Community and Voluntary Sector

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I totally agree with the last sentiment. We tend to find that Governments think that the voluntary sector is a great idea until it starts to criticise their current policy, as my noble friend Lady Scott referred to. It is almost universal; Governments of all colours have done that. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, said, when we deal with any subject in this House, we get our information from the voluntary sector. They are outside groups that lobby us and make us better at our job. I encourage all of them to keep that stream of information coming, because without them, the process of government is worse, and government itself will not be able to answer the questions it should on all its legislation.

I welcome—as I should have done earlier—the noble Baroness, Lady Porter, to our midst. The first 30 years are the worst, in my experience. Somebody with outside experience and new experience is always welcome here. She has started well and I hope that the next steps are at least pain-free.

The one section of this that I really wanted to raise has already been touched on, which is reaching those who are, as we used to say, in danger of offending: those who have had bad experiences going through life. People with bad experiences, bad educational backgrounds et cetera, end up filling up our prisons. We will all be drawing attention to a charity that I have had some interaction with: TackleLondon. It is a rugby-based charity. Your Lordships would never have guessed, would you? What we do there is something that has been referred to by many. We go in, speak to young people who have had, in our terminology, ACEs—adverse childhood experiences such as family breakdown, losing a house, something that puts you on a path towards educational failure, disruption and being in that group that is vulnerable to getting sucked into the criminal justice system.

A major problem that we have down there, after you have got through people from the Atlas Foundation such as me who are raising money for them, which is always a battle, is the interaction with the state. We want to get into schools. We have got expertise, volunteers, people coming forward, people who like their sport, people who think that it should go forward and people who enjoy getting information out there. Remember, it should be people who enjoy what they are doing and enjoy giving. We are not looking for masochistic saints. If you are, you will have nobody to do this. What are the Government going to do to make sure that we can get into that school, that section, and do it easily? We know that we have to do DBS checks and all the rest of it. If we are prepared to do this, how will the education sector embrace this expertise?

As to positive experiences, rugby union is a good sport because it is complicated. You have nice authority figures. Other sports may be better for playing but, for giving authority and structure, rugby union is great. Many other sports do not have their rules described as “laws”: we are a very authoritative sport. How will the Government enable the volunteering charity sector, if they approve of it, to get into the education system and give support? It is a problem that we have had for a long time. It is a resource that we do not make the best of. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about this, if not today then at least in the future.