Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 20th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

Clearly, the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire has had precisely the same thought that we have, and indeed as many other educators, peers and businesses have had, namely that we should make the Bill actually do what the Government try to pretend that it does: set up Skills England.

As I said in the last sitting, the Bill, as introduced, did not even mention Skills England, the reason for which is that it is part of the Department for Education—in fact, its chief executive officer is a pair of DFE civil servants. Ministers have made their case for this in-sourcing, as they think it will make things faster, and we have made our case for using independents, but so have lots of others. For example, as the Labour peer Baroness Blower pointed out,

“the appropriate move from where we are would be to a statutory body”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC90.]

That is the effect of new clause 2; the powers that would be transferred to the Secretary of State would instead be vested in Skills England. The Labour peer Lord Knight has pointed out:

“The problem that some of us have with the Bill is that it feels like the second half is missing. The second half is the establishment of Skills England as a statutory body.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC87.]

That is effectively what new clause 3 would do.

In the previous sitting, I quoted from various industry bodies that are making the case for independence, including the Institute of the Motor Industry and the Construction Industry Training Board. Since then, further evidence has been submitted to the Committee by those on the education side. The University of Winchester, in its submission to the Committee, highlights “four core concerns”, one of which is about independence. It says:

“The transfer of power from IfATE to the Secretary of State for Education raises questions about the independence of the proposed Skills England regulatory body. We believe that the integration within the Department for Education (DfE) is a significant risk, with the current regulatory body being completely independent of external leverage. The current IfATE structure includes a regulatory board which is independent from the DfE, ensuring that outside influence is minimised within the decision-making process. We are, therefore, recommending that Skills England is structured to ensure and protect their regulatory independence from Government and other agencies”.

That is the spirit of our new clauses.

The University of Winchester also worries that in IfATE, at present,

“employers and academics come together to ensure that the standard is industry relevant, current, and academically rigorous. Within the current proposed bill, we believe this breadth will be at risk given the transfer of power from IfATE to an individual in the Secretary of State for Education. This transfer has the potential to lead to situations where ministers can create and/or change standards and assessment plans without consultation with the relevant stakeholders, resulting in apprenticeships which are not fit for purpose or academically appropriate.”

It also notes:

“Currently, IfATE as a regulatory body highlights the importance of technical education, through both its name and its work. The proposed legislation will effectively remove the prominence of this important aspect of industry, undermining its activities and relegating it to the background.”

The university is completely right. Setting up an institute was a core part of the drive to create greater prestige and esteem for technical education, and our new clauses aim to restore that degree of independence from the Secretary of State.

New clause 3(c) and (e)(i) also try to highlight, via an annual report, how the Secretary of State is steering Skills England, and how the body is responding to that. I mentioned earlier the Skills Federation’s submission to the Committee, which brings together 18 employer-led skills bodies and 150,000 employers. Its submission notes:

“The clauses in the bill which transfer powers from IFATE to the Secretary of State risk shifting the development of standards further away from employer demand…Too much centralisation leads to a lack of focus on sector needs.”

Surely that is right, which is why we propose a degree of decentralisation with these new clauses.

In a previous sitting, the Minister made the argument that the Secretary of State might need to write standards directly without external input from a group of people in fast-moving and technology sectors. We argued, in contrast, that those are precisely the kind of exciting sectors where industry input, rather than just ministerial enthusiasm, is most needed. That same argument was made to the Committee by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium—the international professional body for cybersecurity—which wrote:

“While ISC2 understands that Government is seeking to introduce flexibility and agility in the way apprenticeship standards are developed, we contend that without industry involvement in the development of standards, there is a risk that apprenticeships may not adequately reflect the evolving needs of certain sectors. This is especially true for cybersecurity where a changing threat landscape and dramatic shifts brought about by emerging technologies means that apprenticeship standards must stay relevant. It is essential that the voice of professionals and industry, as well as those directly involved in delivering educational provision, be heard whenever the Secretary of State exercises these new powers. Any decision to intervene and directly develop or approve apprenticeship standards or assessment plans should take into account the perspectives of those with hands-on expertise in the sector.”

That is surely right.

We have already voted on a very similar new clause to this—new clause 1, tabled by the hon. Member for St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire—so we will not press this to a vote. But I want to log the concerns that are being raised by professionals and those in industry about the lack of independence, and I do hope—even though I suspect that the Government will not change their mind about bringing this into the Department—that they can at least find ways in its operating procedures and the way it evolves to try to create that sense of independence, and reassure all those who are worried about the idea of the Secretary of State taking the powers in this Bill to go it alone and write things without the input of those who are actually working in the sector.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I rise to speak in favour of the new clause in the name of my hon. Friend the shadow Minister. He is right; of course, we have just voted on something quite similar, and that vote was lost by the classic 11 to four margin, with which we have become familiar. But that does not mean the Government cannot do this, and indeed there have been some signs and indications that they might make Skills England a fully independent body on a statutory footing. Most people talk about Skills England in their speeches, but that is not what the Bill, as introduced, does; it abolishes something without actually creating something else, and hands the powers to the Secretary of State, in whose gift it is to hand on.

There was also the question that came up last Thursday about Ofqual, and what the Bill does to that, which I do not think we were 100% clear about. I think the Minister was going to write, but I do not think I have seen that letter—that is not to say it has not come, or been sent, but I am wondering if when the Minister comes to speak, if she could confirm whether that letter has come.

There have always been two fundamental questions about the Bill and the creation of Skills England: the first is about independence, and the second is about who should set the expectations and standards for various occupations—should it be the employers in those organisations or somebody else? There is also a third point, which is relevant to independence, about the heft of this body, putting skills right at the heart of cross-departmental work, and what statutory independence would do to the status of this body.

Particularly in education and training, one of the reasons that we have independent bodies is so that everybody knows that the standards are robust, they cannot be subject to political pressure, and there cannot be a temptation to make it a bit easier to get over a hurdle to make the numbers look better. We have had that system of independence for a very long time, and do to this day, and still will in the future for academic qualifications. As I said the other day, I think independence of this body is important to underpinning parity of esteem. IfATE is legally established as a non-departmental public body, whereas Skills England will be, as things stand, an executive agency. As a non-departmental public body, IfATE does therefore have some independence from the Department for Education because its functions and responsibilities are set out in legislation approved by this Parliament, whereas Skills England, as things stand, will simply be an integral part or unit within DFE.

When Skills England was first talked about in the King’s Speech, it seemed that it would be established as an independent body. As well as my question on Ofqual, the first of my other questions to the Minister is, what has changed? If that was the intent—perhaps we have all just misread the text—what is different now, that it should not be? Finally, if it is right for the Industrial Strategy Advisory Council to be put on a statutory footing, why is it not for Skills England?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Janet Daby)]

New clause 2 would impose a requirement on the Secretary of State to establish Skills England as a statutory body with a separate legal identity. It would transfer the functions the Secretary of State takes on under the Bill to a new body within 12 months.

The new clause would undo significant progress already made by the Government to establish Skills England. It has been operating in shadow form since July of last year. It is ready to take on the functions conferred by the Bill. I reassure Members that we considered different options for the model of arm’s length body for Skills England. It being an executive agency allows us to move fast, much faster than the previous Government did for 14 years. Skills England can take immediate action to plug the skills gaps that this Government have inherited, and we are focused on economic growth. An executive agency balances the independent Skills England’s need to deliver its functions at arm’s length from the Department with being close enough to inform decisions on skills, policy and delivery. That is good practice for all new arm’s length bodies.

The Department for Education will undertake a review of Skills England. The review will take place about 18 to 24 months after it is fully established, and that will align with the requirements of any future Cabinet Office review programme. It will consider how far Skills England is delivering its functions in the way intended; whether its mix of functions is still aligned to Government priorities; and whether there are alternative ways to deliver the Government’s objectives, including a different model of arm’s length body.

Delay, however, is not an option. We need to respond urgently to critical issues in the skills system to drive growth and spread opportunity. To encourage this Committee, in the first set of apprenticeship statistics under the new Labour Government, we saw an increase in starts, participation and achievements compared with the same period under the Tories in 2023. We remain an ambitious Labour Government. We do not dither or delay, and we urgently need reform to deliver the skills and technical education that is needed. That is what the Bill and Skills England will enable us to do.

New clause 3 would create a duty on the Secretary of State to publish an annual report setting out Skills England’s activities in the preceding year. It would also require Skills England to have regard to matters such as the quality of training and education, and value for money when performing its duties.

Well-established requirements are already placed on executive agencies for a high level of transparency and accountability in how they operate. That includes the publication of a framework document which, as I have mentioned, is a core constitutional document. It will be agreed between the Department for Education and Skills England in accordance with HM Treasury’s handbook “Managing public money”. Once finalised, it will be published online and a copy deposited in both Houses.

The Secretary of State, and Skills England acting on their behalf, is already obliged under general public law to take into account all relevant matters when exercising their functions. Those relevant matters are likely to include the ones in new clause 3. While the Bill was scrutinised in the other place, as I have said, my right hon. Friend the Baroness Smith of Malvern, shared a draft copy of the Skills England framework document with peers. She committed to include references to the need for Skills England to deliver its functions efficiently and effectively, and to ensure that training is high quality and provides good value for money.

In response to the right hon. Member for East Hampshire on Ofqual, the letter concerning Ofqual has been sent to the Chair of the Committee, and also addresses other issues raised by the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston last Thursday.

I am happy to repeat the commitments that I have already mentioned, but finally, I would like to say there is precedent for non-departmental public bodies being closed and their functions being reassigned to newly formed executive bodies. For example, under the previous Government in 2011, the Standards and Testing Agency was established as an executive agency taking on functions from the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, a non-departmental public body, which was later closed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

It is a shame, as this is the last day of this Bill Committee. I do not know whether the letter could be produced before we finish today, but otherwise, those questions will effectively go unanswered because they have not made their way to Committee members. But this was a minor point about the interaction with clause 8 and the decision to bring Ofqual in potentially for T-levels, so I will turn squarely to T-levels now.

I was encouraged by the positive words about T-levels in the curriculum review, but it is very difficult to get a new qualification going, never mind a whole new system, which is what T-levels were intended to be in their initiation by Lord Sainsbury. After the big long debate on BTecs, Ministers in the end decided to add T-levels into the existing alphabet soup of qualifications rather than use them to replace and rationalise that system, which was the original goal of Lord Sainsbury’s project. I should declare an interest in so far as I worked on T-levels back when they were still known as Sainsbury routes. None the less it would still, despite the Ministers’ decision, be possible for them to grow and become a leading part of the system, but that would require a huge push from Ministers. It is difficult to get a new qualification going, never mind a whole new system, and it is much more likely that in the absence of a big push from Ministers that they will stagnate as an interesting, well-regarded and quality niche, but ultimately a small part of the system, which was really not what was intended.

For several years, the DFE has provided a 10% uplift to the funding rates for T-levels as a new qualification, but a couple of weeks ago the Government implied that they would stop doing that this year. They have not made a decision, and providers are now desperate for certainty on that issue. I ask the Minister directly to respond to this: will the 10% uplift be continued or not after this academic year? The sector is now making decisions about this, and urgently needs certainty. The Minister keeps saying that she wants to move fast: the providers, and I am asking her to move fast to give them the certainty on what the funding rate will be, and whether the 10% will continue, because if not, my strong sense is that many providers will conclude that it is not really a priority any more, and not worth the investment of time and resources, which are significant to get these things going. I hope the Minister can address that point, and I give her a bit of notice: will the 10% continue or not—yes or no?

The Government are notionally in a one-year “pause” on the move to replace BTecs, which should give the Government time at least to make up their mind on how they see the future of T-levels. If they want to preserve the option to be ambitious for T-levels, however, they need to keep supporting them now. Those of us who worked on their development and who still support them are not blind to the challenges. Although drop-out rates fell sharply in the last year, they are still high. Even though T-levels are meant to be a demanding qualification, we want young people to get to the end of them.

Although the huge element of work experience is a key advantage and attraction of T-levels to learners, it is expensive and hard to deliver, particularly in a way that is slick and gives clarity to students up front, rather than gives stress. I do not say this every day, but Gordon Brown was right to press the Government to be more ambitious here—

[Damian Hinds]

Hear, hear.

[Neil O’Brien]

We do not always cheer Gordon Brown on the Conservative Benches, but on that occasion he was absolutely right. Lord Sainsbury, too, is right to want to be ambitious. A huge amount of thought went into T-levels over a long period and on a cross-party basis. They have great potential to rationalise the system and to do what politicians have said for decades they want to do, which is to create a prestigious and clear alternative to the academic A-level route. At the moment, however, T-levels are still a fledgling qualification. They have great potential, but they are in need of a lot of care and attention.

My worry is that, amid all the commotion and disruption caused by the transfer of IfATE staff into the Department, that attention will be lost at the critical moment in the development of T-levels. The looming withdrawal of the 10% compounds my worries that attention will be lost at this critical moment. Our new clause therefore aims to ensure that the spotlight stays on T-levels, so that they do not get lost in all the reorganisation, that we preserve at least the option for them to become a widespread and leading qualification on the technical side, and that we achieve Lord Sainsbury’s vision of a more prestigious and higher-funded set of qualifications, more intelligible to employers, and with simpler routes and much more work experience. There is so much potential in T-levels that it would be a tragedy if they got lost in this reorganisation. That is why we are moving the new clause: to ensure that we continue to closely monitor everything going on with them.

New clause 5 concerns higher education. The Government talk about Skills England bringing everything together, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire has pointed out, we can never quite do that—there are always other bodies and overlaps. In this case, for starters, we will have two continuing levy training bodies, the Construction Industry Training Board, or CITB, and the Engineering Industry Training Board, or EITB, as well as the many other bodies that my right hon. Friend mentioned—I am thinking about those involved in skills and supply, which includes the Migration Advisory Committee, as well as the workforce strategies of other Departments, such as the NHS long-term workforce plan, which spans technical education, higher education and apprenticeships.

The other big case in point, of course, is the overlap between the work of IfATE and the future Skills England, and the regulators of higher education. In our previous sitting, we talked about the welcome growth of higher apprenticeships and the Government’s imminent plans to axe them, which we are concerned about, particularly after so much work has gone into them. That is why new clause 5 would require a report on the impact of the Bill on higher education.

The Bill is about apprenticeships and technical education rather than higher education, but the two have become increasingly overlapping. The number of people on higher apprenticeships went up from a little over 3,000 in 2010 to 273,000 last year—a huge increase. For some universities, providing degree apprenticeships has become a very important part of their work.

I will not recapitulate the things I talked about in the previous sitting, but level 7 apprenticeships are a powerful tool to enable people to earn while they learn, and to allow employers the freedom to shape higher education to their needs. Employers are choosing—with their own money—to invest in level 7 skills. It would be false to assume that a reduction in funding here would lead to an increase in the lower levels. Contrary to the claims that are sometimes made, level 7 apprenticeships do not cater primarily to major corporations. Less than 10% of level 7 apprentices are in FTSE 350 companies. Level 7 apprenticeships in health and care are a hugely important part of the NHS workforce pipeline. In a previous sitting, I talked about how axing those apprenticeships would blow a hole in the NHS plan over the long term, equivalent to 11,000 senior nursing posts, but that would start right now, as there were 2,040 level 7 apprenticeships starts in health, public services and care in 2023-24.

The creation of the apprenticeship levy had two purposes: to stop employers that do the right thing and invest in their people from being exploited by employers that do not, and instead just wait to poach their staff once they are trained; and to make sure that employers drove and owned the system. Now that they do drive and own the system, we see that their revealed preference is to spend their money on higher and degree apprenticeships.

The growth has been spectacular. Between 2018-19 and 2023-24, higher and degree apprenticeship starts grew by 63%, while the growth in level 7 apprenticeship starts was even higher, at 105%. That growth was even faster in some critical sectors. Level 7 apprenticeships in health, public services and care grew 716%. Significant extensions occurred in construction, planning and environment, where they went up by more than 700%, and in digital technology, where they went up nearly 600%. Both are key skills areas for our economy and both are supposed to be key parts of the Government’s industrial strategy.

The Bill changes the balance between the voices of employers and the voices of Ministers. Degree and level 7 apprenticeships are a good example of how ministerial priorities can be very different from employer priorities. I will not repeat the criticisms from lots of employers that I read out in a previous sitting—I quoted the Institute of Chartered Accountants, the Chartered Management Institute, several solicitors’ firms and those providing higher apprenticeships into local government and the NHS. In this sitting, I want to look at the other side of the ledger and consider the impact on universities, which is the purpose of new clause 5.

I have said before that we would never accept the lack of independence for the academic side that the Bill proposes for technical education. We would not have Ministers setting the curriculums, specifications and exams for GCSEs and then taking on the role of Ofqual and marking their own homework. We would not allow the same for higher education either, in general, but there is a growing overlap between IfATE, which is to be centralised into the DFE, and higher education, which has all kinds of implications.

The context for higher education is a challenging one. The Government have increased fees, but wiped out the gains from that by increasing national insurance, meaning a real-terms cut in resources for universities this year. With widespread industrial action in the sector looming, the Government have also chosen this moment to dramatically lower the threshold for strike action with the Employment Rights Bill. To now axe level 7 apprenticeships, and potentially also level 6, would be very destabilising for universities and could whack institutions that have tried to do the right thing for their community and for those who do not traditionally go to university.

Sixty-six universities now deliver level 7 apprenticeship standards, and some have got really into it. Prestigious institutions such as Cranfield, a postgrad-only institution with deep industry links, will be hugely exposed if the Government wield the axe in the way they are planning—I suspect that level 7 accounts for a very large part of Cranfield’s UK students. Likewise, York St John University has something in the order of 100 level 7 apprenticeships. Other institutions that are heavily involved include the Open University, Manchester Metropolitan and the University of West London. Given the challenging context for higher education, which is partly a result of Ministers’ own decisions, axing these apprenticeships, which have become quite a big part of their work, could be very damaging.

Given that their action on fees, national insurance and strike action has been a connoisseur-level example of un-joined-up Government, I am not reassured that Ministers have thought through the implications of axing level 7 for higher education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Lady is completely correct; this is not the Bill that abolishes level 7 apprenticeships. However, according to Ministers, the Government are planning to abolish those apprenticeships, which I think is a shame. I think I detected a note of regret in the hon. Lady’s intervention, which I certainly share.

New clause 5 would require a report on the impact of the Bill and the actions of Ministers, through their centralisation of power, on higher education, given that there is now this overlap. Someone might think, “They’re looking at a Bill on technical education and apprenticeships. What’s that got to do with universities?” The truth is that it has quite a lot to do with universities, for the reasons that I have just set out. I worry that the Bill’s implications have not been well thought through.

Can the Minister assure us that she has thought this through? For example, can she tell us how much income universities would lose if the level 7 levy funding really is axed, as Ministers plan to do? How much would universities lose if level 6 levy funding is also axed, an option that Ministers are keeping open? I would love answers from the Minister on those questions today. If she does not feel able to give them, I would be very happy for her to write to me. We have tabled new clause 5 to ensure transparency, so that it is at the back of Minister’s minds that, as they take greater control of everything to do with technical education and apprenticeships, they are not just thinking about those things in their own right, although they are very important.

[Damian Hinds]

In encouraging the Minister to write to him about the effect of the level 6 and level 7 restrictions, will my hon. Friend also ask her to comment on the potential effect of those restrictions on schools—the sector for which the DFE is responsible—and in particular on the postgraduate teaching apprenticeship?

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend is completely correct. He will remember from the last sitting that I tried to lay out the incredibly damaging direct effect on our public services that the decision to axe level 7 apprenticeships would have. The most notable effect is on the NHS, where the doctor apprenticeship has already been axed—that is tragic and has left various people who were on it stranded. It will have a particular effect on advanced nursing, which is a critical part of the NHS long-term workforce plan, as well as management throughout the public services, including local government and the town planning skills that the Government claim are desperately needed.

Exactly as my right hon. Friend said, the implications are severe right across the public services, including teaching, where the DFE is the biggest user of this apprenticeship and the biggest beneficiary in the end, which is a terrible irony. That is why we bring have tabled new clause 5, so that we at least have transparency about the effects of Ministers’ actions, and we have it in the back of Ministers’ minds that they will have to explain their decisions, including not just their direct effect on technical education and apprenticeship funding, but their effects on the wider education system.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 20th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

That is not really the way we do it in Parliament. You respond for the Government.

[Neil O’Brien]

We ask you a bunch of questions. I do not know whether you have noticed, but you are the Minister.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

That is exactly the point I was making. In some instances, the Government can say, “Look, there is already this formal official third party”—perhaps a royal society or some part of the medical profession—“so we do not need this.” I can see why the Government would write that into legislation, but Ministers’ intent clearly goes beyond minor amendments and beyond instances where there is that other group, to instances where they will proceed without drawing up a group of people, in the interests of time or because it is a new and dynamic field. It is precisely because the Government have not defined the circumstances up front that I am keen to put our amendment 4 to a vote. I want to encourage Ministers to think more carefully about how—perhaps in the framework or elsewhere—they might, in response to the Lords amendment, more tightly define the circumstances in which they will, and more importantly will not, use the ability to go it alone. There is definitely a risk of politics getting in the way of good process and of mistakes being made that we will live to regret.

[Damian Hinds]

Even for highly regulated occupations and professions, there is still the question of how to transpose that into a set of standards for, say, an apprenticeship. The question then is: who is the person, or who are the people, best placed to work that out? I am not saying that it is not necessarily Ministers, but I have not heard anything slam-dunk convincing that it is Ministers, rather than the professional body.

[Neil O’Brien]

Sometimes professional bodies overlap, even in the medical profession. When I was a Health Minister, I was acutely aware of that. For example, there are two different ways to become a dentist in this country—there are two different professional bodies that can accredit someone. Were there to be a dispute between them, it might well be sensible to convene a group of persons. I am sympathetic to at least the argument that where we have a big professional body, that is less of a problem, but the problem is that this is not limited to just those instances.

[Damian Hinds]

Unsurprisingly, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. More generally, in legislation one obviously tries to make language as tight as possible, but subtleties in language and meaning still matter in how it gets interpreted. The way the clause is drafted—that the

“Secretary of State may prepare a standard if satisfied that it would be more appropriate”—

does not sound like a tiny number of exceptional cases. It sounds like a judgment that could be made in every case: “Do I think it is more appropriate that I do it?”, or “Do I think it is more appropriate that we get somebody else to do it?” I just ask the Minister if the Government have considered using a different formulation in the wording. It could be something like, “That each standard must be prepared by a group of persons and then approved by the Secretary of State, unless it is necessary to do otherwise for the efficient operation or continuity of those courses and those qualifications.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

I want hon. Members to imagine a hypothetical scenario in which there is a future Government unrelated to this one. Let us say that that hypothetical future Government have passed a Budget that is a bit of a turkey, and it has not done good things to the economy. That hypothetical Government are taking a bit of money out of apprenticeships to spend it on other things, which is giving that Government a bit of a problem. That hypothetical future Government might—because unlike the current one, they do not have good intentions—be tempted to try to prop up apprenticeship numbers, and numbers relating to other technical qualifications, by debasing standards. It would be a problem for that hypothetical future Government to have those independent examinations that clause 7 is getting rid of, because independent third parties would object to the debasement of standards. I will not labour the point.

Clause 7 would amend the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 to remove the requirement for independent third parties to examine occupational standards or apprenticeship assessment plans before approval. Once again, the Secretary of State—there she goes again—would have the power to make such an arrangement. The policy document explains that the clause would mean that the position on third-party examinations would change from being obligatory to being optional, so clause 7 would make it possible for no third-party examination of a standard or an apprenticeship assessment plan to be undertaken at all.

Once again, it is DFE maximalism and a move away from a super-rigorous, employer-led system. We want the technical education system to be like the Deutschmark rather than the Weimar currency, right? We want it to be like the gold coin that can be bitten down on. We want everyone to know that it is really good. All those things that might seem inconsequential or annoying to DFE officials are there for a reason. That is why there is independent assessment, and once again, it is being got rid of.

I will now turn to clause 8, which was the subject of great confusion and endless inquiry in the other place, with lots of very knowledgeable and learned peers trying to understand what the Government’s intent was, what would be going on, and what the point of it was. I have read it all several times and I am not sure we really ever got to the bottom of it. Perhaps the Minister will help us to get the bottom of some questions about it today. Clause 8 amends the 2009 Act to specify that, when the Secretary of State deems it appropriate, Ofqual would have the discretion to exercise its accreditation power for technical education qualifications.

In the other place, the Minister gave the example that:

“the Secretary of State may deem it appropriate to ask Ofqual to consider whether imposing an accreditation requirement on the qualifications in question could help maintain their quality and signal to the wider system that they are broadly commensurate with other accredited qualifications in terms of rigour. For example, the Secretary of State could use this power in instances where it is important to ensure that students who opt into and successfully complete high-quality technical education qualifications are in no way disadvantaged as compared to their peers who pursue academic qualifications.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 November 2024; Vol. 841, c. GC122.]

That raises a number of questions. At present, we have a guarantee of quality through a legally independent institute with a very high level of employer ownership. If we are worried that, under this new system, users will require additional reassurance, that begs the question of why we are making this change. More practically, if some, but not all, technical qualifications will be accredited by Ofqual, and so will have that status, what impact will that have on perceptions of all the others that do not have that status?

The Skills Minister in the Lords talked about this provision being needed to show that high-quality technical education qualifications are equivalent to academic ones. There will now be this third category of technical qualifications, which are the really good ones that are Ofqual-accredited, so what are the other ones? It seems to me, although they do not say this, that the qualification that Ministers have in mind is probably T-levels, and I do not know quite why they are not spitting that out. Peers did not, I am afraid, get to the bottom of this question, but I hope we can today. What type of qualifications are Ministers really thinking of using for this? Why we would suddenly need this now, once we move from IfATE to Skills England, in a way that we did not before? Will we not end up creating two tiers of technical qualifications, where some are Ofqual-approved and others are not? Will there not be a perverse consequence from that?

[Damian Hinds]

Clauses 7 and 8 are grouped, and I am sure there is a reason for that, but it strikes me that they are quite different, and I want to say a word about both.

Clause 7 is about examination by independent third parties, which I think gives an opportunity to also talk about the overall principle of having independent evaluation of standards and making sure they are up to scratch. I am conscious that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes asked a question earlier, and we did not have the documentation to hand at the time, but I did not want to leave it hanging in the air. She asked specifically about whether the words that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, the shadow Minister, had used represented the exact phrase from the 2015 Ofsted report on the then apprenticeships regime. Helpfully, I have the precise words:

“Inspectors found that in a third of the 45 providers visited, apprenticeships did not provide sufficient, high-quality training that stretched the apprentices and improved their capabilities. Inspectors observed, for example, apprentices in the food production, retail and care sectors who were simply completing their apprenticeship by having existing low-level skills, such as making coffee, serving sandwiches or cleaning floors, accredited. While these activities are no doubt important to the everyday running of the businesses, as apprenticeships they do not add enough long-term value to the individual companies or tackle skills shortages effectively.

Some learners on low-level, low-quality programmes were unaware that they were even on an apprenticeship. As suggested by some learners during the survey, a question needs to be asked: are these apprenticeships worthy of the name?”

I mention that for two reasons. First, this was a question that came up. Secondly, it is very important not only that we pay close attention to this position at any one moment in time, but that we create a system that is self-regulating and that does not allow for standards to be eroded. Independence of the body setting the standards and independent third-party checking of the standards alongside leading employers, who will benefit from employing these people, is the surest way of doing that.

Clause 7 and the question about independent third parties examining occupational standards or apprenticeship assessments is a repeat of a debate we had on one of the earlier clauses. The probing arguments and challenges from us are the same as they were then. The Government say that third-party examination is not necessary in some sectors because, for example, in highly regulated occupations, the standard required is obvious—or, as the Minister said in the other place, because

“an external review would be nugatory.”

Is there not still some value in independent verification of that? And, if there is going to be verification, are not those in the sector the people best-placed to do it?

Let me turn to clause 8. It is difficult, because in this place one does not want to reveal not knowing something, but I am nonplussed by this clause because, to be honest, I really do not know what is going on. The clause is about Ofqual and about why, and in what circumstances, it may accredit a technical qualification if the Secretary of State says that it is all right for it to do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said it seemed most likely that the Government have in mind T-levels, and asked whether they would just spit that out. That is one possibility. My worry is the opposite—actually, let us call it a question, not a worry, and make it a neutral term.

Ofqual already has a role in regulating T-levels—I was just reading the Ofqual page about how it is regulating the technical qualification element of T-levels. Now that the Government are saying that Ofqual can do that—if the Secretary of State says it is okay—does that mean that Ofqual might stop doing that, or that its approach for T-levels will be used for some other qualifications? That would not necessarily be invalid, but it would be a move away from the vision of Lord Sainsbury, who wanted a streamlining and simplification, and a broader understanding of technical and vocational qualifications, so that there would be an apprenticeship route and there would be a college-based route. Of course, there will always be some particularly specialist qualifications or students with special needs, for example, but for the majority of cases, the college-based route—these 15 routes—would be the T-level.

I wonder if, buried in this difficult-to-penetrate text, there is something that the Committee really needs to understand, but which, right now, I do not.

Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (Transfer of Functions etc) Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 13th March 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

A fantastic person—all good. It is like having NEDs—non-executive directors—in a Department; it is good to have external people. As I noted, however, the CEO of the organisation is literally not a civil servant; it is a job-share civil servant. They are people who currently work in the Department doing post-16 skills, so I am not sure about idea that this is an independent body. Can the hon. Lady tell me where Skills England is based? Physically, where is it located? Perhaps the Minister will tell us. Is it in Sanctuary Buildings, by any chance? Sanctuary Buildings is none other than the headquarters of the DFE. Is this, in fact a desk in an open plan office that is part of the DFE?

The Government can bring in good people. It is good to bring in good people. The DFE has some good NEDs, by the way, but that is not the same as having an independent institution. That is why Lord Blunkett and other Labour peers are warning that the Government are making a mistake. Those are their words, not ours. Lord Blunkett has a lot more experience of those things than me.

All I would say to the Minister and to hon. Members on the Government Benches is, instead of overturning what peers have put into the Bill, this might be one of those times when it is more sensible to listen to people on their own side, people with some serious grey hairs and a lot of experience, people in their own party, who are advising them that they are making a mistake here. Instead of overturning what they have done, the Government should allow it to stand. The criticisms being made by people in the industry and people with experience in education and skills are serious. I hope that the Government will listen to them, rather than simply overturning what they have done and ignoring them.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

We are debating clauses 1 to 3 stand part and schedules 1 to 3. The Minister, in her opening remarks, talked a lot about the intention to create Skills England, how it will operate and so on. That is not in clauses 1 to 3.

The Bill is all about transferring functions from the independent Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education to the Secretary of State in central Government. Colleagues may have seen the, as ever, helpful and pithy descriptive notes from the House of Commons Library. Clause 1 introduces schedule 1, which will transfer statutory functions from the institute to the Secretary of State. Clause 2 introduces schedule 2, which will allow the Secretary of State to make schemes for the transfer of property rights and liabilities from the institute. Clause 3 will abolish the institute and introduce a schedule 3, which makes consequential amendments to the 2009 Act and other Acts.

The history of this sector is the history of many changes in the machinery of government and the creation of many quangos. There have been 12 in the past five decades. This one will be lucky—no doubt—13. My hon. Friend the shadow Minister helped us with some of the history and some of those previous bodies. I have a slightly longer list.

We have had industrial training boards, the Manpower Services Commission, the Training Commission, and the training and enterprise councils known as TECs—but those TECs were not the same as another type of TEC, the Technical Education Council, which existed alongside the Business Education Council or BEC in the 1970s. The two would merge in the 1980s to give us, of course, BTEC, the Business and Technology Education Council. There were national training organisations, the Learning and Skills Council, sector skills councils, the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, the Skills Funding Agency or SFA, which would later become the ESFA, or Education and Skills Funding Agency, and most recently LSIPs—local skills improvement partnerships—and IfATE.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

I, too, pay tribute to the work of Lord Sainsbury. Those points, which were inserted into what were then called the Sainsbury routes, drew on the experience of the best technical systems in the world, particularly those in Germany and Switzerland. What characterises those systems is the unbelievable level of employer ownership and the incredible constancy of the organisations, which are external to Government, that run them. The Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung has been around for, I think, 50 or 60 years. Are those not the characteristics of a good system—employer ownership and independence—and the things that Lord Sainsbury was talking about?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is right. If we take the full etymology, we can go back a lot further, to the creation of guilds centuries ago, which evolved into the modern system.

[Damian Hinds]

No, I do not, but there is a definition of what an apprenticeship is. There are perfectly good reasons to have all manner of training courses, including entry-level ones, that do important things, but they are not apprenticeships. The shadow Minister talked about Germany. In our country, the minimum length of an apprenticeship is shorter than the typical length of one in Germany. The time off the job—the time in college—is shorter. As I say, we can add on other things, but we cannot stretch the definition of what an apprenticeship is indefinitely. I may come back to that later.

On the face of it, this is a simple Bill—it has 13 pages and is on a simple subject—so it should be fairly easy for a Committee to dispatch in a couple of Thursdays. I have no doubt that Government Members will take the opportunity to make speeches on this subject, and I am sure those will be rather good. Members may make what could be described as great speeches and what they say will be largely unarguable. I fancy that we may hear the word “mission” from them, perhaps even more than once. They will talk about the importance of skills in our economy, investing in the next generation, valuing every single person for what they can do and the value of joining-up across Government Departments.

That will all be correct, but it will be largely beside the point. To turn a great speech that includes those things into a truly outstanding speech in this Committee, they would have to explain why taking away the independence of the body overseeing the system that upholds the standards would make those entirely laudable and shared goals more likely to come about. I know of no reason to believe that it will, but I am keen to hear from anybody who has such an idea.

In the Labour manifesto, there were some very laudable aims. It said that it wanted to empower

“local communities to develop the skills people need”

and to

“put employers at the heart of our skills system.”

Labour said that it would

“establish Skills England to bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government”,

in order to deliver its industrial strategy. The manifesto said:

“Skills England will formally work with the Migration Advisory Committee to make sure training in England accounts for the overall needs of the labour market”.

It mentioned a commitment to

“devolving adult skills funding to Combined Authorities…alongside a greater role in supporting people into work”,

and Labour will

“transform Further Education colleges into specialist Technical Excellence Colleges.”

There are different ways that those aims could be achieved, and I would argue that there are better ways. The Government could, for example, keep IfATE as the standard-setting and upholding body, and create a new, small body, possibly inside the Treasury, to assess the needs of the economy and allocate funds accordingly. They could also strengthen the powers of local skills improvement partnerships, working closely with devolved authorities and mayors, to ensure that what is delivered at a local level in individual colleges matches what the local economy needs. I would have probably chosen that architecture, but plenty of other variations are possible.

To be clear, the Bill does not do any of those things. It simply abolishes the independent body that convenes employers to set the standards and then uphold them, and it hands those powers to the Secretary of State. It does nothing else—I say that, but it is not totally clear to me what it does to Ofqual, and we may debate that when we get to clause 8. I suggest that the Bill presents two fundamental questions: first, about independence; and secondly, about who should set the expectations and standards in any given sector of work—should it be the employers in that sector or somebody else? We will come to that debate when we reach clauses 4 and 5.

Ultimately, this is about whether we believe enough in the phrase “parity of esteem” to do the things necessary to achieve it. As I said in the House the other day, parity of esteem is not something one can just “assert”, and it cannot be legislated for. We cannot pass a law to give something greater esteem. Esteem is in the eye of the esteemer and it can only be earned. In part, that comes from knowing that the qualifications of the technical and vocational strand in our country are just as rigorous and have the same integrity as the academic strand.

By the way, independence is not totally a left/right issue. There are plenty of people on the right of politics who share the Minister’s desire not to have independent bodies. There is a general “anti the quangos” strand, and I have some sympathy for that. By the way, a debate is going on at the moment about removing the independence of the national health service and bringing it into the Department of Health and Social Care. That can be argued both ways. On the one hand, it will be harder for the NHS to do some things, particularly what they call reconfigurations, when they become subject to political pressure. On the other hand, it can be argued that there should of course be direct control from a democratically elected Government over the most important institution in our country. However, I think an independent body for upholding standards in education is in a separate bracket.

[Neil O’Brien]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the context in which this is happening matters? We are talking about getting rid of a prestigious and independent institution, and at the same time, T-levels will not do what Lord Sainsbury hoped they will do. They were supposed to replace the existing standards but, in fact, they will be just another thing in the alphabet soup. We are seeing apprenticeships being made shorter again, and we are going back towards shelf-stacking types of apprenticeships. The mood music is already pretty ominous, and that is against the backdrop of Ministers getting more power by taking this back into the Department and abolishing independence. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an issue?

[Damian Hinds]

I do. Funnily enough, my hon. Friend anticipates my next paragraph. Any Government rightly want more young people to pass their GCSEs, get good A-levels, or start and complete apprenticeships. The truth is that the quickest way to have more people getting any qualification is to make it a bit easier, and there is plenty of history of that, I am afraid. The entry requirements or length could be reduced, the pass mark could be made lower, or the credits that count towards the outcome could be changed. One of the reasons we have independent bodies setting standards is so that that temptation cannot be succumbed to, and crucially, everybody can see that it cannot, so they can have total faith in the standards being upheld.

Essentially, the rationale for why there is an independent Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education is the same one as why the Chancellor sets fiscal rules, or why Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent: it is specifically for the Government to keep themselves within certain tram lines. We do this for academic qualifications. I have asked the Minister this question I think three times, and I will ask it again today: it would not be acceptable, would it, to say, “I’m going to put the pass mark, standards and specification for A-levels in the hands of a Government Minister”? If that is not acceptable for A-levels, how can it possibly be acceptable for T-levels? And we still say that we believe in parity of esteem.

In the good, possibly great, speeches that we will hear from Government Members, one other thing they might say—in fact, they have already started to say it; they pre-empted me—is that apprenticeship starts have fallen since the peak, but that under this Government, they will rise. Well, of course they will rise. If we look at the time series over the last decade of apprenticeship starts, we are not comparing apples with apples; we are comparing apples with oranges, because we had major changes in what counts as an apprenticeship, with the move from frameworks to standards as well as the minimum duration and minimum time off the job.

In discussing the overall numbers, we should also mention that the falls were in the intermediate level and that there were rises in the advanced level, and especially in higher-level apprenticeships. If the specification is reduced, of course that will increase the numbers. To be fair, the Government are not waiting for Skills England. They have already been doing this, by bringing the minimum length down from 12 months to eight months. They have also announced what they are calling foundation apprenticeships, and I hope the Minister will be able to tell us exactly what those are—they sound a bit like traineeships, but let us hear it—and crucially, whether they will count towards the number of apprenticeships that are being undertaken in the country.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Member is right about the difficulty with defining the term smartphone. People talk about a brick phone, a feature phone, a basic phone, a Nokia, a smartphone and an iPhone, but the truth is that there is no definition; smartphone is just a term. It originally came about when people did not want to use the brand name iPhone, because Samsung phones and other types of phone were available. It just means a smarter phone; it has more stuff on it. Some of the things that people worry about are not necessarily only available on smartphones. I looked recently at iMessage, and it is starting to look more like WhatsApp. Anything that can be used for a group chat has some of the issues that we find in schools that cover the teenage and sub-teenage years.

There are other things that people can get on a smartphone but not on a Nokia that are perfectly benign. Some parents are quite keen for their kids to be able to look at the weather. Some are keen to be able to use the tracking device to follow their child, or for their child to be able to use the mapping device to find their way home, so I agree with the hon. Member.

[Neil O'Brien]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Damian Hinds]

This is in danger of turning into a much longer speech than I anticipated.

[Neil O'Brien]

It is good to have this point of clarification. The clause uses the rather quaint phrase “mobile telephones” to capture everything, because the distinction between these devices is blurred. Among those who are interested in the smartphone issue, there is a separate debate about the use of dumbphones for things like walking to and from school, but there is no reason why even a dumbphone cannot cause massive distraction if it is out in class. A child could be texting somebody, for example, and, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, the distinction between these things is blurred these days. That is why we have this catch-all term. It is clear, and it is possible to legislate on that basis, notwithstanding our other discussions outside the scope of this debate.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for refocusing what I was saying, and he is absolutely right. Some of our worries in relation to children apply regardless of the piece of technology. Anything that demands our attention and is ever-present brings such risks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

We can have the classic, “Oh, the wording is technically flawed” argument—which to be fair to the Government, they have not deployed in this Bill Committee yet. We hope the amendment will be subsumed into the Bill, but the Government would never say, “Oh, we’ll just take that amendment and put it in.” Whoever is in Government never says that; they say, “Right, we accept this point. Now we’ll work on the detailed wording”.

[Neil O’Brien]

To answer the question that the hon. Member for Derby North asked directly, subsection (2)(b) says the policy

“is to be implemented as the relevant school leader considers appropriate.”

I think this is—

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Member is right about the difficulty with defining the term smartphone. People talk about a brick phone, a feature phone, a basic phone, a Nokia, a smartphone and an iPhone, but the truth is that there is no definition; smartphone is just a term. It originally came about when people did not want to use the brand name iPhone, because Samsung phones and other types of phone were available. It just means a smarter phone; it has more stuff on it. Some of the things that people worry about are not necessarily only available on smartphones. I looked recently at iMessage, and it is starting to look more like WhatsApp. Anything that can be used for a group chat has some of the issues that we find in schools that cover the teenage and sub-teenage years.

There are other things that people can get on a smartphone but not on a Nokia that are perfectly benign. Some parents are quite keen for their kids to be able to look at the weather. Some are keen to be able to use the tracking device to follow their child, or for their child to be able to use the mapping device to find their way home, so I agree with the hon. Member.

[Neil O'Brien]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Damian Hinds]

This is in danger of turning into a much longer speech than I anticipated.

[Neil O'Brien]

It is good to have this point of clarification. The clause uses the rather quaint phrase “mobile telephones” to capture everything, because the distinction between these devices is blurred. Among those who are interested in the smartphone issue, there is a separate debate about the use of dumbphones for things like walking to and from school, but there is no reason why even a dumbphone cannot cause massive distraction if it is out in class. A child could be texting somebody, for example, and, as my right hon. Friend pointed out, the distinction between these things is blurred these days. That is why we have this catch-all term. It is clear, and it is possible to legislate on that basis, notwithstanding our other discussions outside the scope of this debate.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for refocusing what I was saying, and he is absolutely right. Some of our worries in relation to children apply regardless of the piece of technology. Anything that demands our attention and is ever-present brings such risks.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

We can have the classic, “Oh, the wording is technically flawed” argument—which to be fair to the Government, they have not deployed in this Bill Committee yet. We hope the amendment will be subsumed into the Bill, but the Government would never say, “Oh, we’ll just take that amendment and put it in.” Whoever is in Government never says that; they say, “Right, we accept this point. Now we’ll work on the detailed wording”.

[Neil O’Brien]

To answer the question that the hon. Member for Derby North asked directly, subsection (2)(b) says the policy

“is to be implemented as the relevant school leader considers appropriate.”

I think this is—

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

I agree with the hon. Lady 100%, just as I agreed with what the hon. Member for Southampton Itchen said entirely. Of course, there is not just a material difference between not being a qualified teacher and being a qualified teacher. It is like night and day, and what teachers learn about pedagogy and the experience they get during that time cannot be replicated on an online course or by reading books. She is right, too, that during covid millions of people up and down the country quite rightly developed, renewed or enhanced their respect for the teaching profession and for what teaching is capable of doing.

[Neil O’Brien]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

I did say, “One last time,” but I cannot refuse my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O’Brien]

To finish the point, sometimes there are reasons. Sometimes people want to give back; but by making it harder for them to go to state schools, it is state schools that will miss out—not independent schools or others.

[Damian Hinds]

The points that the hon. Members for Southampton Itchen and for Morecambe and Lunesdale made lead me to—you will be pleased to know, Sir Edward—the concluding section of my remarks, which is to pose the same question that all Opposition Members have posed: why? What is driving this? As with so many other aspects of the Bill—we heard about in the evidence sessions on day one—what is the problem we are trying to solve?

So I did a little research. I wondered—after 14 dark years of Conservatives in government, people being able to recruit teachers willy-nilly, a race to the bottom, blah, blah, blah—how huge the proportion had become of the teaching workforce without qualified status, which is something that Government Members, I and all of us know has such huge value, but which can also be complemented by people with other types of expertise and experience, who may help to augment those brilliant teachers with their qualified teacher status. What do you suppose the proportion was, Sir Edward?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

You’re not.

[Neil O’Brien]

Straw man.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 30th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

I join colleagues in finding troubling the level of detail to be required of home-educating parents. The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston would make sensible adjustments to that, for example by deleting the requirement to show the split between how many hours are done by parent 1 and how many by parent 2. The Government could also amend the frequency of reporting to something more reasonable—or, handily, there is a piece of text ready and waiting, because a private Member’s Bill last year from my then hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley contained the text for a proposed new section 436C.

Proposed new section 436E concerns providers. Did Ministers consider approaching this measure in a completely different way? They could have said that the onus should be on the provider to say who they are and to demonstrate their bona fides, with Disclosure and Barring Service checks and so on, as part of a light-touch registration regime. I am not necessarily advocating such a scheme, but what other models were thought about?

On proposed new section 436G, Ministers will know that a gripe of home-educating parents is that a lot is asked of them but little is offered back. Might it be sensible to change the wording? Instead of the support being

“whatever the local authority considers fit”,

it could be something like “whatever the local authority considers fit, having regard to guidance that it may receive from the Department for Education,” or from Ofsted or whoever it might be.

[Neil O’Brien]

I will just register this point again for Ministers to consider. A lot of people are surprised to learn that although a school will pay for a child to enter GCSEs and the like, home educators do not enjoy that benefit. If we want to make it easier for people to home school their children properly, rather than their children just being out of school, we need to address that long-standing issue. I wonder whether Ministers will consider that point?

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend’s intervention brings me to my final point. Apart from the cost issue, there is the simple question of access and of children being able to sit the GCSE. As there is a vast amount of detail involved, it would be helpful to say that local authorities should ensure that entry to examination centres is possible for those children.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

This is a good and sensible clause, and the Opposition support its inclusion in the Bill. I would note that although all these clauses are good, they come with an administrative cost.

We have already discussed the importance of ensuring that the measures are properly funded, but I want to press the Minister for a few more insights on clause 8. There is a list of details about the local offer—that it must be published, must anticipate the needs of care leavers—and it refers to how they will co-operate with housing authorities and provide accommodation for those under 25. This is all good stuff.

The discussion that we have just had prefigured the question that I wanted to ask, which is about co-operation with national bodies. The clause is quite focused on co-operation between local bodies and drawing up a clear offer. That is a good thing—although, obviously, some of those housing associations are quite national bodies these days.

In the “Keeping children safe, helping families thrive” policy paper published a while back, the Government set out an intention to extend corporate parenting responsibilities to Government Departments and other public bodies, with a list of corporate parents named in legislation following agreement from other Government Departments. When we were in government, we also said that we intended to legislate to extend corporate parenting responsibilities more broadly, so I wondered about that connection up to the national level. We have already had one excellent and very canny policy idea from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire about setting the default for care leavers when it comes to how their housing payments are made. The Minister raised a good point about bursaries and making sure that care leavers are clear about what is available to them on that front. However, there is a whole host of other opportunities to write in to some of these—

[Damian Hinds]

Will my hon. Friend also comment on the particular situation of those young people from care who go on to university? Of course, come the holidays the vast majority of people in higher education go home, but the situation is very different for those who have been in care. Some enlightened universities—including the University of Winchester, in my own county—do very good work in this regard, but will he expand a little on how those young people in higher education can be supported with the offer?

[Neil O’Brien]

That excellent point is another example of exactly what we are talking about. In one sense, I regret not having an amendment that would insert a specific paragraph about the local offer from national organisations. On the other hand, it is pretty clear that the Minister is very interested in this question and is pursuing it. Anyway, there may even be scope to write that into the Bill as it goes through the Lords.

The DFE’s explanatory notes for the Bill say that, although the housing and children’s services departments are encouraged in guidance—in part 7 of the Children Act 1989, I think—to work together to achieve the common aim of planning and providing appropriate accommodation and support for care leavers, that is not happening consistently in practice; the Minister alluded to that.

My question to the Minister is: what do we know from current practice about where that does not happen and why not? It seems obvious, and something that every well-intentioned social worker—every person who works with care leavers—would want to do. What does the good model of effective provision of that support look like? Are there local authorities that are the best cases of that?

Other than providing the administrative and legislative hook for better gripping of this issue, I do not know whether the Minister has a specific plan to do anything else to try to achieve it more consistently—given that, of all the different things that one wants to join up for the care leaver, the provision of a safe place to live and a stable housing arrangements is probably No.1. Is anything more being done? Does the Minister have thoughts about how that can be done best and where it is done best? Where it has not been done as well as we would hope, why is that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Again, as hon. Members have said, we support this approach and it is the approach that we were taking. It is also true that when everybody agrees on something, it is usually the point of most danger for making bad law. It is important to have these Committee proceedings and proper scrutiny.

I was personally never keen on the name of regional co-operatives, although I do not think the word “co-operative” actually appears in the Bill. We can, of course, have co-operation without having a co-operative. This legislation is actually about regional co-operation arrangements.

There are three different types of potential co-operation arrangement: first, for strategic accommodation functions to be carried out jointly between two different local authorities; secondly, for one to carry out the duties on behalf of all; and thirdly, for a corporate body, effectively a separate organisation, to be created to do that. I imagine that Government Members will have different views depending on which of those three forms the arrangements take. Will the Minister say which of those he expects to be most common? As well as the pilots, there have no doubt already been formal and informal conversations with local authority leaders in children’s services in many different areas.

I am keen to know how this arrangement is different from some arrangements that may already take place. For example, the tri-borough children’s services arrangement in London—I will try and get this right—between Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham. Presumably, some of those functions are administered in common there, so how will this be different?

[Neil O’Brien]

I probably should have asked the Minister about scale. In the two pilots, we have Greater Manchester, which is just under 3 million people, and the south-east, which is roughly 3 million people. I do not know what the Government’s expectations about scale are and whether they would continue to support something like the tri-borough arrangement, which is obviously much smaller.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very apt point. Where we end up on that continuum of scale depends on what we are going after most. Of course, we want all those things. For purchasing power, a bigger scale is better, but for close and easy working relationships, a smaller scale is sometimes better. When we are talking about children, and the placement of vulnerable children, that may well push us towards the smaller end of the scale.

Perhaps it is possible to perform different functions at different levels, with some functions still being performed by the individual local authority. Even then, as my hon. Friend often rightly says, there is an enormous difference in scale between London local authorities, which are actually quite small even though they are in our largest city, and Birmingham, which is one enormous authority. It might be argued that doing some things at a sub-local authority level makes sense in a very large local authority area, but as I say, it might be possible to do some things as the single local authority, some things at a larger level, and some things—presumably principally in terms of purchasing leverage—on a wider scale again.

If regional co-operation arrangements are not materially different in practice from something that already exists in co-operation between local authorities, even if that is on a smaller scale than what is envisaged, is legislation actually necessary? If it is not, we probably should not legislate. I would like to understand a bit more about the legislative basis that is currently missing.

Finally, the Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may add to the definition of the strategic accommodation functions that we have listed in proposed new section 22J(3) of Children Act 1989. What type of additional functions does the Minister have in mind?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

I rise to speak to amendment 25 and clause 14. I thank the hon. Member for Twickenham for what she said about our amendment. I completely agree that, ideally, we would have what we are asking for on a regular basis, but just to be clear, the requirement on the Secretary of State to report to Parliament details and analysis of available placements is in amendment 25 because we want to keep the focus firmly on supply and capacity, which I think we agree are the ultimate drivers of the problem we are addressing.

As we said in response to the oral statement to the House by the Secretary of State, we welcome the continuing focus on issues that we identified, and we set up the market intervention advisory group to look at that when we were in government. The heart of the problem, however, as I think we all recognise, is the lack of supply of high-quality places in residential, kinship and foster care for looked-after children. Demand for such places outstrips supply, and that is what is causing the high cost of placements.

It is striking that in its 2022 report, the Competition and Markets Authority did not recommend a profit cap because, in its words,

“The central problem facing the market…is the lack of sufficient capacity.”

The CMA concluded that taking measures to limit the profitability of providers would

“risk increasing the capacity shortfall.”

So if we do not take action to increase capacity first, ironically, we risk simply driving up prices and exacerbating the shortage of places.

Likewise, the review commissioned by the last Government and carried out by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) found that profit caps would not work as it would be,

“relatively easy for providers to reallocate income and expenditure to maintain profit levels”,

a point already alluded to by the hon. Member for Twickenham. The capacity problem rests on the availability of places and the demand for those places. We spoke previously about the need to do much more to grow fostering to reduce demand. Our amendment is designed to ensure that that capacity issue remains at the front of everybody’s mind at both the national and the local levels, so that at neither level do we fall into thinking that we can fix this without primarily fixing supply.

I understand the argument that it cannot hurt to have the power in the clause, which is the reason why we will not vote against it, but it is unlikely to change things very much compared with increasing supply. In fairness, the Bill’s policy notes state that the profit cap power

“is intended only to be used as a last resort should other measures not have the expected impact”.

The hon. Member for Twickenham talked about it being a backstop. My only worry is we should not even rely on it as a backstop. As the previous independent review and the CMA highlight, it would not be easy to use. One reason is that it would inevitably have to be backward-looking. The Government’s policy notes state:

“We are aware that the administration of the profit cap will be a retrospective look back at whether or not the profit cap has been breached in a past period. It will therefore not necessarily prevent breaches in itself, but it will allow action to be taken retrospectively if such breaches have occurred and act as a disincentive for further breaches.”

We will be looking backwards at a sector where there are a lot of complicated financial arrangements, and because we are looking backwards, people will have time to do all kinds of things to make sure that they look like they are complying, for the reasons I have mentioned.

As Ministers take this measure through the other place and consider implementation, I strongly recommend that, if they regulate for fines, they set up an absolutely iron-clad mechanism to ensure that those fines are paid. I was very disturbed to learn from an answer to a parliamentary question the other day that the Home Office has no idea what proportion of the fines imposed for illegal working are actually paid. In that sector, people just move on—they set up a new company, or get their brother to start a new thing. They just move on, and they do not pay the fine. It is widely known that we do not even know how many people are paying those fines. Obviously, we need to prevent that from happening in this sector, where there is equal scope to move on, to set up new things and collapse the old, and so escape fines. I am sure Ministers are seized of that risk; I just wanted to emphasise what they need to do when regulations are made.

Another way out that Ministers might want to try to close off is that some in the sector adopt offshore models of provision. Might the Government want to use this rare legislative moment to discourage, either in primary legislation or by giving themselves the power to regulate, the commissioning of places with providers that are domiciled offshore? They might want to take that power now, but even if they fix it, there will continue to be so many opportunities to fudge and to manage profits with interest and debt.

I do not mean to labour this because, as I listen to some people in the debate, including Ministers, I hear that they understand the difficulties, but then I hear from some other people, and they think, “Oh, we can just control prices to get out of this, without addressing the underlying real problem about supply.” When I was at the Treasury, one reason we were really keen on the work we were leading on through the OECD on base erosion and profit shifting was that we were faced with the endless generation of new tax wheezes and profit-shifting arrangements. They all had these exotic names—the Dutch sandwich, the green jersey and the double Irish; people were constantly generating new ways of moving profits around.

I want to bring that to life a bit by asking some questions. How would profit be defined for the purposes of the cap? The policy summary talks about

“(on average) profits of 19.4% on fostering, 22.6% on children’s homes and 35.5% on supported accommodation.”

I went back to look at the 2022 CMA report from which those numbers are drawn, but it just talks about margins, so I was not clear on whether we were talking about pre-tax, post-tax, or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. I am keen to understand what measure of profit we are using.

What analysis have the Department done to think about the capital needs of the sector over the next five years? It will need large sums, which may make profit capping harder. Fundamentally, there is a big question about what level of profit the Department for Education deems to be acceptable. In in her articulate and thoughtful remarks, the hon. Member for Twickenham mentioned one provider that had a very high rate and another that she said was more acceptable. That is the heart of the issue: given the powers that are being taken, do Ministers at this stage have some rough barometer of what they would regard as unacceptable profits?

Alongside this debate, even as we as we speak, the consultation is running. Obviously, in an ideal world it would have been much better to have had the results of that consultation before the debate and before we moved to legislate. To say we are being asked to sign a blank cheque is an overstatement; I am less worried about it than that. Obviously, though, it would have been much better to have the results of the consultation. What is the timescale of the consultation and when will we have some results from it? Is the Minister already able to share any findings?

I am labouring the point slightly, but I want the Minister’s reaction to the issue, which I am trying to raise in different ways, of the difficulty of capping profits in this kind of industry with these kinds of players so that the concerns that caused the CMA and the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington not to recommend profit caps do not come to bear in practice.

A fundamental question is what the evidence is that, on a like-for-like basis, private sector providers are more expensive than either charities or local authority provision in this area. The numbers may exist, but I have not seen them. If the margins are so high, why are more providers not entering the market? It is a strange thing: there is not enough supply, but we think profits are too high. What is the barrier to entry? It may be that all those questions are addressed in the impact assessment, which is one reason that it is frustrating that we still do not have it.

The DFE says that it is trying to do other things to tackle excess profits. In its policy summary notes to the Bill, it said:

“Until these other measures have had time to be implemented and have effect, we will not know whether regulatory action in the form of a profit cap is necessary.”

That is totally sensible; I completely agree. What are the Minister’s thoughts on timing for making a decision on that? We have a consultation now. The Ministers are trying to do other things to tackle excess profits now; once implemented, they will take time to have an effect, if they are going to have an effect. In what year will we potentially make a decision on the profit cap? As I started to make the mental Gantt chart, I wondered whether this was a decision for the end of this Parliament or the next. I just want a sense of what Ministers think about the timing for making that decision.

Page 53 of the policy summary notes says:

“The level of any future profit cap would depend on a number of factors, including market conditions at the point that we make a decision that a cap is needed.”

That line is a bit mysterious. This may be obvious, but it is not obvious to me—what does that mean in practice? I could not work out which way round it was: would there be no profit capping if supply was too limited, as there would be no scope to do it, or would profit capping come in if supply was limited and prices higher than Ministers wanted? I was not sure in which direction the arrows ran between market conditions and the decision on having a profit cap.

We are not against the clause standing part of the Bill. We are obviously keen on our amendment, and indeed the improvement to it suggested by the hon. Member for Twickenham, but, as an amendment, it is what it is. But all of this is just an aim. We think there are massive limits to how usable this power will be in practice and we do not want it to become a distraction from fixing the main issue, which is supply. To use an example from housing policy, which is apt, given the Chair’s former Select Committee role, the places around the world that have tried to rely on rent controls to fix housing problems generally fail. The people who focus on supply generally do much better. That is the spirit behind our amendment and our questions to the Minister.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Betts. I rise briefly to echo some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston and to ask a couple of questions. I have total sympathy with what Ministers are trying to do here. Having spent a bit of time at the DFE, I know the pain of seeing the amounts of money going out from local authorities for some very expensive placements.

The thing I always found vexing, and still do to this day, is exactly the thing the shadow Minister mentioned. If there are fat margins to be had, ordinarily, in a Schumpeterian world, people come into that—again, I hesitate to use the word—market. The insurmountable barriers stopping that from happening were never clear to me. It was not just that additional supply was not coming in to bring down unit costs, but that, on occasion, there was no place to be found. It is very important that we understand the underlying economics of this, bearing in mind, as ever, that we are talking primarily about the care of children.

The profit made by an entity cannot be limited, ultimately, because that is the residual left at the end of the year between revenue and cost. All one can do is either to choose not to use an entity that makes a profit of more than a certain amount, or seek some form of clawback. I note from the Bill that it is the latter approach that Ministers wish to take, as in proposed new section 30ZM. Do they seek to use this power as a fine—a penalty—for having a profit above whatever is deemed the appropriate level, or in proportion to it? In other words, do they seek to claw back the entirety of the surplus—the profit made—in excess of what is deemed a fair return?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

This is a good and sensible clause, and the Opposition support its inclusion in the Bill. I would note that although all these clauses are good, they come with an administrative cost.

We have already discussed the importance of ensuring that the measures are properly funded, but I want to press the Minister for a few more insights on clause 8. There is a list of details about the local offer—that it must be published, must anticipate the needs of care leavers—and it refers to how they will co-operate with housing authorities and provide accommodation for those under 25. This is all good stuff.

The discussion that we have just had prefigured the question that I wanted to ask, which is about co-operation with national bodies. The clause is quite focused on co-operation between local bodies and drawing up a clear offer. That is a good thing—although, obviously, some of those housing associations are quite national bodies these days.

In the “Keeping children safe, helping families thrive” policy paper published a while back, the Government set out an intention to extend corporate parenting responsibilities to Government Departments and other public bodies, with a list of corporate parents named in legislation following agreement from other Government Departments. When we were in government, we also said that we intended to legislate to extend corporate parenting responsibilities more broadly, so I wondered about that connection up to the national level. We have already had one excellent and very canny policy idea from my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire about setting the default for care leavers when it comes to how their housing payments are made. The Minister raised a good point about bursaries and making sure that care leavers are clear about what is available to them on that front. However, there is a whole host of other opportunities to write in to some of these—

[Damian Hinds]

Will my hon. Friend also comment on the particular situation of those young people from care who go on to university? Of course, come the holidays the vast majority of people in higher education go home, but the situation is very different for those who have been in care. Some enlightened universities—including the University of Winchester, in my own county—do very good work in this regard, but will he expand a little on how those young people in higher education can be supported with the offer?

[Neil O’Brien]

That excellent point is another example of exactly what we are talking about. In one sense, I regret not having an amendment that would insert a specific paragraph about the local offer from national organisations. On the other hand, it is pretty clear that the Minister is very interested in this question and is pursuing it. Anyway, there may even be scope to write that into the Bill as it goes through the Lords.

The DFE’s explanatory notes for the Bill say that, although the housing and children’s services departments are encouraged in guidance—in part 7 of the Children Act 1989, I think—to work together to achieve the common aim of planning and providing appropriate accommodation and support for care leavers, that is not happening consistently in practice; the Minister alluded to that.

My question to the Minister is: what do we know from current practice about where that does not happen and why not? It seems obvious, and something that every well-intentioned social worker—every person who works with care leavers—would want to do. What does the good model of effective provision of that support look like? Are there local authorities that are the best cases of that?

Other than providing the administrative and legislative hook for better gripping of this issue, I do not know whether the Minister has a specific plan to do anything else to try to achieve it more consistently—given that, of all the different things that one wants to join up for the care leaver, the provision of a safe place to live and a stable housing arrangements is probably No.1. Is anything more being done? Does the Minister have thoughts about how that can be done best and where it is done best? Where it has not been done as well as we would hope, why is that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Again, as hon. Members have said, we support this approach and it is the approach that we were taking. It is also true that when everybody agrees on something, it is usually the point of most danger for making bad law. It is important to have these Committee proceedings and proper scrutiny.

I was personally never keen on the name of regional co-operatives, although I do not think the word “co-operative” actually appears in the Bill. We can, of course, have co-operation without having a co-operative. This legislation is actually about regional co-operation arrangements.

There are three different types of potential co-operation arrangement: first, for strategic accommodation functions to be carried out jointly between two different local authorities; secondly, for one to carry out the duties on behalf of all; and thirdly, for a corporate body, effectively a separate organisation, to be created to do that. I imagine that Government Members will have different views depending on which of those three forms the arrangements take. Will the Minister say which of those he expects to be most common? As well as the pilots, there have no doubt already been formal and informal conversations with local authority leaders in children’s services in many different areas.

I am keen to know how this arrangement is different from some arrangements that may already take place. For example, the tri-borough children’s services arrangement in London—I will try and get this right—between Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham. Presumably, some of those functions are administered in common there, so how will this be different?

[Neil O’Brien]

I probably should have asked the Minister about scale. In the two pilots, we have Greater Manchester, which is just under 3 million people, and the south-east, which is roughly 3 million people. I do not know what the Government’s expectations about scale are and whether they would continue to support something like the tri-borough arrangement, which is obviously much smaller.

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very apt point. Where we end up on that continuum of scale depends on what we are going after most. Of course, we want all those things. For purchasing power, a bigger scale is better, but for close and easy working relationships, a smaller scale is sometimes better. When we are talking about children, and the placement of vulnerable children, that may well push us towards the smaller end of the scale.

Perhaps it is possible to perform different functions at different levels, with some functions still being performed by the individual local authority. Even then, as my hon. Friend often rightly says, there is an enormous difference in scale between London local authorities, which are actually quite small even though they are in our largest city, and Birmingham, which is one enormous authority. It might be argued that doing some things at a sub-local authority level makes sense in a very large local authority area, but as I say, it might be possible to do some things as the single local authority, some things at a larger level, and some things—presumably principally in terms of purchasing leverage—on a wider scale again.

If regional co-operation arrangements are not materially different in practice from something that already exists in co-operation between local authorities, even if that is on a smaller scale than what is envisaged, is legislation actually necessary? If it is not, we probably should not legislate. I would like to understand a bit more about the legislative basis that is currently missing.

Finally, the Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may add to the definition of the strategic accommodation functions that we have listed in proposed new section 22J(3) of Children Act 1989. What type of additional functions does the Minister have in mind?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Thursday 23rd January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

I have already talked about our general support for clause 3, as well as some of the issues around the geography, content and cast lists of the teams, which brings me on to funding. On Tuesday, we asked the Local Government Association about the new burdens doctrine and whether there would be clarity on funding for these new requirements. The Government do not plan to commence this clause until 2027, so will local authorities be appropriately resourced to meet these demands? In its summary of the Bill, the Department for Education says:

“Later commencement allows more time to secure funding and resources and workforces will have more time to engage and prepare for change.”

Do the Government know roughly how much extra funding will be required? As Ruth Stanier from the LGA said in her evidence to us on Tuesday,

“the new burdens doctrine must be applied in the usual way. There are a number of measures in this Bill for which additional funding will be required, for example the new multi-agency units.”––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 13, Q21.]

We are talking about those multi-agency units here. What are the Minister’s rough estimates of what will be required, and at roughly what point will that be agreed? Again, the DFE notes on the Bill say that it will be

“set out in regulations how the multi-agency child protection teams will carry out their day-to-day activities.”

That will be extremely specific; for example, it says:

“The new provisions will include a power for the Secretary of State to set out in regulations requirements for the practitioners who are nominated to be part of the multiagency child protection teams. This might include examples of the types of ‘minimum qualifications or experience’ that they will need, which have not been included in the legislation as this will require discussion with the relevant work forces, including police, health and education, to understand what would be relevant”.

The big question is: how much will this roughly cost, and when will the Government agree that with local government, so that we can fulfil the requirements of the new burdens doctrine?

I would like to turn to amendment 19. I have come to believe very strongly, in public services, in the importance of setting up self-improving dynamics whenever that is possible. The Japanese talk about the principle of “kaizen”, or continuous improvement, and really that is the spirit of our amendment. Everybody supports the idea of the new multi-agency meetings, and we are all supportive of the principle of trying to make that happen really well. We do not want just a meeting, or that the letter of the law is followed, but the spirit of it is. We really want to do this as well as we can, and that is what our amendment is about.

There are very different ways of making these things work, and they work in very different places already. There is lots of scope to learn from each other at the local level, and central Government have scope to learn from them all. The amendment is self-explanatory, so I will not go through it, but it is basically looking for a report on all the different aspects of the ways in which this clause plays out on the ground. I am keen to press it to a vote, and I hope it is one that the Government might accept, at least in some form.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

It is very good to see you in the Chair, Sir Edward. I think everybody agrees with the principle of this clause, and there is undeniable valuable in having all the relevant agencies working together. I am afraid it is invariably a conclusion of reviews that, when things go badly wrong, part of the issue is that working together has not functioned as well as it could. The Bill does not invent multi-agency working—that is not a new thing—but it does write something very specific into primary legislation, and that is welcome.

Amendment 19 is good and important and requires reporting back on the work and impact of multi-agency teams. What we need to focus on is actual practice. It is one thing to set out that so-and-so must talk to somebody else—no one would argue with that—but as my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston said, there is quite some variety in the way these things happen. Will there be more guidance in terms of operations to stress the importance of following process and procedure, but also recognising the centrality of professional curiosity and taking ownership of problems through to their solution?

I am keen to understand better from the Government the extent to which what the clause proposes is different from multi-agency safeguarding hubs, commonly known by their acronym, MASH. Is it the same, or is it for a subset of higher level cases? Are we drawing a distinction between safeguarding and child protection?

MASHs themselves have worked in quite different ways. I said that these things are not new—I remember that in 2012, when I was on the Education Committee, we did an inquiry in this area. We visited a couple of different MASHs and had a couple of local authorities, one from Devon and one from Leeds, at a Committee hearing. One of those authorities had a MASH; the other had actively decided not to because it felt that there were better ways of achieving some of the same aims. That highlighted the importance of what is done operationally and what is done in practice. We were frequently told about the advantages of physical colocation —simply being in the same room facing each other across the desk—but that does not guarantee that people will work as well together as they could. Relationships are incredibly important, and so is the willingness to appropriately share information, and these days that can arguably be done without colocation in ways that it could not in the past.

As far as I can make out, the clause does not adopt the principle from what we used to call the troubled families programme, which is now the supporting families programme, of having a designated key worker for each family. Can the Government say why that is, or if it is their intention that that should be the case? More generally, it would be interesting to hear how this programme works with the supporting families programme—probably still better known to many as the troubled families programme.

The creation of that programme straddled the previous change in Government: it started in pilot and research form before 2010 and came into being fully after 2010. Louise Casey is now Baroness Casey of Blackstock and still very involved in incredibly important work. Some of the work of that programme is on the key upstream stage where, sadly, we sometimes end up in child protection territory. Some of the common features identified in Baroness Casey’s report, “Listening to Troubled Families” —abuse, institutional care, violence, mental health problems, drug and alcohol abuse, and so on—are incredibly prevalent in this group.

I hope the Government can say more about how the multi-agency child protection teams and the supporting families programme would work together, particularly since that programme, which used to be in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, is coming or has come—I do not know if it already has—into the Department for Education, so there are great opportunities for good working with children’s services.

[Neil O’Brien]

My right hon. Friend asks a really good question, and I intervene to sharpen that further. He asks whether the new teams are displacing or replacing the MASHs. Does the Government think that the MASHs that exist now will still be running alongside these new teams, or does the one turn into the other?

On the point about continuity of knowledge, which is so important in these cases as often the same family is in trouble for a long time, is it the Government’s expectation that it would be quite normal for people who are currently on one of the MASHs to find themselves on the new teams as well, or is this a new thing? I am just trying to understand the intent.

[Damian Hinds]

I think amendment 19 has a lot of value and I hope it will be agreed.

I want to ask about resourcing. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has rightly asked about cash resourcing—how much there will be—and there is of course the new burdens principle to follow, but I want to ask about staff availability. It is one thing to legislate for people to do a certain thing, but if it is very difficult to hire those people, that is obviously an impediment. To what extent and, if it is possible to quantify, by how much, does this programme create a new human resource requirement? How many more person days per year are we talking about?

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

We have not tabled an amendment to clause 6, as this is another area where the Government are building on the direction of travel set under the last Government. The role of the virtual school head was already extended on a non-statutory basis from September 2021 to include strategic oversight of the educational outcomes of children with a social worker in a local authority’s area; through this Bill, it is now being extended again to champion the education of children, including children in kinship care.

Educational outcomes for children in need and children in care are still far too low, despite the efforts of successive Governments over the last 40 years to improve them. About one in five children in need and looked-after children achieve grade 4 and above in English and Maths GCSEs, compared with 65% of all children. That is a huge gap.

As the Minister knows, local authorities have an existing duty to monitor child in need or section 17 plans, which I believe is about twice a year. Will the Minister clarify whether the Bill gives us an opportunity to escalate that monitoring? Does it extend to children in kinship care, where a child is falling behind or where their attendance drops sharply? Have the Government considered extending priority school admissions for children in kinship care and making them eligible for pupil premium plus?

I have a question about how a single person can discharge this duty in any local authority, let alone a large one—thinking of dried Birmingham, Kent, Leeds or somewhere like that. What is the Government’s expectation of what the person responsible for delivering this work will be able to do?

[Damian Hinds]

The clause extends the role in legislation of virtual school heads to children in need, previously looked-after children and children in kinship care. The virtual school and virtual school heads concepts are not new. The concept was first piloted in 2006 in Liverpool. It was the Children and Families Act 2014, which we both remember well, Sir Edward, that required all local authorities to administer pupil premium plus.

The Oxford University report on the virtual school heads concept noted that there had been improvements in outcomes at key stage 2 and key stage 4 for looked-after children and a marked decrease in permanent exclusions. However, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, rightly said, there is still a yawning gap in attainment and all manner of life outcomes for this group of children.

Previously, looked-after children were added to the virtual school head cohort in 2018. There was a pilot to include children in need in 2021. From 2023-24 onwards, pupil premium plus was extended to age 16-plus. Once again, this is a policy area where there is no difference between us; the current Government’s work builds on previous Governments’ work, and we welcome that. We also note the successes of the virtual school heads concept.

My question is about the danger of dilution. In terms of orders of magnitude, there are 80,000 or 85,000 children in care—looked-after children, but there are 400,000 children in need, so that is a big increase in number. I note that paragraph 4 of proposed section 23ZZA(4) of the 1989 ACT introduced by clause 6 puts a strategic duty on to virtual school heads; it is not about individual children. The bigger number of children there is, with that dilution effect, there is a risk that some of the benefits of the virtual school heads program reduce. We can counter that, to a degree, by upping the resource. My real question is therefore about what resource will be behind this measure, to make sure that the maximum effect can be felt from virtual school heads.

As we talked about earlier on multi-agency working, it is actual practice that matters. People have been working in different ways, and we can learn from what works in different places, but what work will there be to propagate the best and most effective practice between places across the country?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

Q Forgive me—we are very short on time. I was talking about a council’s ability to stop a popular school expanding, for example. You both mentioned earlier that you have some really quite popular schools, and now the council will have much more an ability not to let that happen.

Paul Barber: Sorry; I misunderstood. You are talking about the restrictions on schools unilaterally changing their published admission number. Our position on that is that it is because of this relationship between admissions and the planning of school places, which must be planned in some way. Our diocese has a long track record of decades of working with its local authorities and with the diocese in the Church of England to work out what is required in the future, and looking forward for places and planning that. Having some kind of regulation of schools’ published admissions numbers is quite helpful in ensuring that that works smoothly, because if you plan it and three schools then arbitrarily decide to increase their published admission number, that creates some real problems locally with place planning.

Nigel Genders: We would agree with that. Not to rehearse all that Paul has just said, but a further point is that when it comes to resourcing local authorities to carry out their role in the allocation and direction of schools to take particular pupils, we are really keen to see that done in a way that makes fairness the arbitrating factor to ensure that there is a real fairness of approach. The collaboration between maintained and academy and diocese and local authority very much needs to happen, and we would welcome that.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I have a very specific question on small rural primary schools attempting to deliver breakfast clubs, potentially with a very small number of staff. What is your understanding of whether the time spent doing breakfast clubs will count as directed time?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Damian Hinds

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

Q Forgive me—we are very short on time. I was talking about a council’s ability to stop a popular school expanding, for example. You both mentioned earlier that you have some really quite popular schools, and now the council will have much more an ability not to let that happen.

Paul Barber: Sorry; I misunderstood. You are talking about the restrictions on schools unilaterally changing their published admission number. Our position on that is that it is because of this relationship between admissions and the planning of school places, which must be planned in some way. Our diocese has a long track record of decades of working with its local authorities and with the diocese in the Church of England to work out what is required in the future, and looking forward for places and planning that. Having some kind of regulation of schools’ published admissions numbers is quite helpful in ensuring that that works smoothly, because if you plan it and three schools then arbitrarily decide to increase their published admission number, that creates some real problems locally with place planning.

Nigel Genders: We would agree with that. Not to rehearse all that Paul has just said, but a further point is that when it comes to resourcing local authorities to carry out their role in the allocation and direction of schools to take particular pupils, we are really keen to see that done in a way that makes fairness the arbitrating factor to ensure that there is a real fairness of approach. The collaboration between maintained and academy and diocese and local authority very much needs to happen, and we would welcome that.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q I have a very specific question on small rural primary schools attempting to deliver breakfast clubs, potentially with a very small number of staff. What is your understanding of whether the time spent doing breakfast clubs will count as directed time?