Baroness Pinnock (LD)

My Lords, there are some very important and interesting issues in this group of amendments. The first is about the provision of foundation courses to enable young people to move into further education or training. It is important that the Minister has an answer to the questions of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, that will put us at ease that they will not be penalised in this way. Often, young people who do foundation courses do so because they missed out earlier in their school careers, for many reasons that might be associated with their family or their own health issues. I do not think the Government would want to penalise those young people by putting at jeopardy those courses available to them. The next issue, about nurseries, is interesting because different parts of a premises can be assessed separately by the non-domestic/business rate regime. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, that even in an Amazon building, the facilities for the employees will be rated at a separate value from the rest of the building. For instance, I have been looking—surprisingly—at the implications for large hospitals, which were raised in the debate on Monday. Different parts of the premises will be rated in different ways. If there is a clinic, that is one thing; the main hospital is another; the café is another; a shop is another. It is possible to assess rateable values, for business rate purposes, in the same premises in different ways, so it is possible to assess nursery sections of a private school separately from the rest of the school. Therefore, it is possible to exclude these from the proposals in Clause 5. I look forward to the Minister being able to confirm that that is the case and that nurseries can be readily and easily excluded from business rate applications, even if the Government insist on removing the charitable status from the rest of the premises.