Student Volunteering

Debate between Andrew Smith and Rob Wilson

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Civil Society (Mr Rob Wilson)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Evans, I think for the first time. May I congratulate the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) on securing today’s debate? This is an important topic, as he laid out in his comments. I know what a strong advocate he is for student social action. In some ways, how could he be anything else, representing the constituency that he does? Also, many years ago he went to Reading School in my constituency. It is a top-performing academic school, but it is keen on the wider individual and ensuring that young people give something back to society for the great education they get at that school. I understand where his core values come from on this particular subject.

I am delighted to reiterate the Government’s commitment to encouraging young people to get involved in all forms of social action. I will take “student” in its wider context, and not just talk about university students, who we have heard a lot about in the comments so far. Youth social action is close to my heart, so I am delighted to be the Minister leading on this agenda for the Government. We want to see all young people having the opportunity to take part in social action and to go on to form what should be a lifelong habit—it should not just be for a few years when they are young; the habit should be embedded so that all through their life they are always giving something back to their communities. One of the ways that we as the Government want to achieve that is through the National Citizen Service. More than 200,000 young people have taken part in NCS since 2011, and the NCS Trust estimates that graduates have delivered more than 8 million hours of volunteering time already. Consecutive independent evaluations demonstrate that NCS delivers more confident, capable and engaged young people, and it continues to represent impressive value for money.

I want to expand the opportunity to every young person who wants a place on an NCS scheme, making it a rite of passage that young people look forward to. In January, the Prime Minister set out his ambition that 60% of all 16-year-olds participate in NCS by 2021. To achieve that, we have committed more than £1 billion of funding over the next four years to grow the programme to 360,000 places by 2020. NCS will become the largest programme of its kind in Europe. I am particularly proud of that, and all the young people who have been and will be involved should be, too.

We have already seen NCS graduates go on to achieve great things in continuing their social action journey. One such NCS graduate is now part of the Points of Light team at the Cabinet Office. He works as part of a small team identifying outstanding volunteers right across the country to receive recognition directly from the Prime Minister for their work. NCS graduates from across the UK are celebrating all things social action this Saturday. It is a chance for them to showcase their social action activity and to promote the causes close to their hearts. NCS is all about giving young people the tools, opportunities and respect to achieve amazing things in their community, so the NCS social action day will be a fantastic way to do that.

NCS is not the limit of our ambition in government. We believe in creating a social action journey pre and post-NCS. We want to encourage all forms of youth social action, and the Government are committed to continuing our support of Step Up to Serve’s #iwill campaign. That campaign is supported by all parties in the House of Commons. It aims to increase the number of 10 to 20-year-olds taking part in youth social action by 50% by 2020, because we recognise the importance of social action for young people. We know that participation not only develops vital skills for life and work, but helps young people to feel connected to the communities in which they live. Participation in NCS and Step Up to Serve helps to break down social barriers and adds to social cohesion in our communities. It enables young people to meet and work with others from different walks of life.

As part of the Government’s continued commitment to all forms of youth social action, the Cabinet Office has invested more than £1 million to grow youth social action opportunities across England, which has been generously matched by the Pears Foundation and the UK Community Foundations. The national fund is working with nine successful applicants to increase opportunities for young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds or rural areas. The local fund concentrates on optimising opportunities in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridge: areas previously identified as having low youth social action participation rates.

We have also seen other fantastic results through funding social action. Through our uniformed youth social action fund, Youth United has created 20,000 new places for young people to join groups in disadvantaged communities across the UK, and 90% of the units created are still running with no further funding from Government, which is a great example of sustainability and a really fantastic result, so I congratulate Youth United on doing that.

Part of the fund is to support innovative approaches to reaching the most hard-to-reach young people in our communities. The Boys Brigade has struggled to recruit adult volunteers in some of its more rural locations owing to the timings of meetings, but what is so great about this story is how recruiting NCS graduates as volunteers is really showing how this very natural social action journey can fit together between NCS and other organisations. This part of the uniformed fund is also enabling the Scout Association to be more accessible to young people with disabilities; the Woodcraft Folk to meet refugees and other young people with English as a second language; and the Volunteer Police Cadets to run a pilot programme working with young offenders.

Reports will be published later this year in relation to the fund, and I am sure everyone here will agree that this will be an exciting piece of research that we can learn from. It really shows the diverse range of social action projects that young people get involved in, and the Government are committed to supporting that journey.

[Mr Andrew Smith]

I agree with what the Minister is saying in this happily consensual debate. Has he had or will he have discussions with the Minister for Universities and Science, his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), to ensure that every opportunity is taken to make the most of the potential to link together the broader social action initiatives he is describing with the opportunities that can be available through universities and colleges, which need to be encouraged by those universities?

[Mr Wilson]

Yes, of course. I am in discussions with not only the Minister responsible for higher education but with the Minister responsible for apprenticeships, the Minister for Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), as well. We want to ensure that we have joined-up Government and that the social action journey continues through life and gives every young person the opportunity to take part in things that they want to do in their local community. I have seen at first hand the great work being done by young volunteers in a variety of sectors and communities. I was particularly impressed to see the huge contribution that young people can make in the health and social care sector, for example. I visited the Royal Free young volunteers programme, where young volunteers supported patients, staff and visitors primarily in two roles: as satellite navigation guides around the hospital and as mealtime experience volunteers. The young people I spoke to aspired to have a wide impact in society, beyond the hospital, to inspire positive engagement throughout their communities. It was clear to see that those volunteers brought energy, enthusiasm and heart to everybody they interacted with.

The latest youth social action survey demonstrated that 42% of young people between the age of 10 and 20 years old have participated in meaningful social action in the past year. This demonstrates that young people have a real appetite to play their part. In January this year we published the outcome of a highly significant new study conducted by the behavioural insights team, which demonstrated a link between social action and improved educational attainment as well as enhanced employability skills, which is something that the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) mentioned in his comments. The study indicated that people who engaged in volunteering were up to three times more likely to get invited for a job interview than people who did not volunteer.

The Government are committed to supporting young people, giving them the power and opportunity to play a real part in their community and to build important skills for life. I am keen that the habit remains through adult life. The Government also support young people to have a say in the community and voice their opinions on issues that are important to them. Some of this work is delivered through a grant to the British Youth Council for youth voice activities. Last year, as I am sure hon. Members are aware, the BYC’s Make Your Mark ballot, the largest annual ballot of young people’s views, culminated in a record-breaking 970,000 votes cast towards key topics for young people to focus on. That is a remarkable achievement that would not have been possible without all those young people actively getting involved. That sum of nearly 1 million votes means that 16.5% of the nation’s 11 to 18-year-olds had their say. That is a great demonstration of young people’s interest, and a great vehicle for the collective voice of young people to be heard.

It is therefore even more important that we listen to the voice of young people who can bring a fresh perspective and innovative ideas to many of the challenges that we face. At the annual sitting of BYC’s Youth Parliament in November, I was impressed by the level of commitment and enthusiasm shown by the members of the Youth Parliament who want to make a positive change in society. It was truly impressive to watch young people debating important issues such as mental health and the living wage. Colleagues in Parliament have frequently expressed support for the UK Youth Parliament. As hon. Members may be aware, in June 2015 Parliament resolved that the UKYP should continue to use the House of Commons Chamber for its annual debate for the remainder of the current parliamentary term until 2020. In light of that, I decided to offer BYC a grant agreement to support it to deliver its youth voice activities for the remainder of the Parliament.

Last week we celebrated, as the right hon. Member for Oxford East said, the 15th anniversary of Student Volunteering Week. Delivered in partnership between student hubs, the National Union of Students and the student volunteering network, the week is used to discuss the challenges and opportunities in student volunteering. I had the pleasure of being involved in the celebration event where Liam Rodgers, a constituent of the hon. Member for Sheffield Central, was presented with the student volunteer of the year award. As the hon. Gentleman said, Liam founded UpScribe, a writing project for homeless people to express themselves through creative writing. Liam led on the creation and publication of a book created by people who participated in the project, many of whom are now published writers. It was impressive to hear that Liam had donated a third of his £1,000 award to a fellow shortlisted student of the year volunteer. This demonstrated his commitment to the widest elements of youth social action.

During Student Volunteering Week, I also visited one of the successful organisations under the national youth social action fund. Through the fund, an organisation called Whole Education plans to use its network of schools across the country to work with students who implement their own community projects and embed the culture of social action in their schools. I spent time with a small group of young volunteers who were developing an online platform for students to share their youth-led social action ideas, as well as designing a virtual social action badge, which I look forward to seeing later this week. I want to encourage more universities to harness the power and positive outcomes of student volunteering. I am keen to explore how to engage more vice-chancellors to support the growth of student volunteering, and I will speak to my colleague in higher education to see how we can do that. There is a great deal to do if we are to make social action a part of life for 10 to 20-year-olds under this Government, but I am firmly committed to making that a reality.

I will end by thanking all the individuals and organisations that support youth social action for their commitment and dedication. I also extend my thanks again to the right hon. Member for Oxford East for initiating this debate today.

Question put and agreed to.

BBC Trust

Debate between Andrew Smith and Rob Wilson

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I cannot help thinking that it is somehow appropriate that you should be chairing this debate. I begin by declaring myself a lifelong fan of the BBC and its programmes. It has some of the most brilliant and creative people in the world. I could go through a lengthy list of the world-class programmes that I and many others have enjoyed over the years. It is the same with news and current affairs. The BBC has many talented, thoughtful and—let us not forget—brave journalists.

As an aside, one BBC news journalist recently said to me that they should try to infiltrate a totalitarian regime that has just built a new monument to its vanity. He was not talking about North Korea; he was talking about BBC management. I want to be clear that what I have to say is not about the people who staff the BBC; it is specifically about the people who run the BBC at corporate level and how the trust and the executive work, or do not work. I have rarely encountered such poor management at any level in any organisation, which is why I argue that the role of the BBC Trust is so crucial.

When he first became chairman of the BBC Trust in 2011, Lord Patten said that he regarded the BBC as “a moral force” in this country. I agree, to the extent that the BBC plays an enormously significant cultural role and, with its high ideals, it should seek to be a model for the rest of the public sector. More recently, when addressing a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on the BBC, Lord Patten declared that he did not want the period leading up to the BBC licence fee settlement in 2016 to be

“bogged down by nerdy arguments about governance”.

I requested this debate because I respectfully disagree with Lord Patten that the governance of the BBC is a second-order issue, of interest only to nerds. The BBC’s reputation has taken a number of severe hits over the past year, including for its over-lavish pay and perks for its swelled ranks of management, the tax arrangements of its employees, the spectacularly botched “Newsnight” investigation into child abuse allegations in north Wales and, perhaps above all, its response to mounting evidence of decades of sexual abuse and paedophilia by its long-time former employee, the late Jimmy Savile. I understand that further dreadful news about the waste of licence fee payers’ money is forthcoming in the not too distant future.

[Mr Andrew Smith (Oxford East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. I share his enthusiasm for the BBC and its importance. Will he add to his list of criticisms, or to his questions at any rate, that the trust ought to look at the practice used in the recent visit to North Korea, because it appeared to put at risk the integrity of academic visits to North Korea and similar countries not only by the LSE but by other universities.

[Mr Wilson]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that important point. I understand that the father of one of the young people has written to all members of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport outlining his concerns. It was a significant breach of trust by the BBC. Many questions remain that need to be looked into.

Each of the issues that I have listed would on its own have presented painful difficulties for the BBC, but the management’s inept response to Savile and “Newsnight”, which was defensive, secretive, cynical and in some cases downright murky, made life even worse for the corporation and its staff. The damage to audience and public trust in the BBC was compounded by the woeful lack of active leadership by the BBC Trust, which is meant to be the guardian of the interests of licence fee payers. When it should have been leading the way in getting to the truth and in holding the BBC’s management to account, the trust seems to have interpreted its role as being to defend aggressively the management and to do the minimum necessary to fend off pressure, and wait for the storm to pass.