Academies Bill [Lords]

I agree with my hon. Friend; no doubt the Minister will try to pick up that issue in his remarks. How will special educational needs be monitored? What is the role of the Young People's Learning Agency? How will schools get help? How effective is the YPLA in respect of the quality of local, centrally provided services? What experience and expertise does the agency have? How will we ensure that all these things are effectively fulfilled? How much will it all cost? Who will be responsible for intervening if a school is not offering effective provision? How will the Secretary of State know that something is not being done? Who would make the decision about any of these failures? There is a huge raft of questions that I hope the Minister can begin to address. Our amendment is simple. It tries to ensure that a decision is made about the effect on the provision of centrally provided services of decisions about what money should go to individual schools. At the heart of that is the need for better information from the Government about where the balance should be. The amendment seeks to clarify the situation by saying that we must retain sufficient resources at a central level within the local authority to provide the necessary level of support and help for children with special educational needs, notwithstanding that the Bill will delegate large sums to them. What will be the impact of that? It is a leap in the dark—we simply do not know. Frankly, the Government have not provided the level of detail that the Committee requires because they have not had time to do so.