National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Cromwell and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cromwell (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for discussing this amendment with me since our last debate on the subject. We are very positive about the Bill but we also have to look on the dark side, and that is what my amendment does. Noble Lords will know that the Bill includes a requirement for the NCS to report immediately to the Secretary of State if it has financial difficulties. We might call it the “Kids Company” clause. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that any allegations of child abuse are treated with at least equal seriousness and reported upwards in the same way. Anyone who has been in contact with the news in the past few days will be aware of the unfolding stories of child abuse and the failure to report it within the football world, where it appears to have been dealt with by a combination of not looking, not listening, not reporting and offering payouts.

We should not allow this huge amount of money to be injected into the NCS, a network of organisations dealing with vulnerable children. We must not allow it to create another opportunity for such behaviour or for such reactions to it. My acid test, mentioned at Second Reading, still holds true. If the Secretary of State wants to know at once if there are money difficulties, and includes this specifically in the Bill, I am sure they would equally want to know at once if there are allegations of child abuse, particularly if a pattern of repeated allegations was to occur.

It was suggested to me that the trigger for reporting to the Secretary of State should be a police investigation. I hope that the current situation in the FA and elsewhere, where police investigations are only now mushrooming, decades after the original alleged offences, shows that this is not the right approach. I have therefore not locked down the amendment to that criterion alone. I ask the Minister to consider supporting this amendment tonight and beg to move.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I will merely say that this seems to me to be an eminently sensible amendment, and if I were the Secretary of State, I would certainly wish to have this information available to me.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for raising this important topic again. I also echo his thanks for our being able to discuss this in a very constructive way.

As I have said before, the royal charter states that the NCS Trust’s paramount concern is the well-being of its participants. We could not have been more categorical about that. The trust will need to have robust and effective safeguarding policies and processes in place. We see value in the Secretary of State being informed, at a point where it provides obvious benefit, of allegations of criminal behaviour that might have an impact on the NCS Trust’s ability to operate. I have committed to looking at this.

However, as far as safeguarding is concerned, the primary responsibility of the trust must be to inform the police or local authority where there is a suspicion or allegation of abuse, so that action can be taken to safeguard children and any crime can be properly investigated. Informing the Secretary of State is not an appropriate alternative escalation route as they are not able to take action in the same way as the police or local authority.

In this sense, informing the Secretary of State of criminal allegations is different to informing them of serious financial issues, which is already required in the Bill, as the noble Lord said. In the case of financial issues, the Government, as the funder, will often be the appropriate authority to take action. This is not the case for abuse allegations. It may be appropriate for the Secretary of State to be informed where there are systemic failings in the safeguarding practices of NCS organisations, and we have considered how we might specify that.

The Home Office and Department for Education jointly conducted a public consultation earlier this year on possible new measures relating to reporting and acting on child abuse and neglect, including the possible introduction of a new mandatory reporting duty or a new duty to act. The consultation closed on 13 October, and the Home Office is now carefully considering the wide range of responses from practitioners, professionals and the wider public. It will update Parliament on the Government’s conclusions in due course.

We will not attempt in this Bill to pre-empt or replace general law in this area. We have had a number of discussions and I am happy to give the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, the commitment that Her Majesty‘s Government will make good on those discussions and bring back a government amendment at Third Reading. However, as he knows, we cannot agree all of what he wants. If the noble Lord wants to insert this amendment into the Bill, he will need to test the opinion of the House today, as I cannot give him the further assurances he is seeking. In summary, I regret that I have to inform the noble Lord that further discussions will not result in any further concessions. I thank the noble Lord again for his patience and good humour during our exchanges, which I know will leave him disappointed.