The
Committee consisted of the following
Members:
Blunkett,
Mr. David
(Sheffield, Brightside)
(Lab)
Brooke,
Annette
(Mid-Dorset and North Poole)
(LD)
Drew,
Mr. David
(Stroud)
(Lab/Co-op)
Flint,
Caroline
(Don Valley)
(Lab)
Gibb,
Mr. Nick
(Bognor Regis and Littlehampton)
(Con)
Heyes,
David
(Ashton-under-Lyne)
(Lab)
Holloway,
Mr. Adam
(Gravesham)
(Con)
Hoyle,
Mr. Lindsay
(Chorley)
(Lab)
Laws,
Mr. David
(Yeovil)
(LD)
McCafferty,
Chris
(Calder Valley)
(Lab)
McCarthy,
Kerry
(Bristol, East)
(Lab)
Meale,
Mr. Alan
(Mansfield)
(Lab)
Rifkind,
Sir Malcolm
(Kensington and Chelsea)
(Con)
Whittingdale,
Mr. John
(Maldon and East Chelmsford)
(Con)
Wiggin,
Bill
(Leominster)
(Con)
Wright,
Mr. Iain
(Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
Children, Schools and
Families)Mick Hillyard,
Committee Clerk
attended
the Committee
First
Delegated Legislation
Committee
Monday 22
March
2010
[Mr.
Mike Hancock in the
Chair]
Draft
Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 (Consequential
Amendments) (England and Wales) Order
2010
4.30
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families (Mr. Iain Wright): I beg to
move,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Apprenticeships, Skills,
Children and Learning Act 2009 (Consequential Amendments) (England and
Wales) Order
2010.
The
Chair: Before we begin, anybody who wants to take off
their coat or anything else may do
so.
Mr.
Alan Meale (Mansfield) (Lab): Other than a coat, what
else?
The
Chair: You may shed whatever you choose, Mr.
Meale. I know that with your inventive mind, that could lead to
anything.
We
could take the orders together or consider them successively for an
hour and a half each. I know that the Minister and Mr. Gibb
are eager to give us lengthy presentations on the merits of each. Is it
the wish of the Committee to take the orders
together?
Mr.
David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside) (Lab): Yes, let us
take them
together.
The
Chair: I am delighted to see you with us, Mr.
Blunkett. Is that the wish of the
Committee?
The
Chair: In that case, it will be convenient to consider the
draft Local Education Authorities and Childrens Services
Authorities (Integration of Functions) Order 2010 with the
motion.
Mr.
Wright: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship
again, Mr. Hancock. If my hon. Friend the Member for
Mansfield wants to take off anything other than his coat, I request
that it be put to the Committee for a
vote.
Both
orders were laid before Parliament last month. I shall set out briefly
what each order seeks to do. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and
Learning Act 2009 (Consequential Amendments) (England and Wales)
Order 2010 has three principal objectives. It will enact a
necessary and technical part of the parliamentary reform process that
was set in motion when the 2009 Act received Royal Assent. The 2009 Act
made provision for
the replacement of the Learning and Skills Council with two new systems
to drive forward pre and post-19 education and skills. That change was
debated comprehensively during the Bills passage through
Parliament last year. The changes will take effect from 1 April 2010.
The order will provide for further consequential amendments to primary
legislation that were not covered by the 2009
Act.
The
first objective of the order is to repeal all remaining references to
the Learning and Skills Council for England in primary legislation. In
most cases, such references will be replaced by references to the chief
executive of the Skills Funding Agency, the Young Peoples
Learning Agency or local authorities, depending on which is the
appropriate
body.
Secondly,
the 2009 Act creates a new sixth-form college sector. Existing further
education corporations can be redesignated as sixth-form college
corporations and new sixth-form college corporations can be established
to run institutions that cater mainly for those of sixth-form age. So
that new sixth-form colleges are recognised in existing legislation,
the order will replace any reference to further education corporations
with a reference to sixth-form college corporations or sixth-form
colleges.
Finally,
the order will make technical amendments to the Childcare Act 2006.
Those are needed to give full effect to section 199 of the 2009 Act,
which inserts provisions into the 2006 Act about the inspection of
childrens centres by Ofsted. The order amends the
2006 Act so that the definitions of the terms
prescribed and regulations apply to the
new regulation-making powers on the inspection of childrens
centres.
Subject
to the approval of the House, we intend to bring the consequential
amendments order into force at the same time as the main provisions of
the 2009 Act on 1 April
2010.
The
draft Local Education Authorities and Childrens Services
Authorities (Integration of Functions) Order 2010 will bring
primary legislation into line with current policy and practice, and
remove the scope for confusion. Since the Children Act 2004, the local
authority departments responsible for education and childrens
social care have been integrated under a single director of
childrens services, rendering the term local education
authority obsolete. The order removes reference to the terms
local education authority and childrens
services authority, which was introduced by the Children
Act 2004. Those terms are replaced with the single term
local authority, thereby bringing the terminology used
in primary legislation in line with current policy and practice. I hope
the Committee agrees that these changes, which have the support of the
Local Government Association, are straightforward and
sensible.
The
term local education authority has had a long history
in primary legislation. In the vast majority of cases, replacing
local education authority with local
authority is straightforward, but in some cases, it has not
been possible to do so. For example, some provisions in the Children
Act 1989 would now state that the local authority should consult the
local authority. I believe that the intention of that Act when it was
originally drafted and debated was to ensure that staff in local
authority education departments worked closely with their colleagues in
local authority childrens social services. We have, of course,
dealt with that through the Children
Act 2004. As I said earlier, that Act created the post of
director of childrens services, which is responsible for
both.
So,
where the effect would be that the local authority must consult the
local authority, we have repealed the relevant provision or made it
clear that it applies only to consultation between different
authorities. In addition, there are several cases in legislation that
refer to the functions of a local education authority. If that
expression was changed just to refer to the functions of a local
authority, there is a risk that it might include everything that a
local authority does. To deal with that issue we have introduced the
concept of the education functions of the local authority, which
mirrors the existing concept of the social services functions of the
local authority and enables us to dispense with the term local
education authority without changing the meaning of the
original legislation. The bulk of the order deals with somewhat
out-of-date terms such as
those.
The
intention is clear: to retain the original meaning by using terminology
that is current and relatively accessible. We intend that the
integration of functions order will come into force five weeks after it
is signed. At the same time, another order amending subordinate
legislation will also come into force, which will be subject to
negative resolution. I hope that I have explained the orders
sufficiently to get the Committees approval. I look forward to
taking questions from hon. Friends and hon. Members, and I commend the
orders to the
Committee.
4.37
pm
Mr.
Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con): As the
Minister so ably explained, these ordersparticularly the first
onewere made as a consequence of the Apprenticeships, Skills,
Children and Learning Act 2009. It is good to see so many Labour
Members in their places because, as many hon. Members will recall, on
some early Thursday mornings when the Bill went through Committee,
there were not as many hon. Members in their place as there are today.
Those hon. Members are very
welcome.
The
2009 Act came hot on the heels of the Education and Skills Act 2008,
the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the Education Act
2005, the Education Act 2002, the Learning and Skills Act
2000 and the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. It is good to see
the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside in his place. He was
responsible for a number of those pieces of
legislation.
It
is impossible to forget that the 2009 Act, to which the order relates,
has already been followed by yet another Billthe Children,
Schools and Families Billwhich is still making its way through
another place. Each Bill and Act brings not just clauses and schedules,
such as the 270 clauses and 16 schedules of the 2009 Act,
but a deluge of regulations, guidance, consequential amendments and
further statutory instruments. We are yet to discover what that
whirlwind of activity has achieved. After nearly 13 years of this
Government and billions of pounds of taxpayers money, the
education system still fails far too many children. The Government have
failed to tackle the problems that lie at the root of under-achievement
in too many schools. Those problems will not be resolved by passing yet
another law, and strangling our schools with ever-increasing layers of
bureaucracy will not fix our education system.
The order,
which deals with amendments to primary legislation, is symptomatic of
the Governments haphazard and hurried approach to law-making.
These changes should have been made in the original Bill, rather than
by issuing secondary legislation to amend primary legislation a year
later. The use of Henry VIII clauses, such as clause 265 of the 2009
Act, is not an approach to legislating that we on the Opposition Bench
supports. This is by no means the only statutory instrument that the
Government are hurrying through Parliament before the election. The
House of Lords Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee included a
special section in its report of 23 February complaining about the
number of statutory instruments laid before the Committee since the
Christmas recess. Almost double the number of affirmative and negative
resolution statutory instruments were laid in January 2010 compared
with January 2004 to 2009. Statutory instruments subject to the
affirmative procedure usually make up around 10 per cent. of the
instruments considered by the Committee, but in January 2010 nearly 60
per cent. of the instruments laid were affirmative. The report
stated:
The
Committee understands the apparent desire of Ministers and their
departments to clear the decks of affirmative
instruments ahead of the forthcoming general election. But the end of
the Parliament is not coming as a surprise to Departments, and better
planning to avoid such a surge in affirmatives should have been
possible.
The
Committee went on to
say:
The
number of instruments has made it more difficult for this
Committee effectively to fulfil its responsibility to the House of
sifting instruments and identifying any significant issues.
It also makes it more difficult for this House,
and the Commons, to ensure that every instrument is examined with
appropriate
care.
Setting
aside the affirmative instruments, we must also consider those laid
using the negative resolution procedure. An analysis by the House of
Commons Journal Office has shown that the Department for Children,
Schools and Families alone has laid 19 negative instruments so far this
calendar year, which is almost two a week. Furthermore, the flood of
instruments shows no sign of easing. If the pattern proceeding the 2005
election is repeated, the number of negative instruments laid before
the House will only increase in the coming weeks. I am looking at
various officials to see whether that is
true.
The
Chair: I have to draw you back
here.
Mr.
Gibb: I take your point, Mr. Hancock. With the
deluge of secondary legislation being rushed out by the Government, it
is becoming more and more difficult for the instruments to receive the
appropriate level of scrutiny. I am talking about not just members of
this Committee scrutinising this particular instrument, but those
outside the House who may wish to comment on the mass of
instruments.
The
order seeks to replace references to the Learning and Skills Council
for England with a reference to the chief executive of the Skills
Funding Agency, the Young Peoples Learning Agency and the local
authorities as appropriate. We were opposed to the introduction of such
bodies during the debates on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and
Learning Bill last year, and we are opposed to them now. At the time, I
quoted from my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr.
Willetts), who said of the Bill that
it reveals the
besetting problem of a decaying Government coming to the end of their
term: when in doubt, reorganise...Even worse than that, they are
now reorganising their own reorganisations, and changing the
institutions that they themselves created
earlier.[Official Report, 23 February 2009; Vol.
488, c.
115.]
We
debated our opposition to the creation of a host of new quangos during
the Committee stage of the Bill last year, and I will not repeat those
arguments again today. However, I will repeat my concerns that this
move from one quango to three should not lead to disproportionate
cost.
The noble
Baroness Morgan, the Under-Secretary of State for the DCSF, stated in
another place on Monday that
there
will be short-term costs in reducing the premises of the estate of the
LSC, currently estimated at about £36.8
million.
Added to that are further
one-off costs of
£3 million to standardise the terms of transfer to local
authorities, and £3 million for pensions.
[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 March 2010; Vol.
718, c.
GC216.]
That
adds up to £42.8 million, which could have been spent on almost
1,300 extra teachers in the classroom. In times of necessary
constraints on budgets, that seems to be a wasteful use of scarce
resources.
The
Government claimed during the passage of the Bill that creating three
quangos from one will slim down bureaucracy, but the noble Baroness
Lady Morgan said
that
no
additional staff are being recruited, other than to fill vacancies,
which we would expect, in respect of functions that are transferring
from the LSC to other bodies[Official Report, House
of Lords, 15 March 2010; Vol. 718,
c.216.]
Will
the Minister confirm to this House that there will not be an increase
in the number of staff as a result of those moves, which are being
notarised by the order that we are debating
today.
The
order was laid to tidy up loose ends from one of this
Governments many Bills, which increased the layers of bloated
bureaucracy, burdening both schools and teachers. The
Governments priorities in the Act are diametrically opposed to
the real need for reform in our schools and to greater freedom from
bureaucracy, greater choice for parents, greater autonomy for heads and
greater budgetary responsibility for schools. For that reason, we must
wait not only for a new order, Bill or Act, but for a new
Government.
I have one
final point on the draft Local Education Authorities and
Childrens Services Authorities (Integration of Functions) Order
2010, relating to the correction that was made after the statutory
instrument was published to amend the words local education
authority to local authorityeven his
statutory instrument cannot get the terminology right first off. Could
the Minister confirm that there are no other errors in that large
statutory instrument that makes that name change in several pieces of
legislation currently on the statute
book?
4.45
pm
Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): It is a pleasure
to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Hancock. I agree with
many of the comments made by the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton, although I will not go into so much detail. Clearly, the
matters before us tidy up an Act that has only just been enacted, but
some haste is required because the changes will be brought in on 1
April, so it seems that there has been a complete lack of timeliness.
I, too, question the cost implications of the new quangos. I know that
that point was addressed in the other place, but it is important that
we have the answers on the record here on costs and the number of
staff.
I have a
specific query following a point I picked up in the Select Committee on
Children, Schools and Families. As I recall, the Secretary of State
said that the Young Peoples Learning Agency would establish
regional offices to offer support and challenge to the growing number
of academies. I cannot feel that that will have no resource
implications and will come about as a consequence of the YPLA being set
up, so I seek clarification from the Minister on that large and
entirely new function of the YPLA.
With regard to
the draft Local Education Authorities and Childrens Services
Authorities (Integration of Functions) Order 2010, it clearly makes
sense to tidy up the vast array of legislation that we have had in the
past 13 years on education. The Children Act 2004 is obviously of great
significance, and it is potentially very important if we can get its
proposals working well and all the relevant agencies working together,
but I feel that something was lacking from that Act that the Government
have still not addressed: housing was not taken as a separate strategic
partner for the childrens trusts. I am sorry that it has not
been picked up in the tidying-up action.
I am wary that
the redefinition to local authority could lead to some
confusion on childrens issues. Wherever one has a two-tier
authorityI speak from experienceit is extremely
difficult to solve the problems of housing for a family with a disabled
child, for example. There is a host of matters that means that housing
must be a core partner. The local authority could be said to be that
core partner, but that is no longer the case with housing associations.
I feel that they are left out of the loop and seek clarification on the
term local authority, because clearly that goes beyond
education and social service functions when we are talking about
children. Play, of course, is often dealt with by district councils, so
I want to ensure that we pick up all the functions that cover children,
but without counting every council every time there is some reference
to education and social services. When we are saying that all bodies
have to work together, it is important that we include all the core
partners in the definitions, and I do not think housing provided by
housing associations and other such bodies is currently covered. I
leave those points with the Minister to respond
to.
The
Chair: In the absence of any other Members eagerly rushing
to their feet, including Mr. Holloway, I call the
Minister.
4.50
pm
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families (Mr. Iain Wright): I thank the hon.
Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton for his courtesy in asking
questions and for mentioning the fact that a distinguished former
Secretary of State for Education and Employment is a member of this
Committee: my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside. I
rise with some trepidation. I am so glad that he did not try to catch
your eye, Mr. Hancock.
Let me deal
promptly with the points that have been raised. The hon. Gentleman
knows that the use of the affirmative resolution procedure, which was
promised by the Government during the passage of the Apprenticeships,
Skills, Children and Learning Bill, thereby allowing the Committee to
debate consequential amendments, is a necessary, essential and
effective part of parliamentary scrutiny, freeing up time to debate the
substance of a Bill in Committee and allowing technical amendments to
be dealt with thereafter. That is an important part of democracy and it
helps streamline the process as much as possible. I think that the hon.
Gentleman knows
that.
The
hon. Gentleman mentioned somewhat churlishly the fact that education
standards have not risen. Now is not the time to debate education
standards, other than to say that the proportion of students earning
five good GCSEs or more has doubled since 1997. There have been
enormous advances in the fabric of school buildings, the quality of
teaching, the professionalism of the work force and standards for
students. The fact that we are celebrating record historic levels of
participation in education and training for 16 and 17-year-olds is real
cause for
celebration.
The
hon. Gentleman focused mainly on costs. I understand his point about
ensuring that there are short-term costs in the region of £37
million to make the transition from the Learning and Skills Council to
the Skills Funding Agency and the Young Peoples Learning
Agency. He cited a debate in another place, involving my noble friend
Baroness Morgan, but he failed to mention the full quote from my noble
Friend, so let me put it on the
record:
I
reiterate that, over time, those changes are expected to generate net
annual savings of £77 million from rationalisation of premises,
IT, shared services and streamlined contracting and data collection
processes. The new system is expected to be revenue-neutral for
providers, with prudential savings through reduced
bureaucracy.[Official Report, House of Lords, 15
March 2010; Vol. 718, c.
GC216.]
In the
medium term, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, the
machinery-of-government changes will produce substantial savings to the
public
purse.
The
hon. Gentleman asked whether I can confirm that there will be an
increase in the number of staff. I can confirm that there will be no
increase in the number of staff as a result of the
machinery-of-government changes. I hope that that reassures
him.
The hon. Member
for Mid-Dorset and North Poole made an important point about housing. I
have mentioned that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield,
Brightside was a formidable Education Secretary. May I also pay tribute
to my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, my former boss, who
was a brilliant Housing Minister when I was in the Department for
Communities and Local Government? The hon. Lady makes an important
point about housing associations and makes the argument in respect of
machinery-of-government changes for me. Agencies cannot rely on looking
at things in silos, with education over here and housing over there,
for example. The raison dAŠtre of the
machinery-of-government changes, and the powers to commission
wraparound services for young people from birth to 19, is designed
directly to focus on the integrated commissioning of youth services.
That is exactly the right
point.
The
hon. Lady says that housing associations are somewhat out of the loop.
I disagree. Committee members should not forget that the Housing Act
2004 gave local authorities the strategic responsibility for housing in
their area. The local authorities will have an important part to play,
whether in respect of housing or education, in working out what is
needed for young people. The machinery-of-government changes that the
ASCAL Act brings into play will help to take that on to the next step.
Housing is key part of that strategy. I can write to the Committee and
the hon. Lady to clarify and confirm that. Housing associations play a
key
part.
I
detect that the Committee is largely in favour of the consequential
amendments. I hope that I have dealt with hon. Members points.
I commend the orders to the
House.
Question
put and agreed
to.
Draft
LOCAL EDUCATION AUTHORITIES AND CHILDRENS SERVICES AUTHORITIES
(INTEGRATION OF FUNCTIONS) ORDER
2010
Resolved,
That
the Committee has considered the draft Local Education Authorities and
Childrens Services Authorities (Integration Of Functions) Order
2010.(Mr.
Wright.)
4.56
pm
Committee
rose.