National Citizen Service

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Karl McCartney

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

This is becoming embarrassing, Mr Caton. There are all these Members from across the House whom I have become accustomed to working with closely on various issues. I agree with that point, too.

I come to the nub of what I am saying. I am not criticising the existing service, but we are a bit complacent, in that we think it is enough. I do not think that it is enough. I go to many university campuses and talk to students. Everyone thinks that if people enter higher education, if they go to college, they learn something about this country, but all the evidence is that very often they do not. They might go to study physics, architecture, design or foreign languages, but my experience is that, even in the higher education sector, very little time is spent talking about the culture and nature of this country, the nature of democracy and the nature of a parliamentary democracy in particular.

What also worries me is that when, as Chair of the former Select Committee on Education and Skills, I looked at the way in which citizenship was taught in schools, I found that it was not very good at all. We visited many schools, and too often that was the situation with citizenship, despite all the brave efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and all the other efforts that were made. What we found on the ground was the old story of the PE teacher who does not have a heavy timetable being asked to teach citizenship. There was no training, no back-up and no real curriculum. We found that it was very lacking.

The one exception—the one bright star—was the Blue school in Bath and Wells. It had innovated and created the Learning to Lead campaign. We were so keen on the Learning to Lead campaign that I persuaded the Edge Foundation to give it £100,000, and I believe that it is now in nearly 150 schools. It really works, because it changes and suffuses the nature of the school and teaches people about how democracy works.

[Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)]

The view expressed at the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech was so traditional that I thought he might be crossing the Floor to join all his positive colleagues on the Government side of the House. If he would like reassurance about how widely drawn and diverse the youngsters are who take part in the National Citizen Service, he should please come and see Lincolnshire and Rutland’s, which is most professionally run by Elaine Lilley and her colleagues.

[Mr Sheerman]

I appreciate that intervention as well, but I am not going to be doing what the hon. Gentleman thought; let me just finish now. I believe that there is a complacency outside the House about citizenship. I believe that citizenship teaching should be much more rigorous. I believe that it would fit into another radical scheme that I propose, because I do not believe that anyone under the age of 25 in this country should be unemployed. We looked at that in the former Select Committee.

The fact is that it is a terrible waste of talent, money and everything else if a young person becomes unemployed before the age of 25. In my view—I have said this very clearly in the House many times—every young person should be in employment with training, in education, in training or getting high-quality job experience. The leader of the Labour party was misquoted recently on this. No young person should be allowed to be living on the margins of society on a little bit of benefit, a little bit of housing benefit and so on. Too many lives are destroyed by that dependency that develops up to the age of 25—