The Ties that Bind: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in the 21st Century Follow-Up Report

Baroness Scott of Needham Market Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, following a speech such as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, is the nightmare slot, so I am just very pleased that we had the Division.

This is the fifth follow-up that has been carried out by the Liaison Committee since the new system was introduced in 2019. As a new member of the Liaison Committee when this follow-up inquiry was agreed and held, I was really pleased to be involved, partly because it is a topic that interests me but also because I was keen to get a sense of how well this process works. It feels to me that, given the resource, in all senses, that goes into producing a committee report, it is absolutely right that we do not just leave behind what we have done. To take an updated look at the committee’s excellent initial report and how the Government have responded, the second would not have taken us very long; it is bitterly disappointing. I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris: I found the evidence session with Ofsted one of the most unsatisfying witness sessions I have undertaken in more than 20 years in the House.

I was just having a look at the evidence we took in February last year for the follow-up inquiry, and it was striking how many witnesses referred to the levelling-up White Paper—

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[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

As I was saying, when we were taking evidence for the follow-up inquiry, the levelling up White Paper had fairly recently been published. It was clear from the evidence that we took that a lot of people saw this policy intent, this drive for levelling up, as a vehicle for citizenship and, the other way around, that citizenship would be driven by notions of levelling up. There was a lot of good will and aspiration for levelling up, and most of us had a lot of sympathy with the policy intentions in the White Paper. It well described social capital as,

“the strength of communities, relationships and trust”.

It described institutional capital as,

“local leadership, capacity and capability”.

I think that we would agree that all these are intrinsically linked with notions of citizenship, as it is set out in the original report of the committee to this House. These themes were picked up by witnesses to the follow-up report.

Yet as the levelling up Bill is grinding through your Lordships’ House, there is no sense of any of these ideas and policy intents in the Bill. Somehow, it has become a morass of technicalities and legal argument, in which the essence of levelling up seems to have disappeared. I understand that between policy intent and legislation there is quite often a gulf, but it ought to be there somewhere. We ought to have in the Bill a sense of what levelling up means to citizens. I think that the revolving door of Ministers last year has something to do with the lack of coherence in the Bill, which points up the recommendation of the original committee report that the Government need to appoint a Minister with responsibility for citizenship and civic engagement. It really feels as though this coherence is missing from the levelling up Bill.

I also feel that the lack of a Minister with that sort of clout, that sort of responsibility, is also playing a part in the very real problems that are being felt by the charity, volunteering and community sector. Volunteering is something that the NCVO described as a “powerful expression of citizenship”, and I think that we all would agree with that. Here, I declare an interest as a member of the advisory board for the Institute for Volunteering Research and as a trustee of Community Action Suffolk, which supports the charity and voluntary sector in Suffolk.

Charities and volunteering have never in my mind found a natural home in government, and they very rarely have a real champion at the centre of government. This is not a debate about charities, but we all know that this is a sector which is facing some very real challenges at the moment. Most charitable organisations are reporting a significant fall-off in volunteers. Many older volunteers left during the pandemic, and they are not going to come back. Younger retirees are helping adult children with the costs of childcare. Others have gone back to work. People are working longer hours to make ends meet, and others are reporting that they can no longer afford bus fares or petrol to get to their volunteering opportunities. I am sure that there are things which government could do. However, and this is not a party-political point, successive Administrations have not understood the charity and voluntary sector. We have these big national campaigns, which can be effective at generating interest in volunteering, but they consistently fall flat because the skills needed for the next stages—matching volunteers with the right role, managing them when they get there—are often non-existent. Volunteers can be permanently deterred by a bad experience of their first time in volunteering. We saw this a decade ago with the Do IT campaign, and again during the pandemic. I fear that we are making the same mistake with the Big Help Out.

In Suffolk, we have decided that we want to do it better. We know that a lot of good will is being generated by the Coronation and that we have many leaders in communities, and many causes in the county, which collectively come together enthusiastically to pledge something not just for one day but for the longer term, really to promote the concept of volunteering. Therefore, we are running a campaign which will last several weeks. Organisations right across the county, including the county council, the high sheriff, the lord-lieutenant, voluntary organisations and the business sector, are coming together to create something which will add to the civic life of the county.

The key here is the existence of an effective infrastructure body in Community Action Suffolk, which uses its unique position to act as a catalyst, co-ordinator and champion. If aspirations of levelling up are ever to be met, this sort of organisation needs to exist throughout the country. Returning to the theme of the report, if we had a government champion for the sector in the form of a Minister, this sort of thing could perhaps become a reality.