Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, in moving Amendment 24, I will also speak to my Amendments 25 and 26. As we heard on earlier groups, there is a lot of concern among experts in the sector about how the Government’s plans will work in practice and whether the proposed changes in the governance of the skills sector will result in confusion and delay—obviously to the detriment of the Government’s growth agenda. My amendments seek to bring clarity to this confusion. My Amendment 24 seeks to place a duty on the Secretary of State to explain to employers the way in which they will be able to approve new technical education qualifications and appeal where qualifications are planned to lose funding. It is, obviously, essential that employers know how to get new qualifications approved so that our qualifications can remain up to date and relevant to the needs of businesses, and that the Government can receive the input from businesses on what skills our economy is lacking. My Amendments 25 and 26 seek to address the delays that will happen when these powers are transferred from IfATE to the Secretary of State, as laid out in the impact assessment that the Government published alongside the Bill. The impact assessment lays out details of how the creation of end-point assessments and the approval of new technical education qualifications will both be delayed. In order to minimise the impact that this has on students who are seeking to undertake a technical qualification, students who are midway through their course and businesses that are seeking to introduce qualifications, I felt it necessary to encourage the Government to give details as to how long this delay will be and the steps they are taking to ensure that it is as short as possible. It is important that businesses and students have certainty about the extent to which any delays will impact them. These amendments propose a timetable, when the Bill is passed, by which the Secretary of State must report on how long these delays will last and what the Government are doing to ensure as minimum a disruption as possible to the qualifications and to the students seeking to undertake them. I hope the Minister will agree that these amendments are not controversial and may come back on Report with government amendments that look like mine. I beg to move.