Education and Skills Bill

Many good points have been made, but I feel most strongly about two. First, on the point made by my noble friend Lady Perry of Southwark and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, there are many people for whom a year out—a year’s peace while not in education—is an immense motivation and opportunity to set themselves right. We should not deny young people that. Secondly, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, drew attention to the consequences of giving a child a criminal record. We should not take these things lightly. I tried, once, to persuade the then DCSF to take on as an employee a young man who had a criminal conviction. It said yes, but when it was realised higher up in the hierarchy that the man had a criminal conviction, the department took a policy decision not to employ ex-offenders. The department really should understand that many employers react in that way, particularly those interested in educated people, and that to give someone a criminal record as part of their education is to deny the benefits of that education then and in the future. It is not the way to go. Two dialogues are in fact going on, because the Bill does not come into effect until 2013. One, on these Benches but involving the Cross Benches, is: what will we do with the Bill after the next election, when, all being well, we find ourselves having more influence over things, one way or another? It has been very constructive and enjoyable to listen to these Benches in front of and beside me on how we would take it—and I hope that our decisions would please the Cross Benches. However, I urge the Minister to pay attention to the consequences of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. As it stands, the Bill will not affect the middle classes. If you are a kid with a bit of access to money and the world, you’ll play the system for six months until they get tired of you, at which point you will go abroad to work in the Alps or the Mediterranean for a year, and come back with six months to go. At that point, they will not be bothered with you anymore and you will have escaped the whole thing. This will bite only on those who do not have access to resources and who do not have the social experience that allows them that confidence. However, if one proceeds along the lines proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, and make it an obligation not which comes to an end at 16 but which one has to work off at some stage in one’s career, that will no longer be the case: you cannot escape it by playing the system. If you play the fool for six months, you merely get six months more at the end of it. That is why I worked so hard at my chartered accountancy exams. Every time you failed a chartered accountancy exam, you had to spend six more months as a chartered accountant. I was determined to get through the first time and I did, and it was the first time in my life that I really worked hard. To make it a moving obligation greatly strengthens, rather than weakens, the Bill. You lose the motivation to escape something or to play the fool. If it is a moving obligation, and is enforced, let us say, by making a note on someone’s national insurance records that it still exists, so that any employer knows about it and that if they take you on they are supposed to comply with the provisions of the Bill for time off for education, it becomes a real irritation to the young person concerned. Every time they apply for a job, will they want to be able to offer the employer only four days a week, with the fifth taken off? They will want quite quickly—certainly after a year or two—to get rid of that incubus and settle down and get the education that is required of them, freeing them up for an unencumbered life. Something which causes you continual irritation and difficulty, and makes postponing and avoidance something that you just do not want to do because it is getting in the way of your life, is ultimately a much more effective punishment than any form of criminal record. I support the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in the direction that she is taking, and I hope that the Government might see it as a way forward for their proposals in the Bill, in terms of the direction that they have chosen rather than that which we might take in a couple of years.