The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
May I add my voice to those wishing the Duke of Edinburgh a very happy birthday today? May I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on his prodigious fertility in terms of private Members’ Bills in this Session, but also, in the case of this particular baby, on its characteristic simplicity in terms of its structure? The Government cannot support it, for reasons that I will go into in whatever detail I can in the time that we have, but it is, as the hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) also took the opportunity to say, a welcome opportunity to recognise the astonishing contribution of millions of people in constituencies throughout the country who give time to help others, and those groups, such as WorldWide Volunteering, but there are many others, which help people to use that time and inspire and connect them with opportunities to help others. It is that generosity in that landscape of that ecosystem of civil society organisations that is one of the things that makes this country great, and we should absolutely recognise it.
It is also right regularly to be asking ourselves the question: what can we do to make it easier in 2011 in modern Britain, with all the pressures on people’s time and, at the moment, money, to get involved, to support each other, to help to create the changes that people want to see? It goes to the heart of how we build a stronger sense of community where people have more power and responsibility for their lives, their communities and the services they use—the absolute aspiration of the big society vision. When it comes to encouraging and supporting social action, which is the context of the Bill, it is clear that we need to do something. We are a generous country—the statistics show that clearly—but it is also clear that giving has flatlined and there are worrying signs of decline, not least in terms of the giving of time. We have a sense of this from our own constituencies and community associations, and the difficulties that they have in finding new people to come forward. The charity world is increasingly concerned. Some people say that we cannot change this, that it is as good as it can get, but we do not accept that decline is inevitable, and our research and consultation suggest that there are people and organisations who would like to do more and could do more, but too many things get in the way.
As the hon. Lady said, there is an issue around lack of time in 2011, or perception of lack of time for many people. Often people find it difficult and complicated. For too many, the experience of volunteering, given time, is not as rewarding as it could or should be. There is a lack of awareness of opportunities, or where to start looking. There is an issue around bureaucracy—I do disagree a little with the hon. Lady here—and there is an issue around the CRB. She tried to make a case about why Lord Hodgson ignored this issue. There is a simple explanation: he recognised that other reviews of vetting and barring and of the CRB regime were going on and he took a view, I think quite sensibly, that he needed to focus the efforts of a limited resource exercise on areas where he felt that he could add more value. But his report “Unshackling Good Neighbours”—I recommend it to all colleagues—is a dose of common sense, when common sense is needed.
There is an issue around the CRB checks. I remember going to talk at a forum in Westminster and a gentleman coming up to say that he had 80 people waiting to volunteer, but they were being frustrated and held back because of the time it was taking for their CRB checks to come through. As the hon. Lady knows, there is frustration out there with the lack of opportunities to carry CRB checks around the system—the portability issue.
That brings me to the Bill. There are reasons why we cannot support it, however well intentioned it is. I hope to have the chance to summarise those reasons and our preferred approach. I hope that I can satisfy my hon. Friend about two things. In the specific context of the Bill we want to reduce bureaucracy and the cost attached to it, but without diminishing public protection, because we have duties in this regard that we cannot trivialise or walk away from. Secondly, we are fully committed to promoting volunteering, which is the Bill’s stated aim.
We have considered the Bill carefully in the time that we have been allowed and, although we welcome its aims, we oppose it principally for three reasons, the first of which is the most important; the other two flow from it. The first reason is that for the proposed fit and proper person certificate to be successful, a means of independent verification and checking for accuracy would be required. We simply could not, with any sense of responsibility, leave that as a free-for-all. There is of course a balance to be struck between protection and trust, but we think that a basic level of protection and independent verification of claims is necessary and believe that the CRB check fulfils that role, although we are very clear that it needs to be reformed and retuned in terms of proportionality and a return to common sense.
Mr Chope
I am not surprised that that is the Minister’s approach, although I am disappointed. How, then, does he think it is reasonable that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs can allow trustees of charities to deal with large sums of money on the basis of a mere declaration that is subject to no independent verification?
Mr Hurd
I think that the contexts are completely different. As I go on to explain what we are doing to reform the CRB process, I hope I will go some way towards satisfying my hon. Friend that we intend to reduce bureaucracy without undermining basic protection.
Our other concerns flow from the premise that some form of independent verification is required, and the Bill is silent on how that will work. Our concern is that we will be replacing one form of bureaucracy with another, and with costs attached. I will set out briefly a summary of what we are doing in relation to the existing CRB system in the light of the concerns that have been expressed.
We announced in the coalition programme for government a commitment to
“review the criminal records and vetting and barring regime and scale it back to common sense levels.”
The outcomes of the reviews were published on 11 February and three of the recommendations are particularly pertinent to the Bill. First, CRB checks will in future be provided only to the applicant, which will enable them to challenge any disputed or inappropriate information before it is seen by an employer or volunteering organisation. That is an important issue. I had a constituency case only two weeks ago in which a gentleman was appalled to see the information on his statement, so this change is important.
Secondly, and critically, CRB checks will be made more portable between different employers by introducing an updating service. This will enable employers to check whether a previous disclosure certificate is still valid, reducing the need for repeat checks. Thirdly, CRB checks will not be provided for anyone under the age of 16, an important point relating to clause 2, which proposes that CRB checks be restricted to those over 21. As my hon. Friend knows well, these recommendations require legislation and are being taken forward in the Protection of Freedoms Bill, which is currently going through the House. The Government believe that the current CRB check process and the implementation of the February 2011 recommendations provide the fit and proper person certificate process described in the Bill.
Mr Hurd
My understanding is that there are three levels of criminal records check: a basic disclosure, a standard disclosure and an enhanced disclosure. I may be corrected, but I do not believe that there is any proposal to change those. The changes we are making are those I have just summarised, and the most important one in this context is the one relating to portability, because that is something I hear a great deal of frustration about in the system. In summary, the most important point is the need for independent verification. Those are the reasons why we cannot support the Bill and believe that reform of CRB is preferable to abolition.
Let me close by updating my hon. Friend and the House on what the Government are doing to promote the giving of time and of money. We published a Green Paper in December 2010, to which we have received 400 written responses, and following that we published a White Paper in May, the premise of which is that everyone can make a difference.
Our approach to supporting more giving is based on three strands of activity. The first is about making it easier to give by helping it to fit into everyday life, so the White Paper sets out new ways we will support the giving of money, such as through donations at ATMs. In terms of time, we explicitly support the pilots of flexible, self-managed volunteering platforms, which allow people to give small amounts of time. Time can be a major constraint, but entrepreneurs are developing models that allow people to control and to deliver time in more flexible packages, and we want to support more of that.
We want also to give people better information about opportunities, which is why we are spending £1 million on the Do-it volunteering database and working with it to open up those data so that they can be accessed more widely. We are using challenge prizes to stimulate innovation and giving people new ways to access opportunities through mobile phones in order to give time—a critical development, particularly in relation to inspiring and connecting young people.
We are also investing in community organisers— people who are literally going to walk the streets, knock on doors, find out what people care about and get them together to take action, connecting them with local support and, not least, local businesses, which in my experience want to do more but want to be connected with the right opportunities that really meet local need.
We are, as I have laboured to make clear in this debate, looking at bureaucracy and red tape—the things that frustrate—through CRB reform and the red tape review that I have mentioned. I was delighted to hear my hon. Friend refer to the Budget and the changes to the volunteer expenses allowance, because that was definitely a real frustration in constituencies. Making it easier to give is the first strand; the second is about making it more compelling to give. The Budget introduced new incentives to give money, but we also want to support new models that incentivise people to give time, such as what are known as complementary currencies, which give people credits for volunteering. That is why we are investing £400,000 with the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in developing a pilot of Spice “time credits”, whereby in return for giving time people get discounts on local services.
Through the social action fund that we announced in the White Paper, we are looking to support the best ideas because, as I said, it is quite clear that many social entrepreneurs are building fantastically exciting platforms to make it easier and more compelling for people to give time and money. This Government want to support that entrepreneurial energy through the social action fund.
We have an £80 million community grant programme called Community First, which is focused on deprived neighbourhoods—and that is a match fund. The proposition is to put money into the hands of neighbourhood groups to help them to implement their own plans, but it will be matched—partly in time, not just in money. The fund is about incentivising people to step up, get involved and create the change that they want to see locally.
We are strong believers in leading by example, which is why we are introducing new proposals to encourage civil servants to spend more time in their communities, not just because it ticks a box on corporate responsibility, but because we expect better civil servants to result from the initiative and because we want to send a strong signal to other employers that encouraging employees to give time in their communities is a very good thing to do and in the employers’ commercial interests. Leading by example extends to an expectation that Ministers will give one day a year—the one-day challenge—to volunteering. It is sometimes dismissed as a gimmick, but it is not, because leadership by example is hugely important in that context.
The third and final strand, which the hon. Member for City of Durham touched on, is better support for those who provide and manage opportunities to give—the civil society ecosystem that I mentioned. Such individuals often perform heroic tasks locally, trying to connect people and to support front-line organisations. It is a terribly difficult operating environment, as we well know. Resources are often spread too thinly across too many organisations, and we want to use public investment as a catalyst for more efficiency in the sector, so that such individuals can be more effective with the front-line organisations in their communities. That is why we have announced £30 million as a local infrastructure fund, the details of which will be announced shortly. That follows a recommendation by the NCVO funding commission. It is about trying to support the development of more efficient local hubs, a better online resource bank for front-line organisations, and much more effective local partnerships between business, statutory agencies and local charities. I know from my own constituency that we have barely scratched the surface of what can be achieved, and we can do more.
Alongside these programmes, we are supporting the European year of volunteering, Her Majesty the Queen’s award for voluntary service, and the National Citizen Service.