Lord Ashton of Hyde
Main Page: Lord Ashton of Hyde (Non-affiliated - Excepted Hereditary)(7 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberThat this House do agree with the Commons in their Amendments 1 to 3.
My Lords, the National Citizen Service Bill returns to us after its passage through the other place. I shall explain briefly two government amendments that have been made there. They are minor and technical amendments to correct the drafting of the “Extent” and “Commencement” provisions in Part 2. These are merely technicalities and it falls to me to ask the House to approve the corrections.
When the Bill was introduced in this House, Clause 13 provided that the extent of the Bill was England and Wales only. Schedule 2, however, contains four consequential amendments to other Acts: for example, the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and the Equality Act 2010. Those Acts have extent beyond England and Wales.
When consequential amendments are made to those other Acts, they should have the same extent as the provision of the Acts they are amending. This ensures that the section being amended has a uniform extent. This is standard legislative practice. The consequential amendment to the Freedom of Information Act, for example, should have the same extent as the section of the Freedom of Information Act that it amends. Clause 13 should reflect that.
Commons Amendment 1 ensures that this is the case by qualifying Clause 13 with:
“An amendment made by this Act has the same extent as the provision to which it relates (and this Part extends accordingly)”.
In other words, if the part of the original Act being amended has provision beyond England and Wales, the consequential amendment does too.
The second amendment is to Clause 14, “Commencement”. The Bill as introduced in this House provided that the whole of Part 2, which sets out general technical provisions, and Schedule 2 should both come into force on the day the Act is passed. This would have meant that the consequential amendments referred to in Clause 11 of Part 2 came into force on the day the Bill received Royal Assent. At this point, the new NCS Trust charter body will not necessarily exist. Part 1 of the Bill and Schedule 1 come into force on such day as the Secretary of State decides and makes by regulation. In reality, this will be after Royal Assent and once the royal charter is granted.
This would have meant that, even though the new NCS Trust would not have come into existence until after Royal Assent, the Freedom of Information Act and others would have included it straightaway on Royal Assent, and there is no sense in these Acts covering a body that does not yet exist. Commons Amendment 2 corrects that.
I hope that this explanation serves to justify the need for the amendments. I beg to move.
My Lords, I shall speak to government Amendment 2. Last October, when this legislation to turn the National Citizen Service into a royal charter body came before your Lordships, I said that,
“the fact that the National Citizen Service provides young people with a great opportunity to meet new people, try new activities and develop skills and confidence at the critical age of 16 or 17 is not up for debate. However, pretty well everything else in this Bill should be”.—[Official Report, 25/10/16; col. 120.]
I did so partly because the political decision of Mrs May’s Government to spend £1 billion on one project at a time when public services for young people were disappearing seemed somewhat cavalier. Furthermore, the NCS Trust, an organisation which enjoys unprecedented political support, receives 99% of its funding—£475 million in 2015—from government, but it has a weak governance structure and a patchy performance record.
However, my main concern stemmed from the fact that the decision to scale up this project was justified on the basis of an evaluation report commissioned by the Cabinet Office at a cost of £1 million. Extensive and expensive as it was, it failed to ask two crucial questions: how does the scheme compare with other similar schemes for young people and could the intended outcomes be achieved more efficiently and effectively by putting the scheme out to tender?
Since the NCS Trust accounts do not meet public sector transparency requirements, we on these Benches—lone voices—asked searching questions of the Government last autumn. We asked why this organisation, whose four-week engagement programme with 16 and 17 year-olds costs somewhere between £1,500 and £1,850 per place, was given preference over other schemes such as the Scouts, whose placements cost about £500 and last, on average, about four years.
Why should an organisation which from the outset was insulated from the rest of the voluntary sector be fast-tracked to royal charter status? Why should an organisation that not only failed to meet its targets for young people on placements but overpaid £10 million for places that were not filled be deemed not just suitable to be scaled up but, in the words of the noble Lord, Lord Maude, become,
“a permanent feature on the landscape of our nation”.—[Official Report, 25/10/16; col. 123.]
Why have the Government ignored the lessons of past failures, such as the Work Programme? The more forensic our questions, the more bluster came from the Government.
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction of the amendments. We gave the Bill considerable scrutiny when it was in your Lordships’ House, and I am only sorry that we did not pick up the drafting points that he has had to bring back after consideration in the Commons. We have taken the view that the National Citizen Service Bill has a very narrow purpose, intended to secure the future of the NCS and to make the NCS Trust more accountable to Parliament and the public. This is what it does and we support the amendments.
My Lords, I am grateful for those comments. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, who has been if not a lone voice then a voice that has addressed the scrutiny of the Bill the whole way through. Where I take issue with her is whether this is the correct place to do it. This Bill has been passed by both Houses of Parliament, with the exception of these drafting amendments. Both Houses have agreed it after scrutiny at all the different stages, and I would dispute whether this is her only chance to raise her points about the NAO and the Public Accounts Committee. There are many other avenues, but within the scope of Bill procedure, this is not one of them. I am certainly happy to meet her at any time she wants, along with my officials from the department, to talk about the issues that she has. I am reasonably confident that I can expect further scrutiny in this House on the National Citizen Service from her—I do not want to invite it, but I think that I may have it. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who answered many of the points better than I can, so I will not repeat them now.
As far as the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is concerned, I am not fully sure whether I understood his question. However, the NCS is a commissioning body, so any provider that does the work and provides the courses, be they local authorities or charities, will be paid by the National Citizen Service. It is not a question of extra duties being placed on other people. The money is there and that commissioning body will commission it from suitable avenues, some of which were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker.
I hope that I explained in my opening remarks the technical reasons for these amendments and I therefore commend the Motion.