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Mr. Clappison: I will give way, but before my hon. Friend intervenes, I should like to make the point that the Minister also failed, interestingly, to deal with the point that I made about whether a limited number of subjects or small classes would amount to significant weaknesses.
Mr. Bruce: I tried to intervene on the Minister. Doubtless he will jump to his feet and explain the point if my hon. Friend cannot do so. The Minister clearly suggested that the powers are exactly the same as those that already exist to deal with failing schools. If that is the case, why are sixth forms singled out by the terrible phrase "inadequate sixth forms"? Why is the closure of sixth forms, rather than the school, mentioned?
Mr. Clappison: I am sure that my hon. Friend's anxieties are shared by many hon. Members who have heard what the Minister has said--or failed to say--tonight in response to the problem. The worries remain. I am dissatisfied, but, in view of the need to make progress and the lateness of the hour, I do not propose to press the amendment to a vote. However, genuine anxieties remain.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Remaining Government amendments and new clauses agreed to.
12.41 am
Mr. Wicks: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
At the end of a concert in Japan, the great lifelong learner and songwriter Mr. Bob Dylan observed that it was the time of hour when we had to run. Some of us were born to run, so it is therefore important that we keep the debate brief.
I believe that the Bill is a measure for a new century. The way in which we invest in the skills of our people and take seriously the concept of lifelong learning will determine Britain's economic future. The way in which we determine our sense of community and fairness is equally important for some of us. We are considering not only economics but social inclusion. We are setting up new structures to help the young to pursue workplace development and further education, and to promote adult and community education.
12.42 am
Mr. Boswell: I begin by briefly commenting on the Government's strange pendulum management of their business. Yesterday, the business was so thin, bland and non-controversial that we were sent home by tea time. Today, substantial matters are being discussed well past midnight.
The Opposition remain concerned about the Bill for the reasons that we set out in our reasoned amendment on Second Reading. Above all, we are worried about the centralisation of power and the risk of bureaucracy. It is not that the Minister is an arrogant man; his look of injured innocence if anyone seeks to assert that puts me off making such a claim. However, the dynamics of the position or, more sinisterly, those shadowy educational theorists who lurk in the wings of education policy but occasionally find themselves centre stage, may wrench matters in a direction that Parliament has now empowered them to take. An example could be the unresolved threat to close down sixth forms or, to put it in industrial relations terms, progressively and constructively to dismiss them, not so much necessarily by deeming them inadequate as simply by gradually starving them of funding.
The Ministers who served on the Standing Committee are certainly not lacking in personal charm, and I concede that they have sought to set out their stall as a reasonable case when the details of the Bill are being considered. Only today, however, in the discussion on the disposition of training and enterprise council assets, we had an example of the mask slipping. However much Ministers may claim to be acting in defence of the public purse and, as ever, with reasonableness, there will be those--and they will not all be twisters or people trying to take away Government assets--who will feel that their services and contribution have not been acknowledged, and that the Government's means of thanking them is to rig the course and create an inequitable solution on the disposition of assets.
I come down from the high horse of principle to a more practical level in my closing remarks on our concerns about the Bill. If nothing else, Ministers have, in one Bill and at one time, set themselves the task of introducing a single framework for post-16 education and a parallel connection strategy, both of which involve the schools sector and many other providers. That is, as Sir Humphrey Appleby would no doubt have commented, "Extremely courageous, Minister."
The policy, and the Bill that has been derived from it, are increasingly seen to be assembled in kit form, before our very eyes, in Committee and in the House. Only today, a new version of the transition planning document thumped on to my desk. That process will continue as the consultations continue, until vesting day next April and long afterwards. This is a policy of continuous experiment, if not necessarily of continuous improvement.
Until this late hour, and this last gasp, we have continued to seek from Ministers, and even occasionally to receive from them, assurances. After our deliberations tonight, one final hurdle remains in another place, and after that we will leave this over-sold, over-ambitious and under-achieving Bill with some trepidation. We cast it forth to await the consequences that have not been foreseen and, more widely, the judgment of events.
12.47 am
Mr. Willis: We have spent nearly nine hours on the Bill, and of that, 15 minutes have related to its substance. From the Opposition, we have had sex, selection, division and privilege, which are key areas for a Tory Opposition, but nothing about the substance of what we should be here to discuss--educational provision for 16 to
19-year-olds and adults, which is desperately under-represented, desperately under-resourced and desperately in need of support.Anybody who read the skills taskforce report this week will be aware of the disgraceful skills situation among the adult population. The Small Business Service estimates that billions of pounds are lost because we do not have a work force with the skills to carry out the necessary tasks. Yet we have spent nine hours obsessing about sex, selection, division and privilege.
The social exclusion unit report, "Bridging the Gap", was a graphic reminder that 170,000 16 to 19-year-olds leave school with no qualifications, no hope and no nothing, but they have not been mentioned in the nine hours that we have spent discussing sex, selection, division and privilege.
As we end our consideration of the Bill, there is great sadness because this should have been a ground-breaking Bill. We sought a unified structure in post-16 lifelong learning, education and training. In 1992-93, the Tories created a marketplace. That was their answer to the problem: drive down costs and increase numbers. Everything would take its place. It has not. In reality, the Bill is a disappointment. Members on both sides of the House will share that disappointment. It has retained the narrow provision on the 16 to 19 age group. It has not extended its horizons beyond that, yet there is a classic need to address the underskilling of the adult population.
The Bill does absolutely nothing for small business, which was looking to the Bill to allow it to tap into a network to upskill our people. There is little in that regard. It has decimated the careers service into a Connexions service. We hope that that will be highly successful, but it is at the expense of an adult careers service and of careers services for people who achieve more than five A to Cs. The Bill has created a new bureaucracy that may or may not be more successful than previous ones. Through the back door, it has brought in city academies.
At midnight, I spent a few minutes doing a television programme, on which the official Opposition said that, when the Bill hit another place, all the problems in the House of Commons and previously in another place in terms of sex, grammar schools and selection would simply be regurgitated to kill off the Bill. If that happens, it will leave in limbo the TEC movement, the Further Education Funding Council and the whole of the reorganisation. The hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and her colleagues must not allow that to happen. Despite our differences, we on the Liberal Democrat Benches feel that there is enough merit in the Bill to give it its Third Reading and to support its passage back to another place.
12.52 am
Mr. Brooke: I was not able to be present at the conclusion of the Standing Committee because I was making a speech in the Second Reading debate on the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill. Therefore, I say briefly what I would have said then.
The Government had a certain choice of Ministers to put on the Bill. I will remark neutrally that I think that they chose extremely well. The three Ministers who served on the Bill served the legislation, the Committee, the Government and, indeed, Parliament well. As I said when we debated the sittings motion originally, our side necessarily had fewer resources and had less to choose
from, but we were admirably served in the leadership of the official Opposition by my hon. Friends the Members for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) and for Hertsmere (Mr. Clappison).In Committee, I enjoyed all the observations by the Liberal Democrats and by Government Back Benchers. Lest I sound like the dodo in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", handing round prizes to everyone, let me say a final word about the Bill--something that came up from time to time in Committee. The Government had assured us that it was a bottom up Bill, not a top down one. My only regret about our time in Committee and about the Bill as a whole is that the Government never sought in Committee or, indeed, on Report to justify the claims that they made for it.
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