Chris White
Main Page: Chris White (Conservative - Warwick and Leamington)Department Debates - View all Chris White's debates with the Cabinet Office
National Citizen Service
Chris White Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)
May I be the first Member on this side of the House to congratulate the Minister on his new role? I look forward to working with him. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) on securing the debate. I particularly enjoy working with him on a cross-party basis, as we are both co-chairs of the Associate Parliamentary Manufacturing Group. I welcome how he is framing his remarks.
Chris White
As chair of the all-party group on the National Citizen Service and volunteering, I would welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support. Does he not think that this issue would also benefit from cross-party consensus?
Mr Sheerman
As the hon. Gentleman said, he works well with me and I hope he can work with me on the much more ambitious programme that I am going to talk about today. Nothing I am going to say today is negative about the existing National Citizen Service programme, but I want to finish my analysis. I believe that we have become a very different country. More and more people are living in cities and towns, with fewer people living in the countryside. There are real problems with the mobility of young people—getting off their estates, travelling, and getting away from their sometimes troubled environments.
I would like to see an open discussion about the possibility of having a much more powerful National Citizen Service, because we are in a time when democracy is under threat. When I asked that particular question of the Prime Minister, the other thing I said was that, 10 days before, only 36% of people voted in the European elections and even fewer voted in the local elections. Interestingly, if we look at Europe, even countries that are so keen on getting democracy had levels of involvement of 19%.
It is worrying for Europe and for our country that there is a disengagement from politics. All of us, when we are out canvassing, or in different parts of the country—in my case, trying to persuade the people of Scotland to stay in the Union—hear too often that the perception is that democracy does not make any difference because we are all the same. I think we need citizenship, because it will get to the root of that kind of attitude.