National Citizen Service

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[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—

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Sheerman]

No. My citizenship programme would build on the excellent citizenship programme that has been so innovative and has grown. I have looked at the current programme and I think that it is good, but it is still small. I believe that there is a cost of £50; it certainly was that the last time I looked. As I said, the programme is small. It will have engaged 100,000 people this year, but I want to build on that experience. It has been a good learning process, but I want my hon. Friends on my side of the House and my friends of a different type on the other side of the House to come together on this. I do not think that there should be a political—

[Jason McCartney]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way to one of his friends?

[Mr Sheerman]

Very quickly.

[Jason McCartney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, my near constituency neighbour, for giving way and I welcome the Minister to his post. May I clarify what the hon. Gentleman is saying? I get where he is coming from. Attending National Citizen Service events at the John Smith’s stadium in Huddersfield and at Huddersfield town hall, we saw the wonder of the teamwork. People were away from home and working together in self-reliance. Is there not a fear that burdening the scheme with the citizenship training provided by local colleges, such as Huddersfield New college and Kirklees college, could take away the sense of adventure, self-reliance and teamwork that our young people are getting from this fantastic scheme?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point, but that is not what I am saying. I do not want to touch that scheme. It can carry on—it can improve and we can learn from it. However, I think that there is a deeper lesson: we need a more thoroughgoing programme of inducting people into our society.

Personally, I do not believe that such a programme should be voluntary. I think that every young person in this country should do it. It should be equivalent to a year’s commitment; they should be able to do it full-time or part-time over a longer period. It should be applicable to the college and university student, as well as the young person coming out of school who does not yet have a job. It is a radical programme that I want and it builds on what already exists.

I have found that certain Conservative Ministers are rather jealous of me, because I studied at the London School of Economics with the well known Conservative philosopher Michael Oakeshott, who believed in the pursuit of intimations—not picking up wonderful policies of the left or right, which was the cure-all for everything, but learning from experience and edging forward. I have become much fonder of that kind of attitude as I have got older.

What we can learn from what we have done in the citizenship programme is that there is a real need. Disturbingly, we have found in Birmingham schools and in some in Bradford that there are things going on that we need to find a positive alternative to, rather than just getting into a frenzy when we pick up on something like that. There is also the very worrying experience that I had when I was Chair of the Select Committee of increasingly seeing people withdrawing children from school and saying that they were being home educated. We then lost track of them.

There are some real problems in our society. It would be silly of any political party to sweep them under the carpet. I think that a thoroughgoing one-year commitment to a national citizenship service, learning from the excellent work being done in the voluntary programme, is the way forward. I will continue pressing for that with the new Minister and with my colleagues on the Opposition and Government sides.