Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

I will be delighted to, and I was coming to that. Before I do that, I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McGregor-Smith, and repeat from Second Reading my gratitude for her contribution to the development of IfATE. I recognise her point about what is necessary to get employer engagement in some of the detailed work that IfATE has been engaged in and that will be transferred under this legislation to Skills England. She is absolutely right about that; it needs consistent work. But it also needs, as employers have told us, appropriate flexibility and agility to enable those standards to be developed in a way that reflects changing developments and does not put too onerous a responsibility on employers in terms of their engagement. Let us be clear that the default position will remain that a self-forming group of persons will prepare a standard. It is probably worth noting that this definition of “a group of persons” also legislatively guided IfATE in its engagement on occupational standards and apprenticeship assessment schemes. Our proposals do not weaken legislatively the engagement of employers. When a group does not convene itself to prepare a standard for an occupation which the Secretary of State is satisfied requires a standard, the Secretary of State may convene a group to prepare one. In both circumstances, we would expect that such a group would normally, but not exclusively, include employers that are representative of that occupation. Only when the Secretary of State is satisfied that it is more appropriate for them to prepare a standard than for a group of persons will the Secretary of State then do so. To come to the noble Baroness’s point, scenarios in which it may be appropriate for the Secretary of State to use this power to prepare a standard are those where using a group would be disproportionately onerous for employers or other stakeholders; unnecessary because only minor adjustments or revisions were required; or where it could create undue delays. This might include—I say for illustrative purposes—updating standards to align with changes to mandatory qualifications within the standard; creating or updating standards to align with industry-recognised qualifications or statutory requirements; or creating or updating standards more efficiently where employers do not have the capacity. We envisage that the Secretary of State may also use the power to create and update standards for emerging or rapidly developing occupations, such as those in the digital sector. The clause also enables the Secretary of State to ensure that standards are developed or updated quickly to respond to acute skills needs or urgent regulatory changes required in an emergency, such as the updates to the level 3 community fire safety adviser following the Grenfell disaster. Finally, employers themselves tell us that current processes for preparing standards can feel slow, bureaucratic and time-consuming. This is not a criticism of IfATE; it is a criticism of a requirement currently in legislation that we want to use this opportunity to make more flexible. It is a barrier to their engagement. We want to focus their input where it has the most impact.