National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard - part two): House of Lords
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My Lords, I do not differ from any of the previous speakers in that I welcome the Bill and congratulate everyone who has been involved with the creation and evolution of the National Citizen Service—it is a truly wonderful thing to behold—but, of course, I will now concentrate on what I would like to change about the Bill. Like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, I would like a clear emphasis on quality. What has been done with Ipsos MORI is good of its kind, but it is by no means good enough for an organisation of the size that this will be. We certainly need longitudinal studies; we probably need some isolated bits of randomised controlled trials; and, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, we certainly need routine monitoring of everyone going through the service, so that we know which providers are doing better than others and have enough information for continuous improvement. That is basic. It is not there at present, or, at least, it is not in the Bill. There ought to be a very clear obligation for it.

Also, as many others have said, there must be something much clearer about collaboration. The NCS will have a central position in the structure of voluntary activities involving the young, but there will be hundreds and thousands of other organisations involved. It is very important that the NCS is constructive, that other organisations are involved in pushing young people in its direction and that it, in turn, helps its alumni to find their way into a life that continues to involve voluntary service.

Both those aspects were highlighted, at least for me, by the announcement in May this year that the National Citizen Service will collaborate with the Careers & Enterprise Company in following up my noble friend Lord Young of Graffham’s idea of an enterprise passport—by the creation of a digital passport to record young people’s achievements beyond exams. I think this is a vital idea and one of which I am a thoroughgoing supporter. To record and promote young people’s experiences and attributes beyond those recorded in academic exams is vital for their interaction with employers. To give value to that and to focus on the need for it and its worth will help both schools and individuals in their lives. However, if the National Citizen Service is involved in this, it will give it an immensely powerful position in the middle of the web of voluntary service. It will be recording every interaction between children and the voluntary sector because they will all be important parts of the passport. It will be involved in quality control. If this passport starts to include large quantities of rubbish, no one will pay attention to it, so it will be the National Citizen Service that is saying to other voluntary bodies, “You are not up to scratch. You have to do this, that or the other to improve before we will include you in the passport”.

I think that that also answers the question raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lennie. Anybody doing this will be intimately involved in all schools. NCS will not need to be promoted to schools. It will be involved in recording what each of their pupils is doing and will be a natural part of a school’s life. That is a positive side of it, but the power that the NCS will have is considerable, and I do not see that reflected in this Bill. How that power should be exercised, its principles and its scope are important things to lay down so that the voluntary sector as a whole can have confidence that as the NCS comes to exercise those powers it will do so in a benign and supportive way.