Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Education – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 18 March 2020.
Well, thank you for that answer. I, along with other spokespeople here, I think, will also be contacting members of the higher education sector to look a little bit further than that again, particularly on this issue of how student loans are going to be affected by the fact that some students are basically having at least one term taken out of their programme of study, and I think there's a question of equitability there as well.
Just to close though, and it's in the same space really, it's just about a year until this Assembly dissolves, and you have two major pieces of legislation slated for your portfolio, and if we're going to be working on the precedent from this Government, I'm anticipating that both of those will be pretty much framework Bills, which will require full scrutiny, both on the thoroughness of policy development and on the quality detail of likely content of any regulations that will be used subsequently to the passing of the primary legislation to complete it. And I'll be upfront at this stage, I can't see myself supporting any truncating or reduction of time required for this legislature to carry out its primary purpose of thorough scrutiny of legislation.
Now, we're all at the mercy of reduced capacity, as a result of the coronavirus. Legislation to activate the new curriculum is time-sensitive and already delayed for reasons we understand, but it still needs our full attention and maximum support in terms of tested evidence to command confidence. And I really doubt that we can give it that attention if we're also being asked to give equal attention to the very complicated legislation, which fundamentally changes the regulation of FE and HE, with all its implications for standards. So, it's not that post compulsory education and training is unimportant, but it's not as time sensitive.
And on the basis that I suspect that you're not minded to postpone that Bill until the next Welsh Parliament, can you guarantee, firstly, that you will not be asking to reduce the timetables for scrutiny of both Bills regardless of coronavirus and, secondly, should this Parliament decide that it cannot accommodate proper scrutiny because of coronavirus, that you will consider dropping the post-compulsory education and training Bill in the fifth Assembly?