Education and Skills Bill

As so often happens now in our debates, I am being pulled both ways. I have just heard the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, put a case for having no duties at all on employers to ensure that their employees are undergoing proper education or training. Yet Amendment No. 112, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, would significantly increase the duties on employers because, in addition to checking that the young employees are participating, they would be required to check the number of hours that those individuals are in education and training, in order to ascertain whether that was ““sufficient””, which is what she seeks to do by inserting that word. Such detailed checks to ascertain not merely that a young person is engaged in education and training but that the number of hours required in the Bill are completed would be a complicated and time-consuming exercise, which we do not think it would be appropriate to expect employers to undertake. For example, if checking hours added 10 minutes to our overall estimate of the time needed for employers to fulfil their duties under the clause, the cost to employers would double. We are certainly not minded to go further than we set out in the Bill. Why do we think it right to go as far as we do in the Bill—the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, in her remarks on whether Clause 21 should stand part? We have worked hard with employer groups to ensure that the duties on employers are as light touch as they possibly can be, but deleting the clause would mean that employers would be under no duty whatever to check that young people are in learning before letting them start work. That would mean that a young person could start work breaking the law and the employer would, knowingly or unknowingly, be complicit in that act. That is not acceptable. If the law is to be enacted, employers should exercise responsibility to ensure that their employees within that age range are undertaking education or training. The clause is designed to place an important incentive on young people who want to work to get a place in learning first, knowing that they will not be able to get a job if they have not. Having no duties on employers would seriously disrupt the balance of roles and responsibilities that is fundamental successfully to raising the participation age, so we are anxious that the clause stand part of the Bill. Amendment No. 60, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on certificates, is, we believe, covered by the Bill. The question of whether a young person in employment has made appropriate arrangements for their part-time education or training will depend on whether they are working towards accredited qualifications, not on the type of institution at which they are doing so. They could be studying towards an accredited qualification at any one of a range of institutions: a maintained school, an independent school, a sixth-form college, an FE college or a private training provider. All those institutions can already provide young people with a letter confirming their offer of a place or their enrolment on a course and will already routinely do so. They do not need a legal power to do that. We will, however, provide employers with clear and simple guidance about what they need to look for in a letter of confirmation shown to them by a young person whom they want to employ, to see that the duties on employers are not unduly onerous—for the reasons set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. We will involve employers in developing that guidance and consult them on it, so that it meets their needs. Employers will not be expected to contact a learning provider to check that a young person is enrolled although, if they wish to do so, or to discuss the detail of the course that the young person is undertaking, the contact details would normally be found on a letter from the provider. I hope that that deals with the issues raised, but this is quite a disparate group of amendments and I may have missed something. I will be happy to respond.