National Citizen Service Bill [Lords]

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 16th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate and to follow the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith). It has been heartening to hear widespread praise for the National Citizen Service and I want to join in that praise—it is an excellent scheme. The Secretary of State mentioned that it operates in England and in Northern Ireland, but I want to put on the record my praise for the excellent volunteering element of the Welsh baccalaureate. One good thing about such programmes is that we are able to share expertise and good ideas, wherever they come from, both within these islands and internationally. That is a great strength and has always been the case with the best volunteering programmes.

The Minister will be familiar with them, but I want to discuss some points made about the Bill by some voluntary sector organisations. The National Council for Voluntary Organisations spoke with some eloquence about the NCS being part of

“a longer journey of social action and volunteering”,

of diversity of participants being more important than numbers, and about how crucial it is that young people are involved in the design of the programme. The Charities Aid Foundation makes a plea in the form of asking for a new article to be inserted into the royal charter to ensure that the scheme is a way of encouraging younger people into other social programmes, such as charity trusteeship. Its point is that while 18 to 24-year-olds make up 12% of this country’s population, they make up less than 1% of charity trustees. It is important to develop the scheme and get its participants involved in being trustees and in other leadership roles. Of course, many of us here who are in middle age will recognise that one does not stay aged 15 to 17 forever. [Interruption.] One of my colleagues points out that not everyone here is in middle age.

How do we develop volunteering, and how do we develop a type of volunteering that brings people together? What is the next step for volunteering after this Bill? My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) spoke powerfully about how volunteering does not have any legal status in this country. Indeed, volunteers aged 18 and over, or anyone else, could be designated as not in employment, education or training. For those aged 18-plus who go on volunteering programmes, there is no agreement that that should mean national insurance contributions and the like. We need to develop those ideas as we take forward the National Citizen Service.

Many Members on both sides of the House have spoken passionately today about integration, diversity and bringing people together. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) cited a moving quote by President Obama. This is not all about being in one’s own little bubble and talking to people who agree with ourselves; it is about coming together with different people. I remember a television programme from a few years ago—I think it was a “BBC Parliament when we are not here” type of programme—and sitting on a stage were former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, who were discussing with young people some sort of leadership programme that they had established in the United States. I always remember former President Clinton talking about the idea of bringing together young African-Americans who are active in their community and getting them on the same programmes as young people involved in the Tea Party movement who believe that the world would be a better place if everything operated in their small town. He spoke about bringing together those energies and about how the synergy between them creates something better for society. I am not sure how many of those ideas are at play in the US at the moment, but what a fantastic idea it is to bring together different groups of young people so that they can share their different ideas. Who knows what might come out of that?

When we look at different sorts of schemes, we do not know where they will lead. For instance, I hope that one area we look at is volunteering for former young offenders and for people who have been in prison. That step, which is sometimes very great, can take people out of a life of recidivism in which they offend, go into jail, reoffend, go back into jail, and on and on. Is there a specific role for volunteerism that can bridge that gap between prison and employment? We need to be thinking of that as a next step.

I warmly commend the Bill and the ideas behind it, and I hope the resourcing, the collaboration and the involvement with voluntary groups will be in place. There are so many ideas for us to think about in relation to volunteering and how it creates the sort of society that not everyone might want to see at the moment but that we are certainly going to need.

National Citizen Service Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Committee debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Wilson]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable observation. We hope that giving young people the opportunity to volunteer in the first place will lead to other opportunities and engagement with volunteering. I will explain the Government’s strategy to try to create a lifetime of volunteering among as many members of the population as we can. I promise that I will come to that in a minute or two.

We believe that NCS and the #iwill campaign could help to start a lifetime volunteering habit that runs through people’s working lives and into older age. It is a priority for me and the Office for Civil Society to make that ambition a reality. Last year, we announced a £40 million investment in the #iwill fund to encourage youth social action, and as the hon. Member for Croydon North mentioned, we are undertaking a review of young people’s full-time social action. My officials are working on further plans to encourage volunteering among older people. The plan is to ensure that NCS is not a one-off opportunity but that people have opportunities to volunteer at different points in their lives, for which there is clearly an appetite.

I agree that it is essential that we assess, so far as we can, the long-term impact of NCS, including how far it encourages a long-term appetite for volunteering. As I have said, we are currently exploring the best methodology for doing that.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

May I ask the Minister the question that the Charities Aid Foundation asked about young trustees between the ages of 18 and 24? I would have thought that it was relatively easy to find out who those young trustees are and match them with the names of people who have participated in the National Citizen Service. Is it possible to monitor that at all?

[Mr Wilson]

I am sure that it is possible to monitor that sort of thing, but I would not put that additional reporting requirement in the Bill. We can discuss that outside this forum.

The Bill is not the place to fix an approach. For the meantime, the Government are committed to publishing an independent evaluation of NCS every year, as we have since 2013. In addition, the NAO can carry out value-for-money studies. Owing to the complexity of evaluating long-term impact, we prefer to keep using those independent expert evaluations rather than placing a broad statutory requirement on the trust.

I agree absolutely with the hon. Member for Croydon North that young people’s involvement is essential to NCS and it should encourage long-term volunteering, but it is my view that the reporting requirement in clause 6 strikes the right balance between being thorough on the one hand and being achievable and not overly bureaucratic on the other. The Government therefore will not support the amendment. I hope that, given my reassurance, the hon. Gentleman feels able to withdraw his amendment.

National Citizen Service Bill [Lords]

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

I thank the Minister for those assurances. It is important to put our concerns on the record following the PAC report. I fully understand that he will need some time to look at the report in detail to provide the reassurances that the House and the public will be looking for following its publication. The organisation has declared its intention to reduce spending per participant by about £200, which is significant. It is important to know how savings on this scale can be achieved while maintaining the quality of the service and support it provides.

Concerns, which the PAC report repeated, were raised that the full value of participation targets is not yet being realised. The Government reduced their original targets for the number of young people on the scheme by a third—from 360,000 by 2020, to 247,000. With such a dramatic downward shift, and given the funding going into the organisation, assurances will need to be given that the target can be achieved and that there will be no further downward shift.

Given that local authorities and schools are already active on the ground and know their communities, would Ministers be prepared to reconsider their involvement in delivering the service? At an earlier stage, the relationship was different, and although they still have a role with the NCS perhaps it needs to be reviewed to ensure their full integration into the organisation’s delivery of its services to young people.

The PAC report was critical of the Cabinet Office’s setting up of the trust without appropriate governance arrangements, but I understand that the royal charter to be established will put a governance framework in place. We argued at previous stages that there should be a role for young people in running the trust. I am grateful to the Minister and welcome the comments he made in opening about giving young people a clearer and more direct role on the trust board.

User involvement ensures that organisations remain focused on the needs of their users and do not slip into focusing too much on the needs of the provider. I am pleased to see another good way of making sure that this Government body remains appealing to young people, who will feel they have considerable say in the organisation. I look forward to seeing how the amendment will appear in the royal charter.

I welcome the Minister’s comments on social integration, about which points have been made not just by me but by many of the organisations involved in delivering the NCS. There is broad support among Members and across the sector for the NCS’s important work in encouraging social integration. Bringing together young people from different backgrounds broadens their understanding of their own country and the community of which they form a part, and it helps to build a sense of shared nationhood, which is very important for the future of our country.

It is particularly important that young people from more socially excluded and deprived backgrounds, who might be harder to engage, are fully represented in all the work the NCS does. With the focus on driving up participation, the NCS must not go only for those young people who are easier to engage but who might be in less need of its NCS support than young people from more excluded backgrounds. I know that the Minister shares my view, and I look forward to seeing what further focus is placed on the NCS to ensure that targets are met throughout the project’s delivery.

The internal evaluation of the NCS published last week showed the benefits of the scheme, but the finding that three months after completion of the spring NCS programme there had been no impact on volunteering was of concern. I hope that the Minister will look into that. Getting young people involved in volunteering is one of the key benefits of the NCS, so we need to do more to encourage those who want to give something back to their community and to ensure that they have that chance.

It is very welcome that the Government are going ahead with the youth social action review, whose chairman was named just this week. We welcome the appointment of Steve Holliday and look forward to hearing his recommendations by October.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentions the full time social action review. Does he share the hope of many of us that the Government will look at full-time volunteering and come up with as many creative ideas as possible?

[Mr Reed]

Absolutely. It is important that the Government identify and try to remove possible barriers to involvement in full-time volunteering. We hope that the review led by Steve Holliday will produce some proposals.

Let me reassure the House that the points that my colleagues and I have raised are intended to help the NCS to develop and improve. We want it to succeed. We believe in the young people of this country, and we believe that the NCS can have, and is having, a real impact on those who take part in its programmes. It builds their confidence, exposes them to other young people from different backgrounds, builds valuable life skills, and strengthens their understanding of the community and what it means to be part of it. However, we also believe in value for money. There clearly needs to be a tighter grip. Given that so many cuts are now affecting young people, the NCS needs to succeed for every young person in the country.

I hope that the Bill, and the royal charter it establishes, will enable the NCS to move forward, and will help young people throughout the country to achieve their potential and become the very best they can be.