Citizenship and Civic Engagement (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the clerks, our policy analyst, Professor Matt Flinders, our special adviser, and all those who gave evidence or met the committee for their respective contributions to our report. Special thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for his skilful chairing of a highly opinionated committee.

While I welcome the generally positive tone of the Government’s response, I am disappointed at how few of our recommendations have been accepted. All too often the response sidesteps our recommendations with a description of what the Government are already doing. There is no acknowledgement of the seriousness of the concerns we raise in relation to the citizenship challenge we identify. While the challenge is not just for central government but also for local government, civil society, business and individual citizens, it is for central government to take the lead. At present, they are failing to do so. We found that,

“what is missing is any clear, coherent or ambitious vision of why citizenship should matter in the UK in the 21st century”.

I looked in vain for such a vision in the Government’s response.

The response summarised the overarching aim of our recommendations as,

“simplifying the individual’s civic journey, and enabling people to be active citizens”.

Certainly, the civic journey and active citizenship were important threads in our argument, but our recommendations were aimed not at simplification but at removing what many witnesses identified as “barriers, blockages or obstacles”, particularly those faced by marginalised groups. As noble Lords have already heard, we saw citizenship education as a key building block. We were thus dismayed that the Government’s Integrated Communities Strategy Green Paper said nothing about it, thereby exemplifying the Government’s

“clear lack of citizenship vision”.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, for meeting us to discuss our recommendations, but the Government’s complacent response—how many noble Lords have already used that adjective?—failed to match the urgency of our concern about the state of citizenship education, which we had been told was,

“withering on the vine at the moment at a time when it is needed more than ever”.

Only one of our recommendations in this area was accepted, although as we have already heard, even this has not yet been actioned. Will the Minister tell us, or write to us, about when we can expect it to be so? Otherwise, it was warm words and Pollyanna-like claims, which are at odds with the alarming evidence we received of its “parlous state”.

The barriers to citizenship and to social integration through participation that we identified were various, including some rooted in socioeconomic disadvantage and other inequalities, such as gender. One specific barrier we have already heard about, to which we devoted a chapter, is poor English language skills. A common message was that the ability to communicate in English is vital to British citizenship. While we noted that this is as true of those of the indigenous population, for whom functional illiteracy is a barrier as it is of migrants, our recommendations focused mainly on ESOL, which is of especial importance to refugees and to women, who face particular access problems because of their childcare responsibilities. We referred to the bleak picture painted by Refugee Action’s research: a worsening situation of long waiting lists due primarily to lack of funding. We contrasted this with the exemplary ESOL support provided under the Syrian resettlement programme. We pointed to the danger of a two-tier standard and concluded:

“However one construes the numbers, they cannot disguise the fact that, over the last seven years, a cut in funding of about one half has led to a fall in numbers of at least one quarter”.


We noted that the Green Paper proposed,

“a new fund, but no new funding”,

and stressed that the Government must restore ESOL funding to its 2009-10 levels by 2019-20. The response was more warm words but no commitment to the funding essential for effective action. Can the Minister offer us anything more than further warm words today?

I return like a broken record to an issue that has been exercising me and many others in recent months—the obstacles put in the way of children who, because of their parents’ immigration status, need to register their statutory entitlement to citizenship. These are children either born in this country or who have spent most of their life here. One barrier identified in our report is the “good character” requirement for children from the age of only 10, which originally applied only to applications for naturalisation, in recognition of the important distinction between registration of citizenship and naturalisation. We recommended that the Government,

“review the use and description of the ‘good character’ requirements”,

and, in effect, they accepted that recommendation. However, they refused to reconsider the age from which the test applies on the grounds that,

“this is the age of criminal responsibility”,

and sentencing guidelines take into account the particular circumstances of minors. Whatever one thinks of such a low age of criminal responsibility, it surely cannot be right that according to a coalition of voluntary organisations—I declare an interest as recently becoming a patron of one of them—the requirement is used to prevent children registering rights to British citizenship, even where they have had only minimal contact with the criminal justice system, such as receiving a caution or a fine.

The Government also referred to their statutory obligation,

“to have due regard to the best interests of the child”,

but how can it be in the best interests of the child for their entitlement to citizenship to be denied on the basis of behaviour at such a young age? Why has the Home Office not acted on its acceptance last year of the chief inspector’s recommendation that the requirement should not be applied to children in the same way as to adults? May we have an explanation, if necessary, in writing?

The other obstacle is the level of the fee—over £1,000, of which only £372 is attributable to administrative costs—about which considerable concern has already been raised around your Lordships’ House, as we have heard, and which even the Home Secretary has described as “huge”. The committee questioned the “excessive profits” made on these and naturalisation fees, and in relation to children could see,

“no ground for the Home Office charging more than the costs they incur”.

As we have heard, we made the case for waiving the citizenship registration fee altogether in the case of children in care and children who have spent their entire lives in the UK.

The Government’s response was—as always on this matter—totally unsatisfactory. Their justification that the exorbitant fees,

“help fund and maintain effective wider immigration system functions”,

in effect puts the best interests of the immigration system above the best interests of children—who in any case are not immigrants. Moreover, their oft-repeated argument:

“Setting fees at above cost also enables the Home Office to exempt some people from having to pay a fee”,


and,

“to waive fees in certain individual circumstances”,

is potentially misleading because it implies that such waivers can apply to the citizenship registration fee in question, which they cannot, as underlined by the noble Lord, Lord Russell.

One of the Government’s arguments in response to pressure on the level of the fee has been that citizenship is not really that important. But the underlying premise of our report is that citizenship is important—it matters. It is important to participation in society and to a sense of identity and belonging. It is indeed a tie that binds. I hope that the Government will rethink their response to this and many of our other recommendations and come forward with a clear vision and strategy for citizenship to help unite our country at a time when it has perhaps never been more divided.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank everybody who has participated in a debate of exceptional quality, touching on some very important issues. I echo what has been said about the excellent work of what is clearly a turbocharged committee, so well led by my noble friend Lord Hodgson. I thank others for their thanks around the House: it was clearly an exemplary committee in the work that has been done. I also offer my thanks, in opening, for the massive amount of work that has been done by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, on the National Citizen Service: he is coming to the end of a very distinguished tenure there. I also offer congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, on taking up work at the National Citizen Service Trust, the successor body.

It struck me, listening to the debate, that one of the problems—for the large part understated—that we have in this area, a problem that has bedevilled successive Governments, is the silo thinking that we have in government departments. This contributes to a sense that there is no obvious responsibility for the conglomeration of policy areas that this involves. I note the recommendation made by the committee, a recommendation that has been picked up and is being acted on by the safe and integrated communities committee, which will take up responsibility in this area—indeed, it has just done so at its most recent meeting. I hope that that will help with some of the very serious issues that have been touched upon in this debate.

In preparing for this debate, because of what I just said about silo areas, I prepared a lot of varied areas and I will set out four or five of them that I think dominated the debate. They are values, citizenship education, citizenship itself and the fees that attach to it, and English language teaching. Other points were made along the way but I think that those were the dominant ones and I will try to deal with them. In so far as I miss any points relating to those four areas, or anything else that was brought up—for example, the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised the issue of honours, and I will try to cover that as I go along—I will pick them up later, if I may.

The issue of values is obviously fundamental to the matter of citizenship of our country. Let me say, in parenthesis, that there was perhaps a misconception on the part of some noble Lords: we have not yet issued our response to the Green Paper on integration. The integration action plan will come out before Christmas. Obviously, some matters that were raised in the course of this debate will be dealt with there, not least on the subject of values. I remember when the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury, in a debate that he led some two years ago, used the term “British values”—I do not think he necessarily used the word “fundamental”, I cannot remember that. Those British values could be classified as core values or international values and they encompass a whole range of different aspects, I readily accept.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, in talking about Gareth Southgate, mentioned an emotional intelligence that is relevant here. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, talked about international values. The noble Lord, Lord Russell of Liverpool, in what I thought was an extremely helpful contribution, talked about the independence of the judiciary. I could not agree with him more about how fundamental that is as part of the separation of powers in this country. A country that does not have a free judiciary—we can all think of some—ceases to operate as an effective democracy in the way that Britain does. In those haunting words:

“The whisper wakes, the shudder plays/Across the reeds at Runnymede”

whenever the independence of that judiciary is challenged.

Other people raised other aspects. My noble friend Lady Stowell talked about the importance of individuals, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who said that it was not just about setting public policy. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, talked about civic duty and the neighbourhood planning policy as an example of that. I agree. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, talked about the outward-looking importance of this area. My noble friend Lady Eaton talked about integration rather than assimilation. All these things are relevant and I wholly accept that the use of language is key. That will be reflected in our action plan when it comes out before Christmas.

The second aspect of the debate was the importance of citizenship education and the citizen service—the two melding together to some extent. I wholly agree. I think a country that neglects the importance of citizenship is in grave danger. I particularly appreciated the points made by two very distinguished former Education Secretaries—the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—which went to the core of this. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, talked about the National Citizen Service as a backdrop to how important it is that everybody has that sense of belonging. I forget who it was—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord McNicol—who mentioned that important sense of belonging as a nation. I think it goes to the heart of that.

Much is happening in the National Citizen Service to illustrate the importance of this. On Armistice Day—the commemoration of 100 years since the end of the First World War, just a week ago—it was great to see the 100 National Citizen Service graduates who were there as volunteers. There is no better example of how effective this is as part of our cohesion as a society. Last year, a significant number of volunteers went overseas to mark the centenary of the Third Battle of Ypres.

My noble friend Lord Norton asked some specific, detailed—and fair—questions about citizenship education, which I will write to him about. It was perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Alton—it might not have been—who said that no man is an island, in his very moving speech, and how important that is. My noble friend Lady Eaton talked about civics being taught at school. I do not think I was actually taught civics but it was much the same thing. I remember as a nerdy teenager memorising all the Labour Ministers—in and out of the Cabinet—and the Conservative shadows, which enabled me to be part of the winning team at the Braintree Carnival quiz. It is funny how these things stick. I seem to remember that Tom Urwin was one of those Ministers—that has been corroborated by my noble friend Lord Young. That is a small example but it illustrates how cohesive communities are around this shared interest in citizenship.

Much is happening. Just recently the King’s Leadership Academy in Warrington has done significant things on citizenship education. But I accept that it all needs to be pulled together. That is what we need to look at and perhaps what this committee should turn its attention to now that it has this responsibility.

The noble Baroness, Lady Royall, talked about the importance of moving this forward. In two days’ time, my honourable friend Victoria Atkins, the Equalities Minister, will launch a resource pack in relation to citizenship on the suffrage movement as part of national curriculum key stages 3 and 4. As I say, things are happening, but perhaps they need to be pulled together.

The issue of citizenship fees was brought up. I will have to write to people about the specifics on where there are exemptions. There certainly are some; I know that some exemptions arose recently in relation to the Windrush issues, to see where payments have to be made and where they do not. I merely say that a balance has to be struck. I think it is reasonable enough to cover costs, and it may be that these could be calculated in different ways, but I take seriously some of the points raised in the debate. If people could bear with me, I will follow those up because it seems that there is an issue to be addressed there.

Perhaps I may move to the fourth substantive area: English language tuition. I am visiting an ESOL class tomorrow in Tower Hamlets. It is a coincidence, believe me; this has been long in the diary. Those I have seen elsewhere—in Bradford, Peterborough, Whitechapel and Westminster, at least—have been uniformly excellent. There was some criticism of them, perhaps a blanket criticism from the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, who was uncharacteristically somewhat unfair. We are at pains to make sure that we are getting the best value for money. It is done without fear or favour between public and private providers. Those that we use, and we use many from both areas, are extremely good. I am sure that the noble Lord would agree that getting the best value for money is the right way. I have worked on this with, for example, the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, who has some expertise in this area. Points were raised about the importance of this by my noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Alton. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, again made a powerful contribution on that matter.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

A number of noble Lords made the point that one of our key recommendations was that the Government should restore the level of funding for ESOL to its original level, otherwise it is just warm words. Can the Minister perhaps address that recommendation?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

That is not the only pot used in relation to English-language funding. In my own department, for example, as part of the integration policy we are putting in substantial sums in relation to the teaching of the English language and working with the Department for Education. If I may, I will write to the noble Baroness with more detail but I simply say that it is not just about the one pot. It is about working together to ensure that we get the best value for money.

I turn to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hylton, about honours for volunteering. I think he was tying that to some reduction in the fee for further or higher education. His essential point was that volunteers would get credits which they could then use for some abatement of fees, or something of that nature. On the surface, it seems a very constructive suggestion which I would like to look at. At the moment, as he would know, we reward—if reward is the right word—or honour people through the “Points of Light” programme for outstanding volunteering, which has an award every day. However, I appreciate his point in tying that to education and I will come back to him on that, if I may.

The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, raised a point about the voting age. He will perhaps know from the nature of the committee’s recommendation that the view he holds is not universal. But certainly some people hold it and, regardless of where the voting age should be, I think we would all agree that it is desirable to encourage democratic participation even before people are voting. A fair point was made there.

I think those were the main points. I fully accept that there are some issues to be looked at. As I say, this is work in progress so I would not want people to think that the Government regard it as a done deal. I am certainly not complacent. I fully accept that there is much work to be done—a substantial amount.