My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now again resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House in Committee accordingly.

[The DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF COMMITTEES (Viscount Simon) in the Chair.]

Clause 11 [Educational institutions: promotion of good attendance]:

moved Amendment No. 62:

As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, explained, the amendment expands the list, including special schools, of institutions that are expected to promote good attendance. There seems to be no good reason for leaving them out of the Bill, but I shall listen to the Minister with interest to hear why he thinks that it is not necessary, especially for special schools.

First, Amendment No. 62 would add “proprietor” to what Clause 11 refers to as,

“the governing body of an institution”.

I can tell the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that the amendment is unnecessary because the institutions listed in Clause 11 are in the maintained sector, so the governing body is in fact the proprietor. On Amendment No. 63, which would include non-maintained special schools under the clause, we considered that question, as we said in another place that we would, and we agree that it is important for non-maintained special schools to be subject to that duty. Having considered how that can best be done, we have concluded that the policy aim would be better achieved by enacting regulations under Section 342(2) of the Education Act 1996. I can confirm to the Committee that we will do that, so we will meet the point raised by the noble Baroness.

In respect of Amendment No. 64 concerning city technology colleges, the one city college for the technology of the arts and city academies, academies are required through their funding agreements to have regard to the same guidance as maintained schools on improving behaviour and attendance. The handful of remaining city technology colleges and the one city college for the technology of the arts are not so required by law, but the few remaining CTCs and the one city college for the technology of the arts are, without exception, successful schools with very high levels of post-16 participation from committed pupils with good attendance and behaviour, so we do not think it appropriate to extend the statutory duties to them. Like academies, city technology colleges and the single city college for the technology of the arts are, in general, regulated through their funding agreements rather than legislation. That is why they are not expressly listed in Clause 12.

I hope that the Minister will forgive my ignorance, but I am a little surprised by subsections (2)(a), (b) and (c), because I would have thought that those bodies would already be under a statutory duty to, as far as possible, encourage attendance at their place of work. Am I wrong? If I am, should that duty not be extended downwards to below the age of 16?

The duty does extend downwards, but it is covered by different legislation; I believe that that is the answer to the noble Lord’s point.

But if these bodies are under a duty to get their students to attend up to the age of 16, does the legislation specifically have a cut-off—I suppose because that is the end of compulsory education? I may be delaying the Committee unnecessarily, so if I am right, the noble Lord need not reply; if I am wrong, he can write to me.

I believe that that is precisely the case.

I think that the clause creates some anomalies. It is slightly odd that in supplying information under Clause 13, “Notification of non-compliance with duty imposed by section 2”, subsection (5) lists city technology colleges, city colleges for the technology of the arts and academies. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Elton, that if the duty is already there on schools it is otiose to have this extra clause, but if we are to have it, those institutions should be required to supply the information.

I take on board what the Minister says about special schools, because young people attending special schools are often those who have had some history of non-attendance and difficulties with schooling of one sort or another. We have raised those issues with the Minister. He will be coming back with an amendment on the independent special schools.

If the noble Baroness will forgive me, perhaps I could add to my remarks in response to the noble Lord, Lord Elton. To be clear, Clause 11 establishes a duty on learning providers as listed in the clause to promote regular attendance of 16 and 17 year-olds. I had assumed that a similar statutory duty existed in respect of pre-16 year-olds, because of course it is expected that they attend and that the institution makes every effort to see that they do. I am told that in fact there is not a strictly comparable legal duty, but the position is very complicated in law and it is best if I write to the noble Lord to set out how it applies pre-16. His point is essentially correct. We seek by Clause 11 to extend duties that effectively apply to schools pre-16 in respect of 16 and 17 year-olds.

If it is unnecessarily complicated, it would be good on Report or perhaps in next year’s Bill to simplify that, but I thank the Minister very much.

As a general duty is being imposed on institutions, there is all the more reason to include all institutions funded by the state. As I said earlier, it seems appropriate that academies and the like should be included within the duty rather than have a special duty in their funding agreements, and so forth.

I have made the point. There is no need to go on about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 63 and 64 not moved.]

Clause 11 agreed to.

Clause 12 [Duty to make arrangements to identify persons not fulfilling duty imposed by section 2]:

[Amendments Nos. 65 to 67A not moved.]

On Question, Whether Clause 12 shall stand part of the Bill?

The clause is deeply tied in with the issue of compulsion and, to that end, we oppose the Question that the clause stand part of the Bill. Clause 12, although only half a dozen lines long, has huge implications. It creates a duty on local education authorities to establish the identities of those persons in each area to whom the part applies, but who are not participating in the activities prescribed by the Bill.

I fully accept that that information will not be built up from scratch, as any LEAs will already hold much information on children in their schools. Nevertheless, I seek reassurance from the Minister, as what is being proposed seems rather alarming. A database will presumably need to be set up of every young person to whom the part applies before it can be determined who is not engaging in their duties. What are the cost implications of that? How will the information be collected? How will it be collated? How will LEAs go about maintaining their information details; and for how long will the details be kept? I will be most grateful if the Minister could provide some explanation of how he expects the clause to operate.

I support the noble Baroness in questioning whether the clause should stand part of the Bill. These are extensive powers and there is a real question about how far they extend. For example, must a local authority rely on employers and educational institutions, which have a duty to tell it if a young person has dropped out of a course, or does it have further powers of investigation? Can it use its powers to spy on a young person, just as it can spy on someone whom it thinks is claiming to be in a school's catchment area but it suspects is not, or has only recently moved into that area? Will it have to employ private investigators, as suggested on one occasion by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas? Will it have the power when a young person reaches the age of 16 to compel him or her to prove where they are going next? If a young person does not have a place in a school or college, or an apprenticeship or employment, will it be able to compel him to report, like a young offender, to a probation officer? How will the authority’s other powers be used in this regard? What is the link? What other organisations might be asked to supply information other than those which are mentioned explicitly in the Bill?

In answering those questions, I hope that the noble Lord will spare time to answer a question which I raised in another form the last time we were in Committee. How will the system cope with cross-border compliance? Where a young person is resident in authority A and claims to be getting an apprenticeship or education in authority B, how will authority A be informed about that? Will there be a duty on authority B to provide the information? Will an employer in authority B have to write to authority A or authority B to inform it of people on its roll? It can get quite complicated with areas and their surrounding areas, all of which make similar provision.

I wish to underline the point which has just been made. I recently chaired a commission on the organisation of secondary schools in one London borough where a sixth-form college takes students from no fewer than six London boroughs besides its own. Has the Minister any idea of the sort of bureaucracy which would be entailed by authorities if they had to do that kind of chasing up? I am sure that that story is replicated in many other sixth-form and further education colleges, particularly in large conurbations where many boroughs are cheek-by-jowl and children simply do not stay in their own borough for their education.

The Connexions service already uses a tracking system to promote participation. This clause would enable local authorities to maintain a similar tracking system. As Connexions transfers to local authorities, unless the existing Connexions database is maintained, it will be impossible to track young people effectively in order to intervene to provide support that is timely and appropriate to their needs. Clause 12 establishes the legal basis for the tracking system, which it does on the basis of a Connexions database that already exists and will be transferred to local authorities.

Before the noble Lord abandons the existing tracking system, which is national, I understand that it will be valid for one year, because everyone will be on it. But after that there will be, I understand, separate databases in each authority. The problem that my noble friend and I have outlined will thereafter continue to increase year on year as more and more people come on to these separate databases and exchanges have to be made between the authorities to keep the information valid.

There will need to be appropriate data sharing in that respect, but I am not sure that I understand the noble Lord’s point. There needs to be appropriate interchange between existing Connexions areas and the maintenance of their existing databases. Similar arrangements would need to apply when local authorities take on this responsibility.

I spoke under a misapprehension. I thought that Connexions was already a national database.

Is that the end of the Minister’s reply or are we going to hear more?

The noble Baroness asked me specific questions, but my response to them is that the situation has not changed for the Connexions database and the duties that will fall in respect of local authorities. Therefore, unless the noble Baroness thinks that we should remove existing powers to enable Connexions as the appropriate authority to track young people, which I assume she is not saying, we do not see any of the threats which she highlighted.

I should like to know more about this Connexions database. What sources of data is this based on? Under Clause 12, we are telling local authorities that they have to establish the identities of these people. My impression of the Connexions database, which I admit that I have never gone into in detail, was that it was not a complete database; that it was a best-efforts database; and that therefore it would have a lot of holes in it. Given the points made by my noble friends, one can understand why. Many young people will be quite mobile. There will be no easy way to track them because they are not formally employed. Connexions does its best. If we are giving local authorities an absolute obligation to track these people, we are letting them in for a deal of expense and we are looking to produce something which is much better than is there at the moment without explicitly making the financial provision necessary to do that.

I also question whether the best way of handling this really is to do it through 100-odd separate databases that are meant to communicate with each other. That is a recipe for total chaos. In order to have effective communication between databases, the whole database schema has to be set in advance. For example, you can just about crawl from one police database to another. If the Minister has ever tried to register a firearm, he will know how long it takes to deal with registering a firearm in one county when you are living in another. It can take for ever and it takes for ever for the people on the computer to make the connections and get through.

To have 100 systems scattered around the country that are written and run differently, which are supposed to be working together to track relatively mobile young people, is a recipe for not achieving anything. If we could at least have a national structure for the database with a local view on it, there is a hope of noticing that someone who was supposed to be in Newcastle has turned up in London.

I will expand this issue in more detail. But, first, perhaps I may re-emphasise that there is no national tracking system. At the moment, each Connexions service maintains a local database for its area. The issue, of course, is that local authorities will take responsibility for Connexions. Therefore, legally, it is appropriate for local authorities to have responsibility under this new regime. Existing Connexions services are capable of receiving information from each other under existing arrangements. Clause 17 again enables that to happen in respect of local authorities.

As regards the sources of information, which were raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, there are already duties and powers in the Learning and Skills Act 2000 for learning providers, JobCentre Plus and other public bodies to disclose information in their possession about young people to Connexions. All that information is used by Connexions to track young people effectively through the existing database. With the transfer of the responsibility for Connexions to local authorities, it is local authorities that need to make sure young people are being tracked effectively. Of course, under this Bill, local authorities will gain functions around promoting effective participation of 16 and 17 year-olds.

Under the new regime where Connexions is controlled by local authorities, we want it to have access to exactly the same information about young people as it does at the moment. The information clauses in Part 1 relate to the established system that Connexions uses. It does not change or add to the data that the system holds. I do not think that I could be more categorical.

I am sure that the Minister is well aware that the list he read out of what is on the Connexions database and where it comes from covers those people who are already caught up in education and training. We are talking about people who are not in education and training, but they are not on that list. They are not caught up at all. Furthermore, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, young people are very mobile. If John Smith moves from Newcastle, where he has not been in education or training, to London, how in the world will he be picked up unless we are talking about a kind of police state in which he is required to register at the local Connexions base? He can simply disappear.

The noble Baroness rightly says there will be some people about whom there will not be effective data to enable the local authority to know what is happening in respect of their education and training. The position is no different from the status quo in that respect. Someone who moves from London to Newcastle at the moment is moving between different Connexions databases.

We are trying to improve the status quo. By the time the Bill is enacted, we will have an effective database of all schoolchildren in the country, so we will, at a national level, know who we are trying to track as they leave school and pass into this two-year period. To then fragment that database seems perverse. It ought to be the basis of knowing how many children are going on to further education and pinpointing those young people about whom you know nothing. That must be done centrally because fragmenting the whole operation into a lot of local databases which do not check consistently on what is happening across borders means losing a lot of the advantage of having a national system to pick up people who cannot be picked up at present.

Again, I seem to be holding the centre ground between two views put to me by noble Lords. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, began by saying that we were in a potential police state, with people having powers to extract information, something which currently does not apply. I pointed out that the tracking system and the database will operate in the same way as the current Connexions tracking system. It is appropriate for that tracking system, which is not national at the moment, to move to local authorities because they will be the responsible bodies for managing Connexions and for promoting participation.

The noble Lord wants to move in the direction of a single national database, which I understood the noble Baroness was particularly opposed to. That might raise wider concerns, but it is not the Government’s policy to move in that direction. However, that is emphatically not the status quo. The status quo is a local system of maintaining data through the existing Connexions databases.

Then the word “possible” must be wrong. In a legal sense, to do everything so far as it is possible to do so places no limits on the lengths to which the local authority has to go to establish what young people are in its area. The right word in a legal sense, surely, is “practicable”.

Let me restate clearly that I am not calling for a national database.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, was.

My noble friend is right. If this is to work, that is effectively what we will have to do. We have serious concerns about compulsion.

I thank the Minister for his reply. I hear what he says about Connexions. I said that at the beginning of my remarks, but the Connexions database is not perfect. As my noble friend Lord Lucas said, there are holes in it. We are always hearing of things that are wrong but that does not matter because at the moment you cannot criminalise young people if they do not stay on in education or training at 17 or 18. That is effectively what will happen under the Bill, so what is on the database will be very important.

My noble friend Lord Elton’s example of the complexities of cross-border education illustrates our practical concerns about the clause. It goes without saying that if you compel someone to do something, there must be an attendant structure to ensure that it happens. It is one thing for existing structures to identify young people who are in danger of drifting and then do everything possible to explain and encourage participation, which is what happens now through the Connexions service, but it is a whole different ball game to identify, track and monitor someone throughout a two-year period. I simply cannot believe that such a system can be anything other than enormously time-consuming and bureaucratic, so I am not surprised to see in Clause 12 the words,

“so far as it is possible”.

I can just imagine how hard-pressed authorities across the country will say that it has not been possible to track these young people. That begs the question: how will compulsion work?

There is a difference between accuracy and completeness. Of course a local authority can take enforcement action only on the basis of the information it has available. I fully accept that there will be some young people on whom there will not be sufficient information to be able to make those judgments, but that is different from saying that the information that the authority holds, which will have come from the reputable sources we have already described, is accurate. The two are distinct. The logical consequence of the noble Baroness’s position is that she would have what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, described—much more draconian powers so individuals would have to report to public authorities to say what they are doing. We are not suggesting that. As ever, in these debates, I am holding what I regard as a sensible middle ground between the proper tracking responsibilities of a local authority, using information from the public sources that I have described which is made available to it, and an unduly draconian system where individuals are required to report.

Individuals will not be pursued by public authorities on the basis of inaccurate information. All the protocols and systems by which the Connexions database works at the moment and local authorities will work hereafter will ensure that the information is accurate. There are appeals processes against any enforcement action which a local authority might take that give young people ample opportunity to contest the accuracy of any information if a local authority were to use information on the database that was inaccurate.

I should like some clarification from the Minister. My understanding is that at present the Connexions database is highly selective and not in any sense a comprehensive database of all young people in the neighbourhood who reach the age of 16. It effectively is, above all, a database of those who are vulnerable and are in danger of slipping out of the system. Therefore, the duty being placed on local authorities is far more extensive than is currently placed on the Connexions service.

There is an odd imbalance in the Bill because while there are duties to collect information, there are no duties to give it. That is where the cross-border difficulty arises. I am not sure whether it would be possible to devise a suitable duty that would not be draconian as a way of catching all the people who need to give information to a neighbouring authority if it employed somebody resident there. Local authorities can only get the information they are given, and people may not want to give it to them.

The Minister said that the logical conclusion of my remarks was that we would have a draconian state. Not at all. We would not go down the route of compulsion. It is only because the Government are seeking to compel 17 and 18 year-olds that we will have a massive bureaucracy to track people and find out whether the data are correct and then a massive appeals process if they are not.

The massive bureaucracy that the noble Baroness refers to is in place already. We already have Connexions databases.

Yes, but there will have to be checks that it is absolutely correct. The Minister accepted that the system is not perfect, but it will have to be perfect if the end result is that a young person will be criminalised by being fined and, if they do not pay, they will ultimately go before the Youth Justice Board.

I think we are going round in circles. I said that of course every effort must be made in the future, as it must be made now, to ensure that the data are accurate. However, if any action were to be taken on the basis of inaccurate information, there would be the opportunity to contest it.

Clause 12 agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 68:

This proposed new clause by the Liberal Democrats sets out a general duty for governing bodies in the FE sector to promote the well-being of students under 18. As the Government plan for a rise in the number of 18 year-olds attending further education colleges, it is appropriate to make clear now that their well-being is of great importance. The aim of the Bill is to improve the prospects of young people, so it is sensible that everyone involved in making that happen should promote their welfare.

I also support this proposed new clause. It makes sense to require the governing body of an institution to be made fully aware of the extra duties as a result of the compulsion on young people under the age of 18 to be in continuing education. Of course, one hopes that most students will go into such colleges with a degree of motivation, but not all of them will—it may just be the least worst alternative available to them. Under those circumstances, not only must the governing body be mindful of its duties and any further awareness training needed to undertake this role, but those providing other forms of support such as pastoral care must know about the situation.

I hope very much that the Minister will see the point of this new clause. If he regards it as unnecessary, I hope that he can reassure us that all the points made have been fully taken into account.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is right that, in respect of the duties on governing bodies of FE colleges in England and Wales, Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 is limited to ensuring that they exercise their functions with a view to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of their younger students. However, the section needs to be seen in the context of other provisions, policies and developments which adequately ensure that colleges support and promote the well-being of young people. The Further Education and Training Act 2007 provides that, in England, FE institutions must have regard to guidance from the Secretary of State on consulting employers, learners and potential learners, and this guidance will be published in the summer. Ofsted is reviewing the common inspection framework for colleges and intends to ensure that all the Every Child Matters outcomes will be fundamental to its inspection approach. Inspections of some English colleges have highlighted issues around the capacity of some staff to deal with disaffected young people, and these are being addressed through teacher training and the continuous professional development standards introduced in 2007. The Children’s Workforce Development Council will also be reporting in September on its evaluation of integrated working arrangements, and we will consider that report carefully in developing any further support for colleges.

We have also been considering how the existing duty to co-operate under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, which provides the underpinning framework for children’s trusts, should be applied to FE colleges under the new arrangements. Today my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has written to local authorities to say:

“We are sending out to all local authorities proposals to extend the duty to co-operate with children’s trusts to FE colleges and the providers of publicly funded 16-19 provision, with future academies brought within the scope through their funding agreements”.

This will be a further step in the direction that the noble Baroness is urging us to take.

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. Clearly, as the guidance is still being consulted on and has not yet been published, it is impossible for us to know what it contains. It is the same with the new common inspection framework that Ofsted is publishing. I am pleased to hear that both sets of guidance and comments will take account of this issue and that the CWDC will be looking at the working arrangements in relation to it. It is good to hear that the Children Act will extend to further education colleges the duty to co-operate with children’s trusts. All these things will help.

Nevertheless, an anomaly creeps in here. There is a duty on all schools to promote well-being, and Section 175 of the Education Act 2002 refers to promoting the welfare of children receiving training in the educational institution. “Well-being” is defined clearly, in a holistic sense, within the Children Act, but this is not so of “welfare” in the Education Act 2002. The anomaly is that, unlike FE colleges, all schools and other educational institutions have such an obligation.

I shall read carefully what the Minister said. We shall ponder this matter and may well bring it back on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 69 not moved.]

Clause 13 [Notification of non-compliance with duty imposed by section 2]:

moved Amendment No. 70:

This is a limited amendment, although the noble Baroness raised wider issues in respect of it. It specifically refers to independent schools, which it would add to the list of institutions in Clause 13 that are required to notify Connexions if a young person drops out of education or training.

One of the problems of being a Minister in these debates is that, when you are faced with about 20 questions to answer, if you are lucky you get through half of them, sometimes not even that many, and afterwards you remember the ones that you did not get to. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, asked me in the previous debate whether it is the case that there are requirements on Connexions—and, in future, on local authorities—to maintain the data on participation but no requirements to provide information. That is not the case; there will be substantial requirements to provide information, as indeed there are at the moment. The requirements to provide information are set out in Clause 14 and powers to provide information are set out in Clauses 15 and 16.

With regard to the remark of the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, that the existing database is intended only for NEETs, that is emphatically not the case; it covers all 13 to 19 year-olds. Only a very small percentage of young people are currently not captured—about 5 per cent, according to my information. That relates also to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry: it is not the case that at the moment there are vast numbers of young people in respect of whose participation Connexions does not have some data. The number about whom Connexions does not at present have data is very small. As I say, the information requirements are not new. They are set out elaborately in the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which brought Connexions into being.

Regarding the independent schools, which cater for about 7 per cent of the cohort and therefore are an important source of information on young people, we are looking at ways to encourage existing good practice on the ground. For example, in some areas Connexions has locally agreed protocols in place with independent schools and we are looking into whether they can be extended so that more information from independent schools is included in the database. However, we are not minded at present to extend statutory duties to independent schools, although we will keep that issue under review.

I thank the Minister for his reply. I am glad to hear that the Government are looking at ways of bringing independent schools in. As he says, 7 per cent of the age cohort is not an insubstantial proportion. If the aim is to provide a comprehensive database, it is the more necessary that all schools be brought into it. This was a minor, probing amendment, and I beg leave to withdraw it.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 71 had been retabled as Amendment No. 67A.]

Clause 13 agreed to.

Clause 14 [Educational institutions: duty to provide information]:

moved Amendment No. 72:

We have one small amendment in this large group, Amendment No. 92, which would make sure that inclusion of data on the database had the written consent of the person concerned. All these amendments are on the same subject. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, made clear, we are discussing the integrity and use of the databases and the degree to which those who use them adhere to the highest standards of data protection. She reminded the Minister of the lapses that have taken place in the past few months.

We should be aware that as the potential of information technology increases so we are seeing an increasing number of extremely large databases where a great deal of information, some of it highly confidential and personal, is stored. In the case of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and child benefits, the information included the names and addresses of children and the bank account numbers of their parents. Under the Children Act, we are compiling a great national database of children. We know that many active paedophile rings are using the internet constantly. Therefore, one does not want any chance to be given for obtaining data containing lists of names and addresses of children. One does not wish such data to be leaked out and made available to the general public. It is extremely important that all those concerned with handling the data adhere to the strict requirements of the Data Protection Act, in terms of making sure that the data on databases are accurate, that the person concerned knows that they are there and has the chance to make sure that they are accurate and that those handling the data recognise their confidentiality and adhere to proper standards of encryption when passing them over.

Our concern arises from the multiplication of databases. We spoke under earlier amendments about databases currently held by Connexions that would be passed over to local authorities. We may have a duplicate of the national database of children. We know that data will have regularly to be passed on from one person to another. It is therefore extremely important that those concerned with handling the data adhere to the highest standards. One aspect of those standards is the written consent: making sure that those whose data are on a database know that they are there and have given permission for their use.

Will the Minister answer a factual question? I know that the duty in the Bill is to pass on the information to the local authority, but would it not also have to be to the governing bodies of schools, which are not within local authorities’ purview?

For me to answer a question, I need to understand it properly. Much of the information provided to the local authority will have come from the school in any event. Is the noble Baroness referring to schools that have not provided the information having access to it?

I was thinking particularly of Clause 15, which relates to the passing on of social security data and to which some of the amendments refer. Social security data are passed on to the local authority, but what would happen in the case of young people who are at schools that do not come within the local authority’s purview—for example, independent schools and city academies? Would it not be necessary also for them to have the data?

No, they would not have access to those data.

Perhaps I may make two preliminary comments, because I understand the gravity of the issues that we are discussing. I understand that Parliament has an absolute duty to see that personal data are handled appropriately and are not disclosed in an unauthorised way, and that security is paramount. My first general point is to note that the provisions in this Bill are very similar to those to which Parliament has already agreed in respect of Section 117 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, in terms of duties on educational institutions to provide information; Section 119, in terms of the duties and powers of Secretaries of State to provide information—that particularly applies to Jobcentre Plus—and Section 120, in terms of the powers of other public bodies to provide information. The provisions of the 2000 Act enabled the Connexions databases to be established and the provisions in this Bill substantially replicate those provisions. That is the first general remark that I make. We are not, as we have been in some other contexts—and I appreciate the controversy of some of those proposals—introducing substantially new databases.

My second point is that existing Connexions databases must adhere to national specifications to ensure minimum standards of consistency and to ensure that they have security built into local systems so that individual data are accessible only to those with a need to view the information. All users of the systems are expected to be trained in handling personal and sensitive data and to be aware of the data protection and security procedures in place. To date, I am informed, there has not been a single breach of security involving Connexions data at a local or national level. I make those two preliminary remarks in respect of concerns raised on data.

I can meet most of the specific points raised—and then we have the simple issue of opt-in versus opt-out. The amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—Amendments Nos. 72, 84, 91 and 105—state that disclosure of information under Clauses 14 to 17 should be subject to the provisions of the Data Protection Act. That is indeed the case. The Act applies to all disclosures of personal data. It is of general application and there is no requirement for explicit references to the Act or its principles on the face of other legislation for this to be the case. Not only would making such references be unnecessary as a matter of law, but it would increase the burden on Parliament every time it scrutinised such legislation to re-enact time and again the said provisions.

We can also meet the noble Baroness’s concerns on her Amendments Nos. 77 and 102, on the right for young people to examine information held on them. Learning providers, public bodies and local authorities already have to comply with the Data Protection Act in this regard. This clause is similar to existing arrangements, which are covered by the Data Protection Act. This means that a young person can already request a copy of their personal information held by their school or college, or other public body, and they could put the same request to Connexions or the local authority whenever they wished.

On Amendments Nos. 78 and 103, if a young person believes that the information held on them is inaccurate, they can write to the organisation to set out what they believe is wrong with their information and what should be done to correct it. If the necessary changes are not made, an individual can take the organisation to court and can ask the Information Commissioner to assess whether the processing of their personal data has been carried out in compliance with the provisions of the Act. That was another of the noble Baroness’s concerns.

On Amendments Nos. 83 and 101, the principles of fairness contained in the Data Protection Act already mean that it is necessary to inform a person if personal data relating to him or her are being, or will be, shared, unless such notification is not practicable. The effect of Amendment No. 83 would be that providers would be required to write to each of their students annually informing them of their rights under subsection (4). Learning providers have had arrangements in place to do this with regard to information disclosures to Connexions since 2000, and these have a good track record. Currently, schools write to the parents of all pupils approaching the age of 13, letting them know that information about their children will be shared with the Connexions service unless they request that it should not be.

Parents are provided with a form to sign and return to the school if they do not want additional information about their child to be passed to Connexions. We provide standard templates of these forms to local authorities, which provide them to schools. I can provide them to the noble Baroness. Schools use these letters on a standard basis as pupils approach the age of 13, so parents have the opportunity to opt out of the provision of this information if they so wish. Amendment No. 101 goes too far in specifying that under Clause 16 a local authority would have to notify the young person concerned within seven days of the information being supplied. Setting such a specific time limit within which this must be done would be unnecessarily inflexible and burdensome.

Amendments Nos. 73 and 177 concern written consent for the provision of information. I stress again that information-sharing provisions have been in place since 2000. There is the opportunity now for all parents—and pupils and young people as appropriate—to opt out of the provision of information. These provisions are already in place and have worked well. The amendment would add bureaucracy and unnecessary complexity to the system and reduce the ability of the local authorities and Connexions to ensure that timely and appropriate support can be provided to young people in finding and accessing appropriate courses. Many young people or their parents may simply forget or neglect to sign and send in the necessary form. Only those who had actually sent in the form could be covered in respect of the provision of information. As the noble Baroness will appreciate, this will be a particular risk for young people who have—if I may put it this way—chaotic lifestyles. It is precisely such young people whom we are particularly anxious to help in terms of support to continue engaging in education and training.

We believe that Clauses 14 and 57 strike the right balance between enabling the local authority to fulfil its duty of promoting participation, providing the Connexions service and tracking young people effectively to enable that, and respecting young people’s right to prevent certain information about them from being shared. I emphasise again safeguards that are already in place. Under the Data Protection Act, individuals have the right to request a copy of the personal information held on them by an organisation. The organisation must inform the young person if personal data relating to him or her are being shared, if notification is practicable. Furthermore, under subsection (4) of Clauses 14 and 57, young people are able to prevent additional information about them from being passed on to the local authority. Similar arguments apply to Amendments Nos. 79, 80 and 82, which would turn the existing opt-out regime into an opt-in regime in respect of additional information beyond simply name, address and date of birth for post-16 students and their education or training destinations.

The noble Baroness did not speak to Amendment No. 89 but, as she said, I even reply to her amendments when she has not explained what she thinks they are intended to mean. Amendment No. 89 would affect the ability of Jobcentre Plus to provide information. Again, it is important to understand that this provision is not new. There is already a power for the Secretary of State to pass information on to Connexions in this area under Section 119 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. There are also other powers in social security legislation that permit Jobcentre Plus to provide information on 16 and 17 year-olds claiming benefit. For certain 16 and 17 year-olds, it is a condition of claiming certain benefits that they are in contact with Connexions, so that we can be sure that they are getting the help and support that they need. I imagine that the noble Baroness would support the need for these requirements. Jobcentre Plus has the power to share these young people’s information for benefit purposes without obtaining consent.

Amendment No. 179, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on the disclosure of information to Connexions by schools and colleges, would prevent Connexions services from having access to students and available facilities in their place of learning, unless consent was given by the student. This would make it very difficult for the Connexions service to provide support to young people. It would also create an unhelpful, complicated and confusing layer of bureaucracy for schools and colleges. Good-quality information, advice and guidance are vital to ensure that young people make the right choices about their future. If the amendment were accepted, the Connexions service would be unable to access in their place of learning young people who either failed or refused to give consent. Very often these young people would be the most vulnerable. This amendment would effectively bar Connexions from helping the young people who need its support most.

Finally, Amendment No. 178 would require every educational institution, before supplying information on its students in response to a request from the Connexions service, to satisfy itself that it was conforming to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Article 8 is the right to respect for private and family life. It is a most important safeguard to the rights of the individual. It is, however, a qualified right. The convention allows for circumstances in which an interference with this right can be justified by the state.

My honourable friend the Minister for Schools in another place wrote to Andrew Dismore, chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, in January about the possibility that the duty on educational institutions in Clause 57 to provide information on their students would interfere with this right. The letter extends to 20 closely typed pages. I will copy it to the noble Baroness, but perhaps I may summarise it briefly.

My honourable friend argued that interference with Article 8 in Clause 57 was justified on four grounds. First, what we seek to be protected in requesting this information is the well-being of the young people themselves. The information collected will be used for improving the participation and general attainment in education and training of young people, thereby ensuring a more skilled workforce. Secondly, the provision of relevant information on individual students to Connexions services is necessary so that every young person is identified for whom local authorities have duties to provide support through Connexions.

Thirdly, the measure is proportionate to the aim. Only through the provision of this information by schools and colleges can the full group of young people, for whom local authorities have duties set out in Part 2, be identified. I remind the Committee that the information consists of the student’s name, address, date of birth and other information relevant to Connexions services, but does not go beyond that, except in respect of the name and address of the parents. Fourthly and finally, specific safeguards are in place to ensure compatibility with Article 8. The information, which must be relevant to enabling or assisting the local authority in exercising its Part 2 functions, can be provided only to a person providing Connexions services. The passing of the information is under the control of “the responsible person”—for example, in a school it is the governing body. Under subsection (4) the young person, or, if they are under 16, their parents, can prevent any additional information from being passed to the Connexions service in the way that I described earlier.

In the light of all these considerations, we believe that the qualified right under Article 8 has been satisfied by the limited nature of this duty on the responsible persons in schools and colleges. Furthermore, an educational institution, by virtue of Section 3 of the Human Rights Act 1998, is obliged to read and give effect to the duty in Clause 57 in a way that is compatible with Article 8 and other convention rights. I hope that I have met most of the points raised by the noble Baroness.

I am doubly confused about the Minister’s earlier answer to me, because it seems crystal clear that information supplied under Clause 17 to the local authority by, for example, the police, the Probation Service, the youth offending team or whoever must be shared with the service provider; in other words, with a school governing body or whatever. Clause 57, to which the Minister extensively referred, shows absolutely clearly that this information can fly around.

The Minister has generously admitted that we are dealing with very serious matters. I just want to emphasise that the governing body of a school includes the friends and neighbours of the young persons and their parents, and their local shops and local providers. I have heard governing bodies gossiping about young people in the school and reminded them of their duties under existing legislation. In the Minister’s earlier answer to me he said that the governing body would not have this information. Surely it will.

I understand the noble Baroness's confusion. Like me, as a non-lawyer she might have thought that “service provider” in Clause 17(2)(b) might refer to a school. It does not. A “service provider” is defined in Clause 17(7), a huge subsection, which states:

“‘service provider’, in relation to a local education authority in England, means … where the authority itself provides services”—

we are talking about Connexions services in this regard—

“in exercise of its functions”,

or where,

“in exercise of its functions … the authority makes arrangements for the provision of services”;

that is, by others providing those Connexions services on contract. In neither of those cases would it be a governing body of a school or a school itself. Those would not be a service provider for the purposes of providing the Connexions services in question under this clause.

I understand that, and I have read the clause very carefully. However, I have also read Clause 57. I find the Connexions service just as worrying. A local contractor or local school company can provide that sort of information. However, Clause 57 clearly states:

“Relevant information about a pupil or student … must be provided by the responsible person to a person involved in the provision of services in pursuance of section 54”.

It goes on to say that the “responsible person” can mean the governing body, the local education authority, the proprietor of an independent school or whatever. This flow of information seems to include everyone concerned, whether within schools, the local authority or what replaces the Connexions service.

That is not my reading of Clause 57. Clause 57(1) specifically states:

“Relevant information about a pupil or student who is attending an educational institution in England must be provided by the responsible person”.

That is about the provision of information, not the use of information thereafter; that is, accessing databases and so on. I understood the noble Baroness to raise the issue of the use of the information—who has access to that database and can use it. Of course a school must provide information in the circumstances set out. It will be one of the main providers of information because most of the students, I am glad to say, will be at school.

Forgive me if I am being exceptionally thick, but how can they provide the information unless they access the database, which will include far more than they themselves know? Surely the database from which they will provide information to anybody else, as this clause requires them to do, will be the one that the local authority has acquired from all these other bodies, including the police?

That is precisely the point. The school provides the information to those who maintain the database. The school does not maintain it.

The school cannot access the database either?

No.

Perhaps I may ask a question about Clause 14. My understanding is that when a local education authority wants to know what courses a child is doing and whether they are attending them, the source of that information will be the educational institution, and the power to get that information will be under Clause 14(3)(c), a provision under which the child can refuse to allow information to be distributed. So, if a child has exercised that right, the local education authority will know that they are registered with a particular institution but will have no information about what they are doing there. How does that interact with Clause 39(1), on the conditions under which a local authority can take steps to issue an attendance notice?

If lawyers were physicists, they would understand that, as with Schrödinger’s cat, where there is uncertainty it is not a question of knowing or not knowing, but a question of knowing that it is both. They could therefore take action under this clause. I rather suspect that lawyers are not physicists, and would say that where it is not known whether a student is fulfilling a duty, the power in Clause 39(1) would not apply.

I think that I understand the noble Lord’s point, but let me be clear. His point is that if information under Clause 14(3)(c) was withheld by the student—they did not wish that further information about their engagement in education training to be made available—it would be more difficult for a local authority to take steps under Clause 39.

The less information a local authority has, the less able it will be to take enforcement action; that must be the case. However, it may not be the case that it has insufficient information to take steps under Clause 39. For example, we established in our earlier debates that employers should check, when they take on an employee in part-time training, that the training is either being provided by them on an accredited basis or that they have suitable notification from an education and training provider that it is being undertaken. That would be another source of information that would not be directly related to the database and information held on it. While I accept the noble Lord’s point—that if there is less information on the database, a local authority will be less likely to be able to take steps under Clause 39 and the following clauses—it does not follow that they will be unable to take such action; they will have access to other sources of information, such as that provided to them by employers.

I am grateful that my faith in the Minister’s prophetic powers was not misplaced. I thank him for his answers.

Having listened to the exchange between the Minister and my noble friends, I will read with care the many answers he gave to my questions. We will then see whether we will come back on Report. There is nothing different in how our amendments are drafted from the principles in the Data Protection Act. The purpose of the amendments has been to air a number of concerns. The Minister realises that wherever there is an issue of personal, sensitive data and its protection, people will have concerns, not least the Children’s Rights Alliance.

We have had many debates on the contact point. However, when young people have been widely consulted on professionals involved in their care sharing information, as they were in 2004-05, they have revealed extensive concerns. They think that there may be potential misuse of this information and fear that, far from some of it helping them, they will neither seek the services that they need nor share sensitive information that may help them. For now, however, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 73 not moved.]

In calling Amendment No. 74, I must point out that if it is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment No. 75 for reasons of pre-emption.

moved Amendment No. 74:

I wish to speak to Amendments Nos. 100 and 109 in this group, which stand in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Walmsley. Amendment No. 100 seeks to add the Border and Immigration Agency to the list in Clause 16(2). Clause 16(1) states:

“Any of the persons or bodies mentioned in subsection (2) may supply information about a person to a local education authority in England for the purpose of enabling or assisting the authority to exercise its functions under this Part”.

As we know, the aim is to build up the Connexions database so that it can keep track of young persons in education and training for whom it is responsible.

During the passage of the Children Bill in 2004 we talked at length about the role of the Border and Immigration Agency in relation to young people—often unaccompanied minors—who arrived in this country as asylum seekers. We discussed whose responsibility they were and what happened to them. Given how many immigrants from many countries have arrived in this country over the past few years, among whom are young people crossing our borders and settling in this country, it seems appropriate for the Border and Immigration Agency to be listed among those who supply information so that young people of the relevant age coming from abroad are known about and tracked. If we are requiring young people between the ages of 16 and 18 to attend school or a further education college or to work as an apprentice and have off-the-job training, it should apply as much to those coming in from abroad as to those who are born and grow up in this country. It is necessary that such data are made available to local authorities in order to maintain a fully comprehensive database.

We enter into further complexity in discussing the amendments in terms of the relationships between different clauses. Continuing the dialogue across groups that has been a feature of our debates so far, I shall add a few remarks to the earlier discussions that we had on the connection that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised between the database and any enforcement action that might follow.

I have two further points to supplement the answer that I gave in that respect. If there is less information available to a local authority, it will be less able to act. However, it is not simply the database that acts as one source of information for a local authority, nor is it simply the duty on employers to make checks. The duty on employers is to make checks, not to notify the local authority. The fact that there is that duty on employers to make checks will act as a significant incentive to young people to participate.

There is also the duty in Clause 13 to notify non-compliance on the part of schools and colleges. Clause 13(1)(c) states that,

“the responsible person has reasonable cause to believe that in consequence of that failure to participate the person is failing to fulfil the duty imposed by section 2, the responsible person must give notice to the appropriate service provider of those circumstances”.

A whole set of different parts of the Bill come to bear on the issue of sufficient information being made available to local authorities to enable them to act. We are not talking simply about the existence of information on the database, nor simply about the power of the local authority that will impact on young people in ensuring that they take seriously their duty to engage in education or training. As I said, the requirement on employers to make the initial checks when they employ young people will also have a significant impact. In all those respects, the incentives on young people to participate will be there, in the great majority of cases, without enforcement action needing to be provided.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has tabled Amendments Nos. 74, 85, 93 and 106, which seek to restrict the purpose for which the local authority could request information under Clauses 14, 15, 16 and 17. The amendments would unduly restrict local authorities. To fulfil its duty of promoting effective participation, the local authority will indeed need information on young people to ensure that appropriate careers information is provided to them, as she said. However, it will also need that information to ensure that a range of other services are provided appropriately to promote participation in education and training. Her amendments would not allow that to take place as local authorities would also need to ensure that the full range of Connexions services were provided, including, for instance, assessments of learning difficulties, targeted support services and financial support. Local authorities will need to ensure that they are able to take informed decisions on a case-by-case basis about the appropriate next steps for individual young people who are not participating. The amendments would unduly restrict the purposes for which local authorities could use information within their wider responsibility to promote participation in education and training.

Amendments Nos. 75, 82, 86, 90, 94, 104, 107 and 108 relate to the relationship between information provided and enforcing the duty to participate. The noble Baroness’s concern is that information provided will automatically trigger enforcement. I stress that the Bill ensures that it will not be possible for a local authority to undertake enforcement action against a young person unless, first, they have been offered a suitable learning place; secondly, support has been provided that would enable them to participate; thirdly, the young person has had the opportunity to take advantage of that support; and fourthly, they had failed to do so without reasonable excuse as set out in Clause 39, which we have already debated at length.

There is no direct connection between the provision of information, either from the database or from other sources, and enforcement action. Local authorities need to exercise their judgments before taking any action that there is not a reasonable excuse and they must also have gone through these other steps in the process: ensuring that the young person in question has been offered a suitable learning place; that support has been provided that would enable them to participate; and that they had the opportunity to take advantage of that support.

I hope that clarifies the situation as regards the duties on local authorities and how they interact with the provision of information. We shall also give guidance to local authorities on how we expect them to carry out their new duties and powers, including the attendance panel and enforcement functions and what criteria would apply in judging whether it is appropriate for an individual case to reach the point of enforcements. The local authority will decide, on a case-by-case basis, when it is appropriate to go down the route of enforcement. The system will be designed to ensure that each individual is treated fairly and that the full range of their present circumstances is taken into account before any formal action takes place.

Amendments Nos. 87 and 88 concern information sharing. Information sharing between government departments and the Connexions service is not new, as I said in response to an earlier group of amendments. Section 119 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 provides a power to pass the information described in Clause 15 to Connexions and this power is already being used. It is an essential source of basic identification information which serves to populate the Connexions database. Together with other sources, it is fundamental to Connexions being able to track young people effectively, and to provide them with appropriate and timely support. Those remarks extend also to Amendments Nos. 96 and 97. The power for public bodies to disclose information to Connexions also already exists under Section 120 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which enables professions working in different agencies to tell Connexions when they come across young people who, in their judgment, would benefit from extra support from Connexions services. Those other agencies may come across young people who are not otherwise known to the Connexions service; for example, because they have just moved into the area.

Amendment No. 100 is in this group, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, concerning the Border and Immigration Agency. Would the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, like me to speak to that amendment?

I spoke to it.

It was so long ago I missed the fact that remarks had been made.

I also spoke to Amendment No. 109, although the two amendments cover separate issues.

I shall deal with Amendment No. 100 first and then come to Amendment No. 109. Amendment No. 100 adds the Border and Immigration Agency to the public bodies listed under Clause 16, which have the power to supply information about a young person to the local authority for the purposes of its functions under Part 1.

The list in Clauses 16 and 62 reproduces the list from Section 120 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000 because we want Connexions to be able to access the same information under Clause 62 as it does under Section 120 of the 2000 Act. The information clauses in Parts 1 and 2 mirror each other to make clear that we do not intend to add to the information that is currently used and disclosed under the relevant sections of the Learning and Skills Act. We want Connexions to have access to exactly the same information that it does now.

It is not clear to us what relevant information the Border and Immigration Agency would provide that we could not obtain elsewhere. A young person moving into an area could equally be picked up by other local services coming into contact with him.

In respect of Amendment No. 109, I assure the noble Baroness that the intention behind the amendment is already implicit in the Bill. The amendment would make explicit that the purposes of the Connexions service should include support and guidance services. This is already the case. Clause 54(1) defines the purpose of the Connexions service as such services as the local authority,

“considers appropriate to encourage, enable or assist the effective participation”,

of young people in education or training. That encompasses her objectives. I hope I have covered most of the points raised in the opening remarks.

I shall come back on those amendments before the noble Baroness comes back on the wider issues she raised. The Minister will remember the debates during the passage of the Children Act on the role of the Border and Immigration Agency in providing information about immigrants to this county. He said that local authorities would be able to obtain those data from other sources. It is not clear that they will. If asylum seekers move into an area, they may be picked up by the strategic health authority, the Probation Service or the chief of police but, in some senses, one hopes that they would not necessarily be picked up by those people. In so far as the Border and Immigration Agency has information about where immigrants intend to go initially, it would be useful for that information to be provided.

In relation to Amendment No. 109, as I said when I spoke to it, the wording in Clause 54(1) is not as explicit as it might be. Support and guidance services include not just information and guidance delivered by the Connexions service but also issues in relation to child and adolescent mental health services and other health services, which come under the PCT. Are PCTs included here as service providers?

I am not sure about that. I shall have to come back to the noble Baroness about whether PCTs are included. In respect of her question about the Border and Immigration Agency, the advice I have been given is that we do not believe that it would be in a position to provide information that could not be picked up by other local services, but I am happy to go back and ask the question again in the light of her remarks.

It is not immediately clear that the list of providers of information in Clause 16(2) would necessarily pick up people coming in. They do not have to be asylum seekers. Large numbers of people from eastern Europe have settled in our towns and cities and provide many services, but they bring children with them.

I understand the point that the noble Baroness makes; I will reflect on it further and ask my officials to look again at the issue to see whether there could be any benefit from extending that. We are not against extending the list on principle; as I say, the list was taken from Section 120 of the 2000 Act and we were keen not to be seen to be extending the powers to provide information more widely than absolutely necessary, for all the data protection reasons that we discussed earlier.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, asked the Minister how wide is the definition of a service provider. I am not sure that he answered that part of her question; it is a question that I would especially like to hear the answer to.

I have the answer somewhere; but I wanted to have the absolute words in front of me before they arrive in Hansard. In Clause 17, “service provider” refers to Connexions only; it does not include PCTs or CAMs.

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. I thought that he was going to answer the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, in the next group, but he has done it in this group—that was a joke. I thank him for his answer to this group of amendments and, indeed, to previous ones. In reply to his answer on our first group of amendments, the last thing that we would want to do is restrict access for any special needs assessment or financial support; I fully accept what he said in reply to that group.

I am also grateful to the Minister for explaining and reassuring us that there is no direct connection between provision of database information and enforcement, and that the local authority will have to exercise its judgment and go through all the stages that we will come to later on in the Bill. I must say that the more he explains what everyone has to do before we get to compulsion, the more I wonder where all the people are going to come from to do the work.

On my amendment relating to Connexions, I am fully aware that the power already exists, but our amendment is to prevent the information being used more widely. A general concern is that, as drafted, this part is worded too widely; it could have allayed some of our fears if the provisions had been worded more tightly.

In conclusion, on this group and the previous group, as the Minister keeps going back to previous groups, I fully acknowledge that the systems that the Government use are of the highest standards and they require that people handle the information with the utmost care. What worries me is what happens when the information is printed off, downloaded onto a disk, or when it is on a laptop computer. Then it is not just a question of highly sophisticated technology but of people, with all their human failings. That is where most of our concerns about that sensitive data arise. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 75 not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 76:

We support the Liberal Democrat amendment, which refines the type of information that can be supplied to that which relates directly to the pupil’s education and support needs. As I said in my closing comments to the previous group, the Bill is too widely drafted. In this sensitive area, there is no reason to allow more information than is strictly required to be shared by government agencies.

At the risk of becoming a cracked record, let me start by reiterating that learning providers already disclose this information to Connexions under Section 117 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has asked what this additional information comprises. In practice, the additional information shared includes gender and ethnicity, special educational needs at School Action or School Action Plus status, and which year group the student is in.

Schools also inform Connexions about post-16 choices and, in particular, about whether pupils in their last year of compulsory education have been offered a place at the school’s sixth form, if it has one, so that the Connexions service can contact those who are not planning to stay on in school and can help them to obtain a suitable place in learning or work. I imagine that the noble Baroness would find all those aspects of information entirely acceptable for the Connexions service to hold since it is all directly related to the student’s participation in education and training, and the provision of proper support services to them to enable them to do so. It is also already the case that learning providers pass on only information that is relevant to a young person’s educational and support needs. Under Clauses 14 and 57, that would be the case regardless of whether the information was passed on to Connexions or to the local authority.

Perhaps I may reiterate again that personal information can be shared only in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act 1998, the Human Rights Act 1998 and the common law of confidence. Already, without amendments of the kind suggested by the noble Baroness, existing law tightly regulates the circumstances in which data can be disclosed. This means that information disclosures under Clause 14 must be otherwise lawful, in accordance with existing data protection and human rights legislation in the way that I set out in my response to the earlier group of amendments.

I am particularly interested in this issue. The noble Lord has sought to reassure us with a statement of what educational institutions now do, but we are concerned with what, under this Bill, educational institutions could do. There is no apparent restraint on the nature of the information in Clause 14(3)(c). The noble Lord refers us to other legislation under which this would be caught. No doubt, research would prove that what he has said is a watertight case for restricting the information to that which he has described. But—

I—

The noble Lord might prove me wrong, but perhaps I could finish my sentence, which got only to the word “but”. In my view, and that of many others who have to live under the law, it is much more satisfactory to have any constraints within the instrument and not to have to consult a solicitor at great expense to determine what the other provisions might be. I hope that the noble Lord will point to another provision in this Bill that answers our concern, which would of course be a happy outcome.

I can indeed do that by referring to Clause 14(2), which states:

“A local education authority may request information under subsection (1) only for the purpose of enabling or assisting it to exercise its functions under this Part”.

That is the part of the Bill concerning the duty to participate in education and training.

I remind the House of the amount of covert surveillance that is conducted by local authorities. When we passed the legislation under which that is done, we all thought that it related strictly to national security. It now relates to rubbish bins. We need a little more reassurance than that.

We have eight years’ worth of experience in this area. These duties already apply; they are set out in the Learning and Skills Act 2000, which led to the creation of the Connexions databases for precisely the same purposes. I am not aware of concerns that local authorities have been using these powers to collect information which the noble Lord thinks undesirable. It is always possible to imagine that powers could be used for purposes other than those for which they are intended to be used, but Clause 14(2) is explicit and we have the real experience of local authorities in this area, which I do not think justifies concerns that powers are being used unduly to interfere in or conduct surveillance about young people beyond the promotion of education and training which is necessary for their own needs. However, I am happy to listen to any cases that the noble Lord might bring to my attention.

Is the Minister right in saying that we have the experience of local authorities in this area? To date, we have the experience of the Connexions service in putting together a database which authorities have used for support.

That is what I meant—the experience of Connexions. Exactly the same powers will be transferred to local authorities in maintaining the Connexions database.

Except that the Connexions service will have somewhat extended powers in the sense that it has helped and supported a number of vulnerable young people and got them into education and training. But we know that quite a number fall outside the purview of the Connexions service, and we are extending its powers in that sense.

There is one issue about which I am not clear. If a young person has had a connection with a youth offending team because, say, at the age of 14 he got in with a gang who carried out petty burglaries, would that be passed on to the Connexions service even if he had outgrown that period and was less vulnerable? I do not know whether that is the sort of information that is passed on.

It clearly is the case that such information may be supplied. Clause 16(2) specifically mentions,

“a local probation board, and … a youth offending team”,

as bodies which can provide information. But one would expect that information to be relevant to the purposes of the Bill and thus only for the Connexions service, and in due course the local authority, to make appropriate use of it.

Committee is the point at which to exercise the imagination. I can see a local authority saying that in order to establish what a certain young person is doing and whether he really is behaving as he should, it would be interesting to know if he has previous convictions which involved him in doing things when he ought to have been studying. The noble Lord looks as if I am straining at the possible, but we have experience of authorities vastly exceeding the constraints we thought we had placed on them under one piece of legislation. Therefore I return to what I said before: it is best to have the constraints set out precisely in the Bill that is to provide the powers. I shall not go on further because I am sure I have made myself clear. We shall have to see what happens next.

Perhaps I may press the point a little further. The noble Lord has a great concern, as do we all, about the educational well-being of students who have come into contact with young offender institutions or have been involved in youth offending activities. That could be highly relevant information to assist them with their learning needs. The key issue here is that the information is only for the purpose of enabling or assisting local authorities to exercise their functions under that part of the Bill. I am sure that the noble Lord would himself accept that information of this kind could be highly relevant to enabling a local authority, and/or at the moment the Connexions service, to provide precisely the type of support that could be so important to a young offender to progress with their education and training. Indeed, in other debates we have considered the failure of public authorities to provide sufficient support to young people in young offender institutions—for example, with their transition back into wider society. It is a point on which the Government have been pressed very hard, and I think with some justice.

Again, what is key is that the purposes for which the information is used are properly defined, and as I read the Bill, they are.

I do not know whether the Minister saw in the Guardian on Tuesday that a young man with a criminal record had clearly done a great deal of voluntary work and gained himself a place at a very famous university in London. However, he is about to be refused his place, even though the General Medical Council has said that even if someone has a criminal record they can train to be a doctor. We are concerned about adding to the criminal records of this group of young people, and we rely on what is in existence because it is meant to protect young people. However, we find that what we are relying on is not as protective as we had hoped. Indeed, it causes a lot of concern.

I think the case the noble Baroness is referring to concerns a decision taken by a university about the admission of a student. A university is of course an independent body and it would not be appropriate for us to specify precisely how such a body should take its admissions decisions. The offence, as I understand it, was one of burglary. That has to be an issue for the university in following proper procedures itself. I do not think it would be appropriate for me as a Minister to tell a university who it should or should not admit.

Nevertheless, we have had assurances from the Minister that a conviction gained when young will be off the record after two and a half years. In this case, the conviction seems to have come up again. Perhaps it was slightly under the two and a half years; I am not quite sure. We will come back to the issue when we consider the degree to which the enforcement mechanisms will ultimately involve those who fail to meet their duties under Clause 2, acquiring a criminal record.

The amendment was probing, to try to clarify the situation. We have had some clarification, although perhaps some of us are a little fuzzier about the extent of this provision. The Minister said that the Government were transposing it from the Learning and Skills Act into the Bill, and I understand that. We will read very carefully what has been said and decide what elements we will want to raise again on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 77 to 83 not moved.]

Clause 14 agreed to.

Clause 15 [Supply of social security information]:

[Amendments Nos. 84 to 90 not moved.]

Clause 15 agreed to.

Clause 16 [Supply of information by public bodies]:

[Amendments Nos. 91 to 94 not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 95:

The provisions under Clause 16 are not new. Public bodies already pass on information on young people to Connexions under Section 120 of the Learning and Skills Act 2000, and this is already adequately protected by the Data Protection Act. It would be inappropriate and disproportionate to apply the offence under Clause 15 to Clause 16. There is already adequate cover under the Data Protection Act and the offence in Clause 15 relates specifically to social security information. It was included in the Learning and Skills Act 2000 so that it is commensurate with offences in other social security legislation—namely, Section 123 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992. It is designed as a deterrent and the penalties reflect this.

Under Clause 16 as it stands, unauthorised disclosure of personal information would lead to a breach of the Data Protection Act. Prosecutions for this offence must be commenced by the Information Commissioner or with the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions. A person can be tried for this offence and the maximum penalty is a fine limited only by the jurisdiction of the court. For these reasons, I hope the noble Baroness will be satisfied.

Indeed I am. I thank the Minister for his reply. It was a probing amendment to discover why there was a difference between the two clauses. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendments Nos. 96 to 99 not moved.]

Clause 16 [Supply of information by public bodies]:

[Amendments Nos. 100 to 104 not moved.]

Clause 16 agreed to.

Clause 17 [Sharing and use of information held for purposes of support services or functions under this Part]:

[Amendments Nos. 105 to 109 not moved.]

Clause 17 agreed to.

Clause 18 [Guidance]:

[Amendment No. 110 not moved.]

Clause 18 agreed to.

moved Amendment No. 111:

I support the amendment, although I think it is wrongly placed. It seems odd to place it after Clause 18 at the beginning of the section relating to employers when, in Part 2, Clauses 54 to 70—particularly Clause 66—are expressly concerned with issues of the Careers Service. It would have been better to have placed the new clause somewhere within Part 2 rather than at this point.

I declare an interest as a member of the Skills Commission, which has recently published a pamphlet about careers education. It advocates, among other things, an all-age careers service and to some extent criticises the Government for having failed to listen to those who advocated such a service at an earlier point.

I support the amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. I also have an amendment on careers advice later in the Bill. What the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has said is absolutely right; quite apart from what we are debating today, there are now so many different pathways that the need for much more intensive all-embracing careers advice is very definitely there.

On the idea of having an independent review, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said, we have five years before these provisions are likely to come into effect. If we had an overview and a hard look at the all-age advice that is already established in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, that would be an additional aid to getting it right for the situations and the additional compulsion that will exist for young people up to the age of 18. This is an excellent idea. The amendment may be in the wrong place, but it is no bad thing if we can have an early look at it.

I should like to ask my noble friend whether I am right in this supposition. It is not only the learning path that is complex, which children are faced with; it is also the employment path, which is complex and changing. Schools as well as children should be kept abreast of the changes therein. I wonder whether a national careers advisory service might not actually provide links between schools and the needs of the marketplace and employers. What my noble friend recommends might be a valuable asset.

The amendment proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, would require the Secretary of State to commission an independent review into the effectiveness of the provision of careers advice in England and the appropriateness of a single all-age advice and guidance service as established in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I shall take the two issues in turn—the review, and the appropriateness of a single service. Reviews on this subject have already been undertaken; for example, there was the Report of the End to End Review of Careers Education and Guidance, which reported to my department in July 2005, and the review of skills from the noble Lord, Lord Leitch, published in December 2006, which addressed careers services for adults. We are now implementing the findings of these reviews to build on good practice and to ensure that those areas in which information, advice and guidance have been found to be weak are brought up to the standard of the best.

Secondly, we have listened carefully to those who have called for an all-age careers service. Officials from my department and from the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills have held a series of exploratory discussions with key stakeholders on this issue over the past year. However, while we are fully convinced of the case for an all-age careers strategy, we are not convinced that the introduction of an all-age careers service is the best way forward. Adults and young people have different needs and issues to address and we believe that these require different solutions.

On the adult side, the Government accepted the recommendation of my noble friend Lord Leitch to establish a new, universal adult careers service, bringing together the existing adult face-to-face, telephone and online delivery and working in partnership with Jobcentre Plus in England, to be operational from 2010-11. Key features of the new adult service will be supporting the delivery of skills accounts, improving effectiveness by better needs identification through skills health checks, providing better integrated financial support for learning for those with the lowest skills and qualifications, greater use of online and telephone support, where appropriate, and meeting individual needs within a differentiated service reflecting government priorities to help the unemployed and the low skilled.

The Government will continue to work with partners to develop a joined-up advice service, covering issues such as housing, employment rights, childcare and financial and personal advice and support, as well as jobs and skills. The consultation paper that we have issued, Raising Expectations: Enabling the System to Deliver, sets out that the new skills funding agency will be responsible for managing, setting targets and service specifications for the adult advancement and careers service, which will be fully operational in 2010-11.

We expect the full new service to provide skills health checks and action plans for up to half a million workless people and a further half a million skills health checks and action plans for adults in work, targeting those with low skills or those who need to retrain to progress. We are providing additional resources, rising to at least £50 million per year by 2010-11, to help to develop the new integrated employment and skills system, in particular the development of the new service and skills accounts.

We will continue to fund Connexions at around £470 million over the next two years, which is double the pre-Connexions service budget for the careers service. The Report of the End to End Review of Careers Education and Guidance, published in 2005, gave a broadly favourable verdict on Connexions. It said:

“A summary of available evidence on the progress of Connexions in March 2004 found that the service was making an impact, especially for young people who require intensive support. It has measurably reduced the number of young people in the NEET group. Young people report that the service makes a real difference to their progress through information, guidance and ongoing support. The University of Southampton’s research found Connexions was the most important intervening agency for the majority of pupils”.

That broadly favourable view of Connexions is sustained by stakeholders and surveys, which have been broadly positive, and by Ofsted, which in 28 inspections of Connexions partnerships has rated 89 per cent as satisfactory or better, with 60 per cent rated as good or better. That is why we have made provision for local authorities to be under a duty to comply with key elements of existing Connexions practice, including use of the brand itself and minimum qualifications for personal advisers.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, specifically mentioned web-based services. It is worth noting in this context that Connexions Direct is an award-winning national helpline and website that currently provides services to young people. It complements the face-to-face delivery of local providers of information, advice and guidance to young people and the local area prospectus. Connexions Direct offers accurate, up-to-date information on a range of teen issues. The latest figures show that more than 160,000 young people visit the site on a weekly basis. It has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from young people. Clause 159 ensures that Connexions Direct will continue to be available to young people.

However, we are certainly not complacent and we are alive to the issue of improvements to advice and guidance, particularly to meet the needs of students when making decisions about diplomas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned. Before the delivery of diplomas for 14 to 19 year-olds can go ahead, the consortia will have to pass through a rigorous gateway process to demonstrate that they will deliver high-quality information, advice and guidance. We recognise that the reforms under way for 14 to 19 year-olds will present a challenge to information, advice and guidance providers. We will need to focus on continuous improvements and bringing the performance of all providers up to the highest standards.

I acknowledge the points made by the noble Baronesses, Lady Verma and Lady Sharp, about the quality of schools’ careers services that are not specifically geared to those at the more challenging end of the spectrum. I am talking about the more challenging in respect of their propensity to engage in education and training; of course all young people may have challenging needs for advice and guidance, whatever their propensity to continue in education and training. That is why we will require local authorities to have regard to guidance that clearly sets out our expectations of the information, advice and guidance services for young people that we expect authorities to deliver. We are alive to the need for continuous improvement in this area but, for the reasons that I have given, we are not persuaded that a single, all-age service is necessarily the best way forward. We have conducted significant reviews of Connexions in recent years and we do not believe that a review, of itself, is likely to be a lever to drive up standards further.

I thank the Minister for his response. I agree totally with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, about the great disparity in Connexions services across the country. Many services have incorporated areas that Connexions were not originally intended to cover, such as advice on sexual health and so on. For that reason Connexions has become incredibly stretched in its provision of the sort of advice that young people need when they are looking for career progression.

My noble friend Lord Elton was right to point out the issues facing young people entering the world of employment and the increasing pace of change for those already in employment. There is a great need for an all-age careers service. I thank the Minister for his response, but he failed to satisfy the need for a dedicated all-age advice service. People need a clear point of contact when they are trying to address the challenging changes that they face in the world of employment today. Although Connexions is useful for 14 to 19 year-olds, there must be, given the ever increasing pace of change, a service for all ages. I shall go away and read carefully the details of the Minister’s response. I am not wholly satisfied but, for the moment, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 19 agreed to.

Clause 20 [Appropriate arrangements]:

[Amendment No. 112 not moved.]

Clause 20 agreed to.

Clause 21 [Appropriate arrangements to be in place before employment begins]:

[Amendments Nos. 113 and 114 not moved.]

moved Amendment No. 115:

We on these Benches have some sympathy with the amendment but do not go wholly along with the wording. We, too, were influenced by Professor Alison Wolf’s critique of the Bill when it was first introduced in January, and by her fears regarding the good learning experience that some of these young people are presently getting when they go into a job. They may not necessarily acquire accredited qualifications in their first two years of learning, but they learn a great deal about how to hold down a job. The skills that they learn on the job may not be accredited but they are very worth while. This is the group of young people called not NEETs but NETs—those not in education or training. These young people are in work but they are not getting any training at work. Some 20 to 30 per cent of young people leave school at the age of 16; roughly 10 per cent are NEETs and roughly 10 per cent NETs.

Alison Wolf seems to be saying in her article that we should not write off the training that these young people receive even though it is not accredited. In particular, they learn how to turn up regularly and other useful skills about how to behave in a job. In the retail trades, for example, their mathematics can improve immensely as they have to do calculations. Sometimes they acquire during this period an appetite for some sort of training and we see them coming back into the education system, largely through further education, into adult, post-19 training.

Equally, many of us are agreed that the most satisfactory form of such work has training attached to it. Learning by doing through an apprenticeship, with its formal off-the-job training, is the most satisfactory outcome for these young people, as discussed in the debates on the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Layard, a couple of days ago. In our previous Committee session, we discussed the degree to which the Government are now trying to raise the profile of apprenticeships and increase the number of young people going into them. Over the next two or three years, we shall see a major push with the national apprenticeships service, which will be the subject of next year’s education and skills Bill. Nevertheless, there are fears that small and medium-sized employers, in particular, will pull out of providing jobs for young people because of the training obligations that this Bill will impose on them, unless—again, as discussed in the debates on the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Layard—there is some carrot to encourage them to pursue this route.

We support the general tenor of these amendments: we need a review of how the arrangements will work. On the other hand, to have a review within one year of their coming into force is much too soon. It will take some time for the Bill’s provisions to settle down. Nor is it necessary to have an annual review after three years. We want to see what effect the Bill’s provisions might have on the employment, particularly apprenticeships, of young people and how far the mix of all the proposals, including those in next year’s Bill, are effective. Some evaluation of the measures in the Bill, however, is sensible. It would be more satisfactory to have an evaluation of their effects after three or four years, especially the degree to which young people are taken into employment by small and medium-sized businesses.

The CBI said in its briefing for noble Lords before Second Reading that it supports the Government’s proposals to raise the participation age as a necessary step to improving attainment and reducing NEETs. It is not fair to say that employers at large are against the Government’s proposals. On the contrary, the CBI has supported the thrust of our policy. Of course, the CBI, like all employers, is concerned to see that we limit to the minimum our bureaucratic impositions. I note that the CBI’s response to the Bill highlighted its concerns that we engage effectively in raising basic educational standards, rightly highlighting literacy and numeracy. Ensuring that the education system attains higher standards and that more young people are employable and better able to take advantage of education and training beyond 16 is a big concern of the Government.

Amendment No. 115, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, would require a review of the Bill’s impact on employers and the employment prospects of young people at intervals. We have made employer duties as light touch as possible and we will not require anything from those employing people part time. The duty to check, which we discussed on an earlier group of amendments, would apply only to 16 to 17 year-old employees who are working for more than 20 hours a week and where accredited training is not being provided by the employer. As regards those employers who have to check whether young people are participating, we are satisfied by the findings of our impact assessment, which show that this will not be a significant burden in either time or cost.

Employers ultimately stand to gain from this legislation by getting more skilled candidates who are better able to do their jobs. However, we will continue to assess the implications of our policy in conjunction with other government departments once these provisions come into force. The DCSF already produces a statistical first release each year that provides information on the youth labour market, broken down by various dimensions such as employment, unemployment and inactivity and the education and training status of young people. For the past three years there has also been a more comprehensive review of the youth labour market and its interaction with the education and training market as part of cross-government work with DWP and BERR.

There will be a range of analysis on the implementation of raising the participation age and on the youth labour market carried out by my department and other government departments as we move towards 2013 and beyond. We do not believe that it would be appropriate to set this out in primary legislation, although that would encompass many of the objectives outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma.

Amendment No. 117 is on consultation with employers. We absolutely agree that it will be crucial for employer groups to be fully consulted and involved as this policy moves towards implementation for it to be a success. We have given commitments to consult employer groups when developing guidance for employers to ensure that it is clear what is expected of them and that the guidance is easy to use and understand. As I said, we will continue to assess the implications of our policy for employers in conjunction with other government departments once these provisions come into force. My department and other government departments already produce information on the youth labour market, which will help us to consider how policy impacts on the labour market as we move towards 2013 and beyond, but we do not believe that it is necessary to set out requirements to keep these matters under review in primary legislation. I hope that with those assurances the noble Baroness will be satisfied that we will monitor the legislation’s impact in a way that she would wish.

Of course, we all want to see wider participation but, as the noble Lord recognised, the CBI has concerns about the impact on business. SMEs will be put under great pressure when implementing the legislation, which is why I raised this concern. We want to minimise impacts on those businesses. I thank him for his response and, as always, I shall read carefully what he said. However, at this point, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 21 agreed to.

Clause 22 [Financial penalty for contravention of section 21]:

moved Amendment No. 115A:

My Amendment No. 116 is in line with those tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. It attempts to limit local authorities’ powers in relation to the employer. The duty created by Clause 2 falls on the relevant young person. Clause 10 obliges the local authority to promote the fulfilment of that duty. It seems clear that this is the core relationship in the enforcement of the Government’s plans. If the Bill is passed as it stands, there will need to be a huge increase in bureaucracy to deal with all the interweaving relationships it envisages. Subsection (4)(b) would seem to compel a local authority to establish a new duty to chase employers of young people with whom they have hitherto had no contact. Our amendment would restrict the duty of local authorities to follow up the young people who have been their responsibility. Perhaps the Minister could explain how he sees the provision working in practice. Will it not lead to a huge crossover of information by local authorities as they pass on details about young people who have found employment across the boundaries of local government areas? I hope that our amendment will be recognised as an attempt to make the workings of the Bill more efficient.

I join the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in her puzzlement about how Clauses 22 and 23 are meant to work. What sources of information can a local authority draw on to reach the required conclusions? As far as I can see—perhaps there is a provision elsewhere—a local authority would need information from the Revenue to know who was employed. The basic fact it would have to establish is that someone is employed by a particular employer. When I have employed young people, I cannot recall having to inform any arm of the state other than the Revenue. That seems to me to be the only source of that information. Even if a local authority had such information, it would then have to be satisfied that the employer had taken all such steps as are reasonable, but the employer has no duty to provide it with any information concerning that. So the local authority could only operate in the dark as regards what actually happened and what processes the employer undertook to ascertain that. Under those circumstances and presuming that there is no information forthcoming from the employer—why should he provide information merely so that he can be fined?—on what basis could a local authority ever reach the conclusion that it is asked to reach in Clause 22(1)?

I would like to clear my mind on a matter which we discussed previously about cross-border responsibilities. I recall the duty to ensure that a young person is complying with his duty under Clause 2. It refers to a young person belonging to a local authority area, which I understand means the local authority in whose area he lives. In Clause 22(4)(a) we find that we are dealing with two classes of young persons: one who belongs to, or lives, in an area; and one who does not live in that area but whose workplace is there. In other words, referring to my earlier illustration, a young person may live in the area of local authority A but work in that of local authority B. The duty of ensuring that information is provided about the arrangements for the education of that person falls on local authority B, but it is local authority A that needs the information for the purposes of ensuring that the young person is fulfilling his duty. We all want to know the arrangements for the transfer of the information from B to A and how they are expected to know which should have it.

I, too, am getting more and more puzzled by the minute, reading about the duty imposed in these clauses. The CBI has made it clear that its main worry is that employers will be put off by these differing arrangements, particularly those under Clauses 21 and 22. A particular concern was well underlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. Clause 22 states that,

“the authority may by notice … require the employer to pay a financial penalty”,

While Clause 25 states:

“The employer must, so far as is reasonable”.

But then there are specific exemptions that will almost certainly mean that it will not be reasonable to impose a penalty, whatever the reason. We need rather more clarity about what is proposed so that we do not end up with something that puts employers off being involved in this scheme.

I shall first deal with the content of the amendments and then with some of the questions raised. I can give absolute satisfaction to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, in respect of her Amendments Nos. 115A and 116B. The word ‘may’ in Clauses 22 and 27 already means that the local authority has discretion about whether to use the enforcement powers conferred on it by these clauses. There is no need to add the words “if it so wishes”.

Amendment No. 116 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, limits the circumstances in which local authorities could take action against an employer who was not fulfilling its duty. We believe it would introduce new bureaucracy, not reduce it. At the moment, where employers are not providing accredited training, they will be required to check that 16 to 17 year-olds who wish to work for more than 20 hours a week are participating in accredited education or training. If an employer was not fulfilling its duty, this amendment would limit the circumstances in which local authorities could take action against it only to those cases where the failure to check concerned employees resident within their area—we are getting into the A and B of the noble Lord, Lord Elton. Any failure by the employer to check in respect of new employees resident outside the local authority’s area would not be covered.

Although they could contact the employees’ local authorities and ask them to take action, if there were a large number of employees to whom the failure to check applied, that could be a very bureaucratic and time-consuming task for the local authorities. They would potentially need to contact a number of other authorities, having first ascertained in which authorities the young people were resident. The employer which would then need to respond to penalty notices issued by more than one authority—and in urban areas, that could potentially be several authorities. This amendment would unnecessarily complicate the system, which is designed to ensure that employers play their part in enabling and encouraging young people to participate in education or training.

I make two points on Amendment 116A, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, which would remove the reference to,

“so far as is reasonable”,

from the requirement on the employer to permit the young person to participate in any arrangements for education or training, should they want to change arrangements after they start work. First—this also deals with the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—Clause 25 concerns only arrangements for education or training entered into after a young person has started the employment in question; they are to do with changes in training arrangements. For those who are being employed with training arrangements as part of their employment, the judgments will be made by employers as to what are the appropriate training arrangements at the point of employment. Those considerations come into effect only for changes to training arrangements made after the young person has started employment.

In respect of changes in arrangements made for education or training after a young person has started employment, it is right that a reasonable judgment should be reached on, first, the needs of the young person to fulfil the duty to participate; secondly, the circumstances of the business; and, thirdly, the effect of the young person's absence from work on the running of that business. The reference to,

“so far as is reasonable”,

in that context implies that the employer should be reasonable in seeking to accommodate the young person's change of education or training arrangements with reference to the need for them to participate, alongside the circumstances of the business and the effect of the young person’s absence from work on the running of that business.

I should have thought that the House would want us to see that judgments were reasonable, taking account of the needs of employers, for precisely the reasons to do with the needs of employers that have been rehearsed throughout our debates.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asked how a local authority would know that an employer was not doing its duty. He said that he thought that might be necessary to examine tax returns and Inland Revenue data of one kind or another. The three main ways that a local authority will have that information are, firstly, the returns that all schools make to Connexions at the end of year 11 on their subsequent plans. As a result of those returns, Connexions at the moment and local authorities in the future, know about proposed destinations, including employment destinations, of almost all people. That could give them the information that they need about whether a young person is engaged in sufficient education or training. The second source of information will be engagement with young people themselves who are not participating and discovering, for example, that they are employed full-time without training. The third is through contacting employers in the course of other functions, where they may discover the young people are working without participating in learning.

There are established routes, of which the most important is the fact that Connexions already knows the proposed destinations of almost all year-11 leavers, which would enable a local authority, where it regarded it as reasonable to do so, to take enforcement action against an employer.

On the question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, as to who adjudicates the enforcement of Clause 25, the local education authority would issue an enforcement notice if the employer did not fulfil their Clause 25 duty. An enforcement notice may require the employer to vary the terms and conditions of employment, or permit the employee to take time off. I hope that that deals with the issues raised.

I understand from what the Minister says that in what perhaps I may go on calling the out-of-area employer case, if someone lives in local authority area A but has employment touched by Clause 22 in area B, local authority B will learn from Connexions that contravention is taking place that may trigger Clause 22 action because Clause 21 duties are breached by the employer. This information will come from Connexions. From what I understand the Minister to say, when people working for Connexions in local authority A chase up what happens to school leavers, they will go into local authority B and say, “Did you realise that you have a factory down the road with three students under this scheme and they are not getting any training; they are getting only work experience?”.

That might happen through Connexions or through local authority B’s direct engagement with employers in its area, which might have nothing, as I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to do with the Connexions database. It could come through either route.

Does this raise the question of what standard of proof is required? What can an employer reasonably show to either Connexions or to the local authority in his area to say, “I, in good faith, believed that arrangements had been made”? Will it always have to be a letter from a place of education, which may take some months to require, or should there be a pro forma, a recognised means, that can be endorsed by an employer or an educator, as the case may require, which will be recognised not merely by the local authority but also by the courts?

We are now getting into enforcement. The penalty notice, under Clause 22 on the enforcement of the duty to check, must state all the factors that the noble Lord has mentioned. It must state the grounds for imposing a penalty. It must of course also include the evidence that there is a breach and the consequences of non-payment. There is a proper process for employers to contest action taken by local authorities, which will help to ensure that local authorities take only action which is reasonable in the circumstances.

I was hoping that we might provide something which avoids the contest being necessary; that is, that there should be some standard, recognised evidence. For employers in those industries which still employ large numbers of workers in one place, this may be a very large job.

We covered that point in our earlier discussions. The standard evidence would be a pro forma from a learning provider. We discussed that in response to the debate on Clause 21 initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden. We would work with employers to see that a standard pro forma is provided, which stipulates appropriate education and training. I believe that that would deal with the great generality of the cases to which the noble Lord referred.

He is now raising the question of what happens where the local authority believes that there is a breach. The local authority must issue a penalty notice in a recognised format, as set out in Clause 22. Clauses 23 and 29 set out how these can be contested and, if necessary, withdrawn by local authorities where there is insufficient evidence for them to have been issued in the first place.

I am sorry to go on worrying at this, but the next thing is what happens to the young person? Presumably, he is also in breach of his duty under Clause 2. In the example I have chosen, they do not belong to local authority B, so, presumably, local authority A has to be alerted by local authority B in order that it may pursue the young person.

Yes, as part of the information-sharing under the provisions for the maintenance of the database that we discussed earlier.

Does it begin to occur to the noble Lord that there may be some sense in believing that a non-criminalising process might be better?

It all seems perfectly straightforward to me.

I should like to come back to my question. Clause 22 requires the local education authority to be satisfied that the employer has contravened Clause 21. The noble Lord has said that it may have pretty strong circumstantial evidence that a young person is employed by a particular employer. It is also possible that it may have evidence that that person is employed for more than 20 hours a week. That would take some fairly high-grade snooping, I should have thought, or a statement by the employee that is entirely against his own interests, which seems a strange thing to ask a young person to do. That fact of employment is not the duty under Clause 21, which is to ascertain that proper education or training is taking place. How on earth can the local authority obtain any evidence as to what process an employer has gone through? It can act only on supposition, and how can supposition ever be enough to satisfy the exact terms of Clause 22(1)?

I am not sure I understand the noble Lord. The local authority has to satisfy itself that it is acting reasonably before it issues such a notice. If it was not acting reasonably, an employer would have redress through the courts.

Well, yes, there is always judicial review, if you are a flush enough employer and have 50,000 quid to spare. To be satisfied is a legal term of art. To be satisfied, looking at things internally, you have to have evidence that something is the case. You can have evidence that somebody is employed; it is marginally possible to have evidence that someone is employed for more than 20 hours a week, although I cannot see that that will often be the case. But I do not see how you can ever have evidence that employers have not performed the checks that they are required to perform under Clause 21(1), which is the duty that they are under. Employers will never provide any material and who else, other than employers, knows whether they have performed the checks?

The perfectly obvious form of such evidence would be from the young people themselves who would tell Connexions or the local authority.

So the only source of evidence against an employer would be an employee grassing him up. Since the employer is providing the young person with a job that they presumably want and enjoy, this seems pretty unlikely.

I do not know that it is that unlikely if Connexions is doing its job properly in seeking to ascertain the post-year-11 destinations of young people.

It might know or believe that the young person is there or that that is where he intended to go, but that is not the duty referred to in Clause 22(1). The duty, which refers back to Clause 21(1), is to make proper checks. Employees cannot really know what checks the employer has made although they can have suspicions. I do not see how the duty in Clause 22(1) can be satisfied. As we will see again on Report, it comes back to my interest in making sure that educational institutions provide a proper form, setting out in proper language exactly what course a young person is on and the consequences of that course for satisfying employers’ duty so that there is an easy, simple and ascertainable way of knowing whether a young person is complying with the duty under Clause 22; an employer can do that very easily by ticking the box, and know that they are safe.

All the uncertainty and bewilderment around these clauses emphasise the importance of the wish of the CBI for an assurance that employers will not face a financial penalty if they have acted in good faith. That needs to be written into the Bill so that we do not get into the muddle we appear to be in now.

Perhaps I may also ask a question that I kept forgetting to put to the Minister in the excitement of our previous conversations. The system for inflicting a penalty has no independent appeal to it. The local authority is judge, jury and executioner in its own cause. Does this pattern have a precedent? It appears that no form of tribunal is available to an employer in front of which it might make a case. Even the poor old motorist gets a hearing of some sort.

I am informed that the jurisdiction in question is with the county court, so if an employer wished to contest a decision it would not have to go all the way to a judicial review. However, one assumes that the employer would make representations to the local authority in the event that it was unhappy with the action proposed.

I have been through that myself on parking tickets. It is a pretty uncertain process where results are concern.

I think that the Minister recognises the absolute mayhem this area has created. There is so much uncertainty about it. A couple of days ago I tried to be helpful to the Minister by asking him to look at the pro forma that colleges and training centres are supposed to provide. Perhaps all the questions that have been raised in Committee today could be addressed on that form so that we know which local authority and which training college or institution will make the provision, so that the employer has the evidence in his hands and does not face the difficulty of having to prove that he is not satisfied with the fact that the young person has gone to the institution or training centre to receive the training required under the Bill.

I confirm again that I said in response to the debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, on this precise issue that we will work to ensure standard pro formas which I believe will cover the generality of the case. I do not believe that there is anything like the confusion referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. The specific cases we are talking about concern employees who do not have a pro forma, and there is good reason to believe on the basis of information that the local authority has on those individuals that they are not engaging in education or training. For the great generality of those who come to employers, the checks will be conducted and we will see that a standard pro forma is available. This will be a non-bureaucratic and very straightforward process.

It should not be a standard pro forma, because it would not address the question of which local authority and which training organisation was involved. It would have to specify the training provided.

By “standard” I did not mean that it would say the same thing on every form, but that it would be in a standard format, which of course would need to set out the relevant information, which would vary with each student.

This debate probably indicates that a wise local authority, since it has discretion over whether to bring in enforcement action, would not do so because it would open such a can of worms that it really would not be worth pursuing. The Minister might ponder on these issues because it seems that the contortions and difficulties raised by these clauses are hardly worth it. From that point of view, perhaps the Government need to think seriously about whether there is a simpler way of ensuring that employers allow young people the right amount of time off the job for their education and training.

The Minister said that Clause 25 applies only after the young person is in employment. My understanding of the Bill is that the duty lies upon the young person to fix up their education and training for themselves. They may go into a job where training is supplied by the employer—obviously this applies in apprenticeships—but, in so far as the employer does not provide training, it is the duty of the young person to fix up for himself the requisite amount. Therefore, if a young person comes into employment, under Clause 21(2)(b),

“the employer must not permit the employment to commence, at a time when the employee is a person to whom this Part applies—

that is, a person who has fixed up some training—

“without being satisfied, having taken all such steps as are reasonable to ascertain, that the employee has made appropriate arrangements for training or education”.

The young person concerned may well say, “I have fixed up to go to the college on such and such days”, and then these arrangements somehow fall through. I take it that that is when Clause 25 kicks in and there are let-outs for the employer. Very often the employer may not know precisely what the arrangements are until after the young person concerned has entered into employment. Perhaps the Minister would like to ponder on this and come back on it.

I return to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about the rights of employers to appeal against any enforcement action taken. That is the nub of the issue and will test whether a local authority is acting reasonably on a sound evidence base.

The noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, wrote to the department on this issue in his capacity as chairman of the Select Committee on the Constitution. I replied to him on 1 July and said that, in the light of his comments on that specific issue:

“I will certainly consider carefully whether there is more we need to do to strengthen the provisions in this area, to make clearer that employers will be able to challenge decisions and local authorities will be able to review the process and that there is a satisfactory appeal route. If necessary I will table government amendments at the next stage in Parliament’s consideration of the Bill to effect changes”.

The specific issue of appeal underlies many of the related issues because, if there is a satisfactory appeal process, it will give greater confidence that local authorities are acting on a sound evidence base. I will come back on the issue later and I hope that that will allay other concerns that have been raised on this group of amendments.

As we are on Clause 25, I ask what the significance is of subsection (5). It states:

“Such a notice need not be given in writing but, if it is not, the employer may, on the occasion when the notice is given, require it to be given in writing”—

here comes the puzzling bit—

“and, if the employer does so, the notice is not to be treated as having been given until given in writing”.

That suggests that it is perfectly in order for him not to ask for it in writing and, if he does not ask for it in writing, it will be accepted as having been given when it was given verbally.

That places a very odd legal interpretation on the evidence of the word of the employee. Will the employer have to give evidence as to why he trusted the word of the employee without asking to have it given in writing? If the employee is tardy in giving it in writing, should the employer suspend the employment in order not to be in breach of his duties under Clause 22 by employing him when he has no assurance that the arrangements the notice refers to have been made?

The employer must then reach a reasonable decision as set out in subsections (2) and (3):

“The employer must, so far as is reasonable having regard to the matters mentioned in subsection (3), permit the person to participate … Those matters are … the needs of the person in order to fulfil the duty imposed by section 2 … the circumstances of the employer’s business … the effect of the person’s absence from work on the running of that business”.

The employer must act so far as is reasonable, whether the notice is given in writing or orally. It is not affected either way.

If there is no physical evidence, how will it stand up in court?

There would have to be evidence for a notice to be issued. The point about the appeal, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, raised, is that this would enable a much easier form of testing of that evidence to take place than going through the whole process to a county court, which as I said earlier is the procedure that would apply unless we had such a ready appeal.

As I said in response, it might have been helpful if I had copied my letter to the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, to Members of the Committee. I copy almost everything that I send to Committee Members. I will circulate that letter because it deals with precisely this point in response to the concerns of the Select Committee on the Constitution on the specific point about employers having adequate redress where they believe a local authority is acting unreasonably.

For the purposes of our procedures, as the effect of Clause 25(5) has now been discussed, I would like to consider between now and Report whether that is something that we should speak to.

We have touched on many issues regarding these clauses. There are still many unanswered questions, but we have had enough time and it is appropriate that at this point I should beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 116 not moved.]

Clause 22 agreed to.

Clauses 23 and 24 agreed to.

Clause 25 [Duty to enable participation: arrangements subsequently notified]:

[Amendment No. 116A not moved.]

Clause 25 agreed to.

Clause 26 agreed to.

Clause 27 [Contravention of section 24 or 25: enforcement notice]:

[Amendment No. 116B not moved.]

Clause 27 agreed to.

Clauses 28 to 33 agreed to.

[Amendment No. 117 not moved.]

Clause 34 [Parenting contracts]:

moved Amendment No. 118:

I support the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, in the amendments. She said that many of the young people concerned will have had difficulties with their parents. They are, after all, adolescents, and revolting against one’s parents is something that adolescents frequently do. We have supported the Government in developing the concept of parenting and behaviour contracts in trying to cope with the problems of truancy among younger age groups, but a conflict arises once they are applied to 16 year-olds. It is an age at which many take matters into their own hands. As we discussed in our first day in Committee, young people acquire many rights at 16. Behaviour contracts, which many authorities have found more effective than ASBOs and which involve negotiating with the young person, are an acceptable way forward, but to put the responsibility on parents is not easy. I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, that this provision should be amended.

I add my support to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. She underlined two areas, one of which was also underlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. There is a difficult age at which parents and children may well not co-operate with each other, quite apart from whether they want to co-operate with the schooling requirements. That is a fairly obvious area of conflict.

It is the other area, when the child is a carer, on which I absolutely support what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said. That is a very difficult relationship, and an amendment ensuring that a contract cannot be entered into until an assessment has been made of the needs of the parent and the young carer makes common sense. Otherwise I can see us getting into yet more problems and more situations that are almost criminal offences, involving yet again two of the major parts of the community that need the support to lead a full and active life.

Before my noble friend Lord Lucas speaks, I think that I am catching something from the Minister because I forgot to say something that I should have said.

This part of the Bill is designed to ensure that parents are involved in keeping their children in training and education. The orders set out in the Bill are presumably intended to apply to only a minority of parents, but they emphasise the Government’s overall desire to see parents involved with educational provision for their children. That aim, as with so many in this Bill, is one that we share. But would the Minister agree that parental involvement does not start at 16?

Concerns have been raised, particularly by the Catholic Education Service, about the role of parents in this Bill. Parents will have been deeply involved in making choices for their children when they were much younger. If the Government put in the Bill the responsibilities of parents, they should be prepared to consider the corresponding rights of parents. For instance, the Catholic Education Service is concerned that parents and carers have a voice in the Bill that respects the choice made by their children at 11 to continue to the end of compulsory schooling, particularly when it is an issue of faith. They are worried that there may be a conflict there. I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that.

Mostly I want to listen to what the Minister has to say. Further to what my noble friend said, the crucial part of this Bill is Clause 38(1), which seems too weak. It obliges the local authority to check whether the parent has any effect, good or bad, on decisions made by their child. Often there will be no such effect, no possibility of such an effect and therefore no justification for a parenting order. I should like to see that part of the Bill, possibly combined with my noble friend’s Amendment No. 118, made a condition precedent so that the local authority has to be satisfied that the parent is doing something that they should not be doing, or not doing something that they could be doing, which would make a real difference. Otherwise, there is no justification for harrying parents of children who have exercised their right to independence. If taken too far, such a duty is likely to result in families breaking up before they need to.

We absolutely agree with the intention behind Amendment No. 118. We expect local authorities to assess a parent’s needs before entering into a parenting contract. Guidance for local authorities in relation to parenting contracts for non-attendance of children under 16 already says that they should consult other agencies involved, identify issues and carry out an assessment using the common assessment framework. I refer the noble Baroness to paragraph 50 of the Guidance on Education-Related Parenting Contracts, Parenting Orders and Penalty Notices, which, in respect of pupils under 16, says:

“The LA [local authority] or governing body should be responsive to the needs of the parent in deciding what type of support they will provide. The issues behind the non-attendance or behaviour may be complex and the type of support required will depend on each individual case. The Common Assessment Framework … provides an appropriate framework for identifying these issues and we expect this to be the first assessment used”.

There is a direct read-across to how we would expect local authorities to behave in respect of any parenting contracts under this Bill.

Amendment No. 119, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and supported by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, again highlights the issue of young carers. I said a good deal about them in our first debate on this issue. We understand the need to do a great deal more to support young carers. That is why we published on 10 June our new carers’ strategy, which takes forward recommendations of the National Carers Strategy. The 10-year strategy sets out the Government’s long-term vision for carers and how they will be supported. It includes short-, medium- and long-term plans. In the shorter term, to 2011, it sets out specific measures underpinned by £255 million investment designed to strengthen support for carers, including young carers, and provide the foundation for longer-term progress. These measures include £150 million to expand short breaks over the next two years, £38 million to strengthen support for carers to enter the job market and the piloting of annual health checks.

On young carers, the strategy sets out its vision:

“Children and young people will be protected from inappropriate caring and have the support they need to learn, develop and thrive, to enjoy positive childhoods and to achieve against all the Every Child Matters outcomes”.

More specifically, it sets out £6.45 million worth of support for young carers to 2011, to include better prevention and the piloting of new, more effective models of support around the family, support to ensure that schools and other universal services identify problems of young carers early and encourage young carers to come forward, and £300,000 to embed best practice, ensuring this feeds into and informs major new developments, including targeted youth support and extended schools. So a good deal of concrete support is being provided to young carers.

On the requirement by a local authority to satisfy itself that a young person does not have a reasonable excuse for not participating under Part 1 and, more particularly, Clause 39, I referred in our earlier debates to the letter from Jim Knight to David Laws, dated 13 February 2008. It specifically highlights as an example of what might constitute a reasonable excuse for non-participation,

“where a young person has caring responsibilities, they may not be able to participate or participate for as many hours as we would otherwise expect, until alternative care or learning provision that fits with those caring responsibilities is in place”.

The amendment would prevent the provisions on parenting contracts coming into force until the recommendations of the new National Carers Strategy had been implemented. I reassure the noble Baroness that parenting contracts are voluntary. Where a parent agrees to enter into such a contract, this would be as a result of a face-to-face discussion and agreement about what it would include. We would not think it appropriate to prevent voluntary parenting contracts coming into force until the full recommendations of the National Carers Strategy had been implemented. I believe that they will be implemented; if they are not, this would in any case be a reasonable excuse for a young person with caring responsibilities to put forward. I hope that that deals with young carers.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, invited me to say more about Clauses 34 to 38 and why they should stand part of the Bill. I shall take them in turn. As we have discussed previously, the central responsibility to participate under this legislation lies with the young person. The Bill does not place explicit duties on parents, but they will be expected to help their child to participate and will be given a full range of information, advice and support about children's services and the options open to their child. Where a parent is refusing to let their child better his educational skills by participating or is struggling to support him appropriately, we believe that it should be possible to step in and help. That is why Clause 34 should stand part.

Clause 35 makes it possible to intervene further where the parents themselves may be contributing to the reasons why a young person is not participating. If a full range of support and guidance has been given to the family and the young person nevertheless fails to participate, a parenting contract will usually be tried first, but ultimately a parenting order might be given. However, this would be considered only where it was expected to help enable the young person to participate without unduly disrupting the family. Of course it would not be appropriate to consider a parenting contract unless the parents themselves were judged to be a significant obstacle to the young person’s participation in education or training. It is possible to conceive of circumstances where that might be the case and the parent is part of the reason why, or the reason why, the young person is not participating. The parents may not be giving the child the opportunity to participate or they may, for example, be requiring the child to engage in full-time employment, perhaps in a family business, without giving them the opportunity to train.

In a rare example of coming to the Minister’s aid, perhaps I may draw on my own experience of a young fellow in a large comprehensive school where I taught who consistently over three days did not do his homework. When asked why, he said that it was because his father, a merchant seaman, was home. I thought that three days’ celebration would be sufficient, but in the next week it still did not come in. It finished up with the seaman coming round to the boy’s house tutor and taking off his coat on the grounds that it was absolutely wrong that he should have to do overtime outside working hours in the school. It nearly came to fisticuffs. So that can happen.

I take the noble Lord's point entirely.

That is why we think that Clause 35 should stand part. Clause 36 ensures that where a parent has a history of failing their child and has already been offered a voluntary parenting contract and either refused to enter into the contract in the first place or failed to adhere to its requirements, the court will take such behaviour into account when deciding whether to impose a parenting order. It is right that the court should take the parent’s previous behaviour into account if they have already been given the opportunity to enter into a parenting contract yet failed to take advantage of this supportive intervention; indeed, this is already the case for parenting orders made under current legislation to tackle anti-social behaviour by young people. That is why we believe that Clause 36 should stand part.

Clause 37 sets up the appeals process against parenting orders, which is in place to ensure that parenting orders are always issued correctly and that sufficient opportunity and support have been given. If a parent feels that that has not been the case, they will know that they can appeal through an established independent process. By ensuring that the parent feels that they have been treated completely fairly, we believe that the chance of keeping them to their parenting order and helping their child to participate will be maximised. Without Clause 37, a parent could not appeal. That is why we believe that it should stand part.

Clause 38 makes it clear that a parent's behaviour will be taken into account by the local education authority when it is considering enforcement if a child is failing to participate. It also allows regulations to be made that will ensure that the system is flexible enough to respond if a young person who is failing to fulfil the duty is in one local education authority and his parent is in another, and to clarify what should happen in such circumstances. It is appropriate that such detail should be contained in regulations as opposed to being on the face of the legislation. Similar provisions already exist in relation to existing powers to use parenting contracts and parenting orders. Without this clause, it would not be possible to prescribe how local authorities should exercise their functions in relation to parenting contracts and orders. That is why Clause 38 should stand part of the Bill.

I am grateful for those explanations. I shall bottle what the noble Lord said and distil it into an amendment on Report. What he said about how local authorities should behave is what I would like to see in the Bill. That would make the whole thing acceptable to me, but that is not what the Bill currently says. I will see what I can do, and what the Minister says of it when we get there.

I apologise if I missed this—I may well have done—but did the Minister reply to Amendment No. 120? Can he also say something about the Catholic Education Service and the rights of parents?

I am sorry. I did not reply to Amendment No. 120 because I dealt with it in the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, on Clause 37 standing part. I can assure the noble Baroness that Clause 37 provides for a clear right of appeal for parents to the Crown Court against the making of a parenting order if they felt that one had been issued unjustly. The grounds for such an appeal are currently unspecified and unrestricted, so there is no need for the explicit provision in her amendment. If a parent believes that the court making the parenting order was unjust to conclude that such an order would be desirable in the interests of the young person’s fulfilment of the duty because, for example, there was no suitable provision available locally, they might appeal on that basis. I hope that that satisfies the noble Baroness.

I have not seen precisely what the Catholic Education Service said, but I took the noble Baroness to be saying that it was concerned that the rights of parents and students should be fully respected in terms of the type of education and training available. I say without hesitation that that should be the case. The Bill seeks to ensure that minimum levels of education and training take place. It is not our intention to circumscribe the rights of parents and young people. That provision is in line with both their preferences and any spiritual dimension thereof, such as their desire to continue to be educated in a Catholic environment.

They were concerned that choices made for their children at 11 were taken into account, not least with where the granting of diplomas might be carried out. Faith schools are a delicate issue, and the CES is concerned that the Bill will throw up friction by giving children rights over what they might want at 16 as opposed to what their parents might want.

In my experience, there may be friction between parents and young people at the age of 16 and 17 over what the young person wants to do. That is nothing new, and is certainly not affected by provisions in the Bill.

I thank the Minister for that comprehensive reply. I was particularly pleased with what he said about the young carers. At first, as he was going through the long list of what that the Government have done in this area, I was wondering how it captured our amendment. Then, his comment that these would be special circumstances allayed my fears a lot. I was pleased that Amendment No. 120 was covered and that there is a right for parents to appeal, although I agree with my noble friend Lord Lucas about the ability of a local authority to provide everything demanded of it under the Bill.

We have not had a chance to discuss education since the untimely death of Steve Sinnott of the National Union of Teachers, which suggested Amendment No. 120. Steve and I did not always agree—on a lot of things—but he was passionate about what he did. He will be greatly missed. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

moved Amendment No. 121:

Home-school contracts have a long history, which we do not need to go through now. I support the principle that my noble friend advances. However, in light of what the noble Lord said in replying to the previous amendment, I suggest that the word “support” might be more effective than “secure” in the second line of the amendment.

As the parent of an unruly five year-old, I support the suggestion of my noble friend Lord Elton.

We very much like parenting contracts because we want parents to be as engaged as possible in their children’s education. I am sorry, I should have referred to home-school agreements. I am always an amendment behind. I shall start again. We very much like home-school agreements—we like parenting contracts as well—because we want parents to be as engaged as possible in the education of their children, and for this to be a partnership activity with the school.

We have brought in measures designed to strengthen the relationship between parents and schools, including parent support advisers and transition information sessions. The evidence is that a significant proportion of parents have signed home-school agreements, although we would like that proportion to be higher. The 2007 parental involvement in children’s education report found that two in five parents had not heard of home-school agreements. Overall, 39 per cent of parents said that they had signed a home-school agreement. We would like that proportion to be higher, although it is not clear that all parents understand that what they have agreed to is a home-school agreement. Often parents go through the process of making undertakings to a school to abide by its discipline policy, to see that their children attend on time, and so on, but they are not always aware that that is a home-school agreement. The evidence is that a significant proportion currently signs those agreements, but we would like it to be higher.

However, though home-school agreements have a statutory basis, and we would like to see them being more widely adopted, we do not think that it is right to say that they can be conditions of admission to a school, which is what the amendment would do. That would be discriminatory and unreasonable. Home-school agreements are specifically prohibited from being linked to the school admissions process by Section 111(4) of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, precisely for the reason that we fear that otherwise that could be an unfair source of admissions selection by schools.

The school admissions code restates that section of the 1998 Act. It prohibits admission to a school being conditional on parents signing a home-school agreement. The code also provides in paragraph 1.49 that schools must not ask parents to sign agreements before they have been offered a place at the school. All local authorities’ admission authorities, admission forums, schools adjudicators, and admission appeal panels are required to act in accordance with the school admissions code.

Whether a child gets a place at a school should not be determined by the willingness of their parents to sign a home-school agreement, although it is entirely appropriate and strongly to be encouraged that parents may be invited to sign one after their child has been admitted to the school. As I said, we strongly support home-school agreements and wish to see them much more widely adopted.

I thank the Minister for his reply. If he would like the uptake of home-school agreements to be higher, he has only to accept our amendment. I am not surprised by what he said, and I rather think that he will not accept the amendment. There is a slight irony, that here is something that the Government could compel parents to do, which might make an enormous difference, so that we do not have to have compulsion when children get to age 17 and 18—

Before my noble friend withdraws the amendment, given the objection to home-school contracts, or agreements, being a requisite for admission to a school, is there also an objection to their being a requirement for the continuance of an unruly child at school? I thought that was an entirely different proposition.

I am not sure that I understand the noble Lord’s point. It is not a requirement, if a school reaches a judgment that a child’s behaviour is inconsistent with them being at the school, that they maintain them at the school. The whole exclusion process is precisely to enable schools, in proper circumstances, to exclude a pupil from school.

I meant that, before resorting to exclusion, surely it would be reasonable to resort to getting the parents to agree to a contract or agreement that they will support the school’s discipline policy. That might adjust the behaviour of the child. I wanted reassurance that it is accepted, and that the bar on making it a requirement of attendance at the school applies only at admission stage, and not during the course of the child’s education at the school, if the child becomes unmanageable without the support of the parents.

A parenting contract might well be appropriate to meet precisely the objectives set out by the noble Lord. However, as I set out in response to a previous group of amendments, there are proper processes that need to be gone through in respect of a parenting contract. Provided those processes are gone through, a parenting contract can be enforced.

However, a parenting contract cannot be tied to the provision of a place at a school. A parenting contract will have its own sanctions if the conditions are not fulfilled. The place at a school could not be removed purely because a parenting contract was not being fulfilled. However, if the behaviour of a child continued to be incompatible with their continuance at the school, which may have given rise to the parenting contract in the first place, it would be open to the school, acting by proper processes, to exclude the child. That would give an element of conditionality because the fact that that ultimate sanction was there would be well known to the young person and to their parents.

I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Clause 39 [Failure to fulfil duty under section 2: initial steps]:

moved Amendment No. 122:

I support all the amendments in this group. As we explained on the first day in Committee, we support the concept of an entitlement and we support the Government in wanting to raise the participation rate, but we are unhappy about the compulsion element. We also share the noble Baroness’s worries about criminal offences and about imposing fines on young people, particularly since many of the young people concerned are likely to be on unemployment benefit and not to have any resources of their own, in which case fines could cause great poverty. We have tabled a series of amendments relating to that issue on behalf of the Zacchaeus 2000 Trust. They are due to be debated in the next group, so I shall not say anything at length now. I am slightly surprised that no one from these Benches put their name to the noble Baroness’s amendments, because we are very much with them in spirit.

The clock does not permit the weight of support that these amendments deserve to be fully deployed. My noble friend’s Amendments Nos. 143 to 145 seek to remove the most objectionable aspect of the Bill—the criminalisation of young people—and Amendments Nos. 147 to 150 seek to mitigate the consequences if that attempt fails. After addressing those amendments, my noble friend raised other important considerations, particularly what happens when the age line of 18 is crossed, which is the equator on the journey from childhood into adulthood. All these are matters of great importance, on which we would do well to spend more time than we can tonight. We have to consolidate and focus the strength of our feeling into a few words. I regard these amendments as among the most important that we will consider in these four or five days.

I support what my noble friend on the Front Bench said. I do not intend to rehearse my lengthy objections to the idea of criminalising young people, the consequences of which were nicely—although that is entirely the wrong word—illustrated this week by the young man who was refused admission to UCL to study medicine, although he had superb qualifications, because of some misdemeanour when he was much younger.

In general, we do not forgive criminal convictions until much later than we should. I challenge the Minister to get his department to publish its policy on employing ex-offenders. As I have said to him before, I have had trouble with his department on that. As it intends to criminalise young jobseekers, it would set an excellent example if it declared what its policy will be towards young people who emerge to ask it for a job with such a conviction or another conviction. The Minister should set an example to his colleagues in Whitehall on that.

We also seem intent on starting young people off in life with a history with a credit reference agency as a result of non-payment of fines, as the result of having no money because they are entitled to only £40-odd a week from which to pay the fine. That does not seem to be especially helpful. Perhaps in his heart of hearts the Minister sees that we have ended up in the wrong position for the right reasons and that the Government ought to look again to find another way to do this. I very much hope that my noble friends on the Front Bench and those on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench will concur sufficiently that we shall have a joint effort to put into the Bill on Report.

On my objection to these clauses standing part, I can reassure the Minister that I do not want him to go through every clause justifying them, although that was immensely helpful last time. I would like him to tell me something about Clauses 40 and 41. If a young person refuses to go into education, how can someone else choose the course of education and then compel that young person to go through it? How does that work? In my school career, no one ever succeeded in punishing me by making me do any constructive work. I had to write out lines often enough, but the idea that I should learn how to do long division better as a punishment did not work and I do not know anyone who has successfully tried it. How is a course to be chosen for a young person who does not want to do anything? How is he to be made to do it successfully? I would very much like to know the Minister’s thinking on that.

To return to a subject that I raised earlier, to which I do not remember getting an answer, how does that process deal with the young Alan Sugar, who wants to get out there to start selling car aerials from the back of a van? Those people often turn out to run real businesses on a large scale because of their wish to start doing business—their natural understanding of business is very strong. How are those people, who do not want to start off being employed, but want to get out there and do it for themselves, to be accommodated in this structure and what penalties would a young Alan Sugar face if he tried to relive his early life?

I support the group of amendments proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Bolton. They have underlined all the discussion that we have had on the Bill from day one. We have gone into enormous detail because we are all worried about the compulsion aspect and potential criminalisation. For that reason alone, if this group of amendments and the following group fail and we still have the potential criminalisation, we must look at every method to entitle the young person not to end up as a criminal.

I referred earlier, as did the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to the young man to whom Imperial College extended an offer and then removed it. He is an absolute example of someone whom we should support, but the rules as they exist do not allow it. Yet here we are busily en route to making criminals and giving records to a lot of young people who would not otherwise get them.

We are moving towards the last day of debate in Committee, which is in about a week. I very much hope that the Minister will give serious attention to what lies behind all this discussion. Above all, I should like to emphasise one thing, on which I suspect that there will be further amendments: if we are getting into a position where a young person has to justify himself, there must be a right of appeal and advocates to speak on his behalf.

Such rights of appeal are set out in the clauses we are debating. If the enforcement action went to a youth court, there is no question of a young person not having the rights to contest any action at every stage. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, began by asking a specific question on what would happen when a young person reached 18 and whether any action would stop at that age, thereby giving someone an incentive to spin the whole thing out. If a prosecution has started in the youth court, it stays in the youth court, even if a young person turns 18. The court used depends on the age of the person at the time proceedings commence. If a young person is about to turn 18, prosecution would not be appropriate. The only point of enforcement is deterrent action to get the young person to re-engage. An action would not automatically be terminated in a youth court simply because a person had reached 18.

We made this point at Second Reading and I think that it has been answered. There are people who just refuse to pay fines. If that carries on, is it still dealt with by the youth court or does there come a stage when the non-payment of fines is not dealt with in such a court? Could a person effectively go to prison for simply not participating in education or training?

No, these cases would always stay in the youth court and there is no question of any action leading to imprisonment. I need to make that absolutely clear. No process could be followed that could lead to a young person being imprisoned.

We do not believe that Amendments Nos. 122 and 123, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, would change the Bill in any meaningful way. Failing to,

“participate in education or training as required”,

would mean that the young person was failing to fulfil his or her duty under Clause 2. Therefore, the clause would still have the same meaning.

In response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and others regarding Clause 40 and the processes in place under the Bill, let me reiterate first that enforcement will always be a last resort. If there were any reasonable explanation for a young person not attending, an attendance notice would not be appropriate and we would not expect one to be issued. When a young person drops out of learning or is found to be not participating, the focus will always be on supporting them to engage in learning, helping them to address barriers and personal difficulties, and identifying a suitable learning place that might be personalised. Clauses 39 to 40 provide for that.

However, as a last resort, if enforcement is required, robust checks and balances are in place to ensure that a young person is not given an attendance notice inappropriately. No action can be taken until the young person has been given the opportunity and support to engage voluntarily, and they must have no reasonable excuse for not participating.

Can the noble Lord assure us, either now or later, that convictions which are spent under the arrangements he has described are deleted from the national police database?

I think I need to come back to the noble Lord on the precise issue. Only offences that are punishable by imprisonment or specified in regulations as recordable offences are automatically recorded on the national police computer. The offence in question under this Bill is not punishable by imprisonment and we have no plans to specify it in the relevant regulations. It will therefore not be a recordable offence and will not be recorded automatically on the police national computer. Moreover, as I said in our earlier debates, it will not be routinely disclosed in CRB checks.

I am a little worried by the word “automatically”. The noble Lord has not said that it will not be included in the national database, but that it would not be automatically included. That leaves routes to include it.

It is precisely on that point that I will come back to the noble Lord. There are very limited circumstances in which such offences could conceivably be recorded on the police national computer. Even taking the tiny subset of cases that could end up in the youth courts with a conviction, only a tiny subset of those could conceivably be recorded on the police national computer, and there would be particular reasons related to the association of those offences with other offences that may result in a record on the database. That is my understanding, but I shall specify later the precise circumstances in which that could take place.

Let me stress again that it is always at the discretion of the local authority whether to take enforcement action. Any action in respect of failure to comply with an attendance notice or in respect of a penalty notice would be at the discretion of the local authority. Young people would never progress automatically to the next stage of the process, and they would always have the opportunity to appeal.

Clause 46 sets out all the restrictions on the circumstances in which a local authority can decide to move to the final stage of the enforcement process, which is prosecution in the youth court. The young person must have been given a fixed-penalty notice and not paid it, and they would have had the opportunity to appeal at that stage. The local authority must have consulted the attendance panel, which in turn must have given the young person the opportunity to explain their circumstances. These are necessary checks and balances to ensure that enforcement never proceeds inappropriately or without full consideration, and that is why we believe that these clauses should stand part of the Bill.

Amendments Nos. 152, 153 and 154, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, concern the nature of the fixed-penalty notices. We agree that the penalty on young people should always be appropriate, but it would not make sense to specify an amount for the fixed penalty in primary legislation, as this would make it unnecessarily inflexible. We intend the legislation to be in place for many years, so accepting the noble Baroness’s amendment would mean that to alter the penalty we would have to amend primary legislation. Putting on a limit in primary legislation without consulting would not be appropriate. We will set the amount of the penalty notice in regulations, which will be laid before the House. We have previously indicated that we think the fixed-penalty notice could be in the region of £50, and we will fully consider the amount closer to implementation. I can reassure the noble Baroness that we would want it to be significantly less than the maximum fine available at the youth court stage. As part of this consideration, we will look carefully at the circumstances many young people are in, including their income and the level of financial support provided in order to fix an appropriate financial penalty.

I agree with what I believe is the intention behind Amendment No. 155: to offer additional protection to the small number of young people who enter the enforcement system and who are not re-engaged before that system reaches the stage of prosecution. This protection is important because we recognise that young people are more vulnerable than adults. It is right that the youth court is the most appropriate forum in the rare cases where such enforcement action is required. I can reassure the noble Baroness that under the current youth court justice system, in the vast majority of cases, a person below the age of 18 would not appear before an adult criminal court because they had failed to comply with an attendance notice. The amendment is therefore not necessary.

I am sorry, that constitutes a slight correction to what I said earlier. Apparently it would be technically possible for a young person to be subject to an adult fine enforcement system, but in practice we think it is highly unlikely that that would ever happen. It could arise only if a young person received a fine from the youth court prior to the age of 18 and defaulted on the payment after reaching that age. We believe that this would occur in only a tiny number of cases. However, in no case could such action lead to imprisonment. On that basis, I commend these clauses to the Committee.

I thank the Minister for his response, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support and my noble friends Lord Elton and Lord Lucas. I was reassured at one stage that young people could not be pursued in the adult courts and now I am not. But there we go.

My noble friend Lord Elton was right to say that this is the most important part of the Bill. Even with all the Minister’s assurances, it is the part that causes me most concern. We shall definitely return to this issue on Report but, given the hour, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

[Amendment No. 123 not moved.]

I beg to move that the House do now resume.

Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.

House resumed.

House adjourned at 7.11 pm.