Legislative Consent Memorandum
Education and Skills Bill
Legislative Consent Motion
1. "That the Parliament agrees that the relevant provisions of the Education and Skills Bill, introduced in the House of Commons on 28 November, to make provision within the legislative competence of the Parliament and to alter the executive competence of Scottish Ministers in respect of using and sharing information in relation to skills and training of people in Scotland, should be considered by the UK Parliament."
Background
2. This memorandum has been lodged by Fiona Hyslop, Cabinet Secretary for Education and Lifelong Learning under rule 9B.3.1a of the Parliament's Standing Orders. The UK Education and Skills Bill was introduced on 28 November 2007. The Bill can be found at:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmbills/012/08012.i-v.html
Summary of the Bill and its Policy Objectives
3. The Education and Skills Bill is sponsored jointly by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), with DCSF as the lead Department. The main purpose of the Bill is to raise to 18 the age at which a young person can leave education or training.
4. The provisions on raising the participation age only apply to young people who are resident in England; they do not apply to young people resident in Scotland or Wales. The Bill sets out the duty on young people to participate in education and training; the duty on parents to take reasonable steps to ensure their child participates; duty and power for local authorities to support a young person and a duty on employers to release young people for training or education. In addition the Bill establishes a monitoring, enforcement and appeals process regarding these provisions which will be administered by local authorities.
5. While the focus is on raising the participation age, the Bill will include some provisions implementing the Leitch Review of Skills in England, notably providing statutory backing to the current funding entitlement for adults in England to free training in basic literacy and numeracy and to training up to NVQ level 2. The other provisions in the Bill include the transfer of powers and duties in respect of the registration of independent schools from the DCSF to Ofsted. None of these provisions apply in Scotland.
Provisions in the Bill for which consent is sought
6. As outlined above, the Bill deals primarily with matters which only apply in England. However, part of the Bill provides the ability for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to share data on benefits and income and employment respectively with DCSF. This allows for further education data to be matched to data on benefits, employment and earnings, which are held by DWP and HMRC, for research purposes. This will enable detailed analysis of labour market outcomes of those with Further Education (FE) qualifications which cannot be carried out at present. The Scottish Government believes it is worth using the opportunity of this legislation to allow for similar research to be undertaken in relation to Scotland; the Welsh Assembly Government is proposing to do the same. This provision alters the executive competence of Scottish Ministers by conferring a power on Scottish Ministers to use reserved information received from HMRC or DWP to assess the effectiveness of education or training.
7. The potential analysis which could be carried out with this type of information would be the average earnings, the employment rate and the benefit rates (including types of benefits) of those with specific FE qualifications. The ability to undertake this analysis is consistent with the aim under the Scottish Government's Skills Strategy to ensure that investment in the skills of people living in Scotland allows them to contribute as much as possible to sustainable economic growth. It is also consistent with the ambition, which the Scottish Government shares with the UK Government, of aligning employment and skills systems, placing the individual at the heart of both. Measuring progress against this objective can be greatly assisted by allowing the exchange of data, at analytical level, between the UK and Scottish governments on how employment and earnings outcomes are affected by qualifications achieved.
8. The provision also allows Scottish Ministers to share devolved education or training information with the UK government. This is within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament. This is to allow the matching of Scottish FE data to DWP and HMRC data which in turn allows the analysis of this matched data by the Scottish Government and DWP.
9. The relevant powers in the Bill relate only to data sharing for research purposes. The Bill also creates criminal offences for anyone found guilty of sharing individuals' data for any other purpose.
Advantages of utilising this Bill
10. Matching information on qualifications to data on benefits and employment outcomes has always been difficult. Using this opportunity to open an information gateway for data sharing and data matching in this way will add to the evidence base in Scotland. Without this legal gateway it is unlikely that the Scottish Government would be able to access this information for this type of analysis.
11. Using the UK Bill as the legislative vehicle to enable this data sharing will prevent the need to create specific enabling legislation in Scotland to that effect. While it would be possible to confer powers on Scottish Ministers to allow them to share data with DWP/HMRC using Scottish legislation, it would be potentially more difficult to confer data sharing functions on DWP/HMRC using Scottish legislation due to the fact this information relates to reserved matters. Also given the relatively minor data sharing aspects of this Bill a separate Scottish Bill on this issue may not be a proportionate approach.
Consultation
12. It is widely accepted that the sharing of data, for statistical purposes, across government departments is needed to improve the comprehensiveness and accuracy of official statistics - as long as this extended access is supported by the appropriate confidentiality safeguards. A large number of respondents to the UK consultation paper 'Independence for Statistics' called for increased access to administrative data held by government departments, for statistical purposes. The Royal Statistical Society, for example, called for analysts to have access to administrative systems for statistical purposes, noting that data obtained from administrative systems should be subject to "the same level of protection as for data collected from survey respondents".
13. Respondents to the UK consultation paper also noted that problems exist at present in terms of comparability of statistics across the devolved regions. Scotland's inclusion in the data sharing aspects of the Bill will help towards facilitating the analysis of cross border comparisons of skills statistics.
Financial Implications
14. There may be some administrative costs associated with the exchange of data, which would be negotiated between the Scottish Government and the Department for Work and Pensions, within existing budgets.
Scottish Government
November 2007