Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

Absolutely none, and I fear that this reorganisation may lead only to greater bureaucratic overload. Four further education colleges will now be in an unfortunate position whereby they find that local authorities will be the strategic commissioners of education for 16 to 19-year-olds. However, those local authorities will not have a free hand but will be tied by operating together on a sub-regional level. Their spending in operating at a sub-regional level will be monitored by the YPLA, they will have to negotiate the funding for those over the age of 19 with the SFA, and if they offer training for apprenticeships they will have to liaise with the SFA's sub-quango, the NAS. Even though the national LSC has gone, local authorities will still have to deal with nine regional learning and skills councils. That is because those nine regional councils, which replaced the 47 sub-regional LSCs, were created only five months ago, last September, and the Government cannot afford to get rid of them. While this massive bureaucratic edifice has been constructed, we have found on the ground that the real building of improved facilities for students has stopped because the Learning and Skills Council has placed a moratorium on construction. There will not be a Member in this House who does not have constituents at a further education college that is unaffected by that moratorium. I am myself in the unfortunate position whereby improved provision for sixth-formers in my constituency has been affected by that moratorium.