National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

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

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I support the spirit of both these amendments. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bird, I think that character building and civic responsibility go together and that both are essential for democracy. I deeply regret that the teaching of citizenship, which was introduced by my noble friend Lord Blunkett in the early 2000s, is not taken as seriously as it might be. A lot of schools fail their pupils because it is not taken seriously, but I well understand that this is the responsibility of the Department for Education and it might not want the DCMS to try to push this through the back door. Yet it is a hugely important issue that we should progress.

I am very pleased that the charter says that the NCS should be,

“encouraging participants to take an interest in debate on matters of local or national political interest, and promoting their understanding of how to participate in national and local elections”.

When the noble Lord writes to the NCS, he might suggest that when participants do this specific part of their learning, not only are they encouraged to register to vote but forms for them to register—they can register well before they are 17—are made available by the NCS. This is not political in any way. This is empowering young people to ensure that they are able to use their vote because they registered.

I rather like a lot of things said by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, about civic engagement. The department she referred to could do a lot more on that. I found the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, about the pilot programme quite attractive. It is certainly a lot less than he asked for last time. I do not know what the Minister’s views are but if it is not accepted in this Bill, we should continue to discuss it. The NCS will be a national scheme but it would be excellent if all young people had to do something. I support the spirit of Amendment 3 and the amendment of my noble friend Lord Blunkett and the noble Lord, Lord Bird, although I can see that they perhaps do not quite fit into the Bill.

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, I confess that I have not been very good at getting to grips with the NCS as an activity until recently. We in the rather sheltered DCMS team did not have much responsibility for civic affairs until quite recently, when it was suddenly, and very welcomely, transferred into our brief. Like the noble Lord opposite, we had a bit of a learning curve to understand where this all came from and where it might end up, but we are there, I think.

To cut a very long story short, I invited myself to the autumn programme, which is a shortened version of the summer programme, as it was operating in Croydon College. I discovered I was there not just to observe but to participate. I was a “dragon”—well, I am a dragon, really, in private life, so it was quite appropriate—in a test for six groups of young people; it was originally three but by the time we got there it had got to six. They had to appear in front of three dragons who had to investigate their work on preparing themselves to go out and do social action—this week, I think. They had been brought together as a result of the NCS. They were working together for the first time. They were drawn from very wide groups, although admittedly they were all from the Croydon area. They had to pitch to us a proposal for how they might spend the princely sum of £50 should we dragons be prepared to award it to them. It was great fun, particularly when they got the chair of the NCS up and blindfolded him and made him throw tennis balls into a bucket, advised by another dragon, which he was particularly bad at but blamed everybody else except himself for his inability to make it work. But it showed that the adults were just as bad as the children we were trying to impress with our various processes. Sorry, I ramble on.

My point is that I used the opportunity to find out a bit more about the scheme. One thing I asked, which bears on these amendments, was whether Croydon College had within its academic courses any engagement with the citizenship programme mentioned by my noble friend Lady Royall and whether or not it had any play-across. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that everyone I spoke to—I spoke to about half a dozen individuals involved in the trust—said yes, they had been taught this; it was part of what they were doing. The teachers said that they had had some difficulty programming it in but they wanted to do so. Therefore, as well as the practical aspects of the social action programme that they were doing, there was an understanding of the theoretical basis. This was actually an NCS programme delivered by The Challenge and therefore it was an example of co-operative working across different organisations. Everybody involved was enthusiastic and committed, the kids were wonderful, and it was a really effective and most interesting day.

That is a long way in to saying that I support the amendments in this group. I feel sad that the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has had to move away from his original ambition, which was to tie this more securely to the existing programmes, but I can understand why he feels that a little progress might be better than none at all. Of course, we are all impressed by the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Bird, has embraced this issue and is passionate and committed to how it could help in a wider sense than just the NCS; it would also have a place within the NCS. I am sorry that my noble friend Lord Blunkett has had to leave before contributing because he is the granddaddy of this whole area.

We have been throwing the royal charter around again. My noble friend Lady Royall arrived at the same point I do: there is an opportunity in the charter to take this a bit further. If it is not possible to amend the Bill—and these are probably not the right words to go into the Bill at this stage—surely it is possible to think about expanding paragraph 5.b.iv on page 8 of the charter, quoted by my noble friend Lady Royall, which could bear a bit more of the direct wording from some of the amendments we have here. If that were the case, it would have a bit of a bite on the NCS. I recommend that to the Minister, if that is possible.

National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Baroness Royall of Blaisdon

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

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)]

Well, my Lords, what a good debate we have had. Possibly most of it could have been said at Second Reading but I think that it gained in acuity by focusing on our series of amendments. I say to the Minister, “If these are your friends, I wish you luck in trying to unscramble where you have got to on this Bill”.

First, let us be clear about the nodding. I was not agreeing; I was simply encouraging a previously hesitant Member of your Lordships’ House to speak on. I hope that it was not misunderstood in any way.

Having dealt with the serious stuff, let us move on. Here, we are debating the question of how to balance independence and accountability—a crucial area. Of course, those things are capable of being interpreted in many ways and I am sure that the Minister has had much advice about what the various modes lead to. I do not think that any of them would have led to the idea that this would not be an NDPB because it was genuinely unique and unclassifiable. I think that that might be a step too far for those who have to advise Ministers on such matters. I think that this is genuinely not a unique institution, and it is certainly not unclassifiable, even though we might wish it to be.

I will start with a problem that comes up from time to time—indeed, we have discussed it in your Lordships’ House on a number of occasions. There are some models here that we might want to look at. If you are looking for genuine independence from government in a body, even though it may be in receipt of government funds, I think that you have to look at the green bank and the rather difficult discussions that we had about how to ensure that it was a truly independent body, although it retained at its heart the mission statement agreed by the Government and for which the Government offered funding. That was done by creating a break between Ministers and the bank by invoking a charitable body which would have the power to hold on to and sustain the mission statement. The Minister might want to look at that to see whether it is a route down which some of the arguments that we have heard today lead us.

If there is a sense abroad, and it is widely bruited, that the NCS is of government, that may well be the kiss of death, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett said; others supported him in that thought. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Maude, said that nothing could kill it more definitely than that. If that is the case then we will obviously have a serious problem. I think that there is another argument—I am sure that the Minister will make it—that if you are going to have a body which has truly national aspirations and which is a rite of passage for all our children and all those who aspire to contribute to our society, then there is some value in having an association, whether a royal charter or some other organisation, which shows that it is given that accolade. I do not think that we can just discount that by saying that independence is inconvenient for a better and more exciting future. There must be a way of brokering that.

I think that more time has to be spent on this issue before we come back to it, but I am pretty confident that it would be a very brave Minister who rejected such a strong coalition of interests as have argued this case today. I am sure that we will see this again on Report.

My Amendments 16 and 41 were predicated on the basis that this was an uncontroversial area, that there would be a royal charter and that there would be an arrangement under which this body would have to become a non-departmental public body. I am simply probing—because that is the nature of what we do in Committee—whether there will be an accounting officer. I think I will hear the response that there will be an accounting officer under this model, should it be approved. The National Audit Office will be the designated auditor, so I think that that follows. I would be grateful if the Minister could confirm that, if I am right and we are in that mode and have an accounting officer, the normal cycle of reports and appearances—if necessary—before the Public Accounts Committee will ensure the sort of scrutiny and accountability that other noble Lords have been seeking.

There is another point that I want to pick up, because I have been in this position before. Where an NDPB has an accounting officer and the PAC makes an inquiry, the Permanent Secretary as the accounting officer of the department responsible answers for the Government’s side of the equation. So there is very tight accountability, and it is a model which I hope we can retain the essences of if it is decided to move down a different route in terms of independence.

I do not want in any sense to be too critical but I think that Amendment 41 is the Kids Company amendment. It suggests that there has to be a strong line of responsibility over and above that which is placed on an accounting officer to ensure that, where there is any sense of financial impropriety or difficulty, the accounting officer is named as the person who will tell the Secretary of State in the—I hope—unlikely circumstances that there is a problem. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, can I add something, slightly tongue in cheek? One good reason for the NCS not being an NDPB is that it cannot be abolished under the Public Bodies Act.