National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I regret that I have to begin with an apology. For the first time ever in my time in your Lordships’ House, I will not be able to be here for the end of the debate. I apologise for that: it is the first time that has happened, and I really hope it will be the last.

I asked to speak today because there are a number of points that I feel have to be made. This is an intriguing Bill, one that sets a challenge for your Lordships’ House. I say that because the fact that the National Citizen Service provides young people with a great opportunity to meet new people, try new activities and develop skills and confidence at the critical age of 16 or 17 is not up for debate. However, pretty well everything else in this Bill should be.

The decision to spend £l billion on one project at a time when public services for young people are being decimated is a political decision that the Government will have to take and will have to defend. No doubt they can do that. There is a much more fundamental question, however, to which this House needs to have an answer. Why is such a large amount of money being given to a single organisation that has a comparatively weak track record in the field? The Minister will no doubt point to the fact that the Cabinet Office spent a considerable amount of money—I wish he would tell us how much—on commissioning surveys into the effectiveness of NCS. I urge your Lordships to read the survey report that has been produced by Ipsos MORI. It is a very extensive and elaborate evaluation and produces some excellent statistics. In particular, the cost-benefit analysis that it provides is exceptional. It points out that for every pound spent on the scheme, between £1.25 and £4.65 of benefits accrue from it. That is impressive stuff, and any charity or voluntary organisation would be happy beyond measure to have those sorts of data at their fingertips.

There is, however, one big flaw in that evaluation. It was not a comparative evaluation: it sheds no light on the question of whether this service could be delivered more effectively and efficiently by anybody else. It does not do that because the question was never asked. To go from the state in which the NCS has been over the past few years, with exceptional government support, to a huge infusion of funds on the basis of some flawed research is really quite dangerous. It falls to your Lordships’ House to do the due diligence on this proposal, which has not been done by the Government so far.

I have not been able to find the audited accounts of the National Citizen Service; I am sure they exist but they are not available on the organisation’s website. Will the Minister ensure that a copy is available to Members of your Lordships’ House along with the organisation’s annual report? According to the last available audited accounts, roughly what was the income of the NCS, what was its rough expenditure and what level of free reserves did it have at the time of audit? I ask that because it is important information for your Lordships to know before we invest this amount of money into the organisation.

While I could not find out as much as I wanted about the NCS, I looked in some detail at the work of its biggest delivery partner, The Challenge Network. I did so because it sent me a briefing, as it probably did to other noble Lords. This charity was set up in 2009 with five employees; today it has 700 staff, an income of £53 million—£47 million of which comes from the NCS—and it has free reserves of £9 million. In a period when hundreds of charities have either merged or closed altogether, this one has had a charmed existence. However, as demonstrated by its annual report, particularly its accounts, it is almost wholly dependent on central government for its funding. So we have a proposal to invest a lot of money in the NCS when its biggest delivery partner is similarly reliant on continued central government funding. We have a duty to examine that in some detail because I am not convinced that it is a recipe for sustainability.

Unsurprisingly, other organisations in the voluntary sector have raised questions about this huge investment into one particular organisation. They have done so because they can see that in these straitened times it is not so much a competitor as a game-changer in terms of its impact on local volunteering. Here I pick up the points made by the NCVO when it asked that the NCS should have a duty upon it to have further and better collaboration within the voluntary sector. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, about the mythical view of the voluntary sector as a place where sweetness and light reign: my own personal experience is that in the voluntary sector people do not stab you in the back simply because it is quicker and easier to stab you in the front and they have the moral authority to do so.

Given that there is likely to be a significant reduction in money for volunteering, particularly from local authorities, we need to ensure that if this is going to be the big volunteering game in town then it is done in full collaboration with, particularly, local organisations and small organisations. The briefing from The Challenge Network prayed in aid the fact that results could be achieved only by big organisations that had the economies of scale to deliver them. What ought to be running through people’s heads when they read phrases like that is the Work Programme, under which investment that was promised for small voluntary organisations did not happen and big suppliers like A4E were found wanting.

Great claims have been made for the National Citizen Service. It claims to be unique in its extent and reach with young people from all sections of society. Members of your Lordships’ House who are also Members of the Select Committee on Charities would have heard the Church Urban Fund making similar claims last week. We therefore need to interrogate the uniqueness of the claims made by NCS and its backers.

In introducing the Bill at a meeting with Peers yesterday, the Minister said this Bill is intended to make NCS more sustainable and accountable “if it receives more public money”. That seems to lie behind the decision to make it a royal charter body. It is intriguing that the Government have chosen the most cumbersome governing structure possible. Other royal charter bodies often talk about just how difficult it is to make even minor changes to their governing documents because they have to get Privy Council approval. No doubt, the Minister will say that the Government are doing a belt-and-braces job. It looks a lot more like belt-and-braces and a load of cement. We have to consider whether this is the best treatment and why this organisation is being treated in such an exceptional way.

Charities and voluntary organisations are under great pressure to prove their efficacy and efficiency. They have to compete for funds, deliver contracts and prove their worth to funders. It is right and proper that they should. In those circumstances, this decision to treat this organisation on exceptional, favourable terms must be questioned. We have seen what happens when Government become enthralled by a particular organisation, such as Kids Company or A4e. When £l billion is at stake we really should not allow such a mistake to happen again. I look forward to receiving answers from the Minister in due course and to detailed consideration of this Bill in Committee.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th November 2016 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Barker]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 5, leave out “by Royal Charter”

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ashton of Hyde; since Second Reading he has been at great pains to discuss with opposition Members some aspects of the Bill. I put on record my thanks to organisations such as the challenge trusts, which have been similarly forthcoming in light of the searching questions that we on these Benches raised on Second Reading. I forgot to declare my interests on Second Reading; I have been a management consultant for over 30 years in the voluntary sector, and have a small consultancy that specialises in charities and voluntary organisations. I have no dealings with this organisation or any people engaged in delivery of the programme, but that experience of looking at voluntary organisations—how they are established, how they work and the trouble that they get into—led me to ask a series of questions on Second Reading about the establishment of this organisation. Those questions remain unanswered and that sets the scene for our more detailed probing this afternoon.

I hope that Members of your Lordships’ House might forgive some of us to whom voluntary sector organisations are deeply fascinating things; it might not be so for them. They should appreciate that the Government are about to invest a billion pounds in this organisation, so it falls to us to do some of the important due diligence that should be done in advance of such a decision.

I went away from Second Reading, read the Minister’s speeches carefully, and listened to and read again the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Maude. I am now even more certain than I was before that the Bill is based on two flawed assumptions. The first is that the National Citizen Service is unique. It is, in that it has had unprecedented support from the Government, but it is not in terms of the young people with whom it works or the benefits that it delivers to them. It is unique only in that its programme is four weeks long. Other organisations work with as large a range of people in the youth sector and do so on an ongoing basis. That assumption right at the beginning is profound, flawed as it is, because all the decisions that flow from it in the Bill are built on that wrong assumption. It is not true that the service is unique and can be delivered only by this organisation.

The second thing, which flows from that, is the statement made by the Minister during the debate on 25 October in cols. 187 and 188: that because the service is “unique”, it is incomparable. That is also wrong. Although the service is of a very tight and specific nature, its outputs and its outcomes for young people can be analysed and compared to those of other organisations. Some of them will be among the 200 organisations which deliver the National Citizen Service. It is therefore possible to look at the work done by this organisation, and its cost-benefits, and compare them.

I submit that that analysis should have been done before the decision to make the current sizeable investment was taken. It certainly should be done before the decision is taken to set this organisation in—to use a word that the Minister used in his speech—“cement” in the life of the nation. Having decided that this organisation should stand alone, the Government now wish to embed it in the most clunky, heavy and difficult-to-change charitable structure that can be found. That puts this organisation in yet another unique situation. Unlike the rest of the voluntary sector, which is having to become more efficient and effective, to collaborate, to draw up strategic alliances and to become much more lithe and nimble all round, this organisation is to be put into a structure which is almost impossible to change. We should therefore have a thoroughgoing look at this. Other Members on these Benches will talk about the effects of being a royal charter body and the extent to which services run through such bodies are extremely difficult to change.

The Minister prayed in aid the fact that to be a royal charter body means that an organisation will have to account annually to Parliament. I put it to him that for an organisation to receive the level of investment proposed for this one full reporting should be required, but it does not necessarily follow that it has to be locked down as would be the case here.

I started out by being sceptical about the need for the NCS to exist as a separate organisation. I remain doubtful that it needs to be a distinct organisation: its service could be provided by any one of a number of organisations. On balance, I would be happy to accept that the Government should be allowed to let it exist as a separate organisation. I see no reason why it should not exist as a community interest company. As such, it would be required to produce a high standard of accounts. I would prefer to see it incorporated as a charity. The challenge trusts are both and therefore subject to a high degree of public accountability.

I really do not see the need to use the structure proposed. I therefore tabled Amendment 1 and the consequential amendments in this group, which would remove the royal charter body status from the organisation while leaving the Government the option to explore other forms of charitable structure which would enable accountability. I beg to move.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a registered interest as a member of the National Citizen Service Board. In briefly addressing the amendments in my name, I associate myself wholeheartedly with the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, and the noble Lords, Lord O’Shaughnessy and Lord Maude.

It seems to me that the benefit of having a debate in Committee is to see where we can agree with each other, and I think that many of the amendments have taken on that challenge. There are many improvements that can be made to the way in which the current National Citizen Service is delivered, including greater transparency. It would be quite useful if people would reverse the mirror and say, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea if a lot of organisations receiving substantial public funds also had to comply with many of the precepts laid down in the amendments before us this afternoon?”. In other words, it works both ways.

In some cases, young people have been sceptical about the National Citizen Service, questioning whether it should be embedded—I prefer that term to “cemented” —in our structures. I am keen for organisations that work with these young people to monitor and publish evidence and material about both the impact on the young people and the spread of young people who are reached in the way that is quite rightly being asked of the National Citizen Service. I say “quite rightly” because it receives substantial sums of money. I do not think that it helps for the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, to talk about rolling up money. I used to ask previous Chancellors—not least Gordon Brown—not to do this. When I was at the Department for Education, he had a meeting with me and told me that in the next spending round education would get £19 billion. Unfortunately, it was over three years and was cumulative, and therefore it did not quite have the impact that £19 billion might have done. We are doing the same now with the National Citizen Service.

I want to say why I think that, difficult though it may be to implement the royal charter, it is better than having an NDPB. Making the National Citizen Service a government scheme with, effectively, a government department would be the biggest possible turn-off for young people and would make it extremely difficult for it to have a relationship with the dozens—in fact, scores—of good, professional and effective organisations that constitute the delivery mechanisms at NCS. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to that but then suggested at the end of her speech that, although she did not oppose retaining NCS, it is an organisation which commissions, monitors and oversees, ensuring quality and consistency, but which in itself is not the delivery mechanism. All the good organisations that many of us in this Committee are associated with are the ones that are delivering.

Those who have at times worked with and spoken to the young people engaged in the National Citizen Service know that, as we said at Second Reading, that is just one part of a much bigger jigsaw in terms of the journey that young people make before they reach the relevant age for National Citizen Service. Also crucial is what happens afterwards with regard to part-time and full-time volunteering options, and the ability of young people to understand what their experience has meant to them, as well as, importantly, what it has been able to deliver for others.

The amendments tabled by the noble Lords I referred to a moment ago help to clarify that the Government cannot have their cake and eat it. If the Government want, understandably, to be engaged in the appointment of the chair, it will be quite inappropriate for a government representative—or, for that matter, an opposition representative—to be on the board. The process should be transparent, independent and open in the way that we seek for many other organisations. Incidentally, regrettably, there has been a drift over the last six years towards a hegemony where even those more transparent methods of recruitment have drifted into departmental pressure and something more than oversight. Many noble Lords on this Committee will be painfully aware of examples that they have come across where pressure has been brought to bear.

We must protect NCS, and its delivery and engagement with young people, from any suggestion that it is a government-operated organisation or subject to government appointments in that way. I hope that by the time we reach Report and Third Reading, we will not have to move amendments that reverse the situation as laid out by the Government at the moment on the issue of the appointments procedure. I also hope that by the time we reach Report we will have some idea about the transition arrangements. Although the Minister did write, as promised, after Second Reading, I do not think we are any clearer as to what the transition arrangements are than we were three weeks ago.

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[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to what was an important testing-out of the Government’s proposals. The Minister spoke helpfully about the tensions in what people had said were important for the National Citizen Service and in their attitudes to it. That is often the case when a charitable voluntary body is set up. What matters is what decisions people take, which are crucial to the body being able to achieve the objectives set for it. Some people were worried about status. I am not bothered about the status of the organisation; much more important is its effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objective.

It is interesting that the Government have chosen to go down this route. From the long list of priorities that the Minister read out, he cited permanence. I think that the Government have put that above all else and built a structure that starts with permanence and then works through in a different order to other things. There are different ways to achieve a number of points that noble Lords raised. On independence, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, gave a description of a board of which the Prime Minister had oversight. Well, the Prime Minister has no oversight of the appointment of a charitable board. There are many instances of long-standing charities with a national reach—some of them have royal patronage, the Prince’s Trust being one—where there is no government interference at all, even though there is certainly accountability for public funds. If independence was what the Government really wanted, they would not have gone down this track.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was right to talk about the National Citizen Service being subject to high standards of scrutiny and accountability. Other charities, because of the way in which their services are commissioned and are open to competition, are even more subject to such standards. I fear that, given the rigidity of the structure envisaged and the permanence that is expected of it, it would be easy for the trust to let standards slip and for those not to be challenged for some considerable time.

I come back to the two points that are of fundamental importance. First, nothing that the service does is unique; it is designed in a unique fashion, but its interactions with young people and the outcomes it achieves for them are not unique—they could be delivered by other organisations. Secondly and most importantly, the service has not been subject to comparative analysis. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that it is not about rolling up. If any charitable organisation in this country knew today that it could count on having £1 billion-worth of income over the next five years, it would be in a spectacularly unusual position. The Government are asking us to invest that amount of money in what the noble Lord, Lord Maude, called this “fragile vessel”.

We may not have got very far today in seeking the answers that some noble Lords want. I do not want to control the organisation; I want it to be accountable.

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

When I talked about a fragile vessel, I was not talking about the trust but about the programme and degree of confidence that it has inspired in young people. That is fragile and we must not put it at risk.

[Baroness Barker]

I am happy to stand corrected but the rest of us who have compared it with similar organisations would consider it to be a fragile vessel: it has not been going for very long and it has achieved what it has only with exceptional political support. I remain, like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, unconvinced that this structure is right. I will, however, go away and look at what the Minister said, particularly about the accounting regulations, which we will come to in more detail later. I beg leave to withdraw—

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, we all have questions about the NCS but it is wrong to say that it is “sectional” support. I am here, my noble friend is here: the Labour Party supports the NCS. We are not sectional; we want to see improvements and changes, but we support it.

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[Baroness Barker]

I am sorry, but I think the noble Baroness may have misheard the word “exceptional”. Perhaps she will agree with me that, cross-party though it is, it has an exceptional level of support. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 22nd November 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, Amendments 19 and 23 are in my name and those of my noble friends Lord Maude of Horsham and Lord O’Shaughnessy. Their purpose is to insert the word “primary” before the reporting requirements on the exercise of functions for both the business plan and the annual report. While I appreciate that this is a small word change, we argue that its insertion is critical for two reasons. First, it would prevent the new organisation drowning in excessive bureaucracy; secondly, it is consistent with the draft royal charter which refers in Article 3 to the primary functions of the NCS Trust.

One of the main reasons for the success of the NCS thus far has been its flexibility to respond rapidly and positively to feedback on the programme and to adapt quickly to change. This flexibility is essential when engaging with teenagers. To mire the trust in excessive bureaucracy will hinder, and potentially kill, its ability to adapt quickly and innovatively to new challenges. If the trust is expected to produce a business plan every year about every one of its activities, that would have the regrettable effect of stymieing the NCS’s ability to innovate and to engage with emergent trends, platforms or partnerships.

The new body should of course publish a business plan that lays out the primary functions of delivering the National Citizen Service. This will allow transparent scrutiny of the unit cost of delivery as well as its broader stakeholder engagement. Such scrutiny, which will permit proper accountability, is completely appropriate. However, to insist on more onerous reporting requirements, which would be inconsistent not only with the draft royal charter but with other public bodies, including other royal charters, would detract from the NCS’s ability to deliver a quality and engaging programme.

If the NCS is to achieve its hugely ambitious programme to grow threefold in the next three years, it is vital that it sticks to its core vision while retaining the ability to be nimble. To allow this, the reporting requirements should be kept as straightforward as possible, not weighed down by ever more onerous obligations. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, whose purport is somewhat different from that set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn.

When this legislation is passed, the National Citizen Service will no longer be a start-up; it will be a sizeable body with a very sizeable budget. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect that its reporting requirements will be different from those which it currently has as a very small community interest company. As such, and not a charity, the NCS has a lower level of financial reporting requirement than many of the organisations with which it has to do business and from which it has to commission its services.

I make no apology for the number of the amendments in this group which deal with accountability. I appreciate that we are talking about a royal charter body but the voluntary sector has had one of the worst years on record and has suffered a great deal in terms of its reputation and public support, precisely because it has not been living up to the higher standards of reporting which it should demonstrate—way above the public sector.

These amendments stem, to a large extent, from the acknowledgment of the noble Lord, Lord Maude, on Second Reading, that the NCS was deliberately set up to sit apart from the rest of the voluntary sector while being almost entirely dependent on it for the delivery of its outcomes. The NCS is, and will be in the future, a central commissioner of services from the voluntary sector, and as other resources diminish that will become increasingly important as a larger percentage of the money available for volunteering will be tied to this scheme. The greater freedom of action a body has, the higher standard of accountability it should aspire to. That is why the level of detail we require about any charity’s accounts is much higher than for anywhere in the private sector. The lack of competition to the NCS makes it wise to require a greater degree of transparency and detail in its reporting than we might have otherwise. Recent examples like Kids Company and Work Programme show that the lack of a requirement for proper accountability can be extremely damaging. It is with that in mind that we have proposed a number of amendments.

Given its purpose and set apart though it is, this organisation cannot deliver co-ordination with other voluntary organisations unless it has good relationships with them. It therefore does not seem unreasonable to ask it to set out how it will establish those, and, after a financial year, to report back. It is claimed that this organisation has an important, and, in the view of some noble Lords, unique contribution to make to the lives of young people. It is therefore important to require it to show that it sits alongside the main trends within the voluntary sector. For example, many people working in community organisations serving the Muslim community are saying to the Government— consistently and in many different ways—that the Prevent agenda is not working. It would therefore be remiss of us not to require the NCS—if it does have the role being described by its advocates—to actively work with those charities to ensure that community cohesion and diversion from extremism are part of its achievements.

Amendment 31, which requires that the NCS’s annual report includes its efficiency and effectiveness, is justifiable given that it is not up against competitive challenge. It is also not unreasonable to require diversity among its trustees. But of all these amendments, the two that matter the most are Amendments 28 and 29. It is right that Parliament should know the extent to which the trust has collaborated with and resourced the rest of the voluntary sector given that it will be one of the few sources of money for volunteering. It is also right that its report should include comparisons with alternative provisions. I have not yet been able to find a report giving the unit cost of the NCS including its overheads. Will the Minister give us that figure in his response? There is a suggestion from a number of other voluntary organisations that it is a very costly programme in comparison to them. I would very much welcome a response on that because before we commit this large resource to a body which is going to be set down in stone we should have some answers about the level of accountability that we can expect.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 27 in this group. At the risk of incurring the wrath of the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, it adds to the reporting requirements of the NCS. In my experience, having to provide a detailed business plan and reporting back mechanisms does not have to stifle innovation. Most of the most innovative organisations and businesses around the world have detailed business plans and they report to shareholders, so I find the argument quite difficult. Indeed, I shall go further and say that business planning tools used properly can generate innovation and the reporting requirement can make an organisation focus on the things that those who are funding it believe are important. They can be a driver for innovation, not a barrier to it. The NCS, like any body in receipt of quite large sums of public money, will find that it will be overwhelmed with freedom of information requests if it does not willingly provide the information at the beginning.

In my amendment I am seeking to introduce to the business planning and reporting requirements measurement against the implementation of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. When it was passed, the Act was based on two thoughts. The first was that public procurement generally tends to be at scale and cuts out SMEs and smaller organisations, and the second was that the cumulative spending power of public bodies could be much better used in the economic development of local areas than is usually the case. A review carried out last year by the noble Lord, Lord Young, suggested that the Act had those impacts. It has worked well, but it is underused. I was very pleased that the Government more or less accepted those arguments when they accepted my amendment to the Bus Services Bill and included a reference to the Act in the statutory guidance.

Evidence to the Select Committee on Charities currently sitting in your Lordships’ House has contained many references to the difficulties faced by small charities in participating in public procurement exercises, and a number of them have specifically referenced the Public Services (Social Value) Act as a useful vehicle for being able to do that, and they would like to see it more widely used.

The NCS is going to be a huge provider. On our previous day in Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, talked about the problems of scaling up. I worry about that too. The NCS has written to me very fully and outlined the work that it has been doing with small local providers in a pathfinder scheme. It has given an undertaking that it wishes to widen and deepen its approach. I welcome that, but the recurring theme in this debate is about protecting the commitments currently made by the NCS into the future because it can commit only with its current board and current chair. Unless we have something in the Bill we cannot accept that those commitments will go on for ever.

There are a number of reasons why the Government should accept this amendment. The use of public money to support small and medium-sized charities will add to their sustainability and begin to avoid what someone has described to me as the growing Tesco-ification of the charity sector. There is also an issue about larger providers squeezing out smaller subcontractors. The NCS can use its considerable purchasing and contracting power to ensure fairer treatment. That would be the right message to send out to the sector, which is feeling a little beleaguered and unloved by government. It would help to ensure that more cash is used locally, generating local jobs. It would also help to create genuinely local solutions with providers which understand their neighbourhood. Anyone who does school visits regularly knows how very different areas can be, even those that are geographically quite close together.

Finally, there is something about risk. A larger number of smaller contracts is inherently less risky in terms of collapse or mismanagement than putting all the eggs in just a few baskets. One of the keys to innovation is size, and smaller local providers would be much more innovative and at less risk than the large ones.

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[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

Yes, I can see the point there. I believe, but could not swear to it, that it is open only to graduates at the moment. But I am certainly happy to look at that. We can come back to it later.

[Baroness Barker]

Perhaps the Minister could consider one point, which was made by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, when he said that it was important that the NCS be subject to comparison with other charities. Having listened to what the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, said about the charter, does the Minister accept that some of us understand that it is quite possible for the NCS to be evaluated in the terms set out in the Bill, but that nowhere in any of this is there a requirement for there to be a comparison with any other service? Could he therefore explain, perhaps in writing, where it should be possible for anyone who wishes to to compare the work of the NCS Trust with the rest of the sector to find out the data on that? Is it the National Audit Office?

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I will certainly consider what the noble Baroness has said and will write to her if there is anything more. I think this goes back to what the noble Baroness said at the beginning of the previous day in Committee about the uniqueness of the NCS Trust. The NCS Trust is unique and therefore a direct comparison, especially with the charitable sector, which has been referred to a lot, is not necessarily appropriate. This is not a charity. I take the point that it uses a lot of taxpayers’ money and it must be held accountable but I do not think there is a direct comparison with it as a commissioner of work from the voluntary sector. It is not part of the voluntary sector itself. That is off the top of my head, but of course I will go back and check with my officials that I have not said something awful.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barker]

42: Clause 9, page 4, line 5, at end insert—
“( ) Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs must—(a) inform the NCS Trust and the Secretary of State annually of the costs of fulfilling its duties under this Act; and(b) include this cost in its annual report under section 6(4) of the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 (resource accounts: scrutiny).”

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, the Minister and I have differed on whether the term “unique” is applicable. In this regard it certainly is, because the NCS will have the unique privilege of being advertised to every 15, 16 and 17 year-old by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. I thank the Minister for the explanations that he gave to noble Lords not just at Second Reading but in meetings about how that will happen and about the rationale for choosing the HMRC, which is the body with the most accurate information about 16 and 17 year-olds. He will know, because we had a discussion, that I have a reservation about a very small group of 16 and 17 year-olds for whom this may present a problem—that is, transgender young people, who may be written to using names that are no longer appropriate, and so on. That issue is not to be solved within the Bill; it is a wider issue than that, but I hope that it is one that, given the universal nature of this contact, the Government might give some consideration to.

The value of being able to contact every 16 and 17 year-old is immense. Quite how valuable it is we will come to know only in years to come when we have the annual reports, which will tell us whether the body has achieved the universal coverage of young people expected of it. In the meantime, it might be valid to know the cost of doing this, so we have come forward with the amendment. It is, again, a matter of reporting to high standards. Charities are often required in their annual reports to make declarations about help that they have had in kind. I know that it is not intended that the body be a charity, but none the less it seems to me that government could be open about the extent to which the trust is having this additional, not to say unique, promotion to young people, so that we and all others who will watch this organisation intently can see how well it performs, given the unique nature of its support. I beg to move.

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[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for bringing us to Clause 9 and the new power for HMRC, which has caused a lot of comment in the course of the Bill. I reiterate that this is not the only marketing measure the NCS Trust will use. Your Lordships need only to look at its Twitter account to see its social media presence. However, this power is a means of ensuring, as far as government can, that as many young people as possible have the opportunity to hear about the NCS. HMRC will send on the information but it will not feel or look like an HMRC communication. My speaking notes say it will be colourful and exciting—I am sure it will—and it will be written by those at the trust who know how to communicate with young people effectively.

Amendment 42 in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, alludes to the importance of ensuring that the cost of HMRC writing to young people is value for money. The charter specifies that in all it does the trust must have regard to value for money and I think this is a principle that we all agree on. HMRC will recover the costs it incurs from the use of its staff, time and resources. These costs will therefore be met from the budget allocated to the NCS rather than from HMRC’s own budget. It is HMRC policy to do so and therefore, as an operational matter, it will need to inform the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The expenditure will therefore be included in the NCS expenditure listed in DCMS’s accounts.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, raised the subject of who will be the author of the information HMRC sends out to young people or their parents or carers. I made the point that HMRC will act almost as a delivery service for the NCS Trust—a post person, if you like. The noble Lord’s amendment is in keeping with that in changing the ability for the trust to determine the content of the communication into an obligation to do so. Although “may” is one of my favourite words, we agree with him. This is something I intend to return to on Report.

On my noble friend Lord Cope’s wish to omit the whole clause, I understand his point. As a humble Treasury Whip, I too stood at the Dispatch Box and argued for the need for confidentiality of HMRC information, because it has been shown to aid taxpayer confidence and therefore increase the tax take. However, I respectfully disagree with the argument that this will open the floodgates. HMRC is using the data—only names and addresses—on the NCS’s behalf specifically to prevent it leaving HMRC custody and to keep it confidential. It will maintain its centuries-old commitment to keep confidential all information about individual taxpayers. In fact, this is about not taxpayers, but child benefit recipients. HMRC suits this purpose because it has central government’s best data on young people because of child benefit data. At the age of 16, young people receive their national insurance number from HMRC, which marks the transition to adulthood. At the same time, they become eligible for the NCS, an experience we want to become a rite of passage. The same is not true of road safety or flu jabs, which are ongoing concerns and have a closer affinity with other parts of the public sector, such as the NHS and the DVLA.

With those explanations, I hope noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Barker]

I thank the Minister for his response. He will appreciate that, because no other organisation is given this benefit in kind, it is something which noble Lords will look at with considerable care in future years, not least to see its efficacy. However, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 42 withdrawn.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 2 from the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, to which I have added my name. It provides an important protection to avoiding any inadvertent damage to the very important charities working in the youth area.

In Committee, I drew the attention of your Lordships to the recent research into the impact of the Scout Movement on the mental health of adults; a significant difference in the mental health of adults has been demonstrated in research recently. As vice-chair for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Looked after Children and Care Leavers, I am very well aware of the chaotic lives that too many of our children experience. Yesterday with Gracia McGrath, the chief executive of Chance UK, a mentoring organisation working with primary school children, often those with behavioural difficulties, I discussed the experience of too many children in this country. They may not have a table at home at which they can sit down for meals together; there may be very poor communication in the family, and no consistency about rules. A parent may say, “I will punish you for doing so and so”, and then the child will not get punished but will then find themselves being punished all of a sudden for something that they know no reason for. Often there is violence in the home; that kind of violence becomes normalised, and when such children go to school they find it hard to make friends, because friends do not understand when they get hit all of a sudden for no reason. I remember working with an eight year-old Traveller boy many years ago, blond and blue-eyed and much younger than the other group of four boys with whom I was working at the time. He was full of obscenities, hitting me and the others, but in an affectionate sort of way; it was the only way in which he really knew how to communicate affection towards us.

Going back to my discussion yesterday, Gracia McGrath talked about how she started to help these children, mentoring five to 11 year-olds and how she would often encourage them to join the scouts or cadets. There they would get the solution that they needed, a sense of purpose, a set of rules, maybe a father figure, and a uniform that they could be proud of. So I strongly support the noble Baroness’s amendment. The NCS is a giant already and is going to be even greater; we must take every precaution that it does not inadvertently disturb the delicate ecosystem of youth charities working in the area already. I hope that the Minister can accept this amendment and I look forward to his reply.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 8 in this group stands in my name. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said that this legislation was not controversial. The purpose and aim of this legislation is not controversial; there is agreement that the outputs such as those the NCS exists to deliver are ones that we all welcome. However, as I said at Second Reading, the decision to make this organisation permanent, to make it a royal charter body and to invest so much money in it is highly controversial. What this House has done, or what we have certainly tried to do from these Benches, is to draw to your Lordships’ attention the very many flaws within the basic design of this legislation and in its detail. We do so because we have seen in recent memory programmes of this kind, such as the Work Programme, fail to deliver in their own terms as well as doing damage to the rest of the sector.

I know that, on the one hand, the Minister wants to establish the NCS as a body that is completely insulated and isolated from the rest of the voluntary sector, not bound by the same rules and accounting obligations. On the other hand, he has to accept that if the NCS as a commissioning body is to deliver on its objectives, it will have to work very closely with the rest of the sector. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, is absolutely right: at this size, the new body will have a profound effect on those other organisations. The Minister has, all the way through, elegantly batted off any suggestion that this organisation should be required to be accountable and report in any greater detail than that which is set out in the original Bill, but I put it to him that the requirement in my amendment to report on how many young people have gone on to participate in other social action opportunities and the impact that the NCS programmes have had on the wider social action sector should be fundamental parts of the raison d’être of the NCS. If it cannot do that, then we as parliamentarians have to question why so much money is being invested in it.

I think that this is a very modest requirement. If the Minister says that this is too much of an imposition upon the NCS Trust, I am afraid that, yet again, we will be forced to wonder whether the NCS is being overrated and overstated as an organisation and whether it really is safe to invest this much money in it. I hope that the Minister will accept this amendment.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, before I address the amendments in this group, I thank the Minister for his comments on the previous group. I did not say anything because I did not think anything more needed to be said, but the amendment is very welcome and a sensible compromise on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

There are two definitions at play in this group of amendments. The first is around the intention of the trust, as it were, in its impact on the wider social action sector, as addressed in Amendments 2 and 4. The other is more about reporting the consequences of those actions, as addressed in Amendment 8. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I think we all want the NCS to be a spur rather than to crowd out wider social action. Like her, I am extremely committed to promoting the idea of a journey of service.

Whether these amendments are needed is in question. The evidence on the NCS so far is that it is acting as a spur through its commissioning work. It is not a direct delivery agent itself. I forget how many new and established agencies it commissions through its work, but it is clearly already providing income and capacity for the sector and it is difficult to imagine that it will not do more of that as it grows. If my noble friend the Minister were to give a commitment on a review, I hope that would satisfy the intent of Amendment 4.

Amendment 8, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, is a bit more difficult because it is about what happens afterwards as a consequence of the action rather than the intention. It would certainly add to the reporting burden. I am also not sure whether it is the sort of thing on which the NCS Trust would have the capacity to report. It strikes me that the noble Baroness is asking for something that is more properly the work of the sponsoring department, rather than the delivery agent itself. Therefore, although I understand why she has tabled the measure and I understand the concern in all the amendments in this group to make sure that the impact is positive rather than one which crowds out other provision, I am not sure that the suggestion in Amendment 8 is proportionate in terms of the functions and purpose of the NCS Trust, nor would it be productive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their contributions. I think we can find a way forward on this. The issue here is twofold: what impact does the trust have on the youth sector, and what impact should it have? Amendment 2 would require the trust to have “due concern” for its impact on existing youth provision. Amendment 4 would require it to achieve positive impacts by promoting the youth social action journey. Amendment 8 would require it to report on both topics.

Throughout the passage of the Bill, I have been clear about what the NCS Trust is here to do. Its sole job is to provide NCS in England, so its “due concern” is just that. The primary functions of the trust must relate only to the trust’s promotion of NCS, and its job to arrange for the programme’s delivery. On that, we have to remain firm. However, this is not to say the trust exists in a vacuum, as I think the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, implied I was implying. A national programme such as NCS will have a significant presence in the youth sector and will work with many youth organisations. I agree that the trust must take this presence and these relationships seriously. It would benefit nobody, not least the NCS, if the trust were not to put these considerations to the fore of its strategic priorities.

That is why I can commit to a change to the draft royal charter for the NCS Trust. The charter will be the trust’s constitutional document; the trust must hardwire every element of it into its day-to-day operations. I hope this will enable me to dispel the rumour that the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, gave out, that I want to isolate the NCS. At the moment, as I have said many times, it deals with more than 200 different organisations, and we expect it to do that, continue to do that and expand that relationship.

[Baroness Barker]

Perhaps I owe the Minister an explanation. I do not ascribe that view to him. However, I have to refer to the speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Maude, at Second Reading, when he talked about the design of this programme and the deliberate intention from the beginning to make it a body separate from the rest of the sector. The fact that that is a founding part of its design, which is perpetuated in the Bill, is the source of wide concern in the voluntary sector.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

I am grateful for that explanation and I accept what the noble Baroness says. It is absolutely true that the trust is set up as a separate organisation for the reasons we mentioned. But let me come to what I was about to say and we will see whether that will satisfy her.

We propose to add to the preamble of the charter a formal recital that outlines our belief that, “it is desirable that other organisations supporting young people should benefit from the actions of the National Citizen Service Trust”. This answers both issues. The trust’s royal charter now makes explicit that the trust should always be mindful of how it is impacting on the youth sector and should look at the benefits for that sector of any activity or decision it undertakes. As I have said, the trust will have to report on how it arranged for the delivery of NCS. It will report naturally on its relationships with the youth sector by outlining how it has worked with NCS providers and other partners. With this addition to the charter, Parliament can now even more readily expect the trust to consider how it has sought to benefit the youth sector when self-reporting each year.

The NCS Trust acknowledges its role in developing a coherent youth social action journey for young people. It is a founding member of Step Up To Serve’s #iwill campaign, and its chief executive sits on the board of Generation Change. Government has a role to play in ensuring that those overseeing the trust share a passion for improving the opportunities available to young people before, during and after NCS. This change to the charter sends a clear signal that, through the governance arrangements in the charter, the Government will do just that, now and into the future. This should provide noble Lords with the reassurance that we agree with their core argument—that the trust must be aware of its presence in the youth sector— and that we have moved in an appropriate way to accommodate this.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, talked about the social action journey and volunteering and so on. The noble Baroness specifically asked me about the government review of volunteering and social action, and I acknowledge that she has been very patient. During the course of the Bill I said that we will be able to talk about that “in due course”. I think we then moved to “soon” and perhaps even “imminent”. I can now say that it is very imminent. I hope—although it is not in my power to guarantee it—that we will be able to see something before Third Reading.

On the basis of that and my commitment to amend the royal charter, I hope the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

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Moved by

[Baroness Barker]

11: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Independent review of NCS Trust commissioning
Within five years of the coming into force of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission an independent review of commissioning by the NCS Trust, which shall include, but need not be limited to—(a) the extent to which small, local providers are able to access contracts,(b) the barriers which may prevent small, local providers from being able to access contracts, and(c) the extent to which the NCS Trust has diversified the providers which deliver its programmes.”

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I hope that is the beginning of a trend. We return to an issue that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, in his amendment in Committee. I have submitted a revised version of that, partly because I did not know whether he was going to do so. This deals with an extremely important issue: the effect of the NCS Trust as a commissioner of services from the rest of the voluntary sector.

It might help noble Lords if I explain why some of us see this as being as important as we do. I commend to noble Lords, particularly the Minister, the transcripts or the recordings of the Select Committee on Charities, particularly its session on Monday, when we invited a number of big charities to talk about commissioning. We discussed at considerable length the somewhat damaging experience of using prime contractors and subcontractors, particularly in social care but also in the criminal justice system. I also commend the transcript of yesterday’s session of the committee, when we discussed exactly the same issue with the Minister with responsibility for the OCS.

It is fair to say that over the past five years or so the growth of this model of commissioning of services has had a profound impact, not all of it good. The work programme is the one that we keep coming back to: in effect, the way in which services were commissioned ruled out small providers and set up unhealthy relationships between big commercial providers that were able to deliver at scale and very cheaply at the expense of small organisations. The whole issue of commissioning is deeply problematic but it is the model by which the Government have chosen to deliver the NCS. I think the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, understands how that experience has coloured the perceptions of the rest of the voluntary sector. We know what the Government are trying to do, but there is concern that such a big programme will have a disproportionate effect. The key thing that Parliament needs to look at is whether the process by which the NCS Trust goes about its commissioning work with small providers is harmful to the overall youth social action sector. This very much mirrors some of the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, is wandering round a similar part of the discussion but in a slightly different way.

With that, I ask the Minister to understand that this amendment is not in any way anti-NCS. It is about raising some real and grave reservations about the sub and prime commissioning model. I beg to move.

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[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, these amendments have a common purpose: to put it in statute that a one-off independent review of the NCS Trust’s commissioning takes place after this Bill is passed. Amendment 11 would have it within five years, and Amendment 12 within three; the latter includes a requirement to review benefits to economic, social and environmental well-being. This reflects the discussion we had in Committee about the social value Act.

I cannot disagree with the intention of the amendments or the sincerity with which they have been presented. They mirror the ambition of the Bill: to make the NCS Trust accountable for its performance. But my noble friend and the noble Baroness would go further than what is currently drafted—too far, I would argue, for a piece of legislation. The Government want the trust to be accountable for its outcomes. It must demonstrate and report on how it is providing a quality programme for young people. We discussed these reporting requirements in Committee. The Government are concerned with what the NCS delivers more than the details of its methods. We believe that it is vital to trust in its own expertise to deliver a vibrant, innovative programme. The NCS Trust works with over 200 providers. The programme has grown dramatically since 2013, but the diversity of providers has not reduced. We should have confidence in the trust’s expertise. That is why it has been set up to deliver NCS—it must have the freedom to evolve. I would be worried about the message sent by these amendments: that we are setting up a body we do not trust. To put it in statute that an independent review will be needed would send a negative signal, given that the trust will have to submit reports and accounts each year documenting its activity, be subject to the NAO and Public Accounts Committee and have independent evaluation. There is a limit to the reporting burdens that we can impose on the trust.

Having said that, I understand the concerns. The trust is overseeing the growth of the NCS programme, and it is right to be interested in how it copes with this continuing expansion. Of course if, in future, Parliament were to have legitimate concerns about the trust’s practices, based on the evidence of its reporting, NAO studies, and the independent evaluations of NCS outcomes, there would be every reason for government to establish an independent review. It would do so because there would be reasonable doubt in the organisation’s operations. Nothing in the current Bill and charter precludes this. The NCS Trust must be accountable, but it must be trusted also. The Government are clear on this, and I hope that my noble friend and the noble Baroness can accept our position.

As for what the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, said, I am certainly happy to look at the evidence sessions, but I cannot guarantee to bring a change back at Third Reading.

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the directness of his answer. The debate takes us back again to the initial founding of the NCS and its independent, distinct and separate nature as a body. We have a fundamental disagreement, because I think that how the NCS delivers its services is central to what it delivers, because it has to work in partnership with the rest of the voluntary sector. It is not the delivery mechanism but how it manages its relationships with all the delivering partners that is absolutely central.

We have a disagreement: the Government wish the trust to act in a highly independent way; some of the rest of us believe that in order to deliver what it says it wants to deliver, it has to take account of the whole of the voluntary sector system within which it operates, even though it will have a different status. We will not reach agreement on this, but I have welcomed the opportunity to put on record a number of very genuine concerns from people in the voluntary sector who do not wish the NCS harm and want it to succeed but who, like me, share some grave reservations about its ability to do so, given the underlying nature of its establishment.

I thank the Minister for the grace and elegance with which he has batted on what I think—he may not—is a somewhat sticky wicket. He has been willing throughout to listen to the criticisms and arguments that we have made and he has answered them as fully as he can. I am not going to get anywhere tonight and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I strongly support the amendment and admire the concise way in which my noble friend introduced it. I would like to take advantage of his mentioning the review that has been announced today merely to express the hope—this will not come as a surprise to him as I have taken part at Second Reading, in Committee and on Report and made similar points on each occasion—that the review will be able to look at the wider concept of citizenship and the possibility of the sort of national citizenship scheme that I advocated on those earlier occasions. I would be grateful for the Minister’s assurance that this will fall within the remit of the committee that is to report in October of next year.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the way he introduced this amendment. When the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, spoke to this matter in Committee and on Report, he was clear that his primary concern was not financial misconduct but that wider behaviour was at the heart of this. Charity legislation has had to grapple with this very difficult matter in the past. The Minister may know that during the passage of the draft Protection of Charities Bill we had a lengthy discussion about how one puts this concern into law. I note that this amendment still sits within a clause headed “Notification of financial difficulties”. Will the purport of this measure be made clear in guidance—that is, that it is not about financial matters but about safeguarding and wider issues of that nature?

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

My Lords, I just want to pick up on the point that has just been made—the unfortunate elision of financial difficulties with the broader issue raised by the amendment. I am sure that it is not something that we need to trouble with today. The Minister and I discovered that the wording in bold black type in Bills of this nature is not subject to amendment but it can be changed by the Government simply issuing instructions to the draftsman. Perhaps that can be arranged at some point in the magic that goes on behind the scenes, as I think that would remove the difficulty here.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Baroness Barker Excerpts

Ping Pong (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 4th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Lord Ashton of Hyde) (Con)]

My Lords, the National Citizen Service Bill returns to us after its passage through the other place. I shall explain briefly two government amendments that have been made there. They are minor and technical amendments to correct the drafting of the “Extent” and “Commencement” provisions in Part 2. These are merely technicalities and it falls to me to ask the House to approve the corrections.

When the Bill was introduced in this House, Clause 13 provided that the extent of the Bill was England and Wales only. Schedule 2, however, contains four consequential amendments to other Acts: for example, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Equality Act 2010. Those Acts have extent beyond England and Wales.

When consequential amendments are made to those other Acts, they should have the same extent as the provision of the Acts they are amending. This ensures that the section being amended has a uniform extent. This is standard legislative practice. The consequential amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, for example, should have the same extent as the section of the Freedom of Information Act that it amends. Clause 13 should reflect that.

Commons Amendment 1 ensures that this is the case by qualifying Clause 13 with:

“An amendment made by this Act has the same extent as the provision to which it relates (and this Part extends accordingly)”.


In other words, if the part of the original Act being amended has provision beyond England and Wales, the consequential amendment does too.

The second amendment is to Clause 14, “Commencement”. The Bill as introduced in this House provided that the whole of Part 2, which sets out general technical provisions, and Schedule 2 should both come into force on the day the Act is passed. This would have meant that the consequential amendments referred to in Clause 11 of Part 2 came into force on the day the Bill received Royal Assent. At this point, the new NCS Trust charter body will not necessarily exist. Part 1 of the Bill and Schedule 1 come into force on such day as the Secretary of State decides and makes by regulation. In reality, this will be after Royal Assent and once the royal charter is granted.

This would have meant that, even though the new NCS Trust would not have come into existence until after Royal Assent, the Freedom of Information Act and others would have included it straightaway on Royal Assent, and there is no sense in these Acts covering a body that does not yet exist. Commons Amendment 2 corrects that.

I hope that this explanation serves to justify the need for the amendments. I beg to move.

[Baroness Barker (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to government Amendment 2. Last October, when this legislation to turn the National Citizen Service into a royal charter body came before your Lordships, I said that,

“the fact that the National Citizen Service provides young people with a great opportunity to meet new people, try new activities and develop skills and confidence at the critical age of 16 or 17 is not up for debate. However, pretty well everything else in this Bill should be”.—[Official Report, 25/10/16; col. 120.]

I did so partly because the political decision of Mrs May’s Government to spend £1 billion on one project at a time when public services for young people were disappearing seemed somewhat cavalier. Furthermore, the NCS Trust, an organisation which enjoys unprecedented political support, receives 99% of its funding—£475 million in 2015—from government, but it has a weak governance structure and a patchy performance record.

However, my main concern stemmed from the fact that the decision to scale up this project was justified on the basis of an evaluation report commissioned by the Cabinet Office at a cost of £1 million. Extensive and expensive as it was, it failed to ask two crucial questions: how does the scheme compare with other similar schemes for young people and could the intended outcomes be achieved more efficiently and effectively by putting the scheme out to tender?

Since the NCS Trust accounts do not meet public sector transparency requirements, we on these Benches—lone voices—asked searching questions of the Government last autumn. We asked why this organisation, whose four-week engagement programme with 16 and 17 year-olds costs somewhere between £1,500 and £1,850 per place, was given preference over other schemes such as the Scouts, whose placements cost about £500 and last, on average, about four years.

Why should an organisation which from the outset was insulated from the rest of the voluntary sector be fast-tracked to royal charter status? Why should an organisation that not only failed to meet its targets for young people on placements but overpaid £10 million for places that were not filled be deemed not just suitable to be scaled up but, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Maude, become,

“a permanent feature on the landscape of our nation”.—[Official Report, 25/10/16; col. 123.]

Why have the Government ignored the lessons of past failures, such as the Work Programme? The more forensic our questions, the more bluster came from the Government.

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[Baroness Buscombe (Con)]

May I say that at this stage of the passage of the Bill it is not right to make what is akin to a Second Reading speech? This is consideration of Commons amendments, so I ask the noble Baroness to come to a close.

[Baroness Barker]

Perhaps the House will understand that this is my one and only opportunity to raise a matter which is of key importance.

[Baroness Buscombe]

I say to the noble Baroness that there has been plenty of opportunity through the passage of the Bill.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

If we do not follow the rules, we shall never get anywhere. The noble Baroness does not appear to me to be addressing the amendments; therefore she is not in order.

[Baroness Barker]

If the noble Lord will allow me to finish, I am going to come to the point about commencement, which is what this amendment is about.

I simply wish to say that the level of financial and other reporting which the NCS Trust has given so far has been found to be inadequate by the Public Accounts Committee, which has asked the trust to provide a timetable and an action plan to put in place the governance, leadership and expertise necessary to deliver the expansion of this project.

We have argued from these Benches that citizenship and civic participation are important, but we raised these questions throughout the passage of the Bill and we did not get answers. They are fundamental to the capacity of the organisation to deliver this scheme.

The Bill should not be commenced. Its commencement should be delayed until all the recommendations of the Public Accounts Committee have been fulfilled and a report has been provided to Parliament, and until the governance, management, planning and performance of the National Citizen Service Trust and the Challenge Network have been independently evaluated and a report produced. The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee should hold an inquiry into the role of Ministers and officials, just as it did with Kids Company. The transformation of the NCS into a royal charter body should be delayed until its eligibility can be proven.

In the meantime, the trust should be enabled to run its 2017 programme and it should be informed that its tenure and the remainder of its contract will be subject to the fulfilment of the criteria I have just mentioned. The National Citizen Service is a worthwhile enterprise. The body it has been entrusted to is not yet fit for purpose and a great deal of public funding is going to be staked on an organisation which so far has proven itself unable to deliver. On that basis, the Bill should not go ahead.

[Lord Blunkett (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my registered interests in this area as a board member. The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, has raised some rational points in relation to the Public Accounts Committee, and they should be taken seriously. But to say that these matters have not been addressed and then to say in the next breath, “I have addressed them throughout the passage of the Bill and did not receive answers”, beggars belief.

I sat in Committee and on Report, as other Members of the House did, and heard the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, quite rightly, repeatedly raising the questions she has raised this afternoon; raising the comparative issues—which are not comparable—with regard to the Scouts; and raising issues in relation to contracting out by the National Citizen Service, which is a commissioning body and contracts out the actual delivery of the service to dozens of organisations in the voluntary and not-for-profit sector. The very reason the Bill is before us—and I welcome the two technical amendments —is precisely to ensure that the lessons of the past four years have been learned and will be taken forward.

That is why the noble Baroness’s speech today, together with her numerous interventions in Committee and on Report, which she is perfectly entitled to make, would make a very good speech in favour of the Bill. As I understand it, she welcomes the National Citizen Service, questions the value for money, and raises issues from the Public Accounts Committee, which have not yet been answered, but raises one absolutely fundamental issue: that the long-term outcome measures of the investment in young people engaging with voluntary service and the week’s residential course cannot yet be proved. That is a non sequitur. How can you prove the long-term outcomes at this stage of measures that have been in place for only four years?

On that count alone, and on the count that the measures that the noble Baroness questions have been questioned—even though this afternoon she says they have not been, and have not been answered—we should progress with the Bill, which will set in place an entirely new board and structure. I will not be part of that, but I wish the National Citizen Service well because, although it was not my idea and did not spring from my party, it is a fundamental investment in the well-being of our country and our young people.