Citizenship and Civic Engagement (Select Committee Report)

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests as chairman of the charity Near Neighbours and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I would like to say what a privilege it was to be part of the Select Committee, and I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Hodgson, the clerks and the witnesses for the very stimulating information that we received. Working with such a delightful and interesting collection of your Lordships as committee members was a bonus into the bargain.

I am very fortunate, I think, in being a member of a generation who in school were taught the subject “Civics”. In our lessons, we learned about democracy, how government works and the powers and role of local government. We even had to learn the names of Ministers and the names of all the chairmen of the different council committees. I think that this subject, which in my case was very well taught, created an interest in public life which I still have today, and I think that it is a great pity that this focus disappeared from our classrooms so long ago and that citizenship education has reached such a parlous state at the moment.

I grew up in Bradford, which is an exceptional place where people for centuries have been welcomed and where they have made their home. In my senior school, there were many girls with names that I found very exotic. They were mostly from countries in eastern Europe known then as the “captive nations”. They spoke a number of different languages, but they had in common a determination to learn English well—not just for conversational purposes but fluently—and to be able to read and write well. This, they knew, would enhance their career opportunities and help them to integrate into British society.

It was alarming, in the work undertaken by the committee, to find that England now has the largest population of young people in the OECD with low levels of literacy. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has already mentioned the failure to have functioning English being noticeable in the Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. In these communities, women are twice as likely as men to be unable to speak English well and six times more likely to be unable to speak it at all. Consequently, this is one of the reasons that Bangladeshi and Pakistani women are economically inactive. How difficult it must be for these mothers to be actively involved in the school lives of their children.

The committee made a number of important recommendations that would address this issue of communities with poor English skills. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has already talked about ESOL provision. ESOL should be a useful route to learning functional English. The Government should assess the effectiveness of different forms of ESOL and also, where possible, make courses available where there is childcare available. It would also be a wise use of resources to combine ESOL with citizenship learning.

Resources are always scarce, and money should always be wisely spent. I agree with my noble friend Lord Pickles who, when Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, expressed concern at the level of translation of documents and materials into other languages. This is often unnecessary and in some cases inappropriate. If translation was limited to where it is essential or required by law, the savings would enable more investment in English teaching. We need as a nation to make it clearly understood that a requirement to speak, read and write functional English is the norm, and not an optional extra, for British citizens.

In 2011, the National Citizen Service programme began. There has been criticism that the NCS does not attract enough participants from excluded communities. However, we received evidence that the NCS is working hard to prioritise inclusion as it expands. It is also becoming more embedded within the youth social action sector. We should not, however, lose sight of other charitable organisations that work in this field. The Catalyst programme, which is part of the work done by Near Neighbours, provides a transformational leadership programme for young people aimed at developing creative leaders to act as positive role models in their neighbourhoods and communities. Participants are always from diverse backgrounds.

In a perfectly ordered world, all citizens would be comfortable in who they are and about their place in society and would feel confident that they can contribute to society. For this to be the norm, however, there needs to be an understanding of the values that underpin our society. These values are not self-evident and, as the report states:

“Individuals do not learn about governmental and judicial institutions of the United Kingdom through osmosis”.


The purpose of citizenship is the well-being of all. We need to address the barriers which prevent people feeling part of society and contributing to it. The respect of law is fundamental to society, and this must always come first. Equality before the law is fundamental for our society; it is the shared value from which everything proceeds.

The committee understandably spent a great deal of time taking evidence and discussing the civic journey in the education system, and many speakers this evening have spoken convincingly about that. Citizenship education should specifically provide people with the skills to enable them to be good citizens. From the evidence we received, we became aware that there has been a serious decline in the teaching of the subject, to the point that Tom Franklin, from the Citizenship Foundation, said:

“Our current view is that citizenship education is withering on the vine at the moment at a time when it is needed more than ever”.


The committee visited Byron Wood Academy in Sheffield and saw how citizenship in primary schools can, through a cross-curriculum focus, help bring together children from a wide range of communities. This citizenship experience helped the children to recognise what they have in common and provided a narrative that binds the school together.

It is disappointing that the Government, in their response, do not appear to have fully grasped the importance of the recommendations that the committee made; and as many noble Lords have said, they appear to be complacent about the need for action. As the report says,

“‘integration’ carries with it important, but very different, implications for the various sections of British society”.

Nazir Afzal, the former Chief Crown Prosecutor for north-west England, felt that the word was often confused with “assimilation”. In the context of citizenship, the word “segregation” is a worrying concept. In Bradford, we had riots in 2001. The world and its experts were looking and giving reasons for what they thought were the causes of the event. Two people spoke very sensibly: Professor Ted Cantle and the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, highlighted the problems that arise when minority communities lead segregated lives. We need to create opportunities for interaction between people so that they can meet freely and positively in their communities. The committee recognised that there are many ways in which government can help by funding community development workers and community organisers to enable people to meet freely, enter into dialogue and become more aware of each other.

The committee covered many areas, many of which have been spoken about this evening by colleagues. As my time is up, I will make just one more comment. The Government do not seem to have been terribly responsive in their comments. We all observed one thing—that there are so many strands to the issue of citizenship that, if we could have a single department responsible for co-ordinating all the matters relating to it, that would be a major step forward.