Education and Skills Bill

I support my noble friend. One of the most important points about education for the people we are concerned with here is not only gaining knowledge but gaining confidence—the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, made that point. In the UK over the past 30 or 40 years, once young people leave their workplace and go to college, there has been a marvellous transformation—they have gained the kind of social confidence that formerly I used to see visiting the United States. Britain has been transformed by this. Nevertheless, there are whole areas of Britain in which not enough people can do that. We must make this funding available and have suitable colleges that are reasonably provided with the social and other facilities that are available for people attending universities. This area of justice is important. It also makes those people more effective when they go to work, because they have the ability to communicate. It is when they are not as effective as they might be that there is a drain on our economy. I speak as a small employer of 25 people. With my colleagues, I have seen a transformation in the quality of people coming in when they have been to college. That is what we need to invest in, and it is an anomaly that we are not investing as much as we should be in this valuable part of our society.