National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord Shipley Excerpts

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

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, there is a lot to support in this Bill. The NCS has shown that it can extend opportunities to young people and that it does give a focus for youth social action. I should remind the House that I am a vice-president of a Local Government Association and say that I am grateful for the advice given to me by Redcar and Cleveland Council on its place-based approach to supporting the National Citizen Service. It is an approach that should be commended, not least their year 11 record of achievement.

In terms of the issues that would benefit from further consideration as the Bill progresses, the first would be that in moving from being a community interest company to a body with a royal charter, I hope the NCS will not see itself as somehow superior to all the other organisations working with young people. It will be important for it to support the wider sector in delivering its and the sector’s objectives, and external scrutiny of how it adds value should become a key part of the assessment of its work. The NCS should see its role as strengthening the progression of young people towards and through the NCS programme. In so doing, it must not weaken the rest of the sector. There is considerable need right across the youth social action sector, and with all ages. The NCS is but one part of that.

I want to say to the Minister that other organisations must not lose out because of the expansion of the NCS, which will consume, as we have heard, some £1 billion of public money by the end of this Parliament. This is at a time of major cuts to local government spending on youth services.

Lines 7 and 8 of the Bill, on page 1, talk about the NCS Trust providing or arranging for the provision of programmes for young people. Can the Minister say whether it should be within its responsibilities to provide programmes, or whether it should always work through other organisations in the youth social action field? My instinct is to suggest that the NCS should be a commissioner of services rather than a deliverer. I would appreciate learning more about the Minister’s thinking on that point.

One of the possible consequences of extending the NCS—we heard about this potential problem earlier—is that it will prefer to commission support from the bigger organisations. Can the Minister confirm that small, subregional and local bodies will not be disadvantaged by the commissioning process?

A number of speakers in this Second Reading have referred to the National Deaf Children’s Society briefing. They pointed out that it will be important to ensure that disabled young people can feel fully part of the scheme. I think we all acknowledge that that involves money. In terms of deaf children, for example, it costs more to provide interpreters or speech-to-text reporting. I wonder whether the NCS Trust might have a formal duty to ensure that funding is available to meet the extra costs of young people needing extra support.

There is then the question of higher quality and provision, which has to be a key objective of the Bill. Can the Minister confirm that there will be full guidance for providers on what constitutes high-quality youth social action? I am aware that there are six published principles—they are valuable—but they will need to be stretched to provide much more robust indicators of what constitutes high quality.

We have heard that the NCS Trust will have a lot of public money to spend. I understand that some £75 million will be spent on advertising over the next four years. How much of that money will go to other organisations to help them to reach young people? For example, £75 million is twice the funding announced through the Youth Investment Fund via the Big Lottery to support schemes in disadvantaged communities across England.

I said earlier that I was grateful to Redcar and Cleveland Council for explaining how it managed its place-based approach to the NCS, which seems a very good way to develop the NCS at local level. Simply providing opportunities for young people to take part is not enough where aspiration and confidence are low and where a young person’s experience of life may be limited—yet the NCS will matter to those young people because it provides a framework to enable their participation and personal development. Equally, the NCS must reach them in the first place. That includes those not in education, employment or training, who, I hope, can be integrated into the programme. There seems to be scope in the Bill for this to be achieved.

The place-based approach includes every secondary school, with the NCS programme embedded in school culture through careers advice, social media, parents’ evenings, school events and school assemblies. Involving those who are hard to reach is central to the place-based approach, which can integrate youth provision at a local level. That is why I think that the NCS will want to work closely with local authorities in pursuing its mission. To succeed, the NCS programme will need to be a highly visible brand embedded within a school’s provision and integrated with youth provision across a local area. That means relying on local leadership—and that, I think, means a key role for local authorities.

It is clear that the Bill will give many more young people opportunities that they otherwise would not have had. They can gain confidence, they can gain social and practical skills; and they can develop a love of volunteering, of helping others, and of passing on knowledge. All of this is to be warmly welcomed.

As the NCS is extended, with the aim now of reaching 300,000 participants a year, it will be important to ensure that the large sums of money put into it are fully scrutinised by the trust and Parliament for the outcomes delivered. Given the increase in scale planned for the NCS, it will be important for it to review the progression of individuals on completion of their NCS involvement. Thus, longitudinal studies for several years could be very beneficial to our understanding of the real outcomes of the expansion of the NCS.

In his introductory remarks, the Minister said that the Bill, through the NCS, would create a unifying force in youth provision. I think that he was right.