National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

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

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, the motivation that sits behind this Bill could scarcely be more important. As several noble Lords have said, at a time of increasing division in our country, it represents a serious attempt to build a more cohesive society, and what could be more important to that endeavour than developing a habit of service to others among young people?

Noble Lords may be aware that over the past few years I have been involved in setting up a family of primary state schools with character development at their heart. Of the many virtues we could have chosen to represent what we are trying to do at Floreat Education, we chose four: curiosity, perseverance, honesty and service. We chose service because it is, I believe, a foundational civic virtue, without which it is impossible for a society to function, let alone flourish.

At Floreat Education, we are very fond, as primary schools often are, of inspiring quotes, especially if they are from Martin Luther King, and that great orator was not lost for words on the importance of serving others. He said:

“Everybody can be great … because everybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love”.

As my noble friend Lord Hodgson has said, a commitment to serve others is the glue that binds society together. It encourages humility, understanding and courage. It fills our lives with meaning, purpose and, yes, love.

Psychologists tell us that serving other people is the route to long-lasting happiness. Our colleague in this House, the noble Lord, Lord Layard, once said that the fastest way to make yourself happy is to make someone else happy, so service is not only good for others, it is good for ourselves too.

Parenting is perhaps the greatest form of service imaginable, and many of us were fortunate to grow up in families with a culture of service. In my home, I was able to learn from my mother, who diligently ran riding for the disabled classes, was a school governor and still contributes to talking newspapers, among many other voluntary commitments. My father was involved in the Catenians and coached the Cubs and Scouts football teams that I played in. There were structured opportunities to serve at school, and after university I had the chance to teach in a small orphanage outside Calcutta, the Mathieson Music School, for six months.

I was incredibly fortunate to learn about the importance of service through my family and am deeply grateful for it. Through these experiences, I learned much else too, and met people from all walks of life, but what if a young person does not have these opportunities at home? What if they live in those places where diverse communities exist side by side but never interact, which sadly I am seeing more and more of through my education work? What then?

This is the backdrop to the founding of National Citizen Service, which was introduced as a proposal as far back as 2005 by our former Prime Minister David Cameron. Over the subsequent years, it has garnered support from all political parties and all parts of society precisely because it speaks to important and undeniable needs to bring people together, to forge a common understanding and a shared set of values and to encourage the habit of service that is the bedrock of a prosperous Britain.

NCS has proved very successful so far in delivering on that vision. The young people who take part report a much greater understanding of and positivity towards people from different backgrounds. They have more skills, such as leadership and oracy, that are useful in the workplace, and they report less anxiety and greater well-being. Critically, these effects are greatest for those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The long-term impact on building a culture of service is compelling: in the 16 months after completing NCS, the 2013 and 2014 cohorts gave back an additional 8 million hours to their communities.

NCS is also a model of good policy-making. By starting with small pilots in 2009 and building up slowly, with ongoing impact evaluations, NCS has laid the foundations to be a genuinely transformative programme. That is why I am happy to welcome this Bill and am committed to ensuring that NCS can fulfil its potential.

There are not many measures in the Bill, but they seem largely sensible. Given the increasing ambition of the programme and the sums of public money involved, creating a royal charter for the NCS Trust seems to be the right approach. Other people more expert in governance will have views on that and have expressed them today, but a royal charter puts NCS on a par with organisations such as the British Museum, which have a special cultural status. That seems to me a better alternative than being either an executive agency or an NDPB, with the long fingers of government, as my noble friend Lord Maude described them, playing with the programme.

That is not to say that I have no concerns about the Bill and the accompanying draft paper. I do not quite agree with Ronald Reagan that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the Government and I’m here to help”, but it is certainly true that one of the reasons for the success of NCS so far, as several noble Lords have said, is that even though it has largely been funded by the state, it is seen by young people as being independent of government. We must guard that independence jealously because the moment that NCS is seen as something that is “done to” 16 year-olds by the Government will be the moment that it fails. In that regard, some of the proposals on governance and the appointment of the board are of concern, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said. I look forward to exploring them further in Committee.

I am also concerned that the draft charter limits the NCS Trust’s remit only to delivering the specific programme for 16 year-olds. Clearly, this must be the centrepiece of its activity—that is what it was founded for—but the trust can play a much greater role in the social action sector as whole.

While NCS and the Bill have been largely welcomed by major providers such as vinspired, the Scouts and City Year, of which I am a parliamentary supporter, they all raise concerns about whether the current draft charter limits the role of NCS and will inhibit its links with the rest of the sector. For example, there is gathering momentum behind the idea of creating a year of service in the UK, as the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, described, modelled on the AmeriCorps programme in the US, but, as the Bill stands, the NCS Trust would not be able to get involved in developing that proposal. It would be a tremendous missed opportunity to restrict the trust’s powers when it was perfectly capable—indeed, I believe willing—to play a leadership role in promoting service throughout society. I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance on this point in his closing remarks.

Given the chance, the NCS can not just work for the children and young people who go through it but can be a catalyst for an entire social movement, helping to spread more widely the ideal, which I believe all noble Lords support, that a life well lived is one in which, with a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love, we dedicate ourselves to the service of others.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

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

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate and pleased to put my name to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and to Amendment 17 with those of my noble friends Lady Finn and Lord Maude. I thoroughly endorse the comments both of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and of my noble friend Lord Maude and their passionate defence of the purpose of the NCS programme and of its independence.

The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, asked whether this is a unique programme—which I think gets to the heart of it. It is true that some of the activities that take place in NCS may be found in a range of other volunteering social action organisations, but there are things that are unique about NCS. The first is the idea of a rite of passage and the ambition that it should be something that every 15 year-old, 16 year-old or 17 year-old goes through as a binding experience that builds into a sense of social cohesion and social mixing, which are inherent to the whole programme. That is not to say that every activity in the programme is unique, but its ambition, its potential scale and the idea that is something that everyone goes through, with an opportunity to mix with others, are unique.

The NCS is not a threat to the sector. Rather, as others have said, it is an enabler of the sector. It is delivered by others. It is a beacon—a sense that the Government take incredibly seriously the idea of social action and are providing a centre of momentum that can push this agenda forwards. The amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, not just in this group but in others, seem to face in different directions. They give a lower status to the NCS Trust by keeping it as a community interest company but they also add more control, which seems to be the precise opposite of what one would want for it to be a success. It needs to be more independent of government and to have a higher status. That is ultimately what the Bill attempts to do.

Two principles are at stake here: the actual independence of the body and its perceived independence —of course, one feeds the other. The royal charter seems to be a neat way through this. It provides independence as a well as a sense of permanence and, as the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said, puts the operation of the NCS Trust effectively beyond politics to become something that is seen as a public good and to be supported.

The royal charter sends a strong signal to all stakeholders that NCS is a permanent part of our national landscape, a new British institution that takes that most British of virtues—service to others—and elevates it to the appropriate position. Just as the National Trust might be seen as the protector of historic spaces, NCS can perform a similar role in the development of the nation’s young people.

That is why I absolutely support the amendments on not just the independence of the board but also the appointments process, which my noble friend Lady Finn will talk more about. It relates to this point about the public body, and it is quite right that given the level of state funding involved there is a new regime and greater accountability for the money spent. The clauses that deal with audit and accounts—and indeed appointments, subject, I hope, to some movement from the Minister—would provide the correct level of scrutiny, and of course it will continue to be audited by the National Audit Office and so on.

It is, however, incredibly important that the independence provided by the royal charter is not undermined by the NCS becoming classified, as my noble friend has said, as an NDPB—a quango—which could be a back route into the reassertion of government control. As we have discussed, that is the sure way to kill this thing in the eyes of the people we want to use it. For that reason, the right device is a royal charter. This is not my area of expertise by any means, but the Cabinet Office guidance on the classification of public bodies of various kinds provides for unclassified ALBs—arm’s-length bodies—when they are genuinely unique and unclassifiable, and I think this is genuinely unique. There is, therefore, a spot in the existing landscape that this body could land on. Another organisation with a similar classification is the Churches Conservation Trust—in receipt of public money but clearly carrying out a public good which is beyond the political realm.

In closing, those of us who have put our names to this amendment look to the Minister for his reassurance that the independence that he clearly wants to pursue through the royal charter will not be compromised by bureaucratic consequences of the classification process. It is so important that the fact that it should not be an NDPB is on the face of the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, should declare an interest. I have done most of my politics in places like Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds and Manchester, particularly in areas where the people who we would now call the left-behind are clustered. That is where I have come across the National Citizen Service and been impressed by what it does. However, I also recognise that it is one useful initiative in places where government funding has been cut by 40% in the last 10 years, and where the state is not at all evident.

My worry—and the reason for all these probing amendments—is that we have here something that the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, rightly called one part of a bigger jigsaw, and that can only be part of a bigger jigsaw. It needs not to be set too permanently in cement. It needs to have the flexibility to become part of a wider strategy, because we desperately need a wider strategy towards those who no longer feel that they are really citizens and part of our society. Other voluntary bodies are working in the same area. Just in the past six months I have visited the York schools partnership between independent schools and local state schools. It is excellent: Saturday extra curriculum throughout the year—including a week in the Lake District—funded by contributions and other sources. In the middle of August I visited a summer school run by local volunteers in north Bradford for children between primary school and secondary school, some of whom are still struggling to read or count. That point, at which children are moving from one area to another, is crucial. The local Tesco provided the food and we managed, with contributions from people like me, to take the children to the Lake District for a week to work together. Some of them had never been that far from their homes.

There is a range of activities run by the Scouts and others; they need to work together. If the National Citizen Service is to expand at speed, as is proposed, it also needs to be locally linked and networked, and not have yet more national organisation imposed on it. The choice of local partners and local providers is important.

We will need to develop a wider strategy and look at how one works the volunteer dimension and how far it can fit into the things that desperately need doing for younger people—not just the 15 to 17 year-olds but all the way through from when children enter nursery school. That needs to be discussed further. I worry a little. The reason why some of us are testing this royal charter is that, when one hears about permanence and cement, one wonders whether this is being put down as a great lump, when there is a huge amount that we need to do. Whatever we think about the outcome of the referendum, the scale of the vote that we saw not just against Brussels but against London, the elite and all the outsiders in these areas shows us that we have a major, long-term underlying problem, to which this is one useful response, but as part of a wider strategy—it is only part of a bigger jigsaw.

I have just a few hesitations from my limited experience in the coalition Government about the total independence of royal charter bodies if appointed by the Prime Minister on the advice of the Cabinet Office. There are occasional, small political interventions at that level. Perhaps I had better not say any more than that, but I have watched it with a degree of interest.

One should not overstate the contribution that NCS alone can make. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, talked about giving it a higher status. If this is to be a rite of passage—almost the rite of passage—we need to do a lot more. We need to do a great deal for those in secondary schools. This is a useful contribution to that, but there is a great deal more that this House might usefully debate—we might even have a sessional committee to investigate it further—because we know that we face a much wider problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I have a deal of sympathy with all the amendments in this group. I too think that everybody should be registered. They should be registered at birth and then opt out at some stage if they wish. I also believe in compulsory voting but that is a very personal view; it is not my party’s view.

At Second Reading there was some discussion about citizenship education, which I believe is absolutely crucial to the well-being not only of individuals but of society. As the noble Lord said, it enables people to participate, which is key. If you do not have citizenship education, you do not know how to participate, so you cannot take advantage of your rights and responsibilities.

The Minister addressed citizenship in the letter that he wrote to all noble Lords after Second Reading. In it, he said that citizenship remains a compulsory subject in maintained secondary schools, but therein lies one of the problems. I firmly believe that citizenship should be a compulsory subject in all schools and not just in maintained schools. My noble friend Lord Blunkett pointed out at Second Reading that the number of people being trained to teach citizenship has fallen dramatically, and therein lies another problem. The Government really do have to grasp the issue of citizenship if, as they do, they wish people to participate more in our democratic system.

It was suggested at Second Reading that there should be a government review of citizenship teaching and the whole issue of citizenship, but we have not had a response to that. I hope that is something that the Government are looking at seriously. I very much like the idea proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that there should be a sessional committee to look at citizenship, because I think that that would do society a good service. I would understand if these amendments were not accepted but I urge the Government to say something strong and positive about the review of citizenship teaching and about having more of a national citizenship ethos, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, suggested.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy]

My Lords, this is a subject about which people feel very passionately, and it has been a very passionate debate. Perhaps your Lordships will bear with me as I talk about something with which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is very familiar, as his grandson goes to one of the schools that I founded—Floreat Wandsworth. The development of character is central to what we do at our schools. Included within that is what we call “civic virtues”, of which participation is obviously one, as is service to others, and that is one reason that I am so passionate about this area.

I completely agree with the idea that developing a sense of citizenship, participation and civic virtue should be a fundamental part of education, but there is a question about the compulsory nature of this. One of the arguments is whether PSHE—sometimes with a C or various other bits of the alphabet added on—should be compulsory. That is a conversation that we have sporadically in the House. For me, that should be part of education but it should take place within schools. Just because we think that this is an important issue, it does not mean that this is the right vehicle for it. Just because this tree is with us does not mean that we should hang the bells on it.

I strongly agree with the sentiments behind my noble friend’s amendment and those of other noble Lords. I would welcome a broad debate on service, citizenship and character development. The DfE has a character development programme. It is slightly in stasis at the moment as we have had a change of Secretary of State, but it may be one way to rejuvenate this whole process. However, to me, this is not the right vehicle for those absolutely correct sentiments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I should like to express some sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack. I am very concerned about the increasing number of children—boys and girls—who are growing up without a father in the home. This scheme might offer some of those children a step towards having a father figure in their lives, especially if it connects with other services, such as the Girl Guides and the Scouts.

Back in 2011, OECD research led by Professor Melhuish at Birkbeck, University of London, found that a fifth of children in this country were growing up without a father in the home. That compared with a quarter in the United States. However, the research also predicted that in future years we would overtake the United States, and that by—I think—the 2030s a third of our children would grow up without a father in the home. This is a terribly important fact for us to keep in mind. The evidence shows that low-income boys are more likely to get involved in the criminal justice system if they grow up without a father in the home. We need to think of all possible means to keep fathers, as far as possible, in the home, and to fill the deficit—for girls and boys—when there is no father figure there. One rationale for rolling out the scheme nationally is to meet the needs of those boys and girls for some positive father figure. It is obviously a short-term intervention, and I hope very much it might lead them to other interventions such as the Girl Guides and the Boy Scouts.

I do not wish in any way to disparage lone parents. Just recently I was speaking to a father bringing up three children on his own who works very hard, washes his children’s laundry, cares for them—he says he has no time for a social life. I do not intend to disparage those parents at all; I merely say that from the point of view of so many boys and girls it is a real challenge for them to grow up without a father in the home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, until recently, I was a governor of a special school in the Chilterns, near where I live. On one of my regular walk rounds, I happened to chance on a citizenship class and was immediately seized upon as an exhibit, because they happened to be talking about the House of Lords at the time. I had the embarrassing experience of trying to persuade a group of rather terrifying young men, who were trying to make sense of what on earth democracy was and how it worked in their circumstances, which were not particularly good, why I would have anything to say that meant anything to them. I think I was successful—but then I would say that, wouldn’t I? However, it was good to see the lesson. I thought it was well-planned and well-exercised. The kids got something out of it and, at the end, I sent them away to think about what they would like me to do if I were ever lucky enough to get high enough in the Private Members’ Bills ballot to put in a Bill of my own. I will not share in this august company what they wanted but it got them talking, which was great.

Is not the problem here that this is one of the wicked issues? In all my time looking at, studying and working in government, I do not think we have ever come up with a solution to the problem in which a strong departmental wish for movement in another department has provided the necessary edge or leverage for that to happen. Here we are saying that a well-funded and thought-through programme depends to a greater or lesser extent—I would say greater—on there being a solid foundation of knowledge and understanding about citizenship, but we lack the ability in the system to impress that wish on the department that is responsible for school education, maintained and otherwise, and therefore it will not happen. I am sad about that because all the arguments being made today are absolutely right.

If the prospect facing Ministers is that a member of their own side who normally can get excited only about cathedrals and church choirs is saying that he is determined not to give up on this point, then I wish them luck. An irresistible force is coming your way, but I am afraid it will meet an immovable object in the form of the new Secretary of State. Indeed, although I know his heart is in the right place, the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, gave the game away when he said that the current work on citizenship and service more generally had gone into a hiatus because of the change of Secretary of State. There we are, you see: it will not work.

Why will it not work? It is a classic example of the sort of joined-up government that we all go on about, but we simply cannot do it. I wish there was a way of doing it. Although the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, said that this is not the right Bill, maybe it is. The noble Lord is shaking his head. I was nodding earlier and now he is shaking his head. Tut-tut: he has not learned the lesson.

[Lord O’Shaughnessy]

I am shaking my head because I disagree.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

That was my point earlier, but I nodded—such stupidity.

We have to give some indication. It may be that there are other ways. I like the suggestion from my noble friend Lady Royall for a Select Committee, which of course we cannot order but on which we can certainly make recommendations. Something needs to be started here today by those of us who care enough about this to make it part of what we want to do with the Bill. If it flows in different ways, all the better, because we certainly are not in a good place, and we know now that is the case. I look forward to hearing what the Minister will say.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

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

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I have one amendment in the group, Amendment 47. It is the last in a group of 18. The prior 17 would impose various duties on the NCS Trust. Some of these seem to be entirely sensible. Measuring the impact of what is being achieved is good, so I very much support the thought behind Amendment 25 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, on how many individuals complete the programme, although an annual report that did not contain that would be a sad one. I am less enthused by Amendment 39 about the open-ended requirement to consult the voluntary sector. That seems to be a recipe for a talking shop and would not necessarily achieve very much.

I do not doubt the good intentions behind the amendments in the group, but as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Amendment 47 attempts to go beyond hope, expectation or intention to the reality of what has happened. It would do so by requiring an independent review of the whole of the NCS Trust’s commissioning process. We would thus be able to examine its performance in areas a number of which are the subject of the other 17 amendments in the group.

Amendment 47 focuses widely but particularly on those issues that have been the subject of a good many discussions and comments at Second Reading: how easy is it for small providers to obtain contracts? What barriers have been identified that stop them? What additional benefits have been found for our society arising from the whole process? That last issue has been commented on in the last few minutes, so I will not repeat it, but the Committee needs to be aware of the level of risk aversion among commissioners. It is something we need to guard against for the NCS Trust.

A number of voluntary groups are invited to bid. The fact is that if you ask 12 to bid, there are 11 losers. Therefore, the amount of time wasted on that can be very great. My noble friend Lord Maude has had a valiant blast against the use of pre-qualification questionnaires, or PQQs. That is another hurdle for smaller groups to get over. His weed killer has worked pretty well in central government, but PQQs seem to be alive and well and living reasonably persistently at local government level. Perhaps we need to think about that. There are then lengthy tender documents that take a lot of compiling. Then there are the monitoring processes, which can be very lengthy and extensive, and can be changed in the middle. All those issues and features combine to deter, to put off, to disadvantage smaller voluntary groups.

The day before our meeting last Wednesday a small charity came to speak to me, because I have been involved with this process. It said that it had an example where the commissioner clearly believed it was unsuitable and that it should not be given the job. The charity was persistent, in a rather brave way. It went on to complete the process, against considerable odds and adversity. Then it was disqualified because, in the final contract, where it had to sign the document at the end, the words said, “Sign inside the box”. The signature had touched the side of the box. That was sufficient reason for the commission to say, “Sorry, you haven’t declared, you’re off”. One thinks that this is an extreme example, but these sorts of things come up again and again. We need to ensure this does not take root in the NCS commissioning process and that these non-tariff barriers, if you like to call them that, are identified and dealt with.

The purpose of the amendment is to make sure that we can find out what has actually been happening. It is supported by the NCVO. It provides this important independent overall review, with some special focuses to it. On reflection, I probably would not have chosen a review after 12 months—that is probably a bit too soon. So it might be a review after 24 months, to give more time to see how things settle down, but that is a detail. I hope my noble friend will accept that there is a principle here of something worth pursuing, which deals with some of the other concerns raised by noble Lords on both sides of the Committee, and we can explore how to build it into the Bill at the next stage.

[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I was pleased to put my name to the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Finn. I support everything she said about making sure that the bureaucratic workload is kept to a minimum so that the NCS Trust can focus on its primary role.

I have great sympathy with the idea of the annual reports and the business plan focusing on particular areas of interest, such as diversification of intake, performance, and so on. But there are a couple of reasons why I think it would be a mistake to put it in the Bill and why this more elegant solution from my noble friend is a better approach. First, we cannot possibly anticipate all the things that the NCS, as it succeeds and flourishes between now and whenever—into infinity—could need to focus on from year to year. Inevitably, those challenges will change and we cannot possibly anticipate every single reporting requirement that might be needed to focus on the issue or the challenge of the day. Today, it might be disability; in three years’ time, it could be ethnic minorities, or anything. To put in a small number of things that we can think of now might focus the attention of the board on reporting things that actually in future years might be less important than others. That would be a mistake.

Secondly, all the issues that have been brought up by noble Lords as important focuses for the business plan and the accounts are covered in the royal charter. In the interests of brevity, I will not read out all the relevant bits of the royal charter but pages 7 and 8 talk about the primary functions,

“enabling participants from different backgrounds to work together in local communities”.

The charter says:

“In exercising its primary functions, the objectives of the NCS Trust are … to promote social cohesion”,

and,

“to expand the number of participants”.

The trust is also to,

“have regard to the desirability of … promoting social mobility … personal and social development … ensuring value for money”,

and so on. I think that all the good points that have been made about the sorts of things that the NCS should be reporting on in its annual report and planning for in its annual business plan are covered—perhaps not completely and that is worth a look—in the royal charter.

Having the Bill say that the NCS should report and plan for the primary functions in relation to what is in the royal charter is the correct balance between making sure that the things that we care about are reported on and leaving flexibility with the board to focus on those things that are perhaps more important from one year to the next, rather than putting in the Bill things which might just narrow attention on to a small number of issues, which may not be the most important things in any given year. That is why I think inserting them as primary functions is helpful in clarifying what is important and what we should hold the NCS accountable for, but allowing some flexibility for the board to report on the things that are most pressing in any given year.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, much of what the noble Lord has just said is eminently sensible. Clearly, things change from year to year and the Bill is going to last in perpetuity, as it were. I will retable some amendments on Report. I hope that the Government will look at the charter to make sure that every aspect we have been speaking about today is truly covered. We will see what happens with amendments on Report but I would like the Minister to say what issues the Government and Parliament would expect the report to cover in 2017, 2018, 2019 or 2020—for the foreseeable future. Yes, priorities can change but I want to ensure that my priorities are covered in the annual report.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord O'Shaughnessy Excerpts

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

[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.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall detain the House for just one minute to say a few words in support of Amendment 4, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke. Those Members of your Lordships’ House who were present in Committee will recall that I was concerned to try to involve international citizen service in the National Citizen Service as part of a seamless whole. My noble friend the Minister was having none of this, and has continued to do so, although he has continued to assure me and others that it is not intended that the two should be anything other than locked closely together, but that it would nevertheless be inappropriate for that to be stated in the Bill. That is partially, I think, for reasons of precedent—always the weakest argument in my view—but, more significantly in my view, because international citizen service has a slightly larger target audience. I have accepted this argument and have therefore not retabled the relevant amendment, but the concept of NCS being part of a journey of involvement in civil society and the voluntary movement is important. If I heard the noble Baroness aright, that is the philosophy behind Amendment 4. Since I think ICS would be part of that further journey, along with participation in a lot of other organisations before and after it, I consider the points she made on Amendment 4 worthy of consideration.