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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.