Education and Skills Bill

moved Amendment No. 115: 115: Clause 21, page 12, line 5, at end insert— ““( ) The Secretary of State shall, within 12 months of the coming into force of this section, publish an assessment of the implications of the duty imposed by this section on the employment prospects of 16 and 17 year olds.”” The noble Baroness said: We deal in this amendment with two concerns that we heard clearly expressed in meetings with various interested parties and by the Institute of Directors and Professor Alison Wolf. The first issue is the cost to employers, which the IoD judges the Government have underestimated. The IoD states: "““Government figures estimate that the process of employer checking is a single exchange of paper between an employee and employer, which will take just 10 minutes. In reality this process will actually require a mixture of discussion, checking, altering of work quotas and/or addressing employees’ needs””." The IoD projects that the cost will be double the Government’s estimate. The top estimate that it mentioned to us was £68 million per year. It is understandably a matter of great concern to small and medium-sized businesses, those that are the least able to absorb the extra costs of additional regulation and red tape. Our second concern is the flipside to the first. The consequential unintended impact of the clause could be that employers employ only those who are older than those covered by the proposed compulsory age, an argument articulated by Professor Alison Wolf. They would simply bypass the risk of falling foul of the law by avoiding employing the very people whom we are trying to help. As the owner of such a business, I can tell the Committee that it is difficult to keep on top of all the regulations and laws that must be obeyed. It would therefore not be surprising if businesses simply sought to save themselves more bother and expense. As my noble friend Lady Morris said on Second Reading, it would be a tragedy if the Bill’s consequence was to make it even harder for young people to enter into employment. We therefore think it crucial that the Bill should make provision for keeping the matter under review. We have already proposed a new clause that would set up an annual consultation with the organisations that represent the bulk of private employers, so that the Government have direct contact with the businesses that we hope to engage with the Bill. The Minister in another place gave an undertaking that the Government intend to conduct reviews such as the one that I suggest. Could the Minister please give us more detail on that to reassure those of us who—quite reasonably, I think he will agree—have concerns about the issue? I beg to move.