Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 27 in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran, to which I add my support. It would require the Secretary of State to consult LSIPs, mayoral combined authorities and other relevant employer-related groups on the introduction and number of technical education qualifications before exercising her powers under the Act. Such consultation is vital to ensure that any technical education qualifications introduced align with local and regional skills needs—one of the priorities of Skills England—to ensure that the workforce is equipped with the skills required to support the improved economic growth that we all want to see. I recognise that Skills England has the potential to play a crucial strategic and co-ordinating role in bringing together local and national skills agendas—the Minister touched on this in her comments on the previous group—but I again come back to the fact that the approach set out in the Bill, in terms of the centralisation of powers in the Secretary of State, jars with the Government’s stated intention that Skills England will “bring together business, training providers and unions with national and local government to ensure we have the highly trained workforce needed” to ensure that our regional and national skills systems are meeting skills needs. I am afraid the approach set out in the Bill raises questions that the Minister is hearing time and again around whether we can be truly confident that this is the approach that will be taken when there is nothing in legislation or out there to ensure that that happens. As the Learning and Work Institute has said, it is important that Skills England must “not be primarily a creature of Whitehall”. I hope that the Minister can set out again, in a bit more detail, how Skills England will engage and involve local areas, local leaders and employer groups from the outset; and the mechanisms that will be developed to ensure we can have confidence that Skills England will effectively and consistently ensure, through the technical education qualifications introduced, that our regional and national skills needs are met.