I am grateful for the Minister’s intervention, and I shall wait for his full response.

The Prince’s Trust believes that

“the priority should be for all 16 year olds to be encouraged and supported to achieve Level 2”

It goes on to say

“that raising the compulsory age to 18 will simply prolong the process and potentially lower the aspirations of some students.”

While we are discussing the Prince’s Trust’s excellent work, Martina Milburn said in her evidence on 22 January that it gets young people into education, training and work, and did so with 40,000 young people last year. Will the Minister confirm that a 16 or 17-year-old participating full-time in a Prince’s Trust course or a programme run by Fairbridge—another excellent organisation—will be regarded as being in full-time educational training for the purpose of clause 2(1)(a)?

Professor Alison Wolf pointed out in her evidence that young people who are not in employment, education or training already forgo weekly handouts from education maintenance allowances of up to £30 a week, which they could have received simply by turning up at a college. She said that those people are not simply neutral and waiting for Government direction; they are actively opposed to participation, so imposing a duty on such people will have minimal effect.

In “Diminished Returns”, she pointed out:

“A wealth of psychological evidence demonstrates that human beings that human beings do not learn unless they are motivated to do so.”