Citizenship and Civic Engagement (Select Committee Report)

Lord Beecham Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beecham (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by joining other noble Lords in congratulating the Select Committee on publishing its timely and wide-ranging report on issues going to the heart of our society and its democracy. Of course, I also join them in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, for both his chairmanship of the committee and his presentation tonight.

At a time when there is growing concern about the political process—an essential component of our democracy—stemming in particular from the use, or rather misuse, of social media, it is imperative to promote an understanding of how our system works and how people can engage with it at all levels. This is especially important for young people. The report makes several recommendations to which the Government’s response is frankly disappointing.

The key recommendation that citizenship education should be a requirement across the age range of pupils is effectively dismissed. Academies, which are increasingly taking over the management of schools, are required only to,

“teach a broad and balanced curriculum and promote fundamental British values”.

Those values are not defined, although this vague assertion is made:

“Academies may therefore choose to teach Citizenship to fulfil these duties”.


Clearly, many may not.

The idea of embodying a requirement to provide citizenship education is dismissed, partly on the almost laughable basis that:

“The national curriculum was comprehensively reviewed … in 2013 and, in April 2018, the Secretary of State … committed to making no further reforms to the national curriculum in this parliament”.


The Government’s complacency is reflected in their observation that,

“there is a statutory requirement on”,

Ofsted,

“to consider how schools support pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. This includes consideration of a number of factors which are relevant to citizenship”.

They dismiss the recommendation that there should be,

“enough trained citizenship teachers to have a … specialist in every secondary school”,

with the curious assertion that:

“We do not impose a limit on the number of trainee teachers in citizenship that are recruited for initial teacher training and it is for head teachers to decide how to best deliver their curriculum”.


The fact that in so many schools head teachers struggle to recruit and retain staff, especially in areas where they are most needed, is completely ignored.

The same complacency is embodied in the reaction to the recommendation:

“The Government should establish citizenship education as a priority subject for teacher training, and provide bursaries for applicants”.


Priority is given instead to questionable EBacc subjects and citizenship trainees are left to secure tuition fee loans and maintenance loans to “support their living costs”. What estimate, if any, has the department made of the impact of this approach on the relative numbers of recruits to each category?

A rare tribute should be paid to the decision to adopt,

“a new Specialist Leader of Education specialism”—

a curious tautological expression—but it is deeply disappointing that the department dismissed the recommendation:

“Ofsted should … review … the current provision and quality of citizenship education”.


It is also disappointing that the Government dismiss out of hand the critical, in every sense, recommendation 16, which asserts:

“The Government has allowed citizenship education in England to degrade to a parlous state. The decline of the subject must be addressed in its totality as a matter of urgency”.


It is crucial that our young people in particular are encouraged to participate in our politics at both a local and national level. I speak as someone who started canvassing in a council by-election at the age of 15. I recall finding a keen Labour supporter and, when talking to her on the doorstep, saying that it was great to meet a keen socialist—which drew the response, “Ee no, pet, I’m Labour”. A slightly different experience occurred three or four years later while canvassing in Oxford when the householder said that he was not voting for the Conservative, Labour or Liberal candidate and, when asked why, replied that he was a Jehovah’s Witness and would vote only for a heavenly candidate. I could not persuade him that our candidate qualified.

For those who are not compelled by their religious beliefs, it is time that the voting age was reduced to 16, as it has been in Scotland and as was advocated by Labour in the 2015 general election. Citizenship education would have an important role in preparing the younger generation actively to participate in the democratic process, especially at local government level, where decisions about local issues and services impinge so largely on their lives and futures. I differ from the report on this, on which the recommendation is to consider lowering the voting age only when the,

“recommendations on citizenship education are accepted and implemented”.

Accepting the change would, in my submission, incentivise progress in citizenship education.

In this context, the report’s recommendations relating to the promotion of electoral registration would also have a bearing. I support the proposed piloting of assisted registration in a number of schools and FE colleges, which, if successful, could lead to a requirement for schools, FE colleges and providers of apprenticeships to assist the election registration service.

There are some other interesting proposals relating to democratic engagement, not least the call for local authorities, health bodies and other public agencies to bring the public and, significantly, especially marginalised groups into the decision-making process, with a specific recommendation to restore the access to elected office fund, which gave grants to disabled candidates. Perhaps the Minister could comment on the Government’s attitude on that.

The All-Party Group on Democratic Participation quotes academic research which found that National Citizen Service graduates,

“often equate citizenship solely with volunteering”—

that is, responsibilities rather than rights—and pointed to the significant scope for the NCS to foster more meaningful engagement with politics in general. We are all aware of the disappointing level of turnout in elections, national and local. In council elections it is rare for turnout to exceed 40%—often, alas, it is significantly less. Yet the decisions made by local councils, ranging as they do from strategic policies on major local issues affecting the local economy to key services such as housing, public health, social care, children’s services and much more besides, impact on the whole community, including of course the young. They should be encouraged to take an interest from an early age so that, as they mature, they can influence and, hopefully, participate in local government.

The future health of our democracy depends on the engagement of the young, but we must not neglect the necessity to engage with other sections of society. These range from the elderly—I declare an interest, having reached my 74th birthday on Saturday—to other groups, for example people with health issues and, in a multi-ethnic society, as we have heard, those belonging to different faith groups. Such an approach needs to be promoted in relation not just to civil rights and access to the services and support provided by government, national and local, but to access to justice.

For people for whom English is not their first language, the Government’s response to the committee’s recommendations on ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—will be disappointing, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, mentioned. The Government decline to restore ESOL courses combined with citizenship courses as recommended, merely stating that materials continue to be available. Critically, they fail to adopt the committee’s crucial recommendation that ESOL’s funding should be restored to 2009-10 levels by 2019-20.

The last recommendation to which I wish to refer is that which applies to the charges for naturalisation. The report quotes the evidence of the Deputy Mayor of London, who averred that half of the £1,200 fee was profit. Astonishingly, even bigger profits are engendered from the fees levied on children registering their entitlement to naturalisation, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Russell. The committee criticises the making of excessive profits out of the naturalisation process and avers that the fee should be much closer to the actual cost of the process and the ensuing citizenship ceremony. While the Government’s response indicates that the fees enable some applicants not to be charged, this seems to be another example of charging in general more for a government service than the actual cost—something we are apparently to see again with the revived proposals for substantial increases in probate fees.

Finally, will the Government enter into discussions with the Local Government Association and the devolved Administrations on the report and the response to it? The issues raised in it and reflected in today’s debate affect communities across the country. National, devolved and local government need to work together in the interests of society as a whole to engage with the important issues it identifies.