National Citizen Service

Debate between Brooks Newmark and Karl McCartney

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Newmark]

I thank the hon. Lady for her welcome. She is exactly right, and I have been talking about precisely that topic this morning. How can we engage local businesses? If someone gets a certificate to state that they have graduated from the NCS, will local businesses in our communities recognise the certificate and say, “I will give this person a job opportunity,” whether that be a summer job, a temporary job or a full-time job? The hon. Lady makes an excellent point.

[Karl MᶜCartney]

I welcome the Minister to his new post. I assure the hon. Member for Huddersfield that Government Members were not ganging up on him earlier; we were very supportive. On the point that the Minister just mentioned, career academies offer some business engagement with young people at the ages of 15, 16 and 17. I recently set one up in Lincoln, which is a good model. The Minister, in his new role, might like to look at such academies.

On the NCS, the hon. Member for Huddersfield made a point towards the end of his speech that needs to be looked at. He mentioned those who are home educated, who might miss out on the opportunities that the NCS offers. When I was out with my NCS team in Boultham park recently doing some clean-ups, one home educating mother came up to us and asked whether her nine-year-old daughter could join in. Her daughter was a little bit too young for the NCS, but there is a need and a desire among parents for their children to be included.

[Mr Newmark]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We want to get more people involved, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield urged us to. That means committing resources to engage positively with parents, and I will be using part of our resources to do just that. Many people still do not know about the programme, so it is important that we try to market this great opportunity to young people.

The hon. Gentleman talked about national service and the skills that young people learned there. I remember hearing when I was younger from my stepfather, who went through national service, about the mix of people he encountered. All sorts of people from all sorts of background got together, and many people found when they left national service that they had a greater sense of social mobility than they had had when they entered.

We are not simply talking about skills. The hon. Gentleman described engaging with people, trying to create a cohesive society, encouraging individual responsibility and developing a responsible society. Those are all the hallmarks of NCS. He said that not enough is being done, and I am sympathetic to that. Like him, I would love every young person to be engaged in some form of community work or social action. I would draw the line—he did not really cross this line—at making such work compulsory, because I do not think that it is necessary to do so. If people engage with us voluntarily, they will be engaged with their communities for life. That is the sort of sense of social responsibility that we want to create from the NCS programme.

I conclude by returning to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. He talked about Professor Oakeshott, and about the concept of learning from our experience. We are engaged in an iterative process, and we will continue to learn from it, continue to grow and continue to engage people, particularly young people. I am told that nearly 300 young people are expected to take part in the NCS in Huddersfield and the surrounding area this summer. I was pleased to note the hon. Gentleman’s tweet on meeting some of the NCS participants last September:

“Inspirational young people @NationalCitizensService in Huddersfield Town Hall if these guys are the future we’re OK!”

I could not agree more.