National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Barker and Lord Maude of Horsham

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

[Baroness Barker]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to what was an important testing-out of the Government’s proposals. The Minister spoke helpfully about the tensions in what people had said were important for the National Citizen Service and in their attitudes to it. That is often the case when a charitable voluntary body is set up. What matters is what decisions people take, which are crucial to the body being able to achieve the objectives set for it. Some people were worried about status. I am not bothered about the status of the organisation; much more important is its effectiveness and efficiency in achieving its objective.

It is interesting that the Government have chosen to go down this route. From the long list of priorities that the Minister read out, he cited permanence. I think that the Government have put that above all else and built a structure that starts with permanence and then works through in a different order to other things. There are different ways to achieve a number of points that noble Lords raised. On independence, the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, gave a description of a board of which the Prime Minister had oversight. Well, the Prime Minister has no oversight of the appointment of a charitable board. There are many instances of long-standing charities with a national reach—some of them have royal patronage, the Prince’s Trust being one—where there is no government interference at all, even though there is certainly accountability for public funds. If independence was what the Government really wanted, they would not have gone down this track.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, was right to talk about the National Citizen Service being subject to high standards of scrutiny and accountability. Other charities, because of the way in which their services are commissioned and are open to competition, are even more subject to such standards. I fear that, given the rigidity of the structure envisaged and the permanence that is expected of it, it would be easy for the trust to let standards slip and for those not to be challenged for some considerable time.

I come back to the two points that are of fundamental importance. First, nothing that the service does is unique; it is designed in a unique fashion, but its interactions with young people and the outcomes it achieves for them are not unique—they could be delivered by other organisations. Secondly and most importantly, the service has not been subject to comparative analysis. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, that it is not about rolling up. If any charitable organisation in this country knew today that it could count on having £1 billion-worth of income over the next five years, it would be in a spectacularly unusual position. The Government are asking us to invest that amount of money in what the noble Lord, Lord Maude, called this “fragile vessel”.

We may not have got very far today in seeking the answers that some noble Lords want. I do not want to control the organisation; I want it to be accountable.

[Lord Maude of Horsham]

When I talked about a fragile vessel, I was not talking about the trust but about the programme and degree of confidence that it has inspired in young people. That is fragile and we must not put it at risk.

[Baroness Barker]

I am happy to stand corrected but the rest of us who have compared it with similar organisations would consider it to be a fragile vessel: it has not been going for very long and it has achieved what it has only with exceptional political support. I remain, like the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, unconvinced that this structure is right. I will, however, go away and look at what the Minister said, particularly about the accounting regulations, which we will come to in more detail later. I beg leave to withdraw—