National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bird and Lord Wallace of Saltaire

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

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 20, which is on very much the same lines as those in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Bird. We are talking about citizenship and we are all saying that this is one part of what we need to do but it is not enough. We clearly need to go further. We may be unable to go much further in this Bill, but the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, mentioned, is there before us in all our cities and in some of our rural areas: young people do not feel part of our society or our political system and they are deeply disillusioned. We want to encourage them to see themselves as citizens taking an active part in our political community and our society.

This scheme deals with society but not with the political community. Therefore, I tabled this amendment, which stresses that the National Citizen Service needs to be seen within a wider context of an approach to citizenship. If the answer determinedly from the Government is that they do not want to do that in this Bill, I suggest that we need to have a dialogue with them about how we take it further forward.

On a number of occasions in the past 15 or 20 years we have all talked about the need for citizenship education. I have been converted to the idea of 16 year-olds being able to vote because it would mean that in education they would talk about their citizenship and how to use their vote. I know that that is a controversial area but it is part of how one tries to get people into our political society. I repeat what I said earlier: if necessary, several of us should propose a sessional committee of the House next year to discuss the concept of citizenship and how we educate and encourage the younger generation into citizenship. That very much includes the sort of things that the noble Lords, Lord Bird and Lord Cormack, are talking about. This is a very important area.

Let us have no illusions: we have a society that is deeply disillusioned and alienated when it comes to politics. Westminster is not respected or liked. I was enormously cheered one evening last winter at a family party in Yorkshire when someone asked me what I did. I said, “I’m not sure you want me to tell you”, and she said, “Oh dear, you’re not a banker, are you?”. She told me that there are perhaps at least two professions that are further down the ranking than politicians, but not that many. For the future health of our democracy and our society, we all need to do something about that. The Bill makes a small contribution towards solving the problem, but not a large enough one. We need a large enough contribution.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 50. I am sorry that I missed Second Reading but I was away. In spite of appearances, I am the father of very young children. There are things that I have to do and that was the case on that occasion.

I am very interested in the concept of a National Citizen Service, and I am very interested in the idea of a rite of passage. However, I would like to see it widened into moving from our obsession with representational democracy, where we get people in the other place speaking on behalf of our citizens, and towards the participatory democracy which we are all talking about, and that is why I believe in the NCS.

We are talking about people getting involved in their communities rather than just whingeing about the failure of national or local government—by whingeing I mean just talking about it rather than doing something about it. All those people who go on demonstrations, sign petitions and do all those things are in a sense on the road towards that kind of participatory democracy. I was on a trade union march last week about defending our libraries, galleries and all that. I took my family, and I was there participating in democracy.