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Alan Johnson: The answer is no and no. No, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not ruled out the Learning and Skills Council. There is a concern. If we are rubbing out the lines at 16, and increasingly for the 14 to 19 age group under Tomlinson, and we are rubbing out the lines to a certain extent at 18, the confusion between LEAs, the LSC and HEFCE must be resolved. In dealing with amendment No. 259, I mentioned a merger. There could be a merger between the LSC and HEFCE to a degree, or the LSC may become another funding body. Either way, that would require fresh primary legislation, so the amendment is unnecessary. To produce the situation that I have described, we would need primary legislation. Mr. Collins: For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister confirm that he is talking hypothetically and that he is not saying that there are plans for a merger of funding organisations or that that is contemplated? Column Number: 169 Alan Johnson: No, I am not saying that. The answer to the question about whether the Secretary of State has completely ruled out a merger is no, but that is not to say that there are active plans for a merger. Given the Tomlinson agenda and everything that is going on, it would be crazy to rule anything out when we are trying to make the system more coherent. We want there to be less bureaucracy for sixth form colleges and tertiary colleges, given that three funding bodies deal with the 14 to 19 age group. I am making that simple point. Mr. Boswell: The Minister is genuinely trying to assist the Committee and has clearly benefited from his break. Will he also deal with the point that I raised in my closing remarks about publicly funded students in private institutions, such as the university of Buckingham, or a private specialist college? Will such students or their institutions be affected by the clause? Alan Johnson: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman raised that point, because although I cannot say that I spent the whole break thinking about that issue, I did give it some thought and went back to the drawing board. I am confident that there is no problem. There is only one private university, which is Buckingham, but many institutions have private courses. Mr. James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con): The Government's policies will result in more. Alan Johnson: The hon. Gentleman says from a sedentary position that there could be more, a point raised by the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell). If there are designated courses at other private institutions, for which the state provides money, could a university set up a private institution to get round the legislation and allow unregulated fees? That is the problem raised by the hon. Gentleman. Mr. Boswell: The Minister has understood part of the problem. Equally, if a private institution in which students happened to receive support for their funding continued on that basis, and there was no malicious or clever intent to evade the legislation, would it be entrapped in the whole paraphernalia of access plans, notwithstanding the fact that it was a private institution and not receiving money directly from the funding council, but only indirectly for its students? Alan Johnson: That is much simpler. The answer is no. I have always taken the line of not saying more than necessary, but having started on this theme, I will add that I am confident that if a university tried to set up a separate institution to get round the legislation, it would know that it would be left bereft of HEFCE funding, but would it be able to establish a fees-only situation that would be quite generous? It is almost incomprehensible that any university would try to do that, given that it would not only not receive HEFCE funding or research funding from HEFCE, but would probably get no student support, because designation is entirely a matter for the Secretary of State. If designation looked like being an issue, the Secretary of State could simply stop it by refusing to designate those courses.
Column Number: 170 Having answered a question that I was not asked, I hope that I have answered the questions that I was asked and that the hon. Member for Daventry will withdraw the amendment.Mr. Boswell: It is deeply flattering and entirely undeserved that the Committee has been poised for a whole week on my amendment, but there it is. I find myself in the position of the Spanish academic who was locked up by the inquisition for five years, returned to his duties at Salamanca university and began his inaugural lecture with the phrase ''As I was saying yesterday''. However, I need not repeat my point. The Minister has characteristically tried to respond to the points and has given us some very useful clarification. The principle of amendment No. 259 is that it would add to the number of funding bodies that might impose such conditions. Although I was genuinely trying to help the Minister, if only by smoking out what was intended, I do not think that we need an extra body. As he said, if we did, we could legislate for it as part of the primary legislation. Therefore, applying—as mediaeval logic has now come back into fashion—the provisions of Occam's razor, that it is no longer necessary to multiply bodies beyond the need for them, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 22 ordered to stand part of the Bill. The Chairman: I should have said at the start of the proceedings that the hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell indicated to me most courteously that he might have to leave the Committee at some point during the morning for reasons that I know we all understand. If he does so, he will take the Committee's good wishes with him to his wife. We now come to clause 23. The Committee has got used to my unsubtle ways by now. As this is a complex issue and the amendments are inter-related, I shall allow a fairly wide-ranging debate on the understanding that there will almost certainly be no stand part debate. However, that is not carte blanche to have another Second Reading debate on the Bill. I expect remarks to be confined to the clause, if only because other important matters arise later in the Bill.
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