National Citizen Service Bill [HL]

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 16th November 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Stevenson of Balmacara]

My Lords, this group of amendments covers another meaty topic. I am sure that the Committee will be aware that it is the one that has generated the most submissions from those bodies which are directly or indirectly affected by the establishment of the NCS on a statutory basis under a royal charter.

The key element to come out of the submissions is that the unique selling point of the NCS is its social mixing—the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, cited that as a main issue in our debate on earlier amendments. A subsidiary concern in the submissions we have received is that there is expertise out there on how to attract and get involved with children who are hard to reach because of their upbringing, background, location or geography. It is a worry for all concerned that sufficient thought may not yet have been given to how the scaling-up of NCS will happen as it becomes more difficult to get the attention of those people who would otherwise miss out.

Our Amendment 3 tries to get at the sense of inclusiveness necessary for the NCS to succeed by suggesting a change in the wording about children to stress a more positive “all” and not a negative “different”, as in the current wording. Amendment 5 would make it a requirement that NCS should seek—and then be judged on whether it has achieved—social integration. That might be a difficult issue to define, but the impetus is important, and it is an important point to bear in mind when the reporting cycle starts.

On the point that I made earlier about hard-to-reach groups, Amendment 7 poses some questions; I should be grateful if the Minister would respond to them. Is he confident that there are credible plans to reach the hard-to-reach groups? Has the current organisation got the expertise to do that and, if not, how will it get it? Have the Government built in additional costs for the greater effort that will have to be expended on the last few per cent, as it were, of the cohort they are trying to reach, because that will be difficult? Are we confident that disabled young people, whether physically or mentally and ambulant or not, are sure that the programme will be for them? Unless it is arranged and presented in an appropriate way for them, it will be difficult to sell. That concern about the disabled came up in a number of submissions that I have received. It might be helpful to have that in the Bill.

I think that many other noble Lords wish to speak to this group, because their amendments go in the same vein but are based much more widely. I look forward to hearing the debate and I beg to move.

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 18 and 26 but first, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara, on his amendments. I shall not repeat his arguments but they are very well made and I hope that the Government will agree with them.

I thank a number of organisations, including the National Deaf Children’s Society, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, together with Sense and the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists for their advice on my two amendments. I hope that the Minister will understand that our aim is constructive, but there is a need to include the amendments in the Bill to give it the necessary statutory force. Amendment 18 would ensure that there are ring-fenced funds made available for which NCS providers may apply to meet the cost of providing the support that disabled young people may require to enable them to participate fully in the scheme. Amendment 26 would put in place regular reporting about the participation of disabled young people. This will enable the NCS Trust, the Government and all those involved in the National Citizen Service to judge the reality of the scheme’s accessibility to individuals.

The Minister may argue that the Equality Act 2010 is sufficient, but I would say two things about that. First, it is not sufficient in providing access to the education system without additional funding. This has been generally recognised by successive Governments in a range of educational areas since 2010. Secondly, the Act provides insufficient protection for disabled people to access services because many organisations simply do not make the “reasonable adjustments” required by law to enable access for individuals to participate. As an example, many deaf young people can find it difficult to access mainstream extracurricular activities which can be vital for their personal development. With the NCS scheme being Government-funded and with £1 billion of public money going to the service, there will be no excuse for failure to ensure that young people with disabilities get equal access to NCS schemes.

On the reporting requirements under Amendment 26, as an example of the problem, the NCS website has few details about the support available for disabled participants. For example, subtitles have not been created for many of its promotional videos and there are no videos in alternative accessible formats such as British Sign Language. The duties of the NCS to act as a leader in support of young people with disabilities are clear, given the level of funding it will have and the responsibilities that the trust will carry.

In conclusion, it cannot be left to NCS providers to meet the cost of any support that disabled young people may require to access the scheme. A considerable proportion of the NCS budget will be spent on marketing the scheme and unless promotional materials are fully accessible to all young people, there will not be high take-up of the scheme by those with a disability. The NCS Trust will have to deliver its responsibilities to those who have a disability. These amendments would mean that, first, a duty would be placed on the NCS Trust to ensure that funding was available to cover the cost of additional support required by an individual and, secondly, an annual report to the Secretary of the State would address the extent to which disabled young people have participated in the scheme. I hope the Minister will be willing to look at these issues carefully. If the Minister feels a meeting might be helpful, I would be happy to take part in that, but I hope that there will be a response by the time the Bill reaches Report.

[Baroness Scott of Needham Market (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendments 3, 18 and 26, and start by saying I am confident, given the dealings I have had with NCS and some of its providers, that it is absolutely committed to inclusion in its widest sense. The briefing to which my noble friend Lord Shipley referred suggests that some of the extra costs of including disabled people are perhaps not being entirely recognised. That is something we need to make sure is put right, as there are two potentially worrying outcomes: first, that there will be reduced participation by people with disabilities, and secondly, that providers will suffer if they have to carry extra costs in the way that my noble friend described. We heard about one particular sort of disability, but it is easy to imagine that there would be all sorts of extra costs.

We have to be careful about not creating a perverse incentive. It would be ironic if a local provider was very successful at dealing with the particular challenges of some disabilities and then found itself financially disadvantaged for being able to successfully recruit more from that group. We need something about recognising the costs and ensuring that they are met.

The provision for regular reporting is absolutely key. I am sure the NCS is monitoring this, and will continue to monitor it, as it would be a key part of its own performance, but there is a transparency issue. It should be reporting on what it is finding out about its own performance with regard to inclusion generally and disability in particular. That will help it to improve and see where it is perhaps falling down, and help Parliament and the outside world in judging how well the NCS is doing. This is not all negative. It is going to be tempting for some organisations to benchmark their costs against NCS and say, “Oh well, we are providing this much more cheaply”, but if NCS is working with harder-to-reach people with disabilities, and its costs are higher, it is in its interest to report that.

I wish to make two unrelated points about exclusion. First, we must always caution against models which assume that young people live in functional families where their parents do everything to support them, including for example paying the £50 and that sort of thing. It is absolutely key that, however this is delivered, it is possible for young people to access it without necessarily having to rely on parents who are supportive or even there and interested. There is a danger of imposing our model of parenthood on other people.

Finally, one group that probably needs this help more than any other but will need extra assistance is the very many young people who are carers. They lead very difficult and challenging lives, and the opportunity to get out from their caring responsibilities to be able to do something in a normal way with other young people is key. But there is no doubt they will need extra help, as if they are not there to care, someone else needs to do it. That is something that we should all recognise, and they certainly should not be disadvantaged for the role that they play.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to debate on this important part of the Bill.

I start by addressing the question of the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, in the previous group, and the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about refugees. The Bill is clear: you are eligible for a place on the programme if you are resident in England or receive education or training there. That brings me to refugees, who are welcome on the NCS. Guidance has been circulated among charities on making NCS available to them.

I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Scott, Lady Barker and Lady Royall, and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, who have spoken about an aim that is at the heart of the NCS: that it must be accessible to all. If it is not, it is simply not NCS. It must be available to any young person who wants a place. The royal charter stipulates that the trust must ensure “equality of access” to the programme: that is a clear requirement that can never be watered down. The NCS Trust will need to take all reasonable steps to meet that obligation and to report every year on the extent to which participants from different backgrounds have taken part. This means demonstrating that individuals from varying circumstances have come together in NCS groups, and I commit to noble Lords that this will include individuals with disabilities. NCS is a universal offer, and the trust must report on how it has made this a reality. I confirm, therefore, that we want to ensure that there is a place on National Citizen Service for every young person who wants one. We are currently working closely with the NCS Trust to ensure that it is fully accessible. The trust is currently developing a detailed inclusion strategy to ensure that over the longer term there is consistent and high quality for all.

Already, many NCS providers reach out and offer support to those with disabilities. For example, the largest provider, The Challenge, has worked with the National Deaf Children’s Society and adapted the programme for young people, including providing dedicated support workers. Across NCS, young people with special educational needs have personal coaches and one-to-one support workers alongside staff members. That brings us to the question of resources. It is the trust’s job to ensure that providers can make the programme accessible to all young people. Providers can work with the trust to access more resource. The Bill puts the requirement to make NCS accessible to all firmly in the charter.

The Government mean to take seriously their duty to hold the trust to account for meeting these requirements. If they do not, they have Parliament to answer to. The Government must provide the trust with the means of fulfilling its legal duty on this point: sufficient funding to allow people with disabilities to take part. That is why the Bill also enables the trust to deliver the programme to individuals as young as 15 and as old as 24. While the core demographic for NCS is 16 to 17 year-olds, this ensures that providers can be flexible for those with additional needs, such as people with disabilities. Clause 3 provides for the Government to fund the NCS Trust. The grant agreements drawn up between the trust and the Government will specify particular requirements on an evolving basis. We can assure the Committee that the trust will continue to work flexibly to provide any reasonable additional resource or support that a provider may require to deliver the programme.

Turning to reporting, the Bill requires the trust to report on how far it has met its strategic priorities, including the requirement to ensure that the programme is accessible to people of all backgrounds. There is an additional specific requirement to report on the extent to which people from different backgrounds have worked together. We have not listed all the specific categories we intend to cover, but people with disabilities is one of them. If we mention one category, we should list all of them, and that is unnecessary detail for the Bill.

The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, mentioned the Equality Act. They are right that the Bill will make the NCS Trust subject to the Act. It includes far-reaching duties to consider the need to advance equality of opportunity between people with a protected characteristic and persons without that characteristic, which of course includes disability.

I note that both noble Lords expressed worries about the limitations of the Act, and of course I will go back and look carefully at what they said, but that is in addition to what I said before about it being available to all, which is in the charter.

The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, would add to the functions of the trust to foster social integration and have special provision for the hardest-to-reach groups. The more complete list of the trust’s functions is included in the royal charter. These include an objective,

“to promote social cohesion by ensuring equality of access to the programmes by participants regardless of their background or circumstances”.

I hope that the noble Lord agrees that that covers both those points. To ensure equality of access, those with additional needs will in some cases require special provision.

His other amendment would change the requirement to enable participants from “different” backgrounds to work together to participants from “all” backgrounds. I think in this clause “different” backgrounds carries the stronger meaning. Although we want the programme as a whole to cater to all backgrounds, in each individual group we want a mix of different backgrounds.

The noble Lord asked how we expect the NCS programme successfully to achieve that in future and how successfully it brings people from different backgrounds together. Last year, 17% of summer participants were eligible for free school meals, compared with 8% of young people of the same age in the general population; and 30% were from black, mixed, or Asian backgrounds, compared with 19% of the general population. We think that the NCS Trust is doing quite well at the moment, but we certainly expect it to continue with plans in that area.

[Lord Shipley]

Perhaps the Minister could clarify the point about equality of access being an objective of the Bill. It clearly is, but the draft royal charter which accompanies the Bill makes no specific reference to young people with disabilities, which is the objective of my Amendments 18 and 26. Article 3.4.a refers to an objective of the trust as ensuring equality of access regardless of background or circumstances, and that can indeed be interpreted as including young people with disabilities, among many, but the amendments strengthen the accountability of the NCS Trust in this respect.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde]

The charter says that the programme is available to all regardless of background, and “all” obviously includes people with disabilities.