National Citizen Service Bill [Lords]

Debate between Mike Wood and Steve Reed

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 16th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Reed]

The points I am making are intended to strengthen and improve the NCS; if we do not make them, it may never change, so I hope the hon. Gentleman will join me in the spirit of seeking to offer constructive criticism to improve what the Government are doing.

Applications in general are below the target set by the Government—they were 13% behind in 2016. That must be addressed, and although the delivery organisations are aware of that, we look to the Government to provide the support that they need to reach more young people. In particular, we encourage the Minister to look again at introducing a specific duty on the NCS to promote the programme to young people from socially excluded backgrounds and explore new ways to reach them.

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

To proceed in the tone that I thought had been set for the debate, does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the work the Government are doing, through the Bill, to authorise HMRC to work with NCS to reach more people is a key part of ensuring that the NCS reaches a far wider range of eligible young people? Hopefully that will increase participation rates, as well as diversity in the schemes.

[Mr Reed]

That is certainly helpful, but if that is the limit of the hon. Gentleman’s ambition for the NCS, he needs to find a little more of it, in the way that Opposition Members do.

A truly shared society requires everyone to have a voice and the power to assert it. There is no single model for achieving that: how we give people more control depends on the circumstances and context in which we operate. When the state sets up new organisations or services, it often fails to give people on the receiving end a real say, despite the fact that organisations benefit from higher levels of input from their users. If the NCS is to remain relevant to young people and in touch with their lives, it is important that they have a real voice in what it does and how it operates, now and in future. That means giving young people a direct role in NCS governance and decision making.

I was involved in setting up one of the biggest community youth trusts in the country, the Young Lambeth Co-operative, which took control of a number of the council’s youth services. The intention in setting it up was to give young people a real voice by reserving half the positions on the governing board for them, and ensuring that those young people who were appointed properly represented young people from more deprived backgrounds who had the greatest need of the services on offer.

In the absence of a mutualised structure, which is not being proposed for the NCS, it would still be good to see the NCS take a similar approach to that of the Young Lambeth Co-operative and ensure that young people have a key role at every level. That will be critical to making the NCS credible and attractive to as wide a range of young people as possible, particularly those who are categorised as harder to reach. The governance changes in the version of the draft royal charter that I have seen are important. There is to be a new board of patrons, but the NCS would benefit from more young people, and fewer politicians, at the top.

The NCS has the Opposition’s full support. I am raising concerns in the spirit of constructive criticism, with the intention of improving the organisation’s operation. We want to see some changes in the Bill that we believe will strengthen the focus on integration, ensure that the NCS reaches as wide a range of young people as possible, and give young people a bigger voice at every level in the organisation. Such changes would help the NCS to meet its laudable objectives, and we hope that they can be achieved through consensus.

We live in a country with a generous and open spirit, full of talented and ambitious young people who want to make a difference to their own lives, their families, and the community around them. But to do more, they need a bigger voice and the power to make it heard. Civil society organisations such as the NCS have an important role to play in making that happen. Ours is already a sharing society in which people instinctively co-operate; it is government that needs to catch up. The measure will be whether the Government make real progress in opening up and sharing their power with people so that they can make, or at least influence, the changes that affect their own lives.

The Bill may be small, but it has some very big ideas behind it: power, opportunity, community and contribution. Given the chance, young people and the NCS have much to teach us, and the Government, about those great national themes. We wish them every success in doing that in future.

Riot Compensation Bill

Debate between Mike Wood and Steve Reed

Friday 4th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend is right, and in conversations I have found that a surprising number of right hon. and hon. Members from across the House were similarly unaware that police forces bear those liabilities. We should be under no illusions that most members of the public are much better informed.

Let me return to the principle of switching to a new-for-old system. From the perspective of public finances, much of the additional cost of such a change can be expected to be offset through savings on spending on the loss adjusters needed to calculate second-hand values. It is much simpler and more efficient to assess the cost of a new replacement product, which is why so much of the insurance industry has moved to such a process.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

Was the hon. Gentleman referring to the case in Croydon North of Mr and Mrs Hassan? They had recently bought a dry cleaning business with old dry cleaning machines. It was burned to the ground, but because they were offered only like-for-like funding they could not re-establish their business or get their livelihood going again. They went into serious arrears and were threatened with the loss of their home because they could not pay the mortgage. Surely that is unacceptable and needs to change.

[Mike Wood]

The hon. Gentleman puts his constituents’ case far better than I could, and he is absolutely right. New for old makes sense—it will save time and make the process simpler, fairer and less labour-intensive for local police bodies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Wood]

That is precisely what I have been calling on the ABI and other insurance bodies to do leading up to today’s debate.

I turn to the Bill’s provisions on a riot claims bureau. It sets out that the Secretary of State may assume responsibility for managing riot compensation claims. That is appropriate if rioting spreads across more than one police force area, as it did in 2011. It may also be appropriate at the request of a local policing body, particularly in one of the smaller police force areas, should the volume of compensation claims prove challenging to manage and be beyond its capacity. It is not about taking away local policing bodies’ financial autonomy. It is merely about providing capacity, consistency and additional oversight where necessary.

[Mr Steve Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being so generous with his time. He mentions compensation being paid to victims. Is he aware that when local communities came together to raise and distribute funds to support businesses, families and individuals who had been financially affected by the riots, those funds were then deducted from the more official compensation payments? Does he agree that that was completely wrong and went against the intentions of people who generously donated to help their fellow citizens recover from the terrible circumstances in which they found themselves?

[Mike Wood]

I would certainly hope that money raised to support local communities would be used for that purpose. Of course, we would want to avoid double compensation, with damages being repaid twice so that people were not just put back in an equivalent position to before the riots but received additional payments on top of that. I do not think that that would be appropriate. I do think that after a riot money should be retained more at a community level and invested in rebuilding community cohesion.

The structure of a riot claims bureau would include, in its running and financial decision making, a role for a police and crime commissioner or equivalent, or their designated representative, as well as insurers and loss adjusters. The Bill would allow local policing bodies to place the day-to-day management of claims into the hands of experts in the loss-adjusting profession. That is clearly a better alternative to expecting police forces to retain such responsibility in-house. Companies already have the capacity available to manage major insurance-related incidents, as has been seen in their response to major weather-related events. Moving responsibility for the management of the process to those who understand it best would allow police and crime commissioners to utilise fully industry experts, while retaining full control of the financial decisions for which they are democratically accountable.

The Bill provides, for the first time, cover for some motor vehicles. Understandably, motor insurance and damage to motor vehicles was not considered in the 1886 Act. It is time, nearly 130 years later, to address that. Most insurance companies cover riot damage in comprehensive motor vehicle policies, the type held by the overwhelming majority of the country’s motorists. The Bill would not seek to replace that coverage. The intention is to provide compensation for motorists not covered by comprehensive insurance. Where the vehicle is held in accordance with the law, it would be covered under the Bill: it would cover third-party claims that meet basic minimum legal requirements for insurance, or vehicles that are exempt from requirements for insurance.