| Previous Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |
On Question, amendments agreed to.
Baroness Perry of Southwark moved Amendment No. 44:
44: After Clause 33, insert the following new Clause—
The Secretary of State shall report annually to Parliament on the operation of this Part of this Act, with particular reference to—
(a) the effectiveness of arrangements for providing advice to young people about the range of working, training and further study opportunities which are open to them,
(b) the effectiveness of advice and support given to employers to enable them to fulfil the duties imposed on them by this Part, and
(c) the quality of learning programmes and qualifications available to young persons to whom this Part applies, and the relevance of such programmes and qualifications to the needs of young persons and employers.”
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, the Government have rightly put a great emphasis in all their public sector programmes on measuring outcomes and ensuring that things that are put in actually produce results at the end. This amendment is an attempt in small part to ensure that the effectiveness of the legislation is measured carefully and reported on widely.
I am grateful to the Confederation of British Industry, which sent a very helpful briefing on this subject. It emphasised that reporting of this kind would increase business confidence, which it feels is not at the moment entirely with the provisions of the Bill. Furthermore, the impact of the current economic crisis on the employment prospects of young people is a terribly important outcome from the provisions of the Bill, and whether the provisions work should be carefully monitored and reported. That is why I am asking in the amendment for an annual report to Parliament.
There are three categories of report, but they are not at all comprehensive; there should be other areas as well. We have talked a great deal under previous amendments about careers advice to young people. It is relevant here to quote the CBI’s employment trends survey this year. It highlighted the fact that 52 per cent of employers said that they were dissatisfied with school leavers’ knowledge about their chosen careers.
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1770
4.45 pm
Secondly, we have not talked enough about the duties being imposed on employers, which are very new. They feel a great deal of discomfort about them. The CBI says that its members are unenthusiastic about some of the provisions in the Bill. They dislike not only the idea of requirements on them to provide time off for young people to attend training courses equivalent to one day a week but that it involves police participation, checking that the young person has arranged a suitable course, and that there are enforcement notices, financial penalties and so forth. They are unhappy. They are asking for good advice and support to reassure them that they will not face financial penalties if they have acted in good faith, and that they will have good advice and help in identifying and accessing high-quality and relevant training and provision for their young employees. Above all, they would like reassurance that they can continue to employ these young people. Otherwise we will find that many employers will not want to employ them. They will say that it is too much trouble because they run the risk of incurring penalties which they do not want and that they do not have time to check on programmes themselves and so forth. The effectiveness of the advice and support given to employers to enable them to fulfil their duties is something that Parliament should be told about and should be carefully monitored by the department.
Thirdly, there is a real risk that as we impose on young people the duty to undertake education and training in their latter years—16, 17 and 18 year-olds—the quality of the learning programmes available to them will not be of the highest quality. It will still not reflect the real needs of employers. The CBI again points out that employers spend £39 billion a year on staff development. But the CBI-Edexcel education and skills survey this year highlighted that only a third of employer training leads to a recognised qualification. Therefore, the requirement that the young person must follow only government-specified training may discourage employers from taking on a young person.
The CBI emphasised that it supports the progress that the Government have made on qualification reform, but asked the Government to maintain their momentum in accrediting employers’ own in-house training and ensuring that it is easier for employers to award their own recognised qualifications. An annual progress report on the quality of the learning programmes and the relevance of these programmes to the needs of the young people themselves and their employers would be an important thing. I know that the Minister has been telling us that there is a good reason why none of the amendments that have been moved today can possibly be taken on board, but I hope that she will give a more favourable response to this one. I beg to move.
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1771
Baroness Verma: My Lords, I give strong support on behalf of the Opposition Front Bench to the amendment of my noble friend Lady Perry whose suggested annual progress reports succinctly encapsulate a number of the points that my noble friend Lady Morris and I made in Committee. The amendment covers three areas.
On the issue of practical support for firms, we pointed out in Committee that if conditions on firms are too onerous they will simply avoid employing the very people that this Bill is designed to help. Small and medium-sized enterprises are concerned that the additional costs incurred by implementing the provisions in the Bill will be considerable when set against their profit margins, especially now as we head into recession. If the Government are determined to press ahead, red tape and costs must be kept to a minimum, or the consequence will be a reluctance to employ young people.
We said in Committee that qualifications must have relevance to what the young person is trying to do. There must be a good provision of qualifications, so that he or she is not unable to follow his or her chosen path because there is only a limited number of courses open to them. Employers are more likely to find young people employable if they trust the standard of the qualification and see that is has accorded the young person some relevance to their business. These matters are crucial to the success of the Bill. My noble friend Lady Perry is right that progress on them must be reported annually to Parliament.
Baroness Garden of Frognal: My Lords, we on these Benches also support the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. The measures would be of great benefit in strengthening the Bill. It is not clear whether some would be implemented immediately or whether they would come into effect only after the Bill is implemented in 2013. However, an annual progress report would be a great asset to the Bill.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy for what the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, have said. The Government collect an enormous amount of information and statistics. It is hard to believe that we do not collect the information that would help her.
With reference to the support and advice given to employers, we are committed to working with employers, when drawing up employers’ guidance, to ensure that it is effective. I am happy to meet the noble Baroness and others to discuss how we can make sure that the plethora of information that we collect can meet people’s needs effectively. I hope that the noble Baroness will consider withdrawing her amendment.
Baroness Perry of Southwark: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that generous reply: it was not quite a refusal to accept the amendment, and it kept the issue open. I gladly accept her offer to discuss it further. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 38 [Parenting contracts and parenting orders: further provisions]:
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1772
Baroness Sharp of Guildford moved Amendment No. 45:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment No. 212. Both amendments were suggested by the National Governors’ Association. They have little in common, although they are grouped together.
Amendment No. 45 raises the issue of who is a parent, and what happens when the so-called parent of a young person, who flouts his duties under Clause 2 of the Bill, is a local authority. Clause 38(4), which comes at the end of the chapter dealing with parenting contracts and orders, defines a parent using the formulation given in Section 576 of the Education Act 1996. This excludes a person who is not an individual. The ordinary person might wonder what sort of person is not an individual. To the legal mind, the answer is obvious: institutions are sometimes defined as persons, but are not individuals. In this instance, the person who is not an individual is presumably the corporate parent; and specifically, the local authority in the guise of the corporate parent. The question therefore arises, what happens when the young person who fails to attend education or training is in local authority care? Since the local authority is responsible for monitoring what the young person is doing, and for remonstrating with the parents, who is responsible for remonstrating with the local authority? What procedures are there for making sure that the local authority fulfils its role as a responsible corporate parent? I hope that the Minister can give me a response.
The second amendment, Amendment No. 212, is about a different issue; schools forums. As the House knows, schools forums are a relatively recent innovation, introduced in the Education Act 2005. We set up procedures for the passporting of moneys for schools directly to schools’ budgets, giving local authorities no discretion on the size of the budgets. However, the allocation between schools, although formula-based, leaves a little discretion to local decision-making. This was put into the hands not of local politicians, through the local education authority, but of the newly created schools forums, to be composed of representatives of school head teachers and governors.
The guidance on schools forums issued by the department is explicit. Paragraph 1.18 of the good practice guide states that,
- “it is good practice for Schools Forums to aim for a membership structure based on an equal proportion of head teachers and governors, though this is not always possible for a variety of reasons. Nevertheless it is vital that even where equal numbers of head teachers and governors cannot be achieved there is sufficient representation of each type of schools member in each group to ensure debate within the forum is balanced and representative”.
It is clear that this is not happening in many parts of the country. The National Governors’ Association has had many complaints about this from its members. Indeed, its research has revealed that, while some authorities have equal numbers, many do not. Norfolk, for example, has a schools forum of 22, with 14 heads and, at present, only five governors. Nottinghamshire has nominally 32 members, but currently 16 heads and
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1773
There are, of course, other authorities—Oxfordshire, Durham, East Sussex and Essex—where there is parity in numbers. However, there are enough examples of where there is no parity, and where local authorities seem to be doing little to achieve it. Rather, they retreat behind the excuse that they cannot find governors to fill the slots. I have received a comment from the chair of the National Governors’ Association in response to that criticism:
“I would add that we receive comments periodically from our members about the lack of governor representation on schools forums, but have never had any suggestion from them that there are difficulties in recruiting members for this very important purpose. Most governors recognise how vital the schools forum is and want to ensure that the governor voice is present and are concerned to have parity with the heads’ representatives”.
Amendment No. 212 takes advantage of the fact that Clause 148 deals with the constitution of schools forums and seeks to tighten up the wording in relation to membership. Whereas new subsection (4A) states that the forums shall include membership representing schools’ bodies and head teachers, the amendment would ensure that, as the good practice guide suggests, there should be equal membership from both parties. I beg to move.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote: My Lords, I again declare my involvement as president of the National Governors’ Association. I support everything that was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Now that the NGA and the head teachers’ association have got together on their respective responsibilities, it seems not only fair but sensible that there should be equal numbers represented on school forums, which have quite considerable power. I cannot think of a more sensible way of going about that than through a probing amendment such as this.
There is also a slightly dubious situation when excess money sometimes comes back into the local authority. What is that to be spent on or recycled into? If an equal number of governors and head teachers cannot guide the local authority on particular needs, perhaps spending decisions might not be seen as entirely fair from an outsider’s viewpoint. Sometimes a school has unspent money in excess of some 5 per cent of its annual budget, which is not an insignificant amount.
Then there is the issue of the status of “parent”. I very much hope that my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham might provide some guidance on the situation that has been discussed of the status of “parent” in relation to people in prison. Various things happen, whereby the state may not be as good a parent as it should have been when looking after the health of the prisoners in its care. That is not a dissimilar situation to that of children in care. We know that a child in care is 10 times more likely to be excluded from school and that three out of every four children in care will leave school with no qualifications, compared to 6 per cent among the general population.
I stress these issues because they need to be looked at in more detail. It would be extremely useful to receive some guidance from the Minister.
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1774
5 pm
Lord Ramsbotham: My Lords, the point made by my noble friend Lady Howe relates to our extensive debate during the passage of the Health and Social Care Bill on the in loco parentis responsibilities of care officials for those in custody who had no real parenting, other than from those officials. We were concerned that the social care worker responsible for the young person when they went into custody remained with the young person throughout the period of custody and acted in loco parentis. The question of how those responsibilities will be exercised for those in custody relates to the whole concept of this Bill, as has been mentioned on a number of occasions. Therefore, I hope very much that when the Minister takes what has been said into account, she does not forget this important group of people, not least because they will come out of custody and back into the community. It is essential that they are picked up from that moment and receive the support outlined in the Bill.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for giving me an opportunity to do what he asks.
I shall respond quickly but, I hope, comprehensively. It would not make sense for local authorities to enter into parenting contracts and apply for parenting orders in relation to themselves. I know that I am stating the obvious, and we all understand that; I shall not labour that point.
There are separate means of enforcing the important responsibilities of local authorities, which have their own duties to promote participation for all young people, including children and young people in care. The Secretary of State has the power to give a direction to a local authority under Section 496 or 497 of the Education Act 1996 if they are failing in that duty, and that is the duty that we will be relying on when we are talking about the role of corporate parents. Looked-after children, including children in care, will be able to stay in their care placement until they are 18 if they want to. This is something important to have come out of the Children and Young Persons Act. We are flipping over the normal assumption. We will be encouraging children and young people to stay in care until the age of 18, and there has to be a very good reason for them to think about leaving. They will receive focused support to stay in learning and succeed. We will ensure that young people in care and leaving care receive information, advice and guidance tailored to their needs, particularly through the very important targeted youth support arrangements being introduced, and that their social worker or young persons adviser, as their lead professional, has access to information about the choices available to them.
On Amendment No. 212, local authorities currently decide the composition of their schools forum, and in the vast majority of areas this happens in consultation with the forum members and includes both head teachers and governors. Current regulations, as we have heard, state that school members must be elected by members of the relevant group, and local authorities with strong associations will certainly find this easier to facilitate than those without. This amendment will not change
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1775
Taking into account the comments about support for looked-after children and schools forums, I hope that the noble Baroness can withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her response. In relation to looked-after children, it is a case of “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?”. What do you do with the local authority if a child is in care but nevertheless is flouting the regulations? The Minister makes clear that it is the responsibility of the child’s social worker and that ultimately, if the local authority does not seem to be performing its duties, the Secretary of State has to step in and remonstrate with it. It is the Secretary of State who is responsible for making sure that the local authority performs its functions as the corporate parent.
I am glad that we have clarification on this. I do not know that it gives those of us who have had experience of local authorities in their responsibilities for children in care much reassurance because one knows of cases where they fall down quite badly on these duties. We know that, as a result of recent legislation, including the Children and Young Persons Act, they should be improving their performance. Let us hope that they do so. It is reassuring to know that the Secretary of State has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring that.
I am a little disappointed by what the Minister said on Amendment No. 212. Here, there is explicit legislation concerned with the constitution of schools forums, and, if I may say so, it would be so simple just to introduce the amendment that I am suggesting rather than try to achieve the same thing later through regulations. The Minister tells me that we do not need such a provision in the Bill as it can be achieved through secondary legislation, but, as she can see from the figures that I quoted, many authorities are falling down on their responsibilities. What parity of representation is there here? As I said, a very small amendment to the legislation would do the trick.
We will think about these things and consult further, but we may conceivably see the issue come back at Third Reading. I am not sure that we are satisfied that secondary legislation is sufficient but, for now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 43 [Appeal arrangements]:
Baroness Walmsley had given notice of her intention to move Amendment No. 46:
46: Clause 43, page 24, line 37, at end insert “; and
30 Oct 2008 : Column 1776
(c) to secure that, before a decision is made by an attendance panel in a person’s case, the person, or the person’s nominated representative, has an opportunity to make representations to the panel”
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I have agreed behind the scenes not to move this amendment or the others in this group in exchange for the offer of a meeting with the Minister on this subject. I hope that Barnardo’s can be included in that meeting. However, I should like to put on the record that, if I am not satisfied with the answers to the questions that I ask at that meeting, I may bring the amendments back at Third Reading. Under those circumstances, I shall not move the amendment.
Clause 45 [Offence of failure to comply with attendance notice]:
Baroness Morris of Bolton moved Amendment No. 47:
The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 48 and 49, and will also speak in support of the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Perry.
| Next Section | Back to Table of Contents | Lords Hansard Home Page |