Volunteering: Young People

Lord Vinson Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We are very committed to ensuring that young people in particular undertake social action because we know the impact it can have. For instance, 90% of National Citizen Service participants felt more positive about people from different backgrounds; seven in 10 felt more confident about getting a job; 80% have learned something new about themselves; and 90% felt the NCS had helped them develop key skills for the future. It is obviously extremely important both personally but also to the local communities that these young people live in. Of course, a number of organisations that I have mentioned already offer a year in volunteering, so that option is available to young people if they wish to take it up.

[Lord Vinson (Con)]

Will the Minister look into the effect of CRB checks on volunteering? She will be aware that CRB checks are largely illusory and very often ineffective, because they check people with records but not with tendencies. The complexity of the CRB system is preventing a great many people volunteering. Queues of people want to join the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides and the lack of volunteers through the hold-up of CRB checks is having a very deleterious effect, quite unnecessarily, on the whole volunteering area. Will the Minister look into this with a view to speeding up the process?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

We are very keen to try to address any barriers that we find in relation to volunteering. That and many other issues raised by organisations are on our radar so that we can make sure that organisations that want to take on volunteers, those who rely on volunteers and young people themselves can access this important area.