National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord O’Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, before I address the amendments in this group, I thank the Minister for his comments on the previous group. I did not say anything because I did not think anything more needed to be said, but the amendment is very welcome and a sensible compromise on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

There are two definitions at play in this group of amendments. The first is around the intention of the trust, as it were, in its impact on the wider social action sector, as addressed in Amendments 2 and 4. The other is more about reporting the consequences of those actions, as addressed in Amendment 8. I have a great deal of sympathy with the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Royall. I think we all want the NCS to be a spur rather than to crowd out wider social action. Like her, I am extremely committed to promoting the idea of a journey of service.

Whether these amendments are needed is in question. The evidence on the NCS so far is that it is acting as a spur through its commissioning work. It is not a direct delivery agent itself. I forget how many new and established agencies it commissions through its work, but it is clearly already providing income and capacity for the sector and it is difficult to imagine that it will not do more of that as it grows. If my noble friend the Minister were to give a commitment on a review, I hope that would satisfy the intent of Amendment 4.

Amendment 8, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, and the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, is a bit more difficult because it is about what happens afterwards as a consequence of the action rather than the intention. It would certainly add to the reporting burden. I am also not sure whether it is the sort of thing on which the NCS Trust would have the capacity to report. It strikes me that the noble Baroness is asking for something that is more properly the work of the sponsoring department, rather than the delivery agent itself. Therefore, although I understand why she has tabled the measure and I understand the concern in all the amendments in this group to make sure that the impact is positive rather than one which crowds out other provision, I am not sure that the suggestion in Amendment 8 is proportionate in terms of the functions and purpose of the NCS Trust, nor would it be productive.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)]

My Lords, I shall detain the House for just one minute to say a few words in support of Amendment 4, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, spoke. Those Members of your Lordships’ House who were present in Committee will recall that I was concerned to try to involve international citizen service in the National Citizen Service as part of a seamless whole. My noble friend the Minister was having none of this, and has continued to do so, although he has continued to assure me and others that it is not intended that the two should be anything other than locked closely together, but that it would nevertheless be inappropriate for that to be stated in the Bill. That is partially, I think, for reasons of precedent—always the weakest argument in my view—but, more significantly in my view, because international citizen service has a slightly larger target audience. I have accepted this argument and have therefore not retabled the relevant amendment, but the concept of NCS being part of a journey of involvement in civil society and the voluntary movement is important. If I heard the noble Baroness aright, that is the philosophy behind Amendment 4. Since I think ICS would be part of that further journey, along with participation in a lot of other organisations before and after it, I consider the points she made on Amendment 4 worthy of consideration.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I had not intended to comment but something the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, said prompts me to add that one of the issues that we have struggled with a little throughout our discussions is an assumption that because NCS as currently constituted is doing something, it will always continue to do so. I think that assumption lies behind many of the amendments that were moved in Committee and those that will be moved today. The noble Lord was right to distinguish between Amendments 2 and 4, which are about intent, and Amendment 8, which is about consequences. It would be very helpful if the Minister could give an undertaking that his department will continue to take into account impacts on not just young people themselves but on the wider sector as time goes on.

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[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

I shall speak to Amendment 12 in this group. As the noble Baroness said, I raised the issue in Committee, although I was looking for a review after one year and she is looking for it after five. I am now thinking about three years. It is like Goldilocks’s porridge—a bit too cold and a bit too hot. Three years might be just about right.

It is a few minutes past 10 so I shall not weary the House with a long diatribe about issues that we have already covered. It is really about how we will protect the position of small providers—the ones who are rarely able to get to the hard-to-reach groups—and avoid their getting squeezed out. The noble Baroness has touched on some of the issues that I am sure the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, has been looking into. As I have said, it is a combination of risk-aversion on the part of commissioners and the ease they have in dealing with a single supplier. That can result in a small supplier becoming what is known in the trade as bid candy. That is to say, an attractive, small organisation is put up as the front of a major contractor’s proposal. Not only is the bid candy an unattractive aspect of the situation, the bid candy often finds itself squeezed into the most unattractive part of the contract. The bid contractor takes the vanilla stuff and the small supplier is left with the most difficult aspects of the contract to fulfil.

My noble friend has heard me on this again and again. He will be weary of my saying that I still remain keen to believe that there is a real case for an independent review of the commissioning process after it has begun to settle down and we can see how things are starting to work.

My noble friend said in Committee:

“The Government will be working with the trust during this period to ensure that it abides by the latest best practice for commissioning and procurement. There is a dedicated team in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which works with the trust to oversee and support its contracting rounds and I assure my noble friend that we will continue to review the trust’s commissioning behaviours as a matter of course”.—[Official Report, 22/11/16; col. GC 183.]

I shall not say a word against the good men and women of the DCMS. I am sure they are doing a splendid job but they are not reviewers or commissioners. They have a day job to do; they work in the DCMS. I just do not think they will be able to get into the detail required to make sure that the squeezing out that the noble Baroness and I fear is not taking place. It is too likely to happen.

My noble friend went on to say that as a backstop there is the National Audit Office. Again it is a terrific organisation and does tremendous forensic investigations, but it does so at a very high level. We are talking about being right down in the muck and bullets in how these things work. The NAO is not, therefore, equipped properly to do the sort of thing that my amendment and that of the noble Baroness have in mind.

I hope my noble friend will give this some further thought. It is a small thing to do but an important way of showing the voluntary sector as a whole that the Government, the NCS Trust and this House have the interests of the small provider and the small battalion at heart, and that we will put a provision in place to ensure that—once we test how the commissioning is going and see that it has set itself out in the way that I am sure everybody in the House believes is appropriate—local providers have a real role to play in establishing and building the National Citizen Service.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, can I make a suggestion? If the Minister is not minded to accept either of these amendments this evening, perhaps he might wish to look at the evidence sessions to which the noble Baroness referred, because these things are happening in parallel, and come back to this at Third Reading.

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Given such a strong and supportive statement, I am bound to ask the Minister how he intends to ensure that what he wants to see happen comes about if he is not willing to accept this amendment. I hope we will be able to count on him for his support and on that of other Ministers across the Government in finding a solution to a very significant problem. I beg to move.

[Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts]

My Lords, I was very pleased to add my name to the revised amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner. Along with most other Members of the Committee, I was astonished to find that the law of 1920, which was no doubt introduced with every good intention of preventing the exploitation of young people, failed to distinguish between working as an employee of Railtrack and volunteering to work unpaid on, say, the Bluebell Line. That seems to me a completely different activity. As we explored this issue a bit further, we found that a similar challenge exists with the canals and waterways because the Government—I cannot remember whether it was this Government or the last Labour Government—very creatively came up with the idea of moving the canals into a new charity: the Canal and River Trust. Free from the shackles of Treasury spending restrictions and with a one-off dowry, the charity now has to stand on its own two feet, both operationally and financially. Given the past shortage of funding, there is a huge backlog of maintenance. To tackle this, and to encourage local communities to take an interest in their local canal for all sorts of purposes such as recreation and running and cycling along the towpath, often in highly industrialised areas, the board of the charity has created local partnerships, which means that the bulk of the work is done by volunteers, many of whom are young people working in their holidays and at weekends.

As the noble Lord, Lord Faulkner, said, the Canal and River Trust, like the railway heritage groups, needs to obtain legal certainty and clarity on its responsibilities regarding the position of young volunteers who work on such activities. If their legal position is uncertain, or worse, I do not know what that means for health and safety and their insurance policies. It seems to me that is a serious problem. I cannot believe that somewhere in the fine print of the relevant insurance policy, it does not say that the policy is void if the policyholder is breaking the law. I cannot believe that an insurance policy will be valid in such a situation. If my noble friend is not able to accept the noble Lord’s amendment—glancing over his shoulder at his speaking notes, I think I can see that he is not going to accept it—I hope he will tell us how we can resolve this problem and give us a clear assurance that someone somewhere in government will be tasked with coming up with an answer to the problem, because it cannot be in the interests of NCS, the country or our local communities to have this situation continue. We must have the will to make sure that we sort it out.

[Lord Adonis (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, as a former Secretary of State for Transport, I have to say that until this debate took place this evening I was not even aware that this legal restriction was in place. I am sure that if there was a free vote in the House or indeed in the other place, there would be an overwhelming desire to see this situation change and be subject to proper regulation and health and safety requirements so that young people have the opportunity to volunteer and play their full part in these activities. I cannot think of anything more likely to engage the enthusiasm and wholehearted activity of young people, which is not often so easy to engage, particularly with boys, than not only railways but steam railways, which still hold a particular fascination. I am much more in favour of modern railways and high-speed ones but my noble friend is doing valiant work in keeping our heritage going strong. Of course, these heritage railways are present in all parts of the country. They are among the most exciting and well-visited tourist attractions and play a big part in local communities. This seems a thoroughly absurd and outdated constraint, which, with the wit of parliamentary draftsmen, I am sure it must be possible to find a way through.