of the prime elements but as a final sanction to be applied in extremis.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 72, Q174.]

I do not disagree with that. I have already said that I expect the enforcement of the duty to be a last resort. I say the same as many of our witnesses—that placing a duty on young people to participate is crucial to achieving our goals, which the Opposition say they share, of meeting the future skills needs of this country and ensuring that all our young people have the best possible chance to succeed.

The duty to participate does not take away from young people the responsibility to take decisions about their own education, as the hon. Gentleman claimed. As we have discussed, the range of options that young people will have to fulfil the duty is extensive. We expect young people to take responsibility for making decisions about which of those options is appropriate for them, supported by their parents, schools and the Connexions service. The only option we are removing is that of doing nothing, and we are doing so with the backing of strong evidence that remaining in education or training is in the best interests of young people.

Of course, compulsion must be backed by support and by other duties across the system, and the Bill puts those elements in place. Local authorities will already have, under cause 10, a clear duty to promote effective participation. In addition, we have the Connexions service, which supports young people and helps them to participate. The duty to ensure that that service is provided currently rests with the Secretary of State, but clause 54 will transfer the responsibility directly to local authorities. The service is part of the vision that we set out in “Youth Matters” for integrated youth support services delivered by children’s trusts in every local authority area. Under the Bill, local authorities will also be required to have regard to tough new national standards to ensure that the advice and guidance that they provide is of good quality.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Does the Minister not believe that the provisions he is putting in place—those increased opportunities—will not be sufficient to increase participation?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I agree with some of the witnesses that I have quoted. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services, for example, has said that the provisions will certainly have an effect on participation. We were putting in place measures to achieve our target of 90 per cent. participation, but they will not be sufficient to have an impact on every young person in the country, which is the clear aim of the legislation.

The Learning and Skills Council already has a duty to ensure sufficient and appropriate provision for all 16 to 19-year-olds. The Bill does not affect that duty. From this year, we implemented the September guarantee everywhere—guaranteeing for the first time an offer of an appropriate learning place for every young person leaving year 11. We have also announced that we will introduce an “age 17” guarantee. We are improving the choices that young people have at 16 by increasing access to apprenticeships, which we know are popular with young people, and introducing new diplomas. From 2013—the year that the legislation first takes effect—all young people will be entitled to study for a diploma in any one of 14 lines at three levels. From the same date, any young person who wants to and who meets the entry requirements will be able to pursue an apprenticeship.

We are developing the foundation learning tier—I have been through these things with this Committee before—and we announced in the children’s plan that we will be piloting a new return to learning programme, which I will talk about more when we discuss clause 4. Young people have access to financial support to participate in learning through the education maintenance allowance. Evaluation shows that the EMA has had an impact on participation and attainment.

The combination of clauses 2 and 10 ensures that local authorities must support and enable young people to participate. Amendment No. 4 adds nothing to that—but it would remove the crucial ingredient. Compulsion is the catalyst which ensures that the duties, the reforms and the programme of change transform the operation of the system, so that the system understands that every young person must be engaged, every need must be met and no-one must be left out. Without the requirement on young people to participate, the incentive on the system to engage the hardest to engage is removed, and the requirement to get a full entitlement in place for every learner is reduced. The urgent need to support every young person—no matter how great their need—is lost.

As long as we have an optional system, the young people who are least likely to choose to participate are those who are most disadvantaged and most marginalised already, yet it is they who potentially have the most to gain from continuing their learning. I have consistently argued that it cannot be acceptable for any young person to be deemed to be too hard to engage. We must raise our expectations of these young people and their expectations of themselves.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The whole Committee shares the Minister’s anxiety about those young people who are lost to the system, and his determination that young people should be encouraged to acquire a thirst for learning, but, in essence, is he not really saying that compulsion will be introduced and to meet its objectives, a series of exciting and attractive measures will be put in place? He must surely acknowledge that those exciting and attractive measures will of themselves encourage much greater participation. Would it not be better, therefore, to consider compulsion when we have had a chance as a Committee, as a House, as a Government to look at the effects of those measures?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I can see the temptation to think that, but I argue that if we give people the opt-out, we remove the momentum. The duties in the Bill are balancing duties—duties on young people balanced by duties on local authorities. The enforcement process is costly to local authorities, it is something that they would have to administer, and it is therefore more of a driver for them to put the necessary support measures in place to avoid the need for enforcement. I would argue that, by having some clear and definite measures in place, with a definite end time of 2013 and then 2015, we will create the momentum we need to get those measures in place early. We know that the current cohort finishing primary school will be the first year to whom the set of measures apply, and we need to ensure that their educational journey from now on is configured around the duty to participate applying to them in 2013, and not the possibility that it might apply to them in 2013, which just changes the mindset completely.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I understand the Minister’s argument that the measure will be a catalyst. It is, on the face of it, plausible; but he must have considered with his colleagues other ways in which participation could be encouraged. Indeed, there are all sorts of carrots and sticks that could be used without using this enormous cudgel of criminalisation. I just wonder what other ideas he tested before concluding that he must use the nuclear option.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I do not see compulsion either as nuclear or cudgel-like. I have described it as being slightly more forensic than that, because it certainly has to be applied on an individualised basis. We have considered everything, and everything that we think is reasonable, we are deploying. We were already looking to deploy what gave reasonable value for money in terms of effectiveness and affordability in order to achieve 90 per cent. but, as I have consistently argued, our analysis is that we need to go further through this balancing set of duties in legislation to get to 100 per cent.

Turning to No. 15, if we are going to place a duty on young people to participate, we need to have the means to make that duty real for young people, and that means being able to enforce it. The proposed amendment to clause 10 would remove the ability of the local authority to enforce the duty to participate. Without enforcement, the galvanising effect of compulsion is lost. The pressure on the system to provide what is needed goes away.

I see enforcement as a necessary deterrent that should be used only as a last resort and only once all other avenues have been exhausted. I am absolutely clear that where a young person needs extra support or faces significant barriers to participation, such as homelessness or drug or alcohol problems, the support services will focus on overcoming these first. No young person will enter the enforcement system if there is a reason why they are not participating and if they are taking the right steps for them towards participation.

The role of the local authority is crucial because it will be responsible for encouraging participation and making sure the young people get the support they need. The Connexions service will play a big part in that. I have already set out some of its role. The local authority will be well placed to make sure that young people enter the enforcement system only if it is justified because, as I have just said, it will consider each case individually and take full account of the young person’s personal circumstances. The attendance panel will provide further checks and balances on the process by reviewing the steps the local authority has taken to make sure there has been sufficient opportunity and support for the young person to engage voluntarily. The panel will confirm or dismiss the attendance notice and be able to recommend that the local authority take action to meet the needs of the young person.

The duty to participate and the ultimate possibility of enforcement are at the heart of the Bill. Removing it would significantly reduce the impact of what we are proposing and I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

There is an inherent contradiction at the heart of the Government’s rhetoric. On the one hand the Minister and the documentation say that the compulsion is a last resort and that the real measures in this Bill are the increased opportunities for young people to participate and the duties on local authority to promote participation. The essence of the amendments, particularly amendment No. 4, is to put into legislation the essence of the rhetoric that it is a large resort—that the crucial part of the thrust behind the policy is not the element of compulsion, but the aim of increasing opportunities and encouragement to young people to participate in the system.

We agree with that. If that were the essence of the Bill, I suspect the Committee stage would already be over. We are concerned, however, about the compulsion element. The Minister cited the NUT as evidence of outside bodies that are in favour of compulsion, but it says in its briefing:

“The NUT is concerned that the focus in the Bill on sanctions and criminalisation for failing to participate may be counter-productive.”

Similarly, the TUC says:

“The TUC has some reservations in particular around a compulsory approach that could result in young people being forced into learning.”

Despite a number of questions from the Minister to the TUC witnesses, they refused to backtrack on that view. Despite persistent questioning—until they got it right—they continued to get it wrong, from the Minister’s perspective. I think the TUC and the NUT are right.

The Minister says that if we do not have the compulsion in the Bill that would amount to doing nothing. He cannot say it is doing nothing and then say that the other measures in the Bill to promote participation and increase the number of opportunities are so important. As far as we are concerned, those measures do not amount to nothing. I am promoting the Minister in saying that these other measures in the Bill are likely to be very effective. I wish he had the same confidence in his own measures that we do.

The essence of the issue is whether we can reach 100 per cent. The Minister said, in giving evidence to the Committee, that,

“it is always difficult to get 100 per cent.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 207, Q476.]

He is right. Reaching 100 per cent. is probably impossible. The question is how we get as near as possible to that figure of 100 per cent. The type of young people we are talking about will not respond to compulsion. They have had compulsion thrust upon them for years, and they have resisted and resented it for years. That was the view of the bodies that work with such young people day in, day out—Rainer, the Prince’s Trust and Fairbridge. They are all adamant.

Fairbridge deals with the type of young person that the Prince’s Trust is unable to deal with: very difficult, very hard-to-reach young people. Its witness was firmly of the view that compulsion will not work for such young people, given the problems they face. As local authorities start to monitor those young people, we will end up with a very bureaucratic procedure involving attendance panels, attendance notices and the range of sanctions and penalties that arise from failing to comply with the notices and orders. Those measures will be expensive and will simply not work in getting those young people on to the training and education ladder and helping them to make something of their lives. For this reason, I wish to press the amendment to a vote, as it goes to the essence of the difference in approach between Members on these Benches and those on the Benches opposite.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move amendment No. 3, in clause 2, page 1, line 12, leave out ‘must’ and insert ‘shall be entitled to’.

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments:

No. 144, in clause 2, page 1, line 12, leave out from ‘applies’ to end of line 20 and insert—

‘has the right—

(a) to participate in appropriate full time education or training,

(b) to participate in training in accordance with a contract of apprenticeship, or

(c) whilst in full time occupation, to participate in sufficient relevant training or education in each relevant period.’.

No. 145, in clause 10, page 5, line 35, leave out ‘fulfil the duty imposed’ and insert ‘exercise the right conferred’.

No. 146, in clause 12, page 6, line 22, leave out ‘failing to fulfil the duty imposed’ and insert ‘not exercising the right conferred’.

No. 147, in clause 13, page 6, line 34, leave out ‘failing to fulfil the duty imposed’ and insert ‘not exercising the right conferred’.

No. 149, in clause 39, page 20, line 23, leave out ‘fulfil the duty imposed’ and insert

‘participate in required education or training as required’.

No. 150, in clause 39, page 20, line 27, leave out ‘fulfil that duty’ and insert ‘participate in required education or training’.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

It is a delight to be working again with such a talented team, and none more talented than you, Mr. Bercow. The amendments focus our attention once again on the central issue of compulsion. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has argued, without proper consideration of that element of the Bill, much of the rest becomes fruitless. That is not to say that there are not good things in the Bill, or that we do not support many of the measures which the Government suggest, and it certainly does not mean that we do not share the aspirations that underpin much of what the Government have said both in Parliament and outside. However, those things might be better achieved without reference to legislation. They can be achieved in all kinds of ways. No one in the House, let alone in Committee, is more enthusiastic than I am about rejuvenating the apprenticeships system, but I am not sure that the Bill is the right means of doing so.

The amendments deal with the issue of compulsion through a series of apparently minor or semantic changes. Amendment No. 3 removes the word, “must”, which signifies the determination of the Minister and the Government to compel young people into education. However, as Barnardo’s has said, if education at 16 to 18 is to succeed, young people must choose to participate if they are to maintain their motivation. I am interested in the Minister’s arguments, which he makes with typical flair, that without compulsion, there will be no incentive or driver—“catalyst” was the word he used. However, I am not sure that the case has been made persuasively. It certainly has not been proven, and it is not the view of many organisations that work most closely with the disadvantaged young people whose interests we are so passionate about. My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire spoke about that in an earlier sitting. In his experience of working with young people, unless they thought they had made a choice to participate, the catalyst the Minister described would not apply. It is the catalyst of their commitment that counts, not the catalyst of the law. My hon. Friend made that point with alarming eloquence, and I am surprised that the Minister did not spot it.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Will my hon. Friend give way?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am happy to give way, just to get another dose of my hon. Friend’s eloquence.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind remarks, but Barnado’s, which did a survey of young people, was not the only organisation to come to that conclusion. The British Youth Council reached the same conclusion, so there is support for his argument from the available evidence of what young people think.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I shall deal exhaustively, in the all too few words that I shall use when speaking to this group of amendments, with other organisations that have made the same point. However, we do not need simply to rely on their expertise, as we know what they say is true from our own real-life experience. Have we not grasped that from work in our constituencies and our knowledge and understanding of young people? Do we not know it from our personal experience? The things which we choose to do are usually the things that we do with most enthusiasm. There is a philosophical problem with the Minister’s argument, which supposes that if someone wants to do something, they have to be forced to do it. I am not sure that that obligation sits comfortably with the desire to do something.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I appreciate that the school leaving age is a different proposition, but there has been a cultural shift in parents’ expectations as to how long their children will be in education. Does the hon. Gentleman not acknowledge that in the early 1970s the school leaving age was raised from 15 to 16, and that subsequently it was raised from someone’s 16th birthday to the end of the academic year? That changed parents’ expectations of how long their children would carry on learning, and that cultural shift could only be achieved by a measure of compulsion. That compulsion was applied then, and it would similarly be applied with the Bill?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister’s argument is not without merit. There is an argument that says, and my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire parodied it a little unkindly, that it is not the attractiveness of the product or the ability of Government or any of the agencies that are working in the education sector to inspire young people—it is not about the thirst for learning that might derive from those things—that is likely to be successful but the obligation: the fear, or the threat of force.

That would certainly have some effect, and I think it would do what the Minister says to some extent. However, I am not sure it will reach the people he most wants to reach, because he said earlier—and this is the flaw in his argument—that he believed 90 per cent. of young people in the target set by the Government would participate without compulsion, but that there was a stubborn 10 per cent. that the Government would not be able to attract or inspire in the way that I have described. I am not sure that compulsion will help us to engage that stubborn 10 per cent., because we know from the figures—I will not say “on truancy”, as the Minister would quickly identify absence from school as a factor—that if we add authorised and unauthorised absence in year 11, we are nudging up to 10 per cent. in schools. I do not believe that the figure for ages 16 to 18, if the Bill comes into law, is likely to be less than the existing figure in schools. In fact, I would assert that it is likely to be more. When young people reach the age of 16 or 18, they are more challenging and difficult: there are other draws on their attention and energies that are altogether more seductive than the Minister and his policies. I am not sure, if the Minister’s argument is that compulsion will succeed in engaging the 10 per cent. that other methods have not engaged, that he will be proved right. That is why amendment No. 3 removes the word, “must”.

Amendment No. 144 similarly leaves out, “applies” and adds, “has the right”. Although we are concerned about compulsion, we are passionately in favour, as I have made clear—and my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, with greater knowledge and understanding has made it even clearer—of encouraging as many young people as possible to achieve their potential by staying on in education or training. The explanatory notes to clause 2 are worth considering in detail, because clause 2 creates the central duty, as the Minister said when dealing with a previous group of amendments,

“to participate in education or training”.

It details the ways in which that duty might be fulfilled, both by young people themselves and by the institutions entrusted with the mission of bringing about that purpose. The eligible forms of education and training, to which the amendments refer, are listed in the notes as

“appropriate full-time education or training...a contract of apprenticeship”—

The minister mentioned that a few moments ago—and

“part time education or training towards an accredited qualification as part of full-time occupation or alongside occupation of more than 20 hours a week.”

The purpose of our amendments—and I make no bones about it—is to qualify that duty and pare down the Bill. We do not deny the fact that all those things I have listed are desirable, but we doubt whether the means to achieve them are right. The Minister, untypically—I will not say, “disingenuously”, because I think he was unwise, with an untypical lack of wisdom—suggested that was the only means of achieving those ends. He said that “we must will the means to bring about this end”, as if compulsion were the only means or route to that end. When I intervened on him to ask what assessment he had made of other means to those ends, he said that the Government had looked at almost everything. He did not elaborate in the detail that I think the Committee would have liked, which would have enabled us to judge what measures he had considered, how he had tested them, and what notional judgments he had made about their success. Would they have reached 85 per cent. of people, or 70 per cent. or 97 per cent.?

We were not given a clear indication as to when the Government came to the conclusions about compulsion, having considered and exhausted other options because, in the Government’s estimation and projections, they were found to be inadequate. I would want to look at the measure in considerably more detail, and test more rigorously some of the alternatives before moving to a position where we criminalise young people—that is what it is; there is no point in making any bones about it or mincing our words—in the knowledge, as the Minister has admitted, that 100 per cent., despite the measures in the Bill, will not participate. It is not possible to achieve 100 per cent. participation in anything that people are obliged to do, and that is certainly true in education. Some people, as a direct consequence of these measures, will gain a criminal record at a very young age. That is not acceptable without a very convincing argument that that is the only way forward.

The explanatory notes include details of the duties to which educational institutions are subject. They have a duty to notify the appropriate service provider if someone is not participating and they believe that that person is not fulfilling the duty. The Bill define services providers and puts into place all the mechanisms for enforcement. Our amendment No. 149 suggests that we delete “fulfil the duty imposed” from clause 39 and insert,

“participate in required education or training as required”.

Again, in the same spirit, our aim is to encourage the end but to amend the means. In a similar fashion, amendment No.150 would leave out, “fulfil that duty”, and once again insert,

“participate in required education or training”.

We believe in exercising rights rather than imposing a duty. I should qualify that. I am not terribly enthusiastic about rights, particularly natural rights. It is responsibilities about which I am most enthusiastic, for I am, as the Committee knows, a Conservative. As I have argued before, if we limit people’s liberty, we must have a balancing product—an offer that is so attractive or compelling that that loss of liberty can be justified. The nature of government—and there can be no better example than this—is surely to remove liberty only where there is a compelling, overwhelming case for so doing

Nia Griffith (Labour, Llanelli)

I am glad to hear the hon. Gentleman mention responsibility. Does he not agree that we should ask young people to take their responsibilities seriously, and that there should be a duty on every young person to participate in some form of activity between the ages of 16 and 18?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is an interesting question, because once or twice in our considerations, the Minister of State has made the remark that the only liberty that we are taking away is the right or opportunity to do nothing. I am with Proust rather than the hon. Lady on these matters. I do not know whether we are going to have much opportunity to explore Proust—

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

Another Marcel.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Mr. Bercow, I look to you when I speak for a certain sobriety to balance my levity. I hope I can rely on that, as I do not want to be impertinent.

Proust advocated the notion of spending time doing precisely that—nothing. Proust said that the good life—the fulfilled life—depended on our spending considerable time doing nothing. I rather suspect we should all be doing a lot more of that and thus a lot less than we do now. We should—and I recommend it to the hon. Member for Llanelli—spend more time contemplating, meditating and considering—not the Bill, but all those gentle and beautiful things to be found beyond this place. So I am with Proust rather than the hon. Member for Llanelli, although I do not know whether Proust enjoyed quite so much expertise in dealing with young people as the hon. Lady.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Does my hon. Friend agree that one thing is for sure, Proust could read and write—[ Interruption. ]—and add up?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Proust was a chronic hypochondriac, and spent many years wrapped up in several overcoats and blankets. He went out in a moment of folly, caught a cold and died, so whether he could read and write or not, one would not want to rely too much on his advice. However, I think that he was probably right about that willingness to do nothing. An important part of freedom and liberty is the choice to do nothing. One aspect of liberty is the business of saying, “Well, I do not want to get involved. I do not want to participate.” It may not be what we would advise young people to do: we would tell them that that is the wrong judgement, and we would encourage them or—and I used the word in a considered way—inspire them to get involved. However, that is quite different from saying that we will take away someone’s right to meditate and contemplate—to emulate Proust.

Before the Committee tires of those wider, tangential remarks, I shall come straight back, like an arrow, to the target—the amendments, which very much reflect the views of a panoply of organisations that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton said, have resisted the Government’s argument. They reject the central tenet of the Bill because their experience leads them to believe that it will not succeed. At an earlier stage in Committee proceedings, the hon. Member for Yeovil and I had a brief exchange—I do not think that you were there, Mr. Bercow; you were probably doing nothing, and I congratulate you if that was the case—in which we discussed the difference between philosophical objections to the Bill, which can plausibly be made, and my objection, which is that it will not work. It will not do what it is intended to do. It will not do what the Minister hopes it will do.

That is rather reflected by the third party organisations to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton referred—how much I enjoy working with him in Committee and elsewhere—including Rainer and the Prince’s Trust, which both gave evidence to the Committee that raised doubts about the Minister’s argument. Those doubts were not about the philosophy of the measure but about whether the Bill will work: will it reach the most challenging young people, for whom we have a responsibility to do more?

Barnardo’s has been mentioned several times, but I make no apologies for mentioning it again, because its words are highly relevant to this part of the Bill and to our amendments. Its report, “School’s out, or is it? Young people’s views on staying on in education or training to 18” offers a very clear message:

“Choice is best...the young people consulted in Barnardo’s alternative education and training services...felt that choosing to participate was critical to their motivation to attend and achieve.”

The important words are, “choosing to participate”: those young people made a commitment critical to their subsequent progress.

On the subject of enforcement in relation to young people, the Association of School and College Leaders said:

“Our preferred approach to achieving full participation is by persuasion rather than coercion. In particular we do not support the potential application of criminal penalties for what is a civil matter”.

The Minister may want to leap to his feet and tell me whether the Government considered only criminal sanctions, whether they looked at the possibility of including civil sanctions in the Bill?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for inviting me to leap to my feet, and may I take the opportunity to say that civil sanctions are built into the measure, but criminal sanctions are at the end of that civil road?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

That is true, but for the second time today, I am tempted, against my instincts and against my highly co-operative and generous style, to accuse the Minister of being rather less than straightforward. While there are indeed civil penalties, there are not civil penalties alone. He knew very well what I was inviting him to clarify: whether he, his advisers or his colleagues in government had considered leaving out the criminal sanctions at the heart of the Bill, as well as the coercion identified by the Association of School and College Leaders, and replacing them with solely civil measures. The National Union of Students, an organisation with which most of us were probably associated in some shape or form a few years ago—more than a few in my case—says:

“Compulsion and especially criminalisation of those young people who opt out of education will not be a fair or effective solution.”

The Young Women’s Christian Association says:

“Education at present does not work for many disadvantaged young women and without significant changes to the system these young women will struggle and the situation will get worse.

Compulsory participation in formal education does not necessarily lead to learning. Non-formal education and youth work awards, accredited by QCA or appropriate body, should be recognized as valid forms of training for those most disengaged and disadvantaged”

Time and time again, we hear that the young people in greatest need—those who face the most challenges and are most isolated from the thirst for learning from which we have all benefited and that we hope might be spread more widely—are the least likely to benefit from a Bill that coerces them and, ultimately, if they do not abide by their duties, criminalises them. That is the message that we have heard loud and clear from any number of experts, and it is the issue addressed by our amendments. Clause 2 is a vital part of the Bill, and the amendments are the summation of the Opposition’s view as to why it is not fit for purpose. To that end, I hope that the Minister, even at this late stage, will listen to the evidence—what is the purpose of evidence if we do not listen to it and act upon it?—and take note of the arguments that have been made in Committee, and which will me made time and time again. I hope he will rise to say that the Government might just think again. His share price would rocket if he did so, and not just with my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, although that would be a prize worth having, but with everyone outside the House who knows that I have made a reasonable case and that his argument is less than persuasive.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

We all enjoyed hearing about amendments No. 3, amendments Nos. 144 to 147, and amendments Nos. 149 and 150 much more than we expected. I did not initially intend to speak, but such is the enthusiasm with which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings put his case that it would be discourteous not to enter the debate, even for a short period of time.

This debate was similar to the previous debate on amendments Nos. 4 and 15, which is why I do not intend to speak for long. We have essentially heard the same tune from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, but with a different conductor and, occasionally, a few different notes. However, I am very pleased that we have managed to find some common ground between a liberal Conservative—the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton would, I think, be happy to fly under that flag—and the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, who is a self-styled illiberal Conservative.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

A high Tory.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I did not realise that there were any high Tories left. Indeed, we have managed to find a coalition of views between a Liberal, a liberal Conservative and a high Tory. I hold out some hopes for the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, because he sounded veritably Cameronian when he started to discuss the benefits of meditation and inactivity. I expect at some future date to see proposals along those lines on the front page of The Observer or The Guardian, as informed by his thinking.

The hon. Gentleman made a powerful case for a more voluntarist and permissive approach to the Bill. I wait with interest to see whether he has convinced the Minister, as his hon. Friends and I were not able to do so. I was not convinced by the Minister’s explanations of what he has described as a forensic rather than a nuclear or sledgehammer approach. How one can have a forensic process of compulsion or a forensic sledgehammer, I am not sure—or convinced that one can. However, having felt compelled to lend my support to the amendments on the basis of the robust case made for them, I look forward to seeing whether the hon. Gentleman has convinced the Minister.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I, too, enjoyed the opening speech on this group of amendments by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. I fear that he may have missed his vocation—it was like listening to an episode of “Just a Minute”, only with Nicholas Parsons missing. Perhaps I am wrong, because it did not take just a minute for the hon. Member to conclude his comments. We have discussed at length in the debate on the previous group of amendments the essential importance of compulsion in achieving the aims of the Bill.

These amendments seek to replace the central duty to participate with a right, or entitlement, to participate, and they make corresponding changes to the duties on local authorities. As the hon. Gentleman said, that strikes right at the heart of the Bill, and—I would argue—would effectively neuter it. We had the benefit of hearing from a wide range of witnesses during our oral evidence sessions. They set out for the Committee their clearly and often passionately held views about this issue on both sides of the debate. Plenty of them discussed whether it was right to compel young people to participate in education or training. I will not detain the Committee by citing every supporter of the principle, but there were many of them and I will give just a few examples. The Association of School and College Leaders said:

“We certainly agree with the idea that it should be compulsory for young people to be engaged in educational training up to the age of 18 and we welcome the fact that the Government intend that to be the case.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 58, Q146.]

The Campaign for Learning said:

“If every young person who is 11 now has an expectation that they are going to stay in learning until they are 18, and their parents and employers know that, we think that will be effective in making a difference to the way people think.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 124, Q301.]

That goes to the heart of my argument. Even the Prince’s Trust, which did not hold a clear view either way, said:

“If you make it compulsory and you put in adequate resources...then it would make a big difference because, yes, you would get that shift on the ground.”

It went on to say that

“in the experience that the trust has had...where young people have been sent to us compulsorily, we have not seen a difference in the outcomes.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 21-26, Q52-63.]

Nigel Haynes of Fairbridge addressed the question of choice:

“I think choice has to have consequence, and as far as most of our young people in the Green Paper surveys are concerned, they do believe that if there is a degree of compulsion, for some that is going to be appropriate.”

He went on to say that

“we get round it in quite a subtle way, in that there has to be some choice...a young person coming to us through a YOT or from a YIP will have two or three choices.”

Choice and compulsion can therefore go together in Nigel Haynes’s opinion. He added:

“In the overall sense of the Bill, there are options and pathways for them to take that I think are opening up more than they were previously.”

He went on to say:

“From looking at what there is on the book, I am not so sure that the range of options needs to be increased.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 193-96, Q445-51.]

I am sure that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings is aware of what Nigel Haynes said on the subject.

I believe that the measures in the Bill are right, necessary and proportionate if we are to achieve our aim of full participation for all young people up to the age of 18 in England. I have explained my position at length in relation to the previous group of amendments. I have set out why I agree with our witnesses that compulsion will galvanise the system in a way that no other approach can do. An entitlement or right to participate, as established by amendments Nos. 3 and 144, would not in isolation achieve the goals we have set ourselves. Giving young people a right to participate adds nothing to the current position on post-16 education and training and, in some ways, it weakens it. Young people are already entitled to participate, and we are doing everything we can to encourage them to do so.

As a result of the reform programme that we have put in place, we expect many more young people to choose to participate, but that is not enough to ensure that they all do so. We believe that a voluntary approach could take us to 90 per cent. participation at 17 by 2015—I am trying to be as precise as I can to help the hon. Gentleman—but that means 10 per cent. not participating, left behind and increasingly marginalised.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister has been precise. He suggested that a non-compulsory approach might achieve a target of 90 per cent, as I said.

I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills a question, but as I did not get a straight answer, what estimate has the Minister for Schools and Learners made of the likely non-attendance among that remaining 10 per cent., even given that they will be legally obliged to participate? Is it going to be roughly the level of non-attendance in year 11 at school?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

As we have discussed, the level of non-attendance at school is difficult to quantify for those who are truanting, in common parlance, so it is difficult to draw comparisons with what might happen post-16, particularly as we will put in place a range of measures to support young people as part of the legislation. I therefore cannot give the hon. Gentleman a precise answer to that question.

The figures we have given in respect of enforcement are at the top end, because I anticipate that the informal training that will be put in place to re-engage young people, as well as support to help those with particular difficulties—we have already discussed that and we will go on to discuss it again in the next group of amendments—will account for a range of circumstances, so there will be people who will not be failing in their duty but will not be fully participating, either, because they are on the road. It is therefore difficult to define an answer to that question.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Can we at least get it on the record that no one actually believes that even with these sanctions we are going to achieve 100 per cent? It would be ludicrous for this Committee not to hear from the Minister that even he, with all his confidence in this measure, acknowledges that we are not going to achieve 100 per cent.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

On 29 January, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked me:

“Do you think you will reach 100 per cent.?”

I replied:

“We do not quite reach 100 per cent. for pre-16, because various circumstances have to be taken into account...and there are a number of reasons why people of compulsory school age are absent from school. There are reasonable excuses for people not participating. I do not know exactly how the statisticians measure participation, but it is always difficult to get 100 per cent.”

So I think I have been relatively clear on that issue. Later, again in response to the hon. Gentleman, I said:

“I believe that we can effectively get to 100 per cent.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 207, Q476-477.]

The word “effectively” allows the wriggle room for some of the difficulties around definition that may or may not emerge, depending on how statisticians in the future choose to measure those people who are not fully participating but who are en route to participating through the re-engagement activities in the return to learning-type programmes we will be developing. I hope that is helpful.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

We will not get to 100 per cent. I read the Official Report to which the Minister refers. I will ignore the gobbledegook about statisticians—that is a red herring. We are not going to get to 100 per cent., so we are really doing this, not for the 90 per cent. and not for—let us be generous—the 3 or 4 per cent. who are not going to participate, but for about 6 per cent. Is that what we are really saying?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

No. I know that the hon. Gentleman is probing to gain clarification—he is not deliberately being obtuse. We are clear that we want to design a system for 100 per cent., so that there is no particular type or category of person who has a different aspiration or expectation from the system about their participation up until the age of 18. The system will explicitly be designed for 100 per cent., be it 100 per cent. participation or 100 per cent. engagement.

As long as we have an optional system of participation, the young people who are least likely to choose to participate are those who are the most disadvantaged—the very ones who most need to continue to learn. It cannot be acceptable to deem any young person to be too hard to engage. We must raise our expectations of those people and their expectations of themselves. As drafted, clause 2 is key to bringing about the essential culture change that we are looking for. It is about changing the expectations, not only of young people—the Opposition seem to think the duty to participate is laid on the young people themselves in isolation—but of their parents, their teachers and the others who advise them. That is crucial. The question should no longer be, “Will you stay on?” but, “What will you do?”

We will start with the young people who are now in year 6 and starting secondary school in September. It is worth adding that in school now you cannot distinguish between who is there because they choose to be and who is there because they have to be. Even if they are not choosing to go, by and large they are still learning and gaining from that education. We want to extend that.

Local authorities’ duties are central to the proposals that we will be debating and to the delivery of the reform programme. The existence of a clear duty on young people will ensure not only that local authorities act with urgency but also that they have the moral authority to lead the rest of the system locally to deliver what is needed for every young person. Removing the drive provided by the duty on young people, as amendments Nos. 145 to 147 would do, would both reduce the impetus for local authorities to respond with urgency and reduce their ability to cajole other services to respond. We heard precisely that from John Freeman of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, in one of the most memorable quotes from our evidence sessions. He said

“as a director of children’s services, I have a range of powers that I never use. However, if I did not have them, I would have different conversations with a range of people...without them, my leverage on the activity would be much reduced.”—[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 72, Q174.]

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Does the Minister agree that those bodies do not seem to be using those powers very effectively in relation to those children in year 10 and 11 who are not complying at all with the attendance obligation?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Certainly, I agree that the performance of local authorities in using those powers is not consistent. It is variable, and I would like to see some use the powers more readily than they do. However, I have no doubt that because directors of children’s services have those powers, they are able to have conversations where everyone who is taking part in that dialogue knows at the back of their mind that there are enforcement powers that can be used, but that it is desirable to move on because of the process involved. I hope that the powers that we are putting into legislation through the Bill will have a similar effect.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The efficacy of the powers, if they are not used but they have an effect, is as a kind of threat. When challenged by the hon. Member for Yeovil about the variability of the application of the powers, the Minister said that he agreed that there was inconsistency. There is no inconsistency in their having the powers, so why is there inconsistency in the effect that those powers have when they are not used? It is an extraordinarily illogical argument to say that they all have the powers, and in some cases the powers frighten people, and in other cases the powers do not.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I think it is fairly obvious that if people do not believe that a local authority is going to use the powers, the powers do not have much effect; but if they see that the powers can be and are used, that informs the conversation.

I do not want to get into a lengthy debate about enforcement today; there will be plenty of time for that later on. However, local authorities’ duties in relation to enforcement will only have the impact that they must have if they relate back to the central duty set out in clause 10.

To avoid being accused of disingenuousness by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I would add, in respect of the exploration of whether or not it should remain a civil matter and be enforced by the courts, we discounted that option for a number of reasons. Unpaid civil penalties are registered as a debt with the county court for enforcement. A warrant is authorised, which a bailiff attempts to execute, but bailiffs cannot act in relation to individuals under 18, because young people are classed as vulnerable, so the bailiff would have to withdraw. The cost of the original debt would increase as a result of bailiff fees being added. That is not a position that we want to see young people in. As a result of the spiralling fine, the young person could be taken to county court. County courts and their sentencing are not designed to deal with cases against young people, and it is unlikely that any suitable action could be taken.

Throughout that process, of course, the costs would keep mounting. It is therefore very unlikely that the debt could be enforced at the end of the process. Either the costs would then be left with the local authority and the council tax payer, or the authority would seek to recover the whole amount from the child, none of which would be means-tested. In the youth court, however, the proceedings are set up expressly to deal with young people: the amount of the fine is means-tested, has a maximum limit and does not increase over time. I hope that that is a logical and reasonable explanation of why we do not pursue the civil penalties.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister is being immensely generous, Mr. Bercow, and that should be acknowledged.

Barnardo’s made two arguments relating specifically to the matters that the Minister has just raised. To paraphrase, it does not want a young person who has failed to participate to be left with a criminal record, which could jeopardise their future employment. Barnardo’s believes that the sanctions—the record—should be spent after a certain period of time. It also argues that there should never be a custodial sentence for failure to pay a fine or for non-attendance. Has the Minister considered those points, and does he agree with Barnardo’s?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am looking at the evidence that I gave the Committee, but I believe that I set out the legal position in respect of a criminal record then. That was that these offences would not remain on the criminal record for longer than, as I recall, two and a half years. Also, they would not be a recordable offence: the offence created in clause 45 of failing to comply with an attendance notice is not punishable by imprisonment, so it is not a recordable offence, it will not be placed on the police national computer and it will not be disclosable in a Criminal Records Bureau check. If a young person chooses to go through the whole enforcement process, all the way through the youth court and all the way through to developing a criminal record, the effect would be seen for, at worst, two and a half years after that conviction. I think that that is a reasonable and balanced approach, and largely deals with the concerns that Barnardo’s has raised, although obviously I cannot speak for that organisation.

I ask the Committee to resist amendments Nos. 149 and 150. The duty to participate and the message it sends to all those involved are at the heart of this Bill. Its removal would render the legislation a little more than a restatement of the current position, which we all agree is not one that we wish to see continuing. I therefore ask the loquacious and articulate hon. Gentleman to withdraw his amendments.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

Thank you very much, Mr. Bercow, for calling me to speak on this Bill. It is my debut appearance in Committee and I have discovered my tongue.

As I said to the Minister on Second Reading, I sincerely want this Bill to succeed, I really do. It is just not acceptable in a civilised society for any child to be left behind. It is not in their long-term emotional, spiritual or social interest, nor is it in the long-term interest of society. I genuinely believe that the Bill will get participation rates up from 90 per cent. to 96 or 97 per cent. Then, the compulsion will come into force and another 2 per cent. will be added to that.

That will still leave 1 per cent. of the most excluded, and although 1 per cent. sounds like an extremely small number, in total it is still many thousands, many tens of thousands. I am still not sure how, despite the powers of compulsion, we are going to get this 1 per cent. into training and education. We all have them in our constituencies: they are very hard to reach, they shy away from authority and even go so far as to confront authority on almost every occasion. There will be powers to levy fines on these youngsters, but I do not imagine they will pay the fines. They will then reappear in court and the fine will be increased, or another fine will be placed upon them. Again, I do not imagine for a second that they will have the desire or the means to pay that fine. Then, we get to the question of what we do with them after that.

This is where I am concerned, because the natural extension of the legal system for someone who refuses to participate or abide by rulings imposed on them is some form of custodial sentence. Perhaps that is where we need to go if the measure is to have any teeth at all. If youngsters know that they can get away with being fined time and time again and there will be no long-term sanction, perhaps they will feel they can continue as they want to. I am not suggesting that it would be desirable to lock up recidivist offenders who refuse to pay the fine, but I am struggling to understand how we are going to deal with that small minority. What sort of resources will be at the disposal of local authorities and the Government to sit them down and make them see sense—to re-engage them in the mainstream?

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I was struck by the Minister’s point about Barnardo’s. Some organisations have been prayed in aid as supporting compulsion, but when one looks at what they are actually saying, I question that. I wonder if what has happened is that the Minister has spoken to various charities and organisations and said, as he said to us, “If you want to get the money out of the Treasury for education between 16 and 18, go along with this and you can be pretty sure there will be no real compulsion here.” In other words, there is something going on behind the scenes which is not entirely in accordance with what is being said clearly on the record.

To give an example, having done a survey, Barnardo’s reports:

“’Choice is best’ was the clear message from the young people.”

It goes on to say that what is important is adequate support. Barnardo’s says that the penalties should be really quite small,

“reflecting the level of financial support available to the poorest young people.”

It says that advocacy must be available, that there must be no criminal record and that never, in any circumstances, should any sort of custodial sentence be imposed. Is not Barnardo’s really saying: yes, let us have education to 18 by all means; let us have it funded by the Treasury; but let us not criminalise these young people?

I felt that was the message from a number of the people who have been prayed in aid. The Association of School and College Leaders was very anxious to say that keeping the last 10 per cent. of recalcitrant young people in education and training will not come cheap, which seemed to me to tie in with that message. The comments made by Fairbridge fit in with that analysis. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services goes through the various civil elements of the enforcement programme, explaining them and talking about the need for lots of support, but when it comes to the criminal elements, it comments:

“local authorities will need carefully to assess, on an individual basis the action that is most likely to secure the desired outcome.”

The ADSS is not exactly saying, “Let’s move to prosecution”. Will the Minister comment on whether those organisations genuinely want very vulnerable young people to be criminalised?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Is it in order for me to speak, Mr. Bercow?

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

Yes.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I say to the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire that those organisations understand the momentum that having criminalisation at the end of the road gives the system, but they, like all of us, want to minimise the number of young people who are criminalised. In the same way, the hon. Member for Broxbourne, when intelligently discussing whether imprisonment should be a sanction—I would argue that it should not be and that that would be a step too far—said that he has no desire to see young people imprisoned for failing to participate in education or training. His question was about whether we need that sanction on the statute book to prevent people from not taking this seriously enough.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

The Minister is correct: the last thing I want to see is youngsters imprisoned. What I really want is recognition of the fact that helping that hard core of 1 per cent. will be immensely challenging. We need a detailed action plan or business plan to make sure that the infrastructure is in place to keep them out of prison and get them back into training and employment.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is looking forward to the stand part debate on clause 4, when I will set out those plans. We will need to do much more between now and when the duties come into effect in 2013 and 2015 to get all the support measures in place. I do not intend to speak at any great length for a second time on this set of clauses, but I hope that that is helpful to the Committee.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I, too, have no intention of speaking at any great length. However, as I listen to the Minister respond to the arguments that have been made on the amendments, I am forced to conclude, with considerable disappointment, that he has not, in my judgment and in preparation for this work, even glanced at “Remembrance of Things Past”. I do not think that even a passing familiarity with Proust has graced the Minister’s research—

John Bercow (Conservative, Buckingham)

Order. I simply say to the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings that his invocation of Proust and his impersonation of Demosthenes may well have been equally entertaining and—possibly—illuminating to Members of the Committee, but it is fair for the Chairman to point out that Demosthenes was not subject to the constraints of a programme motion, whereas Members of the Committee are. I invite the hon. Gentleman to bear that point in mind as he summarises his argument.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am delighted, Mr. Bercow, that you have drawn me back to the straight and narrow when Members of the Committee have tempted me to digress from our duty.

The Minister recognised in his remarks that the amendments lie not only at the heart of the Bill, but at the heart of the difference between the sides of this Committee—between Opposition parties and the Government. The arguments could be amplified at length, but I will simply say that I have yet to hear from the Minister a persuasive case for why the ends that we share would not be better achieved by more agreeable means and without some of the unacceptable consequences of his option. To that end, I am obliged, more in sorrow than in anger, to ask the Committee to divide on the amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I beg to move amendment No. 71, in clause 2, page 1, line 17, leave out from beginning to end of line 8 on page 2 and insert—

‘(c) be in full-time occupation (see section 5).’.

Amendment No. 71 moves us on to the beginning of what I think will be one of most important debates on the Bill. So far in Committee we have touched on the principle of compulsion and criminalisation and spent some time debating, on amendment No 70, exceptions and vulnerable individuals who might find it difficult to engage in education and training. Amendment No. 71 invites us to consider what for us is the third salient problem with the Bill. The amendment would allow 16 and 17-year-olds in full-time employment not to have to be in education and training.

We advocate the amendment essentially for two principled reasons. The first relates to evidence that we heard during the evidence sessions. We received many representations about the potential employment consequences of this part of the Bill and the danger that it could increase unemployment rates among 16 or 17-year-olds as a consequence of employers deciding not to take on young people who would then have an education and training obligation.

The second concern that the amendment seeks to address, which is linked to the first, relates to the representations made to us by some of the same people concerned about whether obliging people in full-time employment to take on particular qualifications at a particular time was going to be useful to them, or whether it could saddle them with qualifications that are either useless or of very low quality. It might also get in the way of people taking up their entitlement to some of those qualifications at a later date, which might result in a more useful qualification that could be quite beneficial to their future prospects both within and outside of the labour market.

Later clauses deal with the same issues as those before us now, but I shall regard this argument as having been made. With your patience, Mr. Bercow, I shall therefore spend a little time setting out the evidence.. I promise not to return to it in every succeeding clause. It is worth examining some of the evidence that we received on the employment effects of the Bill.

One of the most powerful and impressive witnesses we heard, and with whom I thought even the Minister dealt with kid gloves, knowing that she is a national expert, was Alison Wolf. She has recently published a paper called “Diminished Returns: How Raising the Leaving Age to 18 Will Harm Young People and the Economy”. She gave evidence to the Committee on 24 January, which is worth some reflection. She said:

“the negative impact that the Bill will have, by effectively destroying the labour market for 16 and 17-year-olds, is enormously underestimated. That might be justified if one were confident that they were going to be doing something that was extremely valuable. Since one is not, and since we know that on-the-job experience is demonstrably extremely valuable to people, I think we have to take the impact on the job market extremely seriously. I think the effect will be very serious and almost totally negative.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 107, Q272.]

Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)

I bow to no one in my admiration of the work that Alison Wolf has done over a long period. However, does the hon. Gentleman agree that when she was questioned on the evidence base of her assertions, , not least by myself, it became clear that it was very thin. It seemed to be strongly focused on her experiences of the economy, job organisation and age ranges in France.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman makes the important point that such matters are surrounded by a large element of uncertainty. Alison Wolf was honest and straightforward with the Committee, including in response to his questions, by acknowledging that uncertainty about her calculations. Had she been a politician, she probably would not have given such a candid response. I remember the hon. Gentleman indicating assertions that had been made about the impact that the minimum wage would have, which have not all come to pass.

I remind the hon. Gentleman not only that we received a lot of evidence on the subject, to which I shall come in a moment, but that in the Bill’s impact assessment the Government assume that there will be a significant impact on small employers. It estimates that half the young people who would have been employed by smaller employers will lose their employment opportunities as a consequence of the Bill. That is by the Government’s own estimation, which I assume is not pitched pessimistically.

Of course, we should subject the claims that have been made to scrutiny, but we should take seriously the risk that some young people might lose opportunities that can be extremely valuable, particularly for those who have disengaged with the formal education process and could learn a wide variety of valuable disciplines by being in employment. We must also take seriously the risk that we will place upon such young people a duty to be in a form of education, training or qualification that gives them skills that do not have a high market value. That is our concern.

Alison Wolf continued in her evidence to talk about some of the people who could be the losers from the proposals. She said:

“The people who are likely to be the largest losers from this are the notional equivalent of today’s young people—many of whom have left school with perfectly good GCSEs...who have made a decision at 16 to leave school, who are in jobs, who are getting a great deal of valuable on-the-job training often and who may be getting formal training as far as the labour force survey data is concerned, but who are not in jobs where their small and medium-sized employers can, with any ease, move to releasing them for a day, or entering into an extremely complex apprenticeship contract and so on.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 108, Q273.]

She is concerned that they are the individuals who might lose job opportunities. She went on to set out her concerns about the alternative approach that I put to her to keep people in the labour market: to widen the accreditation for young people who are in employment but not getting education and training. She said:

“the local training provider can come in and tick them off for an NVQ—well, yes, I guess you can do that. I do not know why you would want to. In fact, I can think of one reason why you would not want to. The reason why you might not feel that it is a particularly important use of Government money is that many of those young people will already have level 2 GCSEs.”

She went on to explain that if young people at that age are obliged to take up particular qualifications, they may expend their level 2 entitlement, even though they might more usefully access that entitlement later. She said:

“If they then want to go to the local college or whatever and take another qualification, they will be told that they have already had their full level 2s”—[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 24 January 2008; c. 109, Q275.]

That whole case is set out in great detail in her paper.

We also heard a lot of evidence on this from business organisations. We had written and, I think, oral evidence from the CBI. Its written evidence, submitted on 22 January—in the context of support for some of the proposals in the Bill, which I do acknowledge—stated:

“The CBI fears that firms currently offering valuable work opportunities will be discouraged from providing these in the future by the requirements on employers to police participation and the financial penalties for employers who inadvertently fall foul of the law.”

It went on to say:

“The Government must be mindful of the potential unintended consequences that could result from its proposals if young people who would have chosen employment opt for unemployment rather than attending training at school or college.”

We heard similar concerns from other bodies. On 29 January, we took evidence from Mr. Harris, Head of Education and Skills Policy for the Institute of Directors, and from Mr. Ehmann, Head of Regulation and Enterprise Policy at the Institute of Directors, and both highlighted the fact that these parts of the Bill could have an adverse impact on employment. Mr. Harris pointed out that

“the Department, which estimated something like 5,500 16 to 17-year-olds will be displaced because of the lack of small employers’ ability to respond flexibly to the requirements

Mr. Ehmann said:

“If you look at IOD members, 75 per cent. of those with less with 50 employees have no human resources support whatsoever. There is a very real possibility that small businesses may choose to employ older members of the work force.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 167, Q372.]

This is not only a concern of academics, and it is not only business organisations that are drawing attention to it. I have found it to be a real concern across the country amongst those who represent the interests of young people or those who work with very challenging young people who might have disconnected from formal education long before 16 but who the education system is increasingly looking to put in part-time work placement prior to the age of 16. From my part of the country, Peter Renshaw, the chief executive of Connexions in Somerset, wrote to me saying:

“Whilst it will be important to ensure high quality provision in education or training the burden of increased administration and bureaucracy must be avoided or employers will not take part.”

He cites the recent Ernst and Young survey that indicated that, although migrant workers are beneficial to the British economy as a whole, an estimated 100,000 or more young people appear to have been displaced from work opportunities as a consequence of the recent large influx of migrant workers. He goes on:

“The implementation of Raising the Participation Age will rely on the involvement of employers, there is therefore a danger they may ‘vote with their feet’ by seeking labour from abroad thereby reducing training costs and denying young people opportunities.”

Angela Watkinson (Conservative, Upminster)

I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman carefully, but it is difficult to envisage any new, young and inexperienced employee going into the workplace and not learning something. The employer would of necessity have to give them some instruction or training so that they could carry out the duties—whatever they happened to be. Does the hon. Gentleman think that small employers, whose employee numbers are below a certain threshold, ought to be exempt from the provision?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Lady makes an important point, and that is one possible course of action. We prefer, in the amendment, however, a provision regarding full-time employment, which might have the effect that she envisages, because we acknowledge that many larger employers already provide a good deal of formal education and training, and one would not expect them to withdraw it as a consequence of any such amendment. I should prefer to remove the compulsion to provide additional education and training, acknowledging, as the hon. Lady said, that young people who engage in employment often learn skills and pick up, on the job, information that can be far more valuable than many qualifications—particularly vocational—that successive Governments have created and which, Alison Wolf, in another book published by some time ago, demonstrated are not always good value for a considerable period.

We have evidence from economists, business groups, groups that represent young people’s concerns and the British Youth Council. James Cathcart, chief executive of the British Youth Council, said that the provisions requiring 16 and 17-year-olds in employment to be in education and training “could discriminate against them.” He continued:

“I think it is an area where we can forecast or project that it could. If employers, for example, feel obliged to recruit a particular age group, there is a possibility that they will then just seek to recruit people who are over 18 or 19, rather than take the risk of having unwilling or unable young people who would have to be released—whether it is one day a week—to take part in that training.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 29 January 2008; c. 192, Q443.]

We have heard concerns from one set of individuals who represent the interests of young people. It has been suggested that there may be a substitution for migrant workers, and we have heard other groups who are concerned that 18-year-olds may end up substituting.

Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)

I am sorry to intervene on the hon. Gentleman again, because I do not wish to interrupt the flow of his argument unduly, but does he agree that one weakness with the British Youth Council’s argument, with other evidence and with the thrust of what he says this morning, is that it takes no account of the potential flexibility in training and education for the cohort of 16 to 18-year-olds who will come under the Bill? There was no reference in the British Youth Council’s evidence, nor indeed in what the hon. Gentleman has just said, to the possibility of training in-house, after work or at weekends, which small and medium-sized businesses can be quite good at, if encouraged and supported.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

We are in favour of flexibility, but compulsion takes away many flexibilities that young people need to act in their own interest. For example, a young person who left school at 16, went into employment, managed to re-engage their interest, learned useful work skills and became more skilled, might want to re-engage with the education system not when the Minister compels them at 16 or 17, but perhaps at 18, 19 or 20. In one witness session, I asked a head teacher from my constituency about his views on the Bill. He said that he knew many young people who were completely disengaged from the education system at 15 or 16 and who had all sorts of different problems—medical and otherwise. They often rediscovered an interest in and conviction about the value of education at a later stage in their life, which is when we want people to be able to take up these opportunities.

We want to amend the Bill to give those young people an entitlement to take up those opportunities later on. A powerful criticism of the system, which we have had for too long, is that the young people who most need state-funded educational support are those who end up with the lowest value of support as a consequence of leaving the education system at the age of 16. Many youngsters from more affluent backgrounds have gone on to have free or subsidised education until the age of 21 or beyond. If part of the aspiration of the Bill is to ensure that every young person has an entitlement that is equal, which they can take when they are ready, we welcome that.

We are concerned about the hon. Gentleman’s comments about flexibility, but we will deal with that under a separate clause so I will not prolong the point. We would also be concerned if there were to be an obligation on some young people to take education and training outside their hours of work. If they are working for a long time anyway, one has to ask whether it is fair to ask them to do that training outside of a full-time employment commitment.

There are reasons why we should be concerned about the employment consequences of the Bill, and we know that the Government are also concerned about that because they have been candid on pages 26 and 27 of the impact assessment. They have acknowledged that it is likely that the process will cause some unemployment among 16 or 17-year-olds. The Government point out in a rather yes ministerish manner that employers will have time to adapt to their employment patterns so that they employ 16 to 17-year-olds on an appropriate basis in the first place, which is shorthand for saying that they will not actually be employing those 16 or 17-year-olds. Consequently, the Government estimate that 5,500 young people will not be able to take up employment opportunities between the ages of 16 and 17.

One of the important services done by Alison Wolf in her paper is to highlight the assumptions on which the figures in the impact assessment are based. As I understand it, the figures are quite optimistic from the Government’s perspective, even though they assume that, for small businesses, half of all the youngsters between the ages of 16 and 17 who would have had employment opportunities will not have those opportunities in the future. I invite the Minister to comment on the points made in Alison Wolf’s paper, in which she indicates what the upside risks are in relation to the 5,500 figure. The first upside risk is that the Government simply will not succeed in securing their objective of 90 per cent. participation in education and training by 2013. Potentially, the stock of young people who could end up suffering as a consequence of the proposals would be much larger. That would have a significant impact on the estimates. It would be helpful if the Minister and his officials could say what the estimate of employment losses is if the participation rate is stuck at around 80 per cent., at which it has been for some time.

The second point that Alison Wolf made in her evidence and in her paper is that the Government appear to be using labour force survey data that assumes that a larger number of people are already in some form of education and training that would meet the requirements of the Bill than is actually the case. In her evidence to the Committee and in her paper “Diminished Returns”, she raised a concern about whether the assumptions are right about how many people in employment are in the type of education and training that would be credited under the Bill. We would be grateful if the Minister could say whether he thinks there may be an underestimate in relation to that.

The impact assessment also assumes that there will be no impact on the employment of 16 and 17-year-olds in larger companies. At the moment, the Bill assumes that there will be an impact on only small firms and that those in larger firms will not be affected. I wonder whether that is a realistic assumption. It seems to me that if 50 per cent. of those in smaller firms could lose their employment opportunities, there is a significant risk of some impact on medium and larger employers.

The impact assessment also touches on the 5,000 or so self-employed 16 and 17-year-olds. Paragraph 5.29, on page 27 of the assessment, argues in slightly obscuring language that those individuals might find that they are more likely to have to look outside their organisation to find the necessary accredited courses. I would have thought that many of them would not be in anything looking like an organisation and that they might find it difficult to access accredited courses. Has the Minister made any assumptions about the impact of the proposals on self-employed 16 and 17-year-olds?

All those criticisms lead on to the section in Alison Wolf’s paper in which she questions the economic assumptions and conclusions in the impact assessment. On page 24 of her paper she argues that if those assumptions turn out to be incorrect, the impact would be dramatic both on employment and through the consequential knock-on effect on colleges’ education and training budget. She states that if the figures are wrong in the way that she believes, the direct cost to the Government would rise to approximately £1.5 billion, rather than the £774 million under the 2016-17 prices used in the Bill. The production losses would then be between £169 million and £321 million—in other words, considerably higher than in the Bill—and the benefits would reduce. Her conclusion is that the amended costings suggest that there might be a net loss ranging from £211 million to £1.8 billion per cohort. The Government’s very optimistic assumptions about the potential benefits of the Bill would be turned on their head by that change in assumption, and by others that Alison Wolf mentions, some of which, in fairness, touch upon education and training issues, and not purely on the employment issues.

Alison Wolf then underlines the huge value of employment to many of those young people, which is a point that has been raised by a number of hon. Members in this sitting already. She states:

“The current obsession with formal training reflects successive governments’ endless pursuit of qualifications, and...reflects a profound misunderstanding of the labour market”.

She continues:

“Employment has a major, positive effect on future employment prospects. Indeed, it is a far more effective way of breaking the cycle of unemployment and deprivation than any form of formal training.”

She goes on to talk about the Government’s new deal programme for unemployed youngsters between the ages of 18 and 24 and argues that an analysis of the programme confirms the primacy of getting many young people into employment even without education and training. She states that the programme

“involves an intensive period of assisted job search, followed by several options”,

which include being in full-time education and training, being on an environmental task force and being in employment. She continues:

“Of these four options, only subsidised employment has offered effective help in moving young people into permanent employment. The fulltime education and training option has had no positive impact on the employment prospects of young people”.

Nia Griffith (Labour, Llanelli)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the world of work is changing rapidly and that the number of jobs available to people with no skills will diminish considerably in the next 10 to 20 years? We can all understand that once a young person is in a job, it is a way of growing up and has a profound impact on them, but does he accept that even in that job, there is a need for continued training if that person is to participate in the world as it changes in the next few years?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Lady makes an important point, to which I have two responses. First, for some youngsters, re-engagement often requires them to be in employment rather than in education and training. We should not underestimate how many things of great value young people can learn and pick up in employment without having to be in something that is accredited.

Secondly, I do not know whether the hon. Lady has had a chance to look at Alison Wolf’s report, in which she seeks to demolish the argument that the hon. Lady used at the beginning of her question—the belief that there will be no jobs for people without qualifications in future. Wolf says that the figures in the Leitch report, from which I think the hon. Lady is implicitly or explicitly quoting, are an estimate, not of the number of jobs that do not require skills, but of the number of people in the work force at that time who do not have those skills. In other words, it is tautology, rather than an indication that there will not be any low-skilled jobs available. It simply indicates that, at that stage, most people in those types of jobs will have certification of one form or another.

My modest amendment opens up a debate to which, I suspect, we will return many times in Committee. I shall therefore set aside issues of enforcement until then. This is our third big concern about the Bill after compulsion and criminalisation, and the need to ensure a flexible system for young people with very high needs. Employment is central to the adverse impacts that the Bill could have. We hope that the Government will acknowledge that there are significant risks in this area, and seek to amend the Bill to reduce the risks of disadvantage to precisely the group of young people whom they seek to help.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The hon. Member for Yeovil spoke at length and in some detail to make the case for his amendment. He argued that it pivots on two essential points: first, the effect on employers and the likelihood of their employing young people, and, secondly, the primacy—he was paraphrasing Alison Wolf—of getting young people into jobs. There might be a third and perhaps a fourth point, but let me explore his arguments.

The hon. Gentleman is right about the effect on employers, because that is what they tell us. Some people—I count myself among them—have experience of employing young people, and have bought and sold things for a living. That is a great virtue in this place, because it gives us real-life experience of these things. From my experience and the evidence cited by the hon. Gentleman, small employers and, perhaps, medium-sized companies, would be particularly deterred from employing young people. That was the case made by Alison Wolf, although I agree with the hon. Member for Blackpool, South that she did not provide powerful evidence to support her assertion when questioned. That is a fair criticism, but, none the less, having spoken to the Federation of Small Businesses, which does good work in Lincolnshire and elsewhere, as well as to other employers in my constituency, I must say that Wolf’s view is supported by many employers. They will simply look elsewhere for workers, as the Government would acknowledge.

As the hon. Member for Yeovil made clear, the Government say in their impact assessment:

“We assume that the reaction of employers...will be split between either choosing to employ older workers and avoiding the duty, or releasing their employees for education and training.”

The Government clearly recognise that there will be a division among employees, but I hope that the Minister will explain precisely how they see that split developing. Are they worried that half of small employers will not engage young people? Is it 10 per cent. or is it the majority? It is not clear.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister is going to make it clearer.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I shall attempt to do so. The Committee should read paragraphs 5.24 and 5.25 together, as they show that the assessment of about half of 16- to 17-year-olds being affected refers to the 27 per cent. of the full-time 16 to17-year-old cohort who are in jobs without training, earn below the 18-year-old national minimum wage and are employed in small firms. That total is 3,360 young people. Therefore, the total of those we assumed would be affected by small businesses not wanting to employ them is 1,680. I hope that that is sufficiently precise.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

It is helpful. Indeed, one could reach that conclusion from reading those two paragraphs. However, one could not conclude, except by speculation, which is all the Minister has offered us, what impact he expects the Bill to have on those employers. In other words, how many of them will henceforth choose to have little or nothing to do with young people? In making his point about the effect, he assumes a constant level of employment, but the labour market changes over time, as we know. We would expect the reaction of different employers to be different, as the subsequent paragraph suggests. I do not know whether Alison Wolf is right that the proposal will have a devastating effect as she argued in her paper and in evidence, but I will be interested to know whether the Minister expects all or any small businesses to continue to employ young people. My guess is that it will be a mixed picture, but I should like more detail.

There is no detail about medium-sized companies and still less about very large companies, which will be similarly affected and, as the hon. Member for Yeovil said, some of them will respond in a similar way. The likely impact on employment patterns, which formed a great part of Alison Wolf’s evidence, is central to the amendment tabled by the hon. Gentleman. The Minister will probably argue that the numbers are sufficiently small not to be likely to have a profound effect on the economy, which brings me to the second argument advanced by the hon. Member for Yeovil which he described, paraphrasing Alison Wolf, as the primacy of employment in young people’s interests.

I shall add a suffix to his argument, which I hope complements the points he made: for some of the most challenging and challenged young people, that primacy assumes even greater significance. For disabled young people who are supported in employment, for young people from homes where employment is not the norm, and where there is no expectation of regular employment, and for those who have had a very difficult time at school, getting a job assumes a disproportionate significance. The hon. Gentleman is right that for those young people, that might be more important than getting into a job that brings immediate training. There is an issue not just about young people per se, but about those groups of young people for whom getting a job at the age of 16 is a life-changing experience.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument. I do not disagree with him about the importance of employment to 16 to 18-year-olds as a means of improving their life chances and increasing their maturity and so on. Would he not agree that it is important that those jobs, or the experience of that employment, gives them prospects? Most young people who are in jobs without training are easily dispensed with. They move in and out of employment, and they only have a future in employment if they raise their level of qualification.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, I think that raising the levels of skills might be a better way of putting it. Of course skills are not just about training. Some skills are acquired by doing the job. Let us be clear that getting a job at the age of 16 for some young people may be highly significant. It brings with it implicit virtues such as experience and increased skills, not least the so-called soft skills acquired through the disciplines and obligations associated with working life. I suspect that that is disproportionately so for the most challenged young people.

Training in the first year or so may not happen in great measure beyond what I have described. I remember taking on young people from school, sometimes young people with poor soft skills, and not putting them into further training immediately, because they needed to bed down in the job, and acquire those fundamental strengths before they were equipped to take on such training. It may well be the case that once a young person has got into a job and has a foot on the ladder, climbing the ladder will take place over a number of years.

I can remember one young man whom we took on who subsequently rose in the company to a significant position. He joined at 16, with poor academic qualifications and very poor soft skills. I am not sure whether we put him on training courses for the first year or two, but I know that he was skilled and trained, and retrained and up-skilled, over subsequent years. There is therefore strength in the hon. Member for Yeovil’s case.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Is there not something missing from the Minister’s case, as he is not really concentrating on the needs of the business? One might employ a 16-year-old to do a very basic task but if, for example, a receptionist goes on maternity leave, her replacement might be sent on a course to learn reception work. The training is all part of the needs of the business. With a small business, there should not be such a rigid programme.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

There is a rigidity in the Government’s position, and that characteristic permeates their approach not just to this part of the Bill, but to the Bill as a whole. That inflexibility sits uncomfortably with the dynamism that is part of business, all the more so as our economy and businesses become ever more advanced. The required skills change rapidly, so upskilling and reskilling become more and more important.

The young gentleman I described was taken on as an assistant warehouseman at the age of 16—as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire said, one does not think of that as a demanding job—and subsequently became a leading salesman in the company and, as a result, probably extremely wealthy. So it is in business, but sadly not in the life we have chosen, Mr. Bercow. However, we have sacrificed those opportunities for our commitment to the common good. In his final words on the amendments, the hon. Member for Yeovil made an underpinning point. He said that he had a series of reservations about the Bill, and listed three of them. What unites those reservations is the sense of the Government’s stubborn determination that the Bill should be an inflexible measure, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hertfordshire pointed out a few moments ago.

The Government have resisted an argument made not just be the Opposition but by many people who were consulted about the Bill. We believe that when it comes to difficult young people, skills and education, commerce and industry, it is not stubbornness that is required, but a willingness to be flexible, so that we can respond to changing circumstances, both as they affect individuals and the needs of our economy. The hon. Member for Yeovil is right that that stubbornness, which is personified by the Minister’s handling of these matters, although not in every other aspect of his existence is, to be blunt, unattractive.

It is because of that stubbornness and inflexibility—that lack of reasonableness—that the Bill has perhaps not received the welcome that the Minister and the Government expected. I think that the hon. Member for Yeovil was right—his three reservations are well-made criticisms of this Bill, and his amendment is a probing one. Unless the Minister can do rather better than he has done so far, I do not think he will satisfy the hon. Gentleman, who will choose to do what he will, but whatever that is, he will certainly have a sympathetic ear from the official Opposition.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

I shall make a brief contribution in the run-up to lunch.

I would just say to the Minister that, in a perfect world, all companies and small employers would offer training. Like him, however, I know that we do not live in a perfect world. As a Member of Parliament, I am a small employer and I do not think that I, or the taxpayer, have funded one ounce of training for my staff since I have been in the House.

Celia Barlow (Labour, Hove)

Shame on the hon. Gentleman.

Charles Walker (Conservative, Broxbourne)

Yes, that is a great shame, and it is something I hope to correct in the future, having been enlightened by this excellent debate.

To be seriously, businesses make commercial decisions. Those decisions they make may not appear rational to the economy at large, but they are rational for those businesses. Many businesses do not offer training to their staff, because they take the view that it is not commercially viable for them to do so. We may say in the House that they are making the wrong decision, and that they have not weighed up all the facts. If they did so, they would be willing to fund training for their staff. The case as it stands, however, is that many small businesses do not fund training, probably because they are operating on very narrow margins and are extremely cost-sensitive. Perhaps those businesses are run by extremely good and decent people who would like to be in a position to offer training, but who simply believe that the bottom line is that they could not afford to fund it. I am concerned that the Bill may have unintended consequences, and it is right for us to debate them in a civil manner.

If we place formal training requirements on employers, there is a danger that there will be some form of displacement, particularly for young people. Small employers may turn to alternative sources of labour that appear attractive but which have resisted up to this point—for example, qualified workers from eastern Europe who can come into a business and make an immediate contribution. By placing a training requirement on employers, perhaps we will tip the balance so that the commercial pressure to take on people from Poland and other eastern European nations becomes overwhelming.

Many small employers offer informal on-the-job training. When something goes wrong, a person running a small business needs all hands to the pump. Many young people working in small business obtain a far more diverse experience of the workplace and its challenges than a youngster working at the checkout in a supermarket. That youngster is hired to do that job, and if something goes wrong, the store manager gets the person who deals with things going wrong to deal with it. That is the young person’s job—they stay there eight hours a day; they come in, do their job and go, and they get paid.

Although small employers may not offer formal training, there are exciting opportunities for on-the-job challenges. As we develop our discussions on the Bill, we need to consider more closely how we help small employers to formalise and accredit as a qualification what they are already doing. Like many Members, I was extremely pleased to see that McDonald’s—I know that it is a large employer—is to give its young workers an accredited qualification. Too often, we dismiss that work as a burger-flipping job, but McDonalds is a hugely successful company, and many youngsters who work there go on to have exciting careers running their own franchises or move on to other parts of business and the service sector. I want the Bill to be a success, and we must ensure that we encourage small employers to retain their youngsters and recruit more.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I have one small point to make. A contract of employment is, in its own way, an important discipline for both the employer and the employee. It contains important rights and duties of both. For the employee, there are the hours of work, for which it is important that they attend, the discipline that they are expected to accept, reasonable training to have the capabilities for the job and a whole range of duties. It also has the duties of the employer to pay the wages, take account of health and safety and the other rights that the law imposes on employers. It is important to say that entering the world of work with a contract is not a minor thing but a major step forward.

Angela Watkinson (Conservative, Upminster)

My hon. Friend is making an important point. Does he agree that the 16 and 17-year-olds who are the most difficult to reach, who may have failed at school or been chronic non-attenders, might flourish in the sort of environment that he is describing, whereas they would be the least likely to knuckle down to day release at college, for example? A small minority of young people will be best suited to being in full-time employment.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I am sure that that is right. I have heard a kindly employer say to a young worker, “You are not on student hours now.” That approach gives people discipline. Young people are quite proud to have their contracts of employment and to be in work. Often, as a result of their package of rights and responsibilities, they are taken under the wing of somebody more experienced, such as a supervisor or their employer. That is the beginning of the training experience, because the employer wants that person to get on almost as much as they themselves do, for the sake of the business.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

As I said when I intervened on the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I very much recognise the valuable skills and experience that young people can get from working. However, ultimately, I do not agree that working full time should exempt a young person from participating in education or training. That is best exemplified by our commitment to expand apprenticeships, which combine the world of work and training towards a qualification.

The Committee will debate in full the duties on employers when we come to chapter 3 of this part, so I will not delay it unduly by going into any great detail about those duties. However, the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire talked about the importance of focusing on the needs of business. I will just say in passing, in reference to the matters that we will debate in relation to that chapter, that it must be a case of balancing the needs of employers and of young people. Obviously, we think that we have the right balance in the Bill, but that is what we are debating.

At the commencement of employment, employers can discuss with young people what training would be appropriate for them. I do not think that that is an onerous burden, as I have mentioned before. Employers then have the choice of releasing the young person, which I would not encourage; providing the training themselves—we have discussed the Maccalaureate and other options that have been developed lately; or arranging hours around training. I would stress that there is no requirement for employers to fund that training.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

I will give the Minister a practical example. Yesterday, I went around an engineering factory. Recently, another part of the production process was converted to computer-aided manufacture, and everyone who was involved in that part of the business had to be trained. Staff who had been there previously but who had not been trained in that area were trained. That was the reason that the training happened. It was not because the Minister had told them to do it.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Clearly, that is a good thing, and there is nothing in the legislation that would stop that continuing. Indeed, if a programme of training was set out for the work force, there are a number of means of accrediting that training, which we will discuss as we go on to debate chapter 3.

As I have said again and again, I believe that all young people should continue to participate in education and training up to the age of 18, in order to equip them with the skills and qualifications that they need for a successful adult life in their present and future employment. There is clear evidence that those people who do not have a level 2 qualification at the age of 16 and who go into jobs without training are barely more likely to get a level 2 by the age of 19 than those who are not in education, employment or training. Therefore, there is evidence that to simply go into work and not go into some form of accredited training affects their life chances and ability to go on to other employment.

There is a danger that the debate is based around a romanticised notion that many young people go into honest, worthwhile permanent jobs at 16. That can happen: young people can go into a low-skilled, warehouse-based job, not receive any training, and then go on to be wonderfully well paid executives driving nice BMWs and contributing large amounts to the economy. I do not see anything in the legislation to stop that. All we would say is that, in conjunction with their warehouse employment, they should be doing some form of accredited training, which need not involve their having to take time out of work, if the arrangements can be made flexibly.

However, I think that the reality, reflected by evidence, is that many young people go into temporary, casual, dead-end jobs and are the most vulnerable to being laid off by employers when things become difficult. There is a lot of churn between the NEET group and the group comprising those who are in jobs without training, which suggests that, on its own, being in employment is insufficient, and that such people need more than that to improve their life chances. It is precisely those young people who could be left behind in future: with insufficient skills to progress in their careers, they will be the most vulnerable to changes in the labour market.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Can the Minister cite any evidence that the prospects for young people who are in employment are going to be any better if they have the qualifications that appear to give a lower economic return than employment, to which Alison Wolf referred in her evidence?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Alison Wolf was referring to some NVQs that our research shows do not give a great return; however, she ignored a raft of other qualifications. When questioning her, we agreed that BTEC, and City and Guilds, qualifications, for example, give a good return. There is considerable evidence that those who gain qualifications while working can benefit.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Of those youngsters whom the Minister expects to be in work, training and gaining accredited qualifications, how many does the Minister envisage actually gaining BTEC-type qualifications, or qualifications with similar status and value, as opposed to NVQs and other, lower-level qualifications?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Again, one of the difficulties in answering that question is that we do not know the extent to which the landscape of options will change between now and when the measures come into effect. We will have extra apprenticeship places, which we have discussed, people will be able to do diplomas part time, and we will introduce the foundation learning tier for those of lower ability. Various options are still on their way into the system, so it is difficult for me to give a meaningful answer to that question now.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Is the Minister saying that there are no departmental assumptions about the type of accredited qualifications in which young people in employment will engage? Surely the Department has made some assumptions in that respect.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Of course we have assumptions: they informed the research that we commissioned and are obviously informed by current practice. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has read the research—he does his own research so assiduously. He will have seen that we have accounted for the current state of affairs before allowing for the effect of diplomas, and that we have pitched that effect about halfway between the effect of A-levels and the effect of some of the vocational qualifications. The effects of the apprenticeship frameworks and the foundation learning tier are also built in to our assumptions. It all depends on the qualification strategy that will be published this year.

Part-time accredited training will allow young people to gain recognition for their achievement and demonstrate the skills that they have gained in a meaningful and familiar way to future employers. The country and our economy need those young people to engage in accredited training. The Leitch report showed that there will be a growing need for more highly skilled workers in future and that level 2 will not be enough.

Compared with 2004, there are expected to be 2.6 million more workers at level 3 by 2020, whereas the numbers below level 3 are expected to fall by around 5 million. The higher lifetime earnings of people with level 2 and 3 qualifications compared with those with low or no qualifications will help to boost our economy. I am sure that that informs the support for the proposals that we have had from employer organisations such as the CBI and the British Chambers of Commerce which, in its brief on the Bill, said that it welcomes the Government’s proposal to increase the compulsory participation age to 18 and to expand the number of available apprenticeships.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the chair, Mr. Bayley. When we concluded the morning session, I had just cited support from the British Chambers of Commerce. I shall now discuss the notion, expressed by the hon. Member for Yeovil, that employers will have to take workers who are unwilling or unable. I do not think that we would have the support of an employers’ organisation if that were the case. Judging by his facial expression, perhaps that is not what the hon. Gentleman meant: he is looking at me very quizzically.

To clarify, employers will not be required to take on any 16 and 17-year-olds. The majority of 16 and 17-year-olds in work also participate in education or training, and they and their employers will be unaffected. We certainly have no intention of compelling anybody to take on a learner—that should, perfectly reasonably, be a choice for employers.

There will be a range of engaging options available to young people who are in full-time work. Some will receive accredited training from their employer, and we are making it easier for employers to get good quality training accredited. Indeed, the hon. Member for Broxbourne reminded the Committee of the announcements last week from McDonald’s, Flybe and National Rail, which are introducing their own accredited qualifications. I was grateful to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for saying that those qualifications may well be better than a whole raft of qualifications accredited in the past, because they relate to the real world of work. I completely agree, and they are an important step forward for us.

For those who attend training elsewhere alongside full-time employment, the new diplomas, the foundation learning tier and elements of apprenticeship frameworks will all be available part-time, and young people can take their time to build up the full qualification. We are confident that there will be a suitable option for all young people, whatever level they are working at; the requirement does not necessarily mean that employers have to allow young people time off from their normal working hours for training. Over half of 16 and 17-year-olds in jobs without training are in the retail sector, for example. Shops are open many more hours than 16 and 17-year-olds are legally allowed to work in a week, and it may well be that their normal weekly working hours are simply arranged for times when they are not in training. That is reinforced by the flexible availability of education and training courses from a range of providers. In the extensive speech by the hon. Member for Yeovil—

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

It was short.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

In the abridged version—he wanted to speak more about this important amendment—the hon. Member for Yeovil discussed the effect on the youth labour market and the works of Alison Wolf. He referred to her pamphlet, “Diminished Returns”, published by Policy Exchange, which I have had a chance to read at my leisure.

I have reminded the Committee of the impact assessment, and the reality of the number of young people in small and medium-sized enterprises who will be displaced. I clarified the fact that, as the impact assessment says, it is not half of all young people in those employment settings who will be replaced. The labour force survey shows that 27 per cent. of the full-time 16 to 17-year-old cohort are in jobs without training, earning below the national minimum wage, and working in SMEs. We estimate that half of that group, which is within the group employed in SMEs, may be displaced in favour of older workers. As ever with impact assessments, that might be a pessimistic interpretation, because we always seek to err on the side of caution. Half of these—not half of all young people in SMEs—may be displaced in favour of older workers; that totals only 1,680 young people.

In her work on the issue, Alison Wolf asked whether we had underestimated the cost impacts on the youth labour market—the hon. Member for Yeovil asked about that, too. Our economists have looked closely at Alison Wolf’s work, and having seen their analysis, I remain confident that the estimates underpinning our impact assessment are sound and considerably more credible than her estimates. First, Alison Wolf assumes that all the 16 and 17-year-olds working in small firms will simply be replaced by older workers, which assumes that no small employer at all will continue to employ 16 and 17-year-olds with day release. As a former director of a small business, I think that that is not a likely scenario at all.

Secondly, she assumes that all the older workers who are employed would otherwise be doing another job, and that there is no way of filling that job. In other words, she assumes that the labour market for 18-year-olds and over is at full employment. Although we know that employment is indeed at record levels, we know we are not quite at the level of full employment. Thirdly, the Department’s analysis compares the costs and benefits of raising the participation age with the previous policy goal of 90 per cent. participation among 17-year-olds. Professor Wolf, in contrast, assumes that overall participation among 16 and 17-year-olds is 80 per cent. in 2016-17. That is significantly lower than the current participation rate for 16 and 17-year-olds of 86 per cent., so we do not think that that figure is credible. Even if she were right about that, she should significantly increase the benefits of raising the participation age so that costs and benefits are calculated on a consistent basis. If that were done, benefits would exceed costs by an even larger margin.

Fourthly, Professor Wolf takes no account of part-time workers. Some 40 per cent. of those in jobs without training are working part-time. Those workers would be able to participate under the legislation without spending less time at work, so there is no need for a foregone productivity cost for that group. Fifthly and finally, Professor Wolf assumes that all 16 and 17-year-olds would be on the national minimum wage for 18-year-olds. The analysis underpinning the costing by the Department for Children, Schools and Families uses data from the labour force survey showing that 27 per cent. of those in full-time jobs without training earn below the national minimum wage for 18-year-olds.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister has given us a very detailed and thorough critique of Alison Wolf’s work. Because it is thorough and detailed, he will no doubt give us his estimate of the proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds in work who are in part-time work. I guess that most part-time workers are not aged between 16 and 18: they work part-time because they have all kinds of other commitments. Can he give us any feel for the proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds in work who are in part-time work?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am trying to recall that particular statistic, and if it comes to the forefront of my mind, of course I will impart it to the Committee. In the meantime, for the reasons I have stated, the DCSF assumptions, are by far the most plausible. In my view, the chance of all the worst-case assumptions produced by Alison Wolf being correct is vanishingly small. In any case, the consequence of some of her assumptions being correct is that the overall estimate of the benefit would rise by far more than the overall estimate of the costs. If I need to give any further information in reply to the question from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings, I will seek to do so, because I am sure that we will return to the effects on the youth labour market, when we discuss chapter 3 and the duties on employers, even if we have that debate in a disciplined and brief way, following the extensive debate that we have had today. I would therefore argue that it is not in the interests of individuals or the economy for young people to go into dead-end jobs without training at 16, and I therefore ask the hon. Member for Yeovil to withdraw his amendment.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

Mr Bayley, may I welcome you back to the Chair? You must be delighted by our rapid progress this morning, as we have already got halfway through clause 2. We have had an opportunity to give an initial airing to concerns about the Bill’s effects on young people who would otherwise be in employment. In particular, we have been able to address concerns that I expressed earlier about the loss of job opportunities for 16 or 17-year-olds, the type of qualifications that they would be required to undertake, and whether those would be useful and valuable.

I did not make the claim in my speech to which the Minister alluded, that young people would be forced into particular posts. No doubt that comment was prepared before I delivered my speech. We are grateful to the Minister for his response to speeches from Opposition Members. No doubt, Alison Wolf and others will go away and look with great interest at the points made by hon. Members. The Minister’s comments will inform our later debates, when we will have a chance to come back to his claims on the important issue of costings, which will undoubtedly be challenged. I only wish that we could pull Alison Wolf back in for another evidence session and some exchanges with the Minister, but I am not sure that our proceedings would allow for that.

On the two fundamental matters that were raised this morning, I am still concerned that the Minister has not registered our worries. On the issue of whether the qualifications that people will be obliged to take will be valuable, at the beginning of his contribution, the Minister referred to young people who do not go into “good honest jobs”—I cannot remember his exact characterisation. He referred to people who do not end up with large exotic cars, such as BMWs, that they would otherwise be able to drive away after their period in work and training. He is setting a rather high and unrealistic bar for everybody engaged in the labour market. Many young people in employment who do not undertake education and training are doing work that gives them valuable skills, and re-engages them after a period of alienation in formal education: they benefit enormously from that experience. Who knows what they may go on to do later in life? The key issue is whether they would be better off, if they were obliged to take one of the qualifications to which the Minister alluded. It is our contention that they would not, because of the value of some of the qualifications and because the job may not exist, which I will come on to in a minute.

I cannot help feeling that we have not yet bottomed out the issue of what qualifications the Department assumes those young people will take. If the Minister has had a chance to read Alison Wolf’s paper, he will know that Professor Wolf claims that the Government are unduly optimistic about the composition of the qualifications that they will take. On page 27 of her pamphlet, she produces a useful summary of the types of qualification that she thinks many young people will end up taking and she questions whether all of them will have the economic value that the Government claim. She also makes the valuable point that there may be some young people get pushed into using up their level 2 qualification entitlement at an early age, although they may want to take those qualifications later and benefit from them more significantly. I hope that we will be able to look at the Minister’s comments about the compositional issues around those qualifications, and that we will be able to compare the different claims that have been made. That that may strengthen our position when we raise other points about the matter further on in the debate.

The Minister also sought to address issues about the labour market and the number of young people who would lose job opportunities that they would otherwise have. The Government acknowledge that something like 1,680 jobs for 16 or 17-year-olds will not be there as a consequence of the Bill’s introduction. I cited a figure of 5,550, and I apologise if it was inaccurate; I was citing evidence that we took from some of the witnesses. I will not mention, to spare their embarrassment, which particular witness it was, but one of our witnesses referred to 5,500, but I am happy to correct that figure, if it is inaccurate and 1,680 is the right figure.

I also referred to the group of youngsters particularly affected by the measure as those in smaller businesses, but the Minister clarified that it is a particular type of small business. I am happy to acknowledge—and it is a useful clarification—that we are talking about a more discrete group. I am happy to do so, because it rather makes my point, which is that the Government have been looking at a very narrow segment of the 16 and 17-year-old population in employment as the vulnerable segment. On page 23 of her paper, Alison Wolf sums up which group of 16 and 17-year-olds the Government assume would be adversely affected by the Bill. I am happy for the Minister to correct me if I am wrong, but it appears from what Alison Wolf’s claims—and I think the Minister confirmed this—that the relevant group of businesses

“is taken to be those which are very small (fewer than 50 employees), and where no job related training is reported (using the LFS definitions) and where the employed teenager is currently paid less than the minimum wage for an 18 year old.”

The Government have therefore taken a very modest, specific segment of the labour market, and claimed that for that sector, the Bill will have significant employment consequences: 50 per cent. of the jobs in that very small subgroup will be wiped out. The complementary aspect is that, presumably, no other jobs are going to be lost in other, larger companies or companies with different characteristics in terms of training and the wage levels of the young people working there.

We are still left with the question I asked earlier about whether those assumptions are realistic. The Government have got down to a figure of only 1,680 by defining the at-risk group of youngsters in a very particular way, and Alison Wolf’s analysis claims that there are a number of significant risks, not least if the Government fail to raise the participation rate to 90 per cent. in the first place.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

To help the Committee, I draw hon. Members’ attention to pages 26 and 27 of the impact assessment, paragraphs 5.20 to 5.27, which deal with the costs to employers. The impact assessment states:

“Labour Force Survey (LFS) analysis for 2006 shows around 40% of the 20,750 16-17 year olds in JWT work part-time.”

It then goes on to deal with medium-sized firms, small firms and the sorts of assumption made. I particularly advise looking at paragraph 5.27, which talks about the fact that the new arrangements are not coming in for some time. That allows large businesses in particular to adjust to what is going to happen over the next five years and to respond accordingly.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

That is helpful, and I recognise that paragraph 5.27 and 5.26 are saying that the Government do not expect young people who are now in employment to lose their jobs as a consequence of the Bill. It is more likely that some 16 and 17-year-olds who would have had jobs will not be taken on. I still think that that is a major concern when we consider that many of those young people may be more likely to engage in employment and to learn valuable skills in that way than if they go down the route being offered in the Bill.

I come back to the point, which I do not think is addressed in the impact assessment, that the Government have defined down the at-risk group in a number of ways, one of which is the assumption that the participation rate will in any case rise from 80 per cent. to 90 per cent. A lot of those youngsters who might be included in the at-risk group have thus been defined out. Secondly, I wonder whether the Government are being realistic about the number of 16 or 17-year-olds who are in the labour market but who are not receiving training in the way specified, because the Government seem to have used quite a broad definition of training. Also, the Government have excluded particular small firms, medium-sized firms and larger employers, as well as the self-employed from the at-risk group.

I put it to the Minister that he may still have underestimated the employment impact of the Bill. It would be useful if Committee members were told before we debate some of the other clauses that will deal with this matter not only more about the qualification assumptions that the Government are making, but more about the rationale for completely excluding some of these groups of young people from the group who may suffer an adverse impact in terms of their employment opportunities.

We continue to be concerned about both those issues, but I am aware that we will have the opportunity to return to them later in our proceedings. The debates on other clauses will give us an opportunity to flush out some of these facts and, perhaps, to table further amendments. I beg leave to withdraw this amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment No. 5, in clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end add—

‘(3) The Secretary of State shall specify by order arrangements and duties applicable to a person to whom this Part applies who has significant responsibilities for caring for parents, siblings or other close relatives.’.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 6, in clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end add—

‘(3) The Secretary of State shall specify by order arrangements and duties applicable to a person to whom this Part applies who has significant responsibilities for caring for their own children.’.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Welcome back, Mr. Bayley. We have conducted very thorough scrutiny of the 20 lines of page 1, and it is a pleasure to move the first amendment that relates to page 2 of the Bill.

Amendment No. 5 would ameliorate the position of young carers. Clause 2 is very precise and clear about the duty it imposes on 16 and 17-year-olds who do not have a level 3 qualification. They will either have to be in full-time education or full-time apprenticeship, or they can be in a full-time job with training which leads to an appropriate qualification. In that context, full time means at least 20 hours a week and the amount of training must be at least 280 hours a year, which is about one day a week. That is very precise and prescriptive, which may present severe difficulties for young people who have a range of responsibilities outside the purview and life experience of—I do not mean this disrespectfully—parliamentary draftsmen.

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, a charity that helps and supports young carers through its 129 carers centres, believes strongly that young carers should not be exempted from the duties that the Bill imposes on other young people. It makes this very clear, saying:

“We do not believe that young carers should routinely be exempted from the requirement to attend education and training. We fail young carers when we give up on their education.”

The thrust of that amendment is therefore not to exempt young carers.

The trust points out that there are 52,000 carers aged between 16 and 17 in England and Wales and of those nearly 4,000 are responsible for care that engages them for more than 50 hours a week. That figure is based on the 2001 census, and the trust believes that it is likely to be an underestimate.

Most of us will have had a pretty conventional upbringing. It is hard to imagine how a 16 or 17-year-old, let alone an even younger child, could cope with the emotional and practical difficulties of caring for a seriously ill parent or sibling. In their joint paper “Making it Work” published in 2002, the Children’s Society and the Princess Royal Trust for Carers quote some young people who are carers. One said:

“It’s not just the caring that affects you. What really gets to you is the worry of it all. Having a parent who is ill and seeing them in such a state...you think about it a lot.”

Another child said:

“I used to run away from school because I always wanted to be with my mum. I used to think that my mum was going to die. I was about eight...they treated me as if I was playing truant.”

Another said:

“It just something I do. It has to be done and there is no one else to do it.”

That, of course, is the human condition. Children, like adults, will adapt and end up responding to their responsibilities, somehow or other. However, doing that will affect their education: young carers often underperform at school, and many are subject to bullying or suffer mental health problems.

The Princess Royal Trust for Carers is concerned that the duty imposed by clause 2

“could result in 16 and 17-year-old young carers being prosecuted for non-attendance, where they do not have anyone else to provide the care for a family member.”

The trust believes that the fact there are so many young carers is testimony to the lack of community care support. However, its concern about the Bill is that:

“As it stands, the Bill offers little to these families, except the threat of prosecution to young people who fail to attend school, regardless of the pressures upon them.”

It believes that

“this Bill should ensure that families are being offered sufficient and reliable alternative forms of support so that young carers aged 16 and 17 are not relied upon for levels of care that prevent them from attending education;”

The Bill should also

“ensure that parents’ needs are assessed by adult services when considering the application of parenting contracts and parenting orders arising from poor attendance;”

and—this is the key point that I wanted to draw to the Committee’s attention, and it is the subject of the amendment—

“offer flexibility on attendance and methods of learning to young carers in exceptional circumstances, such as those caring for a parent in the last stages of terminal illness.”

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

My hon. Friend is making an important case on behalf of young carers. He came to that word “flexibility” and I wonder if he agrees with me that the theme has been emerging today is that the inevitable universality of a legal commitment—a legal obligation—is incompatible with the sort of flexibility and responsiveness we want for those vulnerable groups?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, my hon. Friend has put the point better than I have so far. He is correct: legislation is by its nature inflexible and prescriptive and in the amendment we are trying to introduce an element of flexibility into the Bill, particularly on attendance and methods of learning.

The amendment would introduce into the clause a requirement that the Secretary of State produce regulations that set out a more flexible set of duties to which a person with significant caring responsibilities would be subject. The duty to participate in education or training would remain, but arrangements could be made that were more suitable and adaptable to their circumstances.

Amendment No. 6 is designed to deal with similar problems faced by a young person of 16 or 17 who has a child of his or her own, with all the responsibilities that come with having and raising a baby or young child. The Government’s Green Paper “Raising Expectations: staying in education and training post-16” says at paragraph 5.44 on page 41 that the Government

“want to support teenage parents to engage in learning. This depends on their being able to access childcare and provision that fits their circumstances.”

In the next paragraph, they say

“The Care to Learn scheme supports childcare costs with funding paid directly to the childcare provider. This will continue and we will consider what else needs to be done to ensure teenage parents have real opportunities to participate.”

The purpose of amendment No. 6 is to draw out from the Minister the results of the Government’s consideration and to ask what he has concluded also needs to be done to ensure that teenage parents have real opportunities to participate? With teenage pregnancies continuing to rise, there is clearly a real concern. Between 1999 and 2005, the number of 16 and 17-year-olds becoming pregnant rose from 39,247 to 39,804. When girls aged between 13 and 15 were added, the total rose from 46,655 to 47,277.

The Green Paper says that:

“Of course expectant mothers will need some time off before and after the birth. There would need to be flexibility in this to respond to individual circumstances and we would need to ensure enough local discretion to allow for this.”

That discretion— that flexibility, as my hon. Friend put it—is not yet incorporated into the Bill. That is what the amendment is designed to remedy. The Green Paper goes to say that

“For mothers of compulsory school age, guidance sets out that the normal period of time”—

that is, time off school—

“is maximum 18 weeks, but we know that sometimes where good provision is in place they are able to engage earlier than this. For example, within specialist units the expectation is often six weeks. We will consider what guidance we should set for local authorities about this.”

It would be enormously helpful if the Minister gave us some idea about the guidance that he is considering.

The Prince’s Trust has expressed its concern about teenage mothers and the effect that the duties imposed by the policy of participation to the age of 18 will have on them. In its written submission in response to the Government’s consultation, the Prince’s Trust says:

“Supporting childcare for young mothers to enable them to continue education or training is critical.”

Referring to the six-week period alluded to in the Green Paper, the trust says:

“Six weeks off to have a baby is clearly not enough time; it should be more in line with maternity leave practices for those in employment, with them re-entering education at a later date.”

It continues:

“School-age fathers also have educational and emotional needs and this should be addressed to instil responsibility.”

The purpose of amendments Nos. 5 and 6 is to incorporate into the legislation a mechanism to enable the Secretary of State to introduce some form of flexibility for young carers and teenage parents. Such provision is not in the Bill as it stands. Clearly, the Government are aware of the matter; the purpose of the debate is simply to draw out from the Minister more details of how they intend to respond to the very real needs of both these groups of 16 and 17-year-olds.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has clearly set out the purpose of these two useful probing amendments—I think that is what they are intended to be—so I need not repeat everything that he said. However, the amendments are important because they deal with two groups of people who might be considered either vulnerable or at risk from a sledgehammer approach of compulsion and criminalisation, however refined that sledgehammer is, as the Minister has sought to argue.

We are talking about two very different groups in terms of their characteristics and the ways in which they might need to be accommodated. I think that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton indicated that, although there are a large number of carers in the UK who are under the age of 18 and fall into the group covered by the Bill, it is sensible to make sure that the Bill provides them with all the opportunities that we would want them to have and that we do not simply assume that because they have caring responsibilities, they can have an exemption and therefore be forgotten about.

Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)

I have a great deal of sympathy with the importance of focusing on the needs of young carers. The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that there are already pilot projects around the country involving young carers—there is one in my constituency sponsored by the Princess Royal Trust for Carers—which examine how the health and education needs of young carers can be identified and dovetailed more closely. That might be a useful way to proceed.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for sharing his constituency experience and I am sure that he is right that there is already a lot of good practice around the country. Although we do not agree with the approach of compulsion in the Bill, accepting, for the sake of the argument, that that approach is being taken by the Government, we want to make sure that the approach to carers acknowledges that what many of them will be looking for is not a waiver, but support to allow them to engage with education, training and other services that might be useful to them. I hope that Ministers and others involved will be able to learn from the type of project that the hon. Gentleman refers to.

There will of course, as the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton mentioned, be a group of carers in special circumstances, such as when a terminal or very serious illness is involved. In those circumstances I imagine that the Minister would want to be flexible, sensible and pragmatic. I believe that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton was trying to tempt the Minister in to giving us a bit more clarity and guidance about how that group of young people will be approached, particularly as that is not a group where there are likely to be problems of abuse of rules if they are too public. This ought to be an area where Ministers can be relatively straightforward about what some of the guidance will be.

Amendment No. 6, however, deals with a group of young people—young parents—whose interest might not simply be to be accommodated within the compulsion under the age of 18; instead, there could legitimately be expectations of their not having to be in education or training but potentially taking up some of those opportunities at a later age. The hon. Gentleman cited some evidence about the number of mothers under the age of 18, of whom there were about 10,000 in England in 2005. He mentioned some of the issues that are relevant to them, such as post-natal depression, which is three times higher in teenage mothers than in older mothers, high child care costs, and so on.

I remember not so long ago being a lone voice in arguing that the existing responsibilities on parents in relation to the benefits systems and their obligation to be in work were too light touch. I said that the present system, where the parents can remain out of the labour market until their children reach the age of 16, was too generous, did not recognise the responsibilities that people have in society and was way out of line with international practice. I seem to remember that the spokesmen on both other Front Benches at that time—this was only a couple of years ago—argued for the existing benefit rules to be maintained. Now, both sides have changed their views and have entered into something of a competition to encourage parents to go back into the labour market as early as possible. However, even I draw the line at forcing people back out—either into the labour market, or into education and training—when they have very young children. That is exactly the type of area where the Government could be doing a gross disservice to a group of young people—and their children—by trying to force them into education, training or employment at too early an age. I therefore hope that the Minister will give us some reassurance today that he will not take an excessively draconian approach.

The evidence in the UNICEF report indicated that one of the multiplicity of reasons why we have a lot of problems with young people’s well-being in this country relates to the very high rates of teenage pregnancy. UNICEF linked that to low educational aspirations and to young people regarding having children at a very early age as reasonable way of proceeding in life. It then made the obvious point that the higher people’s educational and employment aspirations are, the more likely it is that they will delay child bearing to a later age, after they have achieved education and training qualifications and when that may be easier to accommodate in their life.

Becoming a parent at age 16 or 17 is not something that I would strongly recommend, but whether I recommend it or not, there are likely to be 16 or 17-year-old parents and I cannot think that there will not be a lot of cases where they will be far better off at home with their child than if they are pushed into education, training or into the labour market.

Oliver Heald (Conservative, North East Hertfordshire)

Obviously, one would not want to create any perverse incentives. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that there is a case for having training about parenting or some other regime that fits in with young parents’ circumstances, so that something educational is happening?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman makes two good points. First, he alerts us to the risks of creating incentives we would not want to create, although I think it is unlikely, however draconian the legislation, that people will have children to get around it. They will probably be confident of being able to get around it in many other ways—some local authority representatives told us that by the time they had taken young people through all the hoops, they would probably not be under the age of 18 any longer.

The hon. Gentleman also makes a very sensible point when he comes back to the fourth option that I was talking about the other day of not simply insisting that we will provide people with education and training, but looking at other types of support that ought to be made available to them. My point is that education, training and employment will not always be the right approach for young people who have ended up as parents at a very early age. I hope that we will hear from the Minister about the types of flexibility that he will introduce into the guidance under the Bill. I can see that he is desperate, post-lunch, to get back into the debate, so I will conclude my comments.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

The starting point for legislation to raise the participation age is that it should give the same expectations and opportunities to everyone, whatever their situation, and I accept that these amendments do not seek to alter that. It should not be the case that teenage parents, young carers or any other group of young people are treated differently from the outset, with reduced aspirations and opportunities as a consequence. Providing the same opportunities for such groups of young people may bring challenges, but just because it is difficult does not mean they should be excluded. We already have a comprehensive system of support available, and we will develop it further as we move towards implementation in 2013. We will ensure there is appropriate provision in place to enable all young people to learn in a way that is suitable to their circumstances. There will be a fully flexible set of learning options, timetabling and settings available to help young parents and young carers to participate in a way that suits them.

I will talk about amendment No. 5, which deals with young carers, and amendment No. 6, which refers to young parents, but first I want to take the opportunity when I am talking of young parents to congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Lammy). It is not often I can correctly name his constituency—I have often made the mistake of calling it Haringey. Given that this is the first sitting of the Committee that he has attended since he became a father, I think it is appropriate to congratulate him. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

Amendment No. 5 refers to the support available to young carers. We want to ensure that all young carers receive the support they need to participate. Our recent carers review consultations have indicated that young carers share the view that they should have the same opportunities. We are looking at a range of options to ensure that young carers can continue their education and our thinking will take account of the recommendations from the cross-Government carers review, which is under way. The measures that result may involve, for example, targeted youth support, which will provide a dedicated lead professional to help in organising support across a range of services including education, social services and Connexions. There is a range of financial support available, including educational maintenance allowance and carer’s allowance, both of which go directly to young carers.

The Government are committed to continuing to improve the provision of support available to young carers and we will examine what more can be done as we move towards implementation. I make no apologies for extending learning opportunities to that group, and talk of compulsion and penalties is misplaced. The challenge is to deal effectively with the barriers that can get in the way of their participation. We are committed to doing this and our thinking will take account of the carers review.

No-one will enter the enforcement system if there is a good reason why they are not participating. I will talk about the independent attendance panel later, but local authorities and schools will have key responsibilities to deliver the services that young carers need, local authorities will have significant resources through general funding which they can draw on; in addition, over the past nine years, they have been able to make use of the carers special grant, which is not now ring-fenced, because of the freedoms we are giving local authorities, but which from 2008-9 will be paid as part of the area-based grant. That continued funding means that by March 2009, we will have invested more than £1.2 billion to support councils in their work with carers.

Amendment No. 6 deals with the support available to young parents. The Government have committed to having a Sure Start children’s centre in every community, where teenage parents can access a broad range of support in one place, including child care, education and training, parenting support—I am sure the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire will welcome that—and health-related information, advice and treatment. Information, advice and support to help young mothers are also available through Connexions and targeted youth support services. There is a range of financial support available to young parents to help with the costs of accessing education and training, including child tax credits and child benefit, which their parents may be able to claim, and education maintenance allowance, which is means-tested and goes directly to the young person. As has been mentioned, there is also financial help available through the Care to Learn programme, which funds child care to enable young parents to return to education.

It is very important that we help this group. Teenage mothers’ rates of post-16 participation in education, employment and training are low: only about 30 per cent. of that group are in education, employment or training. Some teenage mothers who do want to return to learning are experiencing difficulties finding child care and other support. It is certainly part of our focus in continuing to address teenage pregnancy, but I say to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton that there has been steady progress on reducing teenage pregnancy rates since the teenage pregnancy strategy was launched. The under-18 conception rate has fallen by 11.8 per cent. since 1998 to its lowest level for 16 years, and the under-16 rate has fallen by 12.1 per cent.

The Government are committed to continuing to improve provision as we move towards implementation. We will do everything in our power to remove the obstacles and difficulties that prevent young carers and young parents from participating in education and training post-16.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

If I am leaping in too rapidly, I apologise, but could the Minister clarify what his expectations are going to be, particularly of 16 and 17-year-old mothers? How quickly will they be obliged to go back into the labour market and what potential exemptions will there be?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I will seek to expand on our thinking—that is the phrase that we have been using—regarding “reasonable excuse”, about which the hon. Member for Yeovil is extremely concerned, very soon for his and the Committee’s benefit. We may need to rename clause 4 “the fourth clause” after the fourth option. Under that clause I will expand on some of the other options available to provide support to this group and others. At the moment, we do not have any plans to do anything different post-16 to pre-16, but 18 weeks is just a maximum in respect of mothers returning to education or training; often, where there is the right provision, they will want to return sooner. We do not believe that it should be like maternity leave, because 16 hours a week of education or training is certainly less onerous than employment. It is vital that those young people have the right support. It would not be appropriate to pursue enforcement action against them in any normal circumstances.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I want to ensure that I understand precisely what he is saying. Is he saying that every 16 and 17-year-old parent, including mothers, will be obliged to go back into education, training or employment within 18 weeks of the birth?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am saying that if, after 18 weeks, they have not started to re-engage with going back to education, employment or training, their personal advisor, probably through the Connexions service, would discuss with them what their support needs are and what would be required to get them back into education or training, be it in employment or otherwise. I doubt it would be appropriate for them to go into employment as well as education or training, because they would obviously have the significant caring needs of looking after their young child. However, with the Care to Learn programme, which is successfully funding child care to enable young parents to return to education, it is perfectly possible for them actively to work towards returning to 16 hours a week.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am sorry to push the Minister, but obviously there will be people in that situation once the Bill is passed, and we need to be clear about what we are saying. What is the earliest time after birth that we might find some of the powers of compulsion contained in the Bill used against young mothers in that category?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I shall talk directly about the use of enforcement in those circumstances. If the hon. Gentleman is still unclear once I have done that, perhaps he will want to intervene again. I am sure that he will, as he is of that persuasion.

Angela Watkinson (Conservative, Upminster)

Before the Minister moves on to compulsion, will he agree with me that one of the most useful things that very young mothers can do in continuing their own education and that of their children is to introduce their children to books at the earliest possible time? If they cannot afford to buy books, they can borrow as many as they could possibly want from the public library, and that would help to break the cycle of illiteracy if the young mothers come from homes where the parents have not achieved in their own schooling and there are no books in the home.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I certainly agree with the hon. Lady on that very important point. No age is too early to start reading and looking at books with babies and young children, not just for the sake of the literature, but for the sake of creating special moments of bonding between parent and child. For young children and babies to have that bonding experience with parents, to learn to concentrate, and to enjoy listening to a story are all really important formative experiences. That is certainly something that children’s centres and other parent support services are trying to engender among parents who may not have had that experience when they were growing up. In this, the national year of reading, I hope that the message is going out to use public libraries and other ways of borrowing books, which are sometimes available through pre-schools, nurseries and children’s centres.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Drawing the debate closer to the Bill, some of that sort of support is provided by family learning groups and family learning centres, such as the one I visit annually at Gedney Dyke in my constituency, where challenged families, sometimes with parents who are themselves learning to read and write for the first time, work closely alongside their youngsters. If that sort of learning did not lead to accredited qualifications, it is entirely possible that that work would not count in terms of the legal obligations of the Bill. That would surely be monstrous. Will the Minister have a look at that and, if he cannot answer now, will he come back to the Committee with certain assurances?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

We certainly want to see that sort of activity continue. I am not sure there is anything in the Bill that would stop it, but I am certainly happy to reflect on the points the hon. Gentleman has made, and if I need to come back to him I certainly will.

Let me move on to the point surrounding enforcement. Clause 39 makes it clear that before commencing any sort of enforcement the local authority must ensure that appropriate support has been made available and that the young person has been given the opportunity to take advantage of services to support participation. Clearly, that would be very significant in the case of young carers and young parents. Clause 42 provides further safeguards to ensure that a young person with unmet needs does not enter the enforcement process inappropriately by establishing attendance panels, which will hear appeals against attendance notices and will be able to confirm or dismiss them and make recommendations to the local authority. We will specify in regulations the make-up of the panel and how it is to carry out its functions, but in general we expect it to consider the specific circumstances of the young person, the support and provision they have been offered, and whether they have any unmet support needs that mean they cannot be expected to participate at that time. I am confident that knowledge of those safeguards, through attendance panels and elsewhere, will deter local authorities from inappropriate enforcement action, particularly where those sorts of vulnerable young people are concerned.

Participating helps young people to move on to successful and fulfilling lives and has wide benefits for both the individual and society. It is critical that young parents and carers have the same opportunity to succeed as other young people. I reject the amendments on the grounds that these groups of young people will be given every kind of support to participate and will be treated the same as all other young people of their age. It cannot be acceptable for any young person to be deemed too hard to engage; we must raise our expectations for and with the young people and raise their expectations of themselves.

In the light of my reasoning and because it is not necessary to legislate here—the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton himself said that legislation is by its very nature inflexible—I urge him to withdraw his amendment and opt for the flexibility of not legislating and instead going for the mechanisms that I have set out.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am sorry to detain the Committee. I know that we have spent a long time on the amendments, but I am still slightly concerned about a number of points relating to the Minister’s response.

First, on amendment No. 6 relating to young parents, the Minister appeared to say that he could contemplate young parents being obliged to go back into education, training or employment 18 weeks after the birth of the child. I encourage him to stop me if I get anything wrong. That seems extraordinarily soon, particularly when contrasted with current expectations for parents to go out into the labour market, education, training or anything else. Until recently—I believe it is still the case—we have allowed parents, or lone parents, to stay at home without a work obligation until their youngest child has reached the age of 16. Even now, parties are talking about reducing that time limit significantly, but to nothing like to the expectation that a parent will return to an education, training or work setting so soon after the birth of their child.

The hon. Member for Upminster made an excellent point. She talked about the importance of parents educating their children, accessing libraries and so forth. It is a point that could more powerfully be made on our side of the argument rather than the Minster’s because it highlights that parents have an important responsibility not only to themselves and their futures but also to the children they bring into the world.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

The way people will judge that depends on where they want to give the benefit of the doubt. Clearly we are on different sides of the divide. My interpretation, if it helps, is that I have talked about the importance of the right support, and the attendance panel will have to be mindful of whether an individual has had the right support to enable them to fulfil their duty to participate. It might be more complicated than simply having a young baby. They might have housing or other issues that affect how their child is progressing. The emphasis should be on the support that young person needs to make their life easier, rather than on enforcement. Enforcement is the last resort, but I understand that for the sake of scrutiny the hon. Gentleman has to assume that it would be one of the things that we would rush to.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

It is not that I have to assume that the Minister is more draconian than he may be. It is not reasonable of him to suggest that all the decisions about how that flexibility should be exercised should fall to the panels.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

What I am trying to say is not that it all falls to the panels, but that knowledge of how the panels will judge things means that the local authority which is exercising its duties around participation and support will view things from the perspective of how the panel would interpret things if they chose, as a last resort, to go for enforcement.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

My concern is that we are still looking to the panels to exercise discretion, and there is a presumption that the right way forward is for parents of very young children to be in education, training or employment. I am suggesting, at this stage in legislating, that that is the wrong presumption, that it is too draconian, and that the hon. Member for Upminster may have been correct—if this is what she was getting at—that it is possible that, in the interests of certain parents and certain children, it may be useful for the parent to be in the home environment for a longer period. I am not sure that that judgment can very easily be made by the panels, since it seems clear to me that the Government’s presumption in the legislation is that all 16 or 17-year-olds ought to be in education, training or employment.

I assume that when the Minister talks about safeguards, he is largely thinking of the mechanisms that would enable the young parent to return to education, training or employment. In other words, he is asking us to believe that there would be flexibility if there is not child care and other provision. I accept that there probably would be in that the panels would be able to consider whether there were child care and other elements of support, but the panels would still be deprived, through legislation, of making the overall judgment about whether the right setting for a parent with a young child in this particular age group is at home with the child or in the setting that the Minister wants. Ministers do not have a monopoly on wisdom with regard to whether it is better for a parent to be in the home environment or in education, training or employment. He is assuming too much for the panels to be able to exercise that element of discretion.

I also still have concerns about the degree to which it will be possible to exercise discretion in respect of carers. I hope that it will be exercised sensibly. I accept that we want to offer the vast majority of carers the support they probably need to be in education, training or employment, but we can all think of examples where it would be very difficult indeed for panels to make judgments. They might make different judgments in different parts of the country. We would all probably agree that it would be easy to decide that the carer of a terminally ill person should be allowed to stay in the home environment and focus on their caring responsibilities, but what about someone who was very seriously ill, had been for some time and was likely to remain so, where there was no certainty about how long that person would have to live?

One could have an environment in which there were two children of the same age, one of whom might decide to go into the armed forces—exercising a freedom they will still have—while the other might wish to remain as a carer rather than going into education, training or employment. I have no idea whether, with the Bill, the guidance and the panels, that option would be open to them. I fear that there is still a great deal of uncertainty about how the panels will be handled for those special cases, which comes back to many of our concerns about the compulsion route, because that route means fitting people around legislation and around Government presumptions about what is best for them, rather than allowing people’s lives to be framed and determined by what is in their own best interests.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I was disappointed by the Minister’s response. I agreed when he said that we must have the same expectations for everyone. Young parents and carers should not be treated differently as far as their expectations are concerned. I am absolutely, fully in agreement with him on that. Then he went through the support he hopes to give to young carers. He described a range of options: the outcome of the cross-Government carers review, targeted youth support, education maintenance allowance and so on. Then he said that we were talking not about compulsion and penalties, but about getting rid of barriers and that no one would be subject to enforcement if they had a good reason not to be.

The Minister then cited clause 4. That is about appropriate full-time education or training, which is that

“which is suitable for the person,

having regard—

(a) to the person’s age, ability and aptitude, and

(b) to any learning difficulty”.

However, that does not seem to apply in these circumstances. It goes on to say

“at a school, at a college of further education, at an institution...or otherwise.”

I assume that the “or otherwise” opens up a range of options. I do not feel that this is the clause where “to have a good reason not to” would be invoked. When the Minister responded to amendment No. 6, he referred to clauses 39 and 42, which is where the phrase “without reasonable excuse” comes in. By that stage, the enforcement process has commenced. That is what those clauses are about.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

It is through clause 4 that a range of provision will be developed and needs to be developed. Some has been developed over the past five years and some may include provision appropriate for this group of people. The enforcement duty, in respect of reasonable excuse, will not have started because the local authority will know that there is reasonable excuse and therefore it has no chance of enforcement. That will reinforce its need to provide proper support, rather than to take the enforcement route.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

If the Minister has issued guidance—this is really what the amendment is about—to say to local authorities that the circumstance that I and the hon. Member for Yeovil are alluding to will always be and should be regarded as a reasonable excuse then that is fair enough, but that is not where we are. Clause 39 is invoked when the local authority gives written notice to the person who has not been attending. At that point, as the Bill is drafted, the person can tell the local authority that they have a reasonable excuse within clause 39(2)(b) and then the local authority can respond to that reasonable excuse.

The Minister also cited clause 42, which is about the attendance panels, by which time there has been not only the written notice, but the attendance notice. The person has to appeal against that attendance notice. The matter gets referred to the attendance panel, which has to meet. It hears from the person, who has had all these enforcement notices issued against him or her, what the reasonable excuse is. That is why I am disappointed by the Minister’s response.

The amendments are reasonable. Amendment No. 5 simply says:

“The Secretary of State shall specify by order arrangements and duties applicable to a person to whom this Part applies who has significant responsibilities for caring for parents, siblings or other close relatives.”

Amendment No 6 is similarly worded but for

“who has significant responsibilities for caring for their own children.”

That gives the Minister the opportunity to provide the guidance that we are seeking and that he is intimating in his response.

Angela Watkinson (Conservative, Upminster)

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The domestic circumstances of new young mothers can vary enormously. One teenage mother may still be living in her family home, getting a lot of support from her parents and her mother may be taking a large amount of responsibility for the baby, which would make it much easier for the mother to return to education. However, that might not be happening. She may be living on her own in council accommodation, for example, and the stresses of coping with the demands of looking after a baby, probably on a small income, would make it extremely difficult for her to access training or education at that point.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. In the former circumstances, we would expect the young person to be in education or training, but in the latter that would be an unreasonable demand.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Perhaps I should be clearer with the hon. Gentleman in respect of clause 39. Yes, we will issue guidance to local authorities about how they interpret it, in particular subsection (5), which says:

“The authority—

(a) must take all reasonable steps to secure that relevant support is offered to the person, and

(b) may not give the notice unless satisfied that the person has been afforded an opportunity to take advantage of the support offered.”

I hope that gives him the necessary reassurance about guidance and the fact that support will come before enforcement.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Not entirely. In response to amendment No. 6, the Minister went through a range of support mechanisms. He talked about the Sure Start centre in every community, child tax credits, child care credits and Care to Learn. All of those are already in place and were in place when the Government’s Green Paper “Raising Expectations” was published. It says that

“we will consider what else needs to be done to ensure that teenage parents have real opportunities to participate.”

In paragraph 5.45, it states that the Government will consider what guidance they should set for local authorities not about new provision, but about the circumstances in which more flexibility should apply. It is for that reason that I am disappointed by the response. He merely reiterates the services that are already in place.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I remind the hon. Gentleman that the children’s plan sets out our ambitions to develop those services further and to look further not only at the things that lead to teenage pregnancy, but at the obstacles that may prevent teenage mothers, in particular, from accessing opportunities. They may be housing related. We stressed that. More needs to be done when bringing in these duties.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am grateful to the Minister for that, but I am concerned about why he is so resistant to the amendments, which would simply clarify the flexibility that local authorities need to take into account in dealing with young people who have significant caring responsibilities. It would clarify matters hugely if he were able, by order—it would be helpful, too, if we could see it in draft—to state in the Bill that flexibility will be incorporated in legislation. I accept everything he says about wanting to provide more services and support, and when that is in place, we will support it.

However, the Bill as drafted is restrictive and prescriptive, and my hon. Friend the Member for Upminster and the hon. Member for Yeovil can both envisage circumstances in which people with a huge array of responsibilities on their shoulders will find themselves coming up against the whole of the enforcement procedure: written notices, appeals panels and attendance notices. We could get away from that by simply adopting the amendments, which would give the Secretary of State the power to set out, by order, a set of circumstances in which a more flexible approach could be taken.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I shall have one last go at trying to persuade the hon. Gentleman, and then leave it up to the Committee. I oppose the amendments because they are likely to leave less room for discretion. They will specify by order specific duties and arrangements, rather than leaving local flexibility. It is largely the local flexibility delivered by clause 39(5) which specifies support. That is for local interpretation, to provide local flexibility based on the individual circumstances of the vulnerable person and the specific range of services and facilities available in that locality. It is much more flexible than having us, centrally, here in Whitehall, dictate by order what duties and arrangements need to be put in place.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

At the moment, the legislation created by Whitehall is very draconian and applies to the person. The amendment would alleviate the duties imposed on the young person. All the Minister has spoken about is issuing guidance to the local authority about the support services that they should provide, which is a different set of issues. He has not persuaded me that there is no case for providing flexibility just on the duty in clause 2. We want to ensure that we do not end up with a very unjust position whereby a 16 or 17-year-old person with a huge range of responsibilities in caring for a sick parent or sibling finds himself suddenly encountering the enforcement procedures. Both the amendments would create a much fairer and more tolerant position as far as those vulnerable young people are concerned.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

May I propose amendment No. 6 formally, Mr. Bayley?

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

I am advised that the two amendments are so closely related that there should be only one Division.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I beg to move amendment No. 7, in clause 2, page 2, line 8, at end add—

‘( ) This section may not come into force before the Secretary of State has certified that in his opinion there are sufficient contracts of apprenticeship available to meet in full the level of demand for such contracts by persons to whom this Part applies.’.

The amendment brings us to the point where we can consider once again—some might say yet again, but I know that you, Mr. Bayley, would not—the quality of what is on offer to young people as a part of the argument for the Bill. It is an argument that the Minister has made exhaustively. He has said that the range of options available to young people will be so inspiring—so alluring—that he believes that they will consider lightly the loss of their liberty. To that end, the amendment suggests that until the Secretary of State can make real the claims that have been made by the Minister in the Committee and elsewhere, it would not be reasonable—even if we accept the argument of compulsion—to go ahead with the Bill’s provisions.

How would it be if we said to young people, “You must stay in training but there is no appropriate training for you.”? The Minister would not want that circumstance any more than I would. Therefore, the amendment might be regarded as a way of strengthening the provisions. It would certainly be an improvement and is not a wrecking amendment in any way, shape or form. It would simply oblige the Government to guarantee that what they are offering to young people is right and proper, given that young people will have to accept what they are offered.

According to the explanatory notes, clause 2 creates the central duty—in other words, the duty to participate in education or training. We have heard a lot about that. The clause details the ways in which young people might fulfil that duty, and I spoke about that this morning and listed those ways. One of them, which is why I tabled the amendment, is by

“participating in training in accordance with a contract of apprenticeship”.

However, the Committee, including the Minister and his noble Friend the Under-Secretary—I do not mean “noble”; that may have been a Freudian slip in anticipation of some future event—know that there is a shortage of apprenticeship places owing to a lack of employer engagement. As a result, the Government have consistently missed their target for the number of apprenticeships. In 2003, the Prime Minister, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced that apprenticeship numbers would rise to 320,000 by 2006. In fact, as we know, there were only 239,000 apprenticeships in training in 2006-07, and numbers are falling, as was confirmed by the figures that were published just before Christmas. Alarmingly, the numbers were falling not only at level 3—they have been falling steadily since 1999—but now at level 2. I should be more than happy to make graphic evidence of that available to the Committee should any hon. Members wish to see it.

We could debate the reason for that decline at length, but it is not appropriate here to do so, as I am not sure whether it would be in order. However, the Government must go a long way if they are to create enough apprenticeship places to make the duties implicit in the Bill a reality. If they do not provide additional apprenticeship places, how could they possibly oblige young people to sign up to them? That is the simple thrust of the argument behind the amendment.

Once, all apprenticeships were a level 3 qualification. Eager young learners acquired alongside experienced craftsmen vital practical skill that gave them a sense of accomplishment and worth, and well deserved too, and that fulfilled an economic need. Although statistics show an increased level of participation in the apprenticeship system since 1997—the Under-Secretary made that point a number of times—the inclusion of lower qualifications labelled “apprenticeships” has disguised the fact that fewer people are training at level 3. In addition, work-based training has been in decline for about 20 years; in fact, it is about half of what it was 20 years ago. There is a pattern of decline of people training at higher level, a decline in work-based training, and a willingness to include under the badge of apprenticeship qualifications at level 2 that are not always fit for purpose, because they are not well based, not mentored and, sometimes, not employer-engaged at all.

To that end, a fairly unattractive picture emerges. It is a similar picture to the one painted by the hon. Member for Yeovil, who spoke of the possibility of people signing up to NVQs that might not enhance their employment prospects. Some academic evidence suggests that some NVQ courses—clearly, I do not mean all such courses—may not bring the return of greater employability. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee can agree on this: it is important that we establish that the critical test—the key way in which to judge vocational education and training of any kind—is whether it adds to the individual’s employability. That is the nature of vocational training: it should lead to a vocation, and that vocation should be about the acquisition of a real competence that has economic value.

We are training fewer people at level 3, which is why there are doubts in our mind about whether the Bill can be implemented. I have said a number of times that my principal reservation is that I simply do not think that it will do the job for which it is intended. There has been broad agreement about ambitions. Our ambition is for more young people to stay on in education or training after the age of 16, but I am not sure that the Bill in those terms is fit for purpose. One of the critical weaknesses relates to whether enough meaningful training places—apprenticeships are, or at least should be, about meaningful training—can be put in place in time for the statutory duty to have the impact that hon. Members want, which is one of greater participation, particularly among young people who currently do not make it in terms of their educational progress and level of skills.

It would be remiss of me, in proposing the amendment, not to say something about the apprenticeship review published at the beginning of last week. That review is important in these terms because it is clear that the Government know that what I have said about increasing the number of apprenticeships is of real significance. Both Ministers on the Committee have made that point themselves. In fact, they know that, in a sense, my amendment, whether it is accepted or not, is critical to the Bill: if the number of apprenticeship places does not grow, the Government will not meet their own targets and fulfil their own ambitions. However, the apprenticeship review, in my judgment, will in the end be unhelpful, because it sails in the opposite direction to the recommendations made by Lord Leitch, who examined these matters closely for the Government.

Lord Leitch’s key recommendation was that the Government should move from supply-side planning to demand-led skills training. He concluded that

“history tells us supply-side planning of this sort cannot effectively meet the needs of employers, individuals and the economy. The Review recommends a fully demand-led approach, with an end to this supply-side planning of provision.”

He stated that, as a consequence, planning bodies such as the Learning and Skills Council will

“require a further significant streamlining.”

However, the apprenticeship review reinforces supply-side planning by establishing a national apprenticeship service. That service is part of the LSC. The bureaucracy that at the moment is unhelpful to the provision of apprenticeships will be reinforced by the new service.

Mr. Marsden rose—

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is a student of—indeed, an expert on—these matters.

Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)

As ever, the hon. Gentleman gilds the lily, but I am deeply appreciative of his comments. He mentions the national apprenticeship service. We have only just had the statement and do not know the details of how that will pan out eventually. Is it not perfectly possible to have a national apprenticeship service that is strategic and focused and is not supply based in the way that he envisages? I do not see the necessity of saying that because we are to have a national apprenticeship service, it will automatically be supply based rather than demand led. It is perfectly possible to have a scheme that strategic that is demand led.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I describe the hon. Gentleman as expert because he is chairman of the all-party skills group, which does a good job of encouraging debate of such matters in a non-partisan way. He and I have enjoyed many conversations on this matter and others. However, his optimism might be ill-founded, given that the review said that the NAS, part of the Learning and Skills Council, will be responsible for the

“achievement of the targets set by Government. This includes determining and publishing the strategy for expanding places by region, sector and age group consistent with the Government’s published national plans.”

If that is not a supply-driven, centrally-based, target-orientated model, I do not know what is. It does not sound responsive to demand, or dynamic in the way that Lord Leitch hoped that the system might be.

I go further. The NAS will be responsible for determining apprenticeships qualifications. By the way, I believe that sector skills councils should have a bigger role. I recommend to the Committee an excellent paper that I wrote with my adviser Dr. Scott Kelly, who is an even greater expert on the subject than the hon. Member for Blackpool, South, which is entitled “Towards a gold standard for craft: guaranteeing professional apprenticeships”. In it, we reinforce, or perhaps borrow from—having been immodest, I move straight into my modest mode—Lord Leitch’s view. It is clear that sector skills councils, as bodies that are linked closely to employers, are best placed to fulfil precisely the role that is now to be put in the hands of the NAS. In other words, it is about anticipating demand, transmitting that demand to the people who provide skills—the various agencies that train people—and ensuring that the qualifications are best suited to changing skills needs.

I am alarmed that the new review weakens the role of sector skills councils in the process. That will weaken those aspects of the Bill that require a robust apprenticeship system to provide the training necessary, given the compulsion that lies at the heart of the Bill.

The creation of the NAS adds to the confusion. There is already a confusing array of organisations with overlapping responsibilities crowding the skills sector. The NAS will be responsible for a national information and marketing service for apprenticeships. That is in addition to the careers and training advice that is already provided by schools and colleges, local authorities, the Connexions service, the proposed new adult careers and advice service, and skills brokers as part of Train to Gain. A litany of organisations advise young people in which direction to travel in order to fulfil their statutory duty, but I am not sure that the advice received will be consistent or always helpful.

As far back as 2001, the Cassells review recommended that the apprenticeship system should be led by employers, with training providers acting only as apprenticeship agents with a clearly defined role. In 2002, the Learning and Skills Council announced that it accepted that recommendation, but it has never been implemented.

We could debate apprenticeships all day, but I do not want to delay the Committee unduly—except to say, for the avoidance of doubt, that I am a passionate supporter of vocational education and training. I admire the apprenticeship system, which, at its best, produces superb training. It a world-recognised brand, and we must not see it diluted in any way, shape or form. Some of the best apprenticeships, such as those of BT, Rolls-Royce and Honda, are the envy of the world, but unless we underpin the Bill, without sacrificing rigour, by ensuring that sufficient apprenticeship places are available, we will be short-changing potential trainees and British business. Neither of those is acceptable.

I trust that the Under-Secretary, who has hared to his place, has assembled his notes. I have resisted my instinct to abridge my remarks to give him sufficient time to pull his notes together. I hope that he will recognise the amendment as an important safeguard. I think that he knows that if the terms of the amendment are not met, the Bill simply will not work.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

I am grateful to have my first opportunity to speak for the Government on this occasion, and I am pleased to have made it back to the Committee following the birth of my son.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I was out of the room when that was announced earlier. May I congratulate the Minister on that splendid occasion?

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

I call Mr. Lammy, senior.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

The Government share the sentiment behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendment. I think that we all agree that apprenticeships provide a high-quality work-based route to continue learning at 16 through which young people can properly engage with employers. Those young people, with the employer and alongside someone who is dedicated to continuing their learning and training, are getting a degree of mentorship, developing craft and skills, and learning important skills that employers talk about in relation to soft skills such as discipline, routine, dedication and commitment. Apprenticeships that work well also help young people to work alongside people who are much older than them. That is a particular advantage of apprenticeships working at their best.

The hon. Gentleman will know that, since 2007, the Government have sought to double the number of apprenticeships for 16 to 18-year-olds from 75,000 to 150,000. I was pleased that he relied heavily on the apprenticeship review and that, notwithstanding his concerns about sector skills councils, to which I shall return, the broad thrust of his comments was in support of the review, which was published on 28 January by my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills and for Children, Schools and Families. In the review, we restated our intention to put in place an apprenticeship entitlement for every young person who wants one by the time this legislation comes into effect.

In the end, the system must be based on employer demand and on employers coming forward, so we put in place the things that we all want to see further to incentivise employers to come forward so that we can meet that ambition. Today, fewer than one in 15 of 16 to 18-year-olds are in an apprenticeship. Our goal is that within the next 10 years, one in five young people can get an apprenticeship place. That is ambitious, but meeting that ambition is key to our productivity and our country’s success. Galvanising the system and getting employers to come forward to offer apprenticeships is the key to that.

Our apprenticeship trajectories are modelled on an analysis of learner demand that was carried out by the Learning and Skills Council. It projects that there will be another 90,000 apprenticeship places by 2013, which will be a 60 per cent. increase on the number of places that we have now. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will see when he reads the review that we have worked with our sector skills councils precisely to identify the sectors in which there are growth opportunities. For example, the sector skills councils in the creative and culture sector, the media and the creative industries have come forward to suggest that there are growth opportunities in the next period. That is particularly relevant in London, where we have the smallest proportion of apprenticeships available for young people.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

There are fewer apprenticeships in central London than there are in Leeds, as the Under-Secretary will know. I agree with him about those new industries, and he is right to emphasise that because, too often, apprenticeships are seen as old-fashioned or to do with older industries, but many are not. The House of Lords Committee on Economic Affairs report on apprenticeships states, “Many young people unfitted to start apprenticeship”. Does the Under-Secretary share my concern about that? The report says:

“some 300,000 16—19 year olds are unable to access training or any worthwhile employment as a result of a lack of basic skills”.

Getting the numbers right is about getting apprenticeships right, but surely it is also about getting the fit between people who are capable of studying for apprenticeships and what they are likely to study.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In the evidence sessions, the Committee heard a lot from organisations such as the Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s that indicated that there was a group of young people who would not be ready to begin an apprenticeship. The hon. Gentleman has also talked about the quality, brand and integrity of apprenticeships. I hope that he will welcome in the review the Government’s intention to define clearly what an apprenticeship is and is not.

We also said in the review that there is a place for those young people who are on that journey towards an apprenticeship for whom a pre-apprenticeship or, indeed, a programme-led apprenticeship, might be appropriate. At some point, they will get to take up an apprenticeship. We also clearly say in the review the minimum qualification that will be required to begin an apprenticeship. I hope that that addresses the point that the hon. Gentleman made, which he has also made in the past.

In galvanising the system to meet that 2030 ambition, which we believe that the legislation will do, it is important that we do not just reach out to new sectors through our sector skills councils, but identify areas and regions for growth. We must also understand that the sort of growth that might occur in the process industries in the north-east, for example, will probably not be replicated in the south-west or in London. In London, we would hope for growth in, for example, public sector apprenticeships, which poses a challenge to us in Parliament. Apprenticeships could be attached to the House of Commons, and certainly more could be provided across Whitehall Departments and non-departmental public bodies. All that is fleshed out in the review. I hope that that reflects the sentiment behind the suggestion from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister is right that the review is welcome in a number of ways, particularly in providing a statutory definition of apprenticeship, as he described, and in creating a baseline. As he will recall, I called for both measures. However, he must tell the Committee why level 3 numbers have declined steadily year on year, and why level 2 numbers are now tailing off. To meet the targets, we need considerable growth. Rather than growing from a rising trend, we will reverse a downward tend, which will make the job that much harder.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

The hon. Gentleman must concentrate on apprenticeship completion rates. The overall completion rate stands at 63 per cent., having gone up from 25 per cent. in 1997, and completion rates for advanced level apprenticeships have also gone up. It is not only about being on an apprenticeship, but about successfully finishing it.

Gordon Marsden (Labour, Blackpool South)

I agree entirely with the Minister’s focus on the road to completion, but does he agree that one of the very encouraging things about the Government’s latest announcement is the fact that they are looking at ways in which those apprenticeships can be flexibly structured to accommodate the complex work-life balance of younger and older people? Does he agree that portability is a key part of achieving increases in completion rates, which is a goal that he, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings and I all share?

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue of portability, which goes to the heart of our discussions on unitisation. We want vocational qualifications, for which individuals can do a unit, then move to different parts of the country, or to different institutions, or—in relation to apprenticeships—between different providers and, sometimes, employers within the same sector. We are moving in that direction and running pilots until summer 2008. That is very much the direction of travel.

On completion rates, it is important to remember that the number of young people completing the full advanced apprenticeship framework has grown from 17,000 in 2001 to about 33,000 in 2006, which represents a significant increase. The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings talked about companies such as Rolls-Royce, which represent the gold standard within the apprenticeship family, and he should recognise that those completion rates go to the heart of such things. Something else that is relevant to the hon. Gentleman’s question is the Government’s absolute commitment to quality. This is not just about being on an apprenticeship. Ten years ago, we were in a situation in which there were poor employers, little or no inspection, and training providers who did not take apprenticeships seriously. We have sought to root those bad employers and training providers out of the system. That has resulted in a reduction in their overall number, but I repeat that it is important to concentrate on completion rates, which are going in the right direction. In addition, we have undertaken an apprenticeship review, which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings has broadly welcomed.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am relying on the Minister’s indulgence, as he is likely to be in an extremely buoyant mood today, given his happy event.

The Minister speaks about completions a great deal. One of the witnesses to the Committee suggested that there was a relationship between completion rates and the dropping of the technical certificate. The Minister will remember that in 2003, the Government insisted on a technical certificate for all apprenticeships, but the Learning and Skills Council subsequently dropped that requirement. Will the Minister explain whether, with regard to the need to maintain rigour and quality, the LSC would require those technical qualifications to be certificated in the way in which they once were?

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

On the matter of technical certificates, the hon. Gentleman may be running away with himself slightly.

All our apprenticeships are independently assessed, and there is a curriculum framework and a relationship with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. They are all independently and rigorously assessed and inspected. In relation to the technical certificates, it is precisely because we have sought to be responsive to employers that we have allowed flexibility. I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that the LSC has sought to move away from the technical certificate in only four areas of apprenticeships, including hairdressing. That does not mean that the courses are not still independently assessed by the qualifications agency, but it does mean that we have given it the flexibility that it has sought. I want to reassure the hon. Gentleman on that point, because I looked into it personally after he raised it in the past.

As I have previously explained, part of our rationale for legislating is to galvanise the system to provide appropriate support and opportunities for all our young people by setting a clear expectation in law that all young people must participate until they are 18 years old. We are making it clear that it will no longer be an option to forget the student who sits quietly at the back of the class, watching the clock and waiting until it is time to leave. To link the raising of the participation age to the achievement of our apprenticeship targets in the way proposed by the amendment would remove an important driver for the system, as it gears up to meet the apprenticeship entitlement by 2013. There are further clauses on apprenticeships later in the Bill, and, in light of my reasoning, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his amendment.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

I am grateful for the way in which the Minister addressed the Committee in conciliatory—I could go as far as to say collaborative—terms. However, three or four points stand proud from our short debate on such a vital subject. There is common ground, first, about the need to increase the number of apprenticeships—without that, the Bill cannot do its job—and, secondly, about the need to do that while retaining rigour. There would be a not inconsiderable risk that, in trying to achieve the first purpose, we might lose sight of the second, and that many young people might be encouraged into training that was less than rigorous. There is probably more common ground on the fact that the test of that rigour is enhanced employability; does the completion of an apprenticeship improve job prospects and performance? I would go even further and say that the Government have moved, hesitatingly and grudgingly, but moved none the less. We should always rejoice when a sinner comes to the Lord.

The Government have moved in our direction, and the statutory definition of apprenticeship is now part of the review for which I called, as the Minister generously acknowledged. That is critically important for employer engagement, mentoring and the degree to which the apprenticeship will include work-based training. There were doubts about programme-led apprenticeships and some level 2 apprenticeships in that regard, which were reflected in the adult learning inspectorate’s final report, which said that it was entirely possible to complete an apprenticeship without setting foot in a workplace. That is not right.

There is, however, a fundamental difference between us—and this is why I am inclined to press the amendment to a Division—and I am not sure that the Government have sped in our direction. They might not even be moving falteringly in that direction. Indeed, evidence from the review suggests that they are plodding in the opposite direction. The difference concerns the question of how apprenticeships are managed and funded. I am convinced that the central tenet of the Leitch analysis is that we must inject dynamism into the apprenticeship system to grow the numbers, with the caveat that we retain rigour, and that we must therefore make it more responsive to employer demands.

The hon. Member for Blackpool, South is a heady optimist—an idealist—in such matters. I am a romantic idealist, too, but I cannot reconcile the ambition to increase numbers in a robust way with a system that is still driven centrally by, and built around, the Learning and Skills Council. I am not saying that that is wrong. If we did not have that arrangement, we would have to have a method for funding such things, but I suspect that Lord Leitch hoped for—he certainly alluded to it in his report—a more radical overhaul of the management and funding structure. I am inclined to say that the growth that the Minister wants—and it is a desire that I share—will be inhibited by an over-bureaucratic way of funding and managing apprenticeships.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the review points to a new national service for apprenticeships, but with a local field force that can interact locally and with the regions? Does he also recognise that, for the first time in this country, a new group of students will have a matching service similar to that provided for another group of students, who have been able to apply for university admission through the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service and previously the Universities Central Council on Admissions? It will go some way towards meeting employers’ needs, as it will provide brand integrity, identify local needs and enable young people to connect with employers.

The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that he wants us to be responsive to employers, but then ask us to raise the technical certificate and other things that respond precisely to what employers tell us will make the system work better and create greater numbers of apprenticeships. I remind him that there is an apprenticeship clause later in the Bill, and I urge him to reflect further on whether he wants to press the amendment to a vote.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

We can therefore debate the matter at even greater length when we discuss that clause. We may consider this to be just a preliminary discussion—early skirmishes between the Minister and myself.

The Minister is right about the matching service. It is a good development, but it is not enough. We need an all-age careers service that pulls together advice and guidance from several disparate sources. When I put that to witnesses in the evidence sessions, they agreed. The record shows that even the chief executive of Connexions was sympathetic to the principle of reinvigorating careers advice and guidance on apprenticeships through a radical change in structure. We have a cluttered landscape on advice and guidance, which is unlikely to provide a clear and coherent focus for advice and so, perhaps, will leave young people wanting.

As I said at the outset, the essence of my amendment is to underpin commitments made by the Minister again today. It is necessary to grow the number of apprenticeships to provide the level of training that is required for the numbers desired. He said that we will debate apprenticeships later. I hope that during further consideration of these matters he will have a chance to think deeply about some of the things that I said today. His contribution has been helpful, as he said that employer involvement in apprenticeships will be a condition of public funding. I believe that he said that—perhaps he will correct me if he did not. That is certainly what I want, and if the statutory definition means anything, it means that.

I want the licensing of apprenticeships to be led by the sector skills councils, as that would be a helpful way of ensuring that the product meets the demand. We certainly need apprenticeships to teach and test real competencies. I wonder why the Minister did not say more about how we will engage small and medium-sized enterprises, and he may wish to intervene on me again to do so. We heard a lot about the new duties of SMEs. To achieve the expansion that he described, it is critical to involve many more SMEs in apprenticeships. One way of doing so is through an expansion of group training associations, and the Minister knows that I have advocated such a measure. The review did not say much about associations, but he may wish to elaborate now.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

The hon. Gentleman will know that in the apprenticeship review, we advocated group training associations. However, this goes back to my previous point about how we ensure quality while creating a system that is attractive for employers. We might debate that later, because the hon. Gentleman has tabled amendments about the local contract of employment. He will know that engagement in an apprenticeship is key for certain SMEs—two or three-man businesses in various sectors, from the creative industries to a group of electricians or plumbers—but that they find it difficult to undertake the core business of liaison with the Learning And Skills Council and the bureaucracy necessary to meet the requirements of the legislation. For that reason, we support the training associations. However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts that there must be flexibility in the system

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Yes, the Minister is right. This boils down to who owns the contract. The difference between us is that I want the contract to be owned either by a group of employers through a group training association or by a single employer, whereas he wants the contracts to be owned by the training provider. I think that that is the essential difference between us, although the Minister may not agree.

David Lammy (Labour, Tottenham)

It is not the case, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, that I am prescriptive. I believe that it is for the employer to determine whether the contract should be with the training provider with which he is working or whether it should be with him. Big employers like Rolls-Royce, for example, may want the contract to be with them. Smaller employers, however, would either want a group training association to have that responsibility or they would want the local further education college to be the liaison point with the Learning and Skills Council while the individual is in their employment completing their apprenticeship.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Countless reviews of the system have suggested that the contractual relationship should be refocused on employers. I do not want to get too nasty, because I am not nasty, particularly today. However, the Minister will understand that doubts remain about how we define employers. Employers were mentioned in the evidence sessions. There are what one might call real employers and those whose principal or sole business is training. If an employer’s sole or principal business is training—there is nothing wrong with that—it is something of a con for it to be included in a definition of employer-based or led apprenticeships. There are real doubts—I have tried to get answers about this in parliamentary questions and elsewhere—about how we break down the employers involved in apprenticeships and define precisely what kind of organisations they are.

I want to move swiftly to a conclusion, because the final point in the programme for government that I have laid out, in terms of apprenticeships at least, is, as I have said, the creation of an all-age careers service. With the measures that I have briefly outlined, I think that we could rejuvenate the apprenticeship system and increase dramatically the number of people engaged in apprenticeships, providing we get the basic skills and soft-skills issues right, so that we do not have 300,000 young people ill-equipped even to begin an apprenticeship. I agree with the Minister that that is partly about pre-apprenticeship training. However, I cannot see why the Government, even if they do not adopt all these things immediately, should not, given the time frame available to them, accept the amendment and be confident that they can grow the number of training places in the way that we all agree is necessary.

Perhaps the Minister will rise at this late stage, and suggest that he will accept the amendment with the alacrity with which he swapped places with the Minister for Schools and Learners and contributed to this debate. If he does not do so, I will have to test the mood of the Committee by dividing it on this subject.

Clause 3

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment No. 9, in clause 3, page 2, line 11, after ‘means,’, insert—

‘(a) the Cambridge Assessment Pre-U qualification in two subjects, and,

(b) ’.

Hugh Bayley (Labour, City of York)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 72, in clause 3, page 2, leave out lines 23 and 24.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Clause 3 defines what is meant by a level 3 qualification for the purpose of clause 1(c). It is defined as

“the level of attainment (in terms of breadth and depth) which, in the opinion of the Secretary of State, is demonstrated by the General Certificate of Education at the advanced level in two subjects.”

Levels are a new, Government-created notion that is part of a forlorn attempt to pretend that different things are the same. Parity of esteem between vocational and academic qualifications is a laudable objective, but it will not be achieved by pretending that a vocational qualification in a particular activity is the same in terms of breadth and depth as a GCSE in Latin or physics. It is like comparing apples and pears. It would be perfectly possible to create a GCSE in plumbing that had the same breadth and depth as a GCSE in physics: it would be very academic and would involve Archimedes’ principle, the melting temperature of copper and the chemical and physical properties of various metals and their expansion rates. However, to create parity of esteem, there has to be parity of esteem in society between different types of jobs.

Having lived in Canada as a child, I was astonished, when we returned to Britain when I was nine, by the class consciousness in this country compared with Canada and the United States, where it barely exists. In those countries, esteem is determined by endeavour; to be blunt, it is determined by income and wealth. In the US, the owner of a large plumbing concern has a higher status than a small-town lawyer. In Britain, we are moving ever closer to that type of society, which I welcome, but we will not achieve that faster through a patronising pretence that it is just as difficult to pass one type of exam as another. If we really want parity of esteem and a more equal society, we will achieve that by ensuring that everyone is educated to the best of their ability. If we pretend that a particular qualification is something that it is not, it is the poorly advised and the less well resourced and those who attend weaker schools who will be led down a route that is not necessarily in their best interests.

We have seen that with some of the newer A-levels, which Cambridge university does not recognise as an entry requirement, particularly if a candidate has more than one of those types of A-level. The Minister for Schools and Learners insists on claiming that there is no difference between those A-levels, and he may or may not be right, but Cambridge university takes a different view. At least it has been honest and has published on its website the list of those A-levels that, if a candidate takes more than one of them, it will not regard as sufficient for entry to the university.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am listening with interest to the argument that the hon. Gentleman is developing. How does he think vocational qualifications could achieve parity of esteem with some of the more traditional subjects? Is it that they must have some kind of academic content, as I thought he was implying, or is he simply concerned that at the moment they do not have sufficient robustness and rigour?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

My view is that one cannot create parity of esteem between two qualifications simply based on the number of hours of study that they require. A qualification will gain status in society by the outcomes that it generates in later life. If a particular vocational qualification leads someone to acquire a high-paid job or enables them to establish a business that generates a high income, it will, of itself, become a qualification of high status and will have equal esteem with those qualifications of an academic nature that also lead to high-income or high-status jobs. That is how to create parity of esteem between two sets of qualification.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry (Labour, Portsmouth North)

I am trying to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Is he saying that esteem only comes with high income?

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am saying that largely, in the United States and Canada, which have far more equal societies than ours, that is the way in which status is determined. I am not saying that I want to go down a route where everything is determined by money, but we are more likely to create parity of esteem between qualifications if those qualifications lead to well paid, well established jobs, than by pretending that a qualification created by somebody in an office, because it requires 280 or 1,000 guided hours, will have the same status as a different qualification with 1,000 guided hours. That simply will not happen in reality. My concern is that in the weaker schools—I will provide evidence for my argument in a moment—some students will be advised to take qualifications that are not in their best interests, simply because they have been led to believe that these qualifications are identical in their outcomes because of the guided hours attached to them, and not because of the reality of the qualification and its results when those young people leave study and enter the workplace.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for taking an intervention as I want to keep my remarks down to a couple of minutes when I speak, to help the Committee to make more rapid progress. Given his argument about achieving parity of esteem, I am interested to know how his prescription would work in response to the rapidly changing nature of work and the need for qualifications to be developed fairly quickly to deal with the skills needs of newly emerging industries, if we have to wait for outcomes to get that parity of esteem. We might, by necessity, need an industry to get those skills in very quickly.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

Yes, there is nothing that can be done. A qualification will fall or rise on the basis of the quality of the qualification and the quality of the syllabus that leads to that qualification. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings has repeatedly said, we need to ensure that vocational qualifications are of very high quality, and that is what will determine the status of that qualification, whether it is in a new industry, a new science, or a more traditional subject area. That is always going to be the determinant of the status of a particular qualification—the quality of the qualification itself. No amount of pretence will determine otherwise in the real world that we live in.

In its briefing on the Bill, the Association of School and College Leaders said of level 2 diplomas being made the equivalent of seven GCSEs,

“this could create a perverse incentive for the sake of league table standing as well as Government policy, to pressure students into taking a diploma when they might be better advised to take another course.”

That is my concern about the rush to create parity of esteem between various qualifications when, in reality, that parity may not exist.

In her book “Diminished Returns”, which has been widely quoted by many Liberal Democrat and Conservative members of the Committee, Professor Alison Wolf gives a helpful analysis of the use of the terms level 1, 2 or 3 qualification. On page 12, she says:

“The assigning of qualifications to a level began with National Vocational Qualifications, the first major set of English qualifications created directly by Government. Launched in the late 1980s, NVQs promised a comprehensive set of vocational qualifications, encompassing the whole occupational range, and arranged in 5 levels. In 1989, the CBI proposed national education and training targets...Targets have been central to English education policy ever since, and their growing importance, and use of levels led inexorably to a full-blown “National Qualifications Framework” ”.

She goes on to say:

“No one outside the education sector and the relevant parts of the Treasury talks about a “level 2 (or 3, or 4) qualification”. When journalists have to explain the usage they generally refer to level 2 as “the equivalent of 5 good GCSEs”, or to level 3 as “meaning” the same as A-levels. This is deceptive. “Good” GCSEs (grades A* through to C) are indeed assigned to level 2 as are, for example, the NVQ2 in food processing and cooking offered by Education Development International, or the text processing certificate from OCR. But they are equivalent only in that circular sense. Employers and sixth form gate-keepers who are looking for good GCSEs in maths and English do not treat...an AQA level 2 certificate in enterprise and employability as something that will do perfectly well instead.”

That is a preface to the amendment, to caution ourselves about the use of those levels when trying to assert that things are equal when it is not necessarily so in the real worlds of work and of academia.

Amendment No. 9 would ensure that level 3 includes the new pre-U qualification. That qualification was developed by Cambridge Assessment in response to concerns expressed by the independent sector about the quality and rigor of the A-level, caused by curriculum changes and modularisation. The pre-U exam is not yet recognised by the QCA and thus once the qualification is up and running, we could face a situation in which a 17-year-old with a pre-U qualification but no A-levels is subject to the duties of the Bill when in fact he or she ought to be exempt under clause 1(c). Wendy Piatt, the director general of the Russell group of universities said of the pre-U qualification:

“We believe that the Cambridge Pre-U promises to be an acceptable preparation for university courses. We welcome the academic rigour of the new qualification’s linear approach and the retention of subject specialism”.

Cath Baldwin, head of recruitment and admissions at the London School of Economics said:

“The LSE would accept the Cambridge pre-U qualification as suitable for admission to its undergraduate courses. In particular, LSE would welcome the academic rigour of the new qualification’s linear approach”.

Graham Able, headmaster of Dulwich college said:

“I expect that more than 50 independent schools will offer the pre-U, mostly instead of current A-levels...I also expect that many state schools will wish to do so.”

However, because the pre-U, like the iGCSE, is not recognised by the QCA, it is not permitted for any state school to offer the pre-U to its students. That blatant unfairness must be removed. I hope that the Minister will confirm that it is his policy to have the QCA approve the exam in due course.

The headmaster of Eton says:

“We want the best courses that challenge our students and, if that means doing the pre-U instead of A-levels then we will do it”.

He said that they have

“real concerns about the future of A-levels,”

particularly in the sciences, which he worries may be further dumbed down.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

My hon. Friend may be coming to this point, and if he is, I apologise, but the arguments against the academic diplomas have been made largely because of the competition that they will offer to A-levels. I think that those are good arguments. In the light of his earlier remarks, does he share my view that their other effect will be to dilute the integrity of vocational diplomas? Diplomas were meant to be high-quality vocational qualifications that would achieve the parity of esteem that he described, but now the waters have been muddied.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I agree. The announcement of three academic diplomas is a sign that the Government have decided to go ahead with the Tomlinson agenda, which under the previous Prime Minister they had not decided to do. It is a retrograde step, and if we adopt the Tomlinson agenda, it will do enormous damage to the education system. Not everyone shares that view, but I think that that agenda is about less external assessment and trying to pretend that things are not what they really are. It is a huge error, from which we as a country will suffer in the years to come.

A large number of universities have given written notice that they intend to accept the pre-U as an entry qualification, and I believe that more will follow as it is taken up by an increasing number of independent schools. If the gap between the independent and state sectors is not to widen further—for example, the independent sector now secures more than 60 per cent. of all A grades in science A-levels—it is vital that the Government allow the state sector to use the pre-U qualification. It is important that it is recognised as a level 3 qualification for the purpose of clause 3.

Amendment No. 72 would remove subsection (5), which gives the Secretary of State the power by regulation to amend subsection (2) and

“substitute a different qualification for the qualification for the time being referred to.”

The explanatory notes to the Bill say:

“In Clause 3, level 3 is defined as the level of attainment which is demonstrated by two A levels. The clause enables regulations to set out the qualifications that will count for this purpose. It is intended that these will include the Progression Diploma and the Advanced Diploma once these are available.”

The concern is that the provision gives the Secretary of State a huge amount of power to alter primary legislation. Clause 142 makes the power an affirmative resolution power, which, given that it amends primary legislation, is right. However, it is not right for secondary legislation to amend primary legislation.

The memorandum of delegated powers, which was published with the Bill, appears to contradict the explanatory note that I just quoted. It says:

“Clause 3(5) allows the subsection to be amended by order. This power is needed in order to allow the level of achievement a young person must obtain to be altered at a future data in response to any development in the qualifications system which would mean that the clause no longer had its intended effect. It is not anticipated that any amendments will be made in the foreseeable future.”

That flies in the face of the explanatory notes, which say that the power will be used for the introduction of the new diplomas, so it would be helpful if the Minister explained that apparent contradiction.

The memorandum of delegated powers goes on to say in an understated way:

“It is recognised that an amendment to subsection (2) could result in altering to some extent the nature and effect of the basic duty to participate. Therefore it is proposed that this power is subject to the affirmative resolution procedure.”

It would be possible therefore for the Secretary of State by regulation to redefine a level 3 qualification, and for example, change it to a degree. Since the various levels are fictional notions with no recognised reality in the real world, it would be very easy for the Secretary of State simply to require every 16 or 17-year-old without a degree to remain in education or training, or to lower the threshold. For those reasons, and in accordance with the general principle that secondary legislation should not amend primary legislation, subsection (5) should be removed.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

We are grateful to the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for prompting an interesting and wide-ranging debate on qualifications, and I say that in a positive, rather than negative sense. He is right to say that we will not create a level playing field in the perception of qualifications simply through a rebadging process. He is also right to warn that there is a danger that young people in some of the most challenging communities and difficult schools could find themselves diverted into qualifications that ultimately might not be in their best interests, depending upon how successful the diplomas are. However, he is probably being a little too pessimistic about the possibility of having some degree of parity between qualifications that can result in different outcomes, particularly in terms of income. We can think of GCSE and A-level qualifications for which there are very different perceptions of their likely pathways in terms of income and credibility.

I can remember long ago asking in a physics class, the day before our O-level geography exam, for permission not to have physics homework that evening because we had to revise for the exam, at which point the physics master described geography, somewhat unfavourably, as a coloured pencil subject. I apologise to any geographers present, but even within the GCSE and A-level world there is a difference in credibility of the pathways, in relation to income and profession, that different qualifications can lead to. I do not object to the aspiration of having some kind of ambition of parity and comparability between different qualifications, but agree with the hon. Gentleman that that should be on that basis of real quality rather than simple rebadging.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I cite the problem with the targets of five or more GCSEs at grade A* to C. We have seen the weaker schools in this country move away from the tougher subjects to the softer options, and that shift was evident before the introduction of the requirement to publish English and maths results in the league tables. One school that I have in mind achieved an 84 per cent. success rate for five or more GCSEs, but when the English and maths results were included in its results, that figure plummeted to 16 per cent. That trend concerns me about the whole notion of pretending that everything is equal when clearly it is not.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

The hon. Gentleman is right to be nervous and to want to ensure that any apparent improvement in standards is based upon engaging young people in subjects that they might find more relevant and interesting but that are still challenging, rather than simply attempting to water down standards. His comments highlight the volatile and potentially dangerous situation that we are in at present, where we risk ending up with quite a dispersion of different qualifications, with some “top” schools within the state and independent sector adopting the type of qualifications he mentioned, many people in the middle sticking with GCSEs and A-levels, and diplomas coming in without us being sure how successful they will be. Obviously, they will have their own GCSE equivalents, which might create incentives for different institutions to encourage their youngsters into those courses, regardless of their merit.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

Given that we have that litter of qualifications, if I may term them so, are not two important ways of assuring their quality the extent to which they enhance job prospects and employability and their fit with further study, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton mentioned in relation to university entrance requirements? Surely those are reasonably empirical ways of ensuring that rigour and, to some degree, equivalence are maintained?

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I agree that those are two important measures. However, we all need to be aware that, in seeking to encourage and allow for qualifications with that type of credibility, we do not move too far from a system that youngsters from all backgrounds can access. I have some concerns that the direction in which we are moving could unintentionally result in an multi-tier, multi-status system, which could impede social mobility.

Before speaking to the amendments directly—I hope that I am not trying your patience, Mr. Bayley—I should say that I am slightly more positive about the Tomlinson agenda than the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton. In fairness to Mr. Tomlinson, a number of his criticisms of the existing vocational curriculum qualifications offer are borne out by most people’s experiences, particularly those about the lack of stretch for youngsters at the top end of the ability range, the lack of serious vocational offer, and youngsters’ ability to go on beyond the age of 16 without having proper literacy and numeracy skills. I would like to see the existing GCSE and A-level framework folded into the diploma structure that Mike Tomlinson suggested.

On the amendments, if I am not mistaken, towards the end of his comments the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton expressed support or encouragement for amendment No. 72, which would delete clause 3(5) and thus the Secretary of State’s discretion to substitute a different qualification for those in subsection (2) and to drop the reference to

“the General Certificate of Education at the advanced level in two subjects.”

The amendment is a probing amendment, designed to discover the Government’s short-term intentions regarding the possibility of substituting qualifications now mentioned in subsection (2). We want to prompt a debate not only about the potential to substitute not only the reference to

“the General Certificate of Education at the advanced level”

for some sort of direct equivalent, but about the potential for the Government to introduce an entirely different qualification—perhaps one not even being discussed in the present public debate.

What is the intention behind subsection (5)? Does the Minister envisage, for example, that in the near future the reference to

“the General Certificate of Education at the advanced level”

might be removed completely? Once the diplomas have been introduced and the GCSE equivalents have been announced, encouraging people to switch to diplomas, do the Government really intend to get rid of the GCSEs and A-levels entirely and simply switch to the diplomas, as mentioned in the explanatory notes?

Finally, on amendment No. 9, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton raised a valid concern about ensuring that other qualifications that are broadly equivalent to those set out in clause 3 are also allowed for, so that those who take them do not find themselves disadvantaged under the compulsion measures.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

For the sake of expediency, I shall not comment on the broader preamble about parity of esteem, which we will have an opportunity to debate later, but speak directly to the amendments.

Level 3 needs to be defined in the Bill because we have said that a young person who has achieved a level 3 qualification already before the age of 18 should not be required to participate. It makes sense, and is good law making, to define level 3 with reference to a familiar qualification—in this case, to A-levels, which are established qualifications at that level. However, it also makes sense to be able to amend that description if it becomes necessary. Hon. Members will have in mind the fact that we have publicly said that there will be a review of post-16 qualification in 2013. I do not rule anything in or out, and I certainly do not want to prejudge that review, but we want to leave it open so that if it were decided that the A-level should not be continued—no such decision has been made—we would not want to have to make primary legislation to do so. The clause is drafted to allow the description to be amended by order. That will be subject to the affirmative procedure and so to full parliamentary scrutiny. That is what subsection (5) means, stating:

“The Secretary of State may by order amend subsection (2)”.

Using the affirmative procedure is common practice when allowing for future changes.

The description in the clause does not include a range of other level 3 qualifications that would be worthwhile ways of participating. For example, it does not mention diplomas at the advanced level, which we believe will be central to ensuring that all young people have valuable and engaging programmes to follow but which are not yet established and therefore not good to use in law. Instead, we shall specify such qualifications in regulations. We should not list all the qualifications in the Bill, particularly if they do not yet exist, which is why subsection (1) states:

“In this Part, ‘level 3 qualification’ means a prescribed external qualification, or an external qualification of a prescribed description, at level 3.”

We will be able to make regulations by the negative procedure, to which the explanatory notes refer. I hope that that explains the difference between the explanatory notes and the delegated powers document.

Similarly, we could regulate to apply the provision to the pre-U, which is in the process of being accredited or otherwise by the QCA. It is worth saying in passing that, if the 17-year-old in the scenario that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton painted had taken the pre-U, he would not be subject to the duty; as long as the pre-U was accredited as level 3, he would be exempt, regardless of whether we approved it for funding in maintained schools. It is important that the hon. Gentleman understands that if the pre-U is accredited by the QCA, my Department will then have to decide whether it should be approved for funding in maintained schools and colleges under section 96 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. I cannot comment further in advance of being asked to make any such decision if the QCA accredits the qualification. Assuming that it will be a level 3 qualification, if it is accredited it will be able to be prescribed under clause 3 by regulation, so there is no need to specify it explicitly. I therefore hope that hon. Members will not press their amendments.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I am grateful to the Minister for that explanation, and I am moderately reassured. I think that he was seeking to undertake that subsection (5), which relates to subsection (2), could not be used to alter materially the level of qualification required so that it would become far higher and more challenging.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I want to give that assurance. The clause is headed “Level 3 qualification”, and the situation would change only if the best descriptor of a level 3 qualification moved on from being an A-level to being something else.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

I suspected that that was the case. I have no doubt that the Minister is not secretly planning to alter the provision to insist that people get degree-level qualifications before leaving. Having received that clear indication, I shall not press my amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I, too, am moderately reassured by the Minister’s response, particularly in relation to the amendments. However, I am disappointed that he could not give a little more information about the future of the pre-U, which is an important exam that is gaining wider currency in the independent sector. It is important that the pre-U is allowed to be taught and examined in the state sector as well. We understand from the press that a decision is imminent from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority. A little hint about that might have been useful and helpful.

This was intended as a probing amendment to try to extract some information on that from the Minister and, given that it has failed, I see no reason to press it any further. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment No. 8, in clause 3, page 2, line 20, at end insert

‘, subject to the approval of the Secretary of State.’.

The amendment is intended to determine how much unfettered power clause 3(3) is giving to the QCA by adding those words to subsection (3), which currently states:

“A qualification, or description of qualification, prescribed under subsection (1) may be prescribed by reference to an assessment made by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority of the level of attainment demonstrated by a qualification; and for that purpose regulations under subsection (1) may confer a function (which may include the exercise of a discretion) on the Authority.”

People are increasingly unhappy about politicians, but I still believe strongly in democracy. Ultimately, the Secretary of State needs to be the official who takes important decisions about education policy, because it is he who is accountable to Parliament and to the Government in whom he serves, who will be judged by the electorate.

I should like the Minister to explain in a little more detail the powers contained in subsection (3), so that we Opposition Members can be reassured that we are not handing over too much power to a non-departmental body accountable to a Select Committee, but not to Parliament via the Secretary of State.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

The amendment is unnecessary. Regulations under the clause will be drafted by my Department and approved by the Secretary of State before being laid before Parliament in any case. The Committee will know from our consideration of the last group of amendments that the reference to a level 3 qualification in clause 1 is crucial to describing the group of young people who are subject to the duty to participate.

Accepting the amendment would mean that regulations could only confer functions on the QCA if the Secretary of State approved. That is an unnecessary addition as the Department will be drafting the regulations in any case. So the intention behind the amendment is already implicit in the Bill. I hope that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton is reassured that the QCA cannot do anything in respect of clause 3(3) without its being approved by the Secretary of State, who would have to approve the order to make an amendment. I hope that, on that basis, he will ask leave to withdraw his amendment.

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I am reassured and on the basis of the Minister's assurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Clause 4

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The explanatory notes say that the clause

“defines appropriate full-time education or training as efficient full-time education or training suitable to the person’s age, ability, aptitude and any learning difficulty they have, provided at a school, college of further education or otherwise.”

My hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton drew this to my attention. We want the Minister to comment on "otherwise". It is certainly true that some full-time education and training currently provided would struggle to meet the definition in those explanatory notes.

We have talked about the test for the kind of education that we discussed at length today—vocational education in particular—as being its likelihood to provide the trainee with increased job opportunities and greater employability. That seems to me to be a test on which the whole Committee can agree. If a qualification does not confer real competence and does not teach and test practical skills, it does not meet the definition in the clause. There is evidence that a substantial number of qualifications do not add to employability.

I wish at this juncture to highlight the effect that certain training has on the employability of young women. There is a substantial disparity between the outcomes for young women and for young men in pre-apprenticeship training and apprenticeship training itself, as the Minister will know. Some academic research, including that by Professor Lorna Unwin, who gave evidence to the Committee, suggests that there may be no benefit to women who study apprenticeships—level 2 apprenticeships in particular—in sectors such as retail and hospitality. The sectors in which employability is increased most significantly tend to be those that disproportionately train young men, such as engineering and construction.

While the economic outcomes of apprenticeships and other training vary enormously, the gain in wages for men who complete an apprenticeship is about 7 per cent. for the system overall and about 14 per cent. for level 3 apprenticeships. Level 3 apprenticeships are equivalent to the level that all apprenticeships used to be at, which we now call advanced apprenticeships. For women, the results are much less impressive. There is a positive return for vocational qualifications at level 3 and above, but there is no statistically significant return for many women in completing a level 2 apprenticeship in the service sectors that I have described.

The clause states that the training provided should be suitable

“to the person’s age, ability and aptitude”.

However, and as we discussed earlier, the lack of adequate advice means that some young people do not get the kind of match that they need between their aptitude and ability and the training provided. That matching is very important. In speaking about apprenticeships earlier, the Minister talked about the matching service and I welcomed that new direction. Nevertheless, if we are going to pass the Bill into law with the stipulation that the training must meet people’s aptitudes and skills and reflect their abilities, tastes and strengths, it is important that we be absolutely certain that the training provided will do the job.

I hope that the Minister will give us some assurances about the changes he envisages being made to ensure that the clause’s stipulated requirements can be met—not just in theory or as an ambition, but as a reality for young people. In the eyes of many, the Bill puts the cart before the horse. It establishes compulsory participation before the system has been reformed sufficiently to provide training of a quality in line with the requirements in clause 4. I hope that the arguments that we have put forward throughout the Committee’s deliberations will go some way toward encouraging the Government to bring the horse back before the cart and to reform the system properly, instead of creating extra pressures and demands on the unreformed system, which will surely lead to disaster.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

It would be timely to finish our debates on the clause rapidly, but I want to raise a couple of important issues, including the “or otherwise” element that we discussed last week. I have two questions for the Minister, the first of which is about subsection (1) and was touched on by the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. It mentions

“full-time education or training which is suitable for the person”.

We would like to know how that will be defined, and what would happen if there were a course in a local further education college that a young person might consider suitable and that might meet their needs, but which is either full or closed because of lack of demand. That happens quite frequently at FE colleges that try to provide a wide range of opportunities.

The main issue that I want to discuss brings us back to our debates last week on amendment No. 70. I should like to know what other types of provision there might be for young people with high needs for whom education or training is not the right setting. In its briefing note to the Committee on this clause, the National Youth Agency said that it seeks confirmation that “or otherwise” includes provision of non-formal education as a recognised form of learning outside the classroom.

You will recall, Mr. Bayley, that we had a long debate on this issue on 31 January, when we debated amendment No. 70. In that debate, I referred to the suggestion by James Cathcart of the British Youth Council that the Government should consider a fourth option beyond those in the Bill, which are education or training, employment and sanctions. He wanted, and we want, the fourth option to be support that may help a young person to get back into education or training at some stage, but which may not narrowly meet the definition of education or training.

When we raised that issue on 31 January, the Minister, who was in one of his flexible and helpful frames of mind, said that I was right to refer to

“clause 4 and the breadth of the definition of appropriate full-time provision for which it provides.”

He went on to say:

“I have an open mind when looking at the range of support to be offered. I want to consider the evidence given by witnesses from Barnardo’s, during the first evidence session, through to Fairbridge at the end, from whom we heard about all sorts of good practice. We have also heard from other organisations such as Rainer, which did not give evidence. They all have something to offer, which is why I disagree with him when he describes it as a sledgehammer Bill. It is capable of being much more forensic.”

That was very helpful. I now want to find out how forensic the Bill and how important the word “otherwise” are going to be. I want to find out whether the Minister will be able to deliver on the commitment that he made on 31 January, when he said that he was

“certainly minded to support the notion that some individuals will need intensive, quite possibly full-time, support to get them into a position where they can access and engage with education and training. The important thing is that that support leads them towards a position where they can participate fully in what we would normally describe as education and training.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2008; c. 297-98.]

That is very helpful and important because there are young people for whom going straight into education and training, particularly if they slipped out of it before the age of 16, might be difficult, yet they may be precisely those youngsters who do not clear the high hurdles that our local authority colleagues set as a reasonable excuse not to be in education and training.

I referred in a previous debate to an individual in my constituency who did not meet the standards that meant he would be sectionable, or have such mental health or drug problems that he would automatically be given flexibility by those who police the system. From what I now know about him, he would be unable to engage in a formal education and training process of any sort. Indeed, how quickly would he be able to get on to the escalator that the Minister envisages? A small number of people would find it incredibly difficult to engage with education and training, even within the time that the Minister foresees. He said further on 31 January how he could envisage

“intensive engagement over a few months”.——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2008; c. 298.]

However, I think that he said elsewhere that he was not willing for that to go on for a long time, such as 18 months.

I appreciate that we are discussing a small group of young people who might need intensive support for a time before being able to engage with education and training, but I put it to the Minister that there are such people and that, if he fails to accommodate their needs in the Bill, a large number of them will end up having to be dealt with by the panels that will be considering enforcement. As a result, we could have different enforcement patterns throughout the country.

If the Minister accepts the wide definition of “or otherwise” that is possible under the clause, I hope that he will follow through that logic and make sure that funding will also be available to local authorities for such services. We know that they are often expensive and that they are not always available in the types of supply that we would like. For example, I can think of relatively recent examples of the drug service in Somerset having extremely long waiting lists of people who needed assistance in getting off their drug habit.

I want to know not only that alternative support will be available as a later pathway into education and training, and that patience will be shown to such people by allowing them to proceed to education and training in the right time for them, but that the money we shall spend on youngsters who follow the conventional route into education and training will be available in full to support intensive support activities that could be far more expensive in conventional education, inner-school, sixth-form or even employment settings. If the Minister can give us reassurance on those matters today, that would deal with one of our major practical concerns about the Bill.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

I shall not delay the Committee too long, but naturally I do not want to short-change it when answering the debate. Given the importance of the clause, I was surprised that it was the first clause not to have amendments tabled to it, but perhaps that is because it is so perfectly formed.

It is right for us to expect all 16 and 17-year-olds to be in full-time education or training unless they are fully occupied elsewhere—working or volunteering, for example. We want full-time education or training to be one way of fulfilling the duty to participate, and clause 4 is essential as it describes what is meant by that. As for the question of the hon. Member for Yeovil about the use of “suitable” in the clause, it mirrors section 7 of the Education Act 1996, on pre-16 learners. There is quite a lot of case law on what constitutes suitable education. In practice, it will be a matter for local authorities. Clearly, there is an important role for impartial advice and guidance, as provided for in part 2 of the Bill, in negotiating with an individual regarding what is suitable for them. However, in legal terms we will be drawing on the case law that is informed particularly by the 1996 Act.

The definitions in the clause are drawn broadly and refer to what is appropriate for the age and aptitude of a young person, with reference to any learning difficulties that they may have. Again, that is a wide definition of “learning difficulties”—a phrase used quite narrowly in popular parlance—but difficulties in accessing learning would be another way of interpreting it.

Underpinning the clause is a large programme of change that is designed to transform the opportunities available in education and training in this country, so that every student studying full time will have a route to success through hard work and dedication. The aim of the programme is simple: to ensure that every young person—no matter where they are, what level they are learning at, or what their preference for a style of learning is—has the opportunity to follow a route that will suit them and help them to progress in learning and in life.

John Hayes (Conservative, South Holland and The Deepings)

The Minister has mentioned people with learning difficulties. He will know that there are statutory protections for those people, particularly in respect of suitability. The education that they are offered, if they are statemented young people, must be suitable for them in terms of their statement. How does the Bill interface with that existing statute?

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

Chapter 2 makes some changes to that statutory arrangement. Perhaps we will have a chance to debate that when we get to chapter 2.

The new foundation learning tier will provide, for the first time, a coherent body of units of qualifications at level 1 and at entry level, which often address the needs of those with learning difficulties. That will ensure that every young person can progress. Learners will, through clearly defined progression pathways, be able to follow routes that are carefully designed to support their progression.

Apprenticeships, which the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings mentioned, are being expanded. There is a gender gap in respect of apprenticeships and apprenticeship pay. Such indicators tend to mirror the wider labour market pattern, but we recognise that such patterns are sometimes more pronounced in apprenticeships, and addressing that is a priority for us. That is reflected in the proposals in the apprenticeship review, which contains a number of practical measures. They include positive action and targeted funding support for learners making non-traditional career choices; pilots to drive a critical mass of learners in non-traditional occupations to encourage more such applications; the appointing of super-mentors to support atypical apprentices through their experience; and the full enforcement of the Learning And Skills Council contract for all minimum pay requirements, pending a future investigation of apprenticeship wages by the Low Pay Commission.

There are also 17 new diplomas in areas ranging from engineering, creative and media, to science and hair and beauty, which will be available throughout the country. Those will provide, for the first time in our national system, qualifications that mix the best of theoretical and practical learning. The hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire will be the first to welcome the provision enabling every young person to have the chance to work toward new functional skills qualifications in English, maths and science.

The opportunities afforded by the clause are wider still. We heard from many of our witnesses last week how important informal learning and programmes of re-engagement activities are in bringing some of the most vulnerable and disengaged young people back to learning in a way that is relevant to and enjoyable for them. The hon. Member for Yeovil mentioned that.

The voluntary sector has many years of experience and great expertise in delivering such programmes effectively. Among our witnesses were some of those who are most successful with young people through such programmes. The clause is drafted to ensure that these highly valuable programmes and activities will come within the definition of full-time education and training. The use of “otherwise” refers to where that happens—whether in school, college, home or anywhere else—but definitions of full-time education and training will be interpreted so that we can engage the fourth option that the hon. Member for Yeovil is so keen on.

David Laws (Liberal Democrat, Yeovil)

This is an important point and I want to be clear about what the Minister is saying. One of the options offered to these young people would look very different from education and training as most people understand it; from the Minister’s description, it seems that it might not contain a clear education and training component.

Jim Knight (Labour, South Dorset)

For the sake of clarity, a fourth option might be full-time support. That option would be fine, but it should be provided en route to education or training; it should not be seen as a separate route altogether with regard to its outcome. That is why the hon. Gentleman referred earlier to the comments that I made on 31 January. I do not have much to add to those comments at this stage, except to say that I fully see that someone who suffers from addiction-related problems, for example, should address those problems before they can engage with education or training. The problems should be addressed with a view, implicit in the whole treatment, that they should be going on to education or training as soon as they are ready to do so.

As part of our drive to implement the raising of the participation age, we want to build further on such informal training programmes. In the children’s plan, we announced that we would pilot a new return to learning programme. That programme aims to ensure that the system is better able to take advantage of the excellent work of informal learning programmes and activities in re-engaging young people.

The programme will ensure that as young people complete such informal programmes, they are supported in continuing learning, and it will gradually bring them back into formal learning through personalised progression routes. The programme will support organisations working to re-engage young people and will ensure that every young person can find a well-defined route into more formal learning at an appropriate level for them. It will also ensure that the personalised support that many young people experience on informal programmes can continue for longer.

Clause 4 ensures that those routes and the informal opportunities about which we heard from some of our witnesses are included as forms of participation. The Bill as a whole galvanises the system to ensure that such provision will be available wherever it is necessary to engage a young person. It is also worth noting that the breadth of the clause allows young people to attend independent schools—that will please the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton—or to be educated at home if that is what they want.

Clause 5

Nick Gibb (Conservative, Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)

I beg to move amendment No. 10, in clause 5, page 2, line 41, leave out ‘20’ and insert ‘16’.

The clause defines the meaning of the phrase “full-time occupation” as at least 20 hours a week. My first question to the Minister is: on what basis was that figure derived? The Government’s consultation paper states that no specific questions were designed to consult on whether 20 hours per week should constitute full-time employment, nor was there even a general question on views of where the threshold should lie. The consultation sheet simply asked whether those who are not in employment for a significant part of the week should participate in full-time education. It would be helpful to know why there was no consultation on the number of hours that constitute full-time work for the purposes of the legislation—why not, for example, 16 hours and 35 hours?

There was specific consultation on whether full-time education should be set at 16 hours per week. Why should 16 hours per week constitute full-time education, when 19 hours per week would not be regarded as full-time employment? Why consult specifically on the definition of full-time education, but not full-time employment? The issue is of real concern to the Association of School and College Leaders, which said the following in its briefing document on the Bill:

“We are concerned that to be ‘relevant’ and therefore covered by the Bill, employment must be for 20 or more hours per week. We do not think that it is right that employers should be able to employ people on half-time contracts and be exempt from the duty to take account of their training needs.”

Martin Ward, the deputy general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said in his evidence to the Committee that

“the figure that we were looking at was more like 16”—

that is, hours of work

—“than 20.”

He went on to add:

“What concerned us about a figure as high as 20 was that the not-so-good employers...might subvert the system by offering a lot of 19.5 hour contracts.”——[Official Report, Education and Skills Public Bill Committee, 22 January 2008; c. 58, Q148.]

The amendment would change the figure from 20 hours to 16 in order to flush out from the Government the reasoning behind the figure of 20, which is a slightly odd one to select, given the prevalence of 16 elsewhere in legislation, particularly social security legislation. For example, 16 hours is the threshold for the working tax credit, so a 17-year-old could, by working 16 hours, qualify for such a credit but not qualify as working full-time for the purposes of the Bill, and therefore find themselves subject to pressure to enter full-time education or training.

Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Michael Foster.]