Nick Hurd
Main Page: Nick Hurd (Conservative - Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner)Department Debates - View all Nick Hurd's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
1. What plans his Department has to help match young people with volunteering opportunities.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
We are investing in the national citizen service, which will be very powerful in connecting young people with their own power to make a contribution to the community. In addition, we will invest £40 million over the next two years to support volunteering infrastructure and social action.
Duncan Hames
I thank the Minister. Grow, the organisation behind Wiltshire’s volunteer centre in Chippenham, is keen to extend the range of support it provides in matching young people with volunteering opportunities as part of Wiltshire council’s volunteer strategy and action plan. Will the new local infrastructure fund be able to support such initiatives, be they in Wiltshire or elsewhere?
Mr Hurd
I was in Devizes constituency in Wiltshire on Friday, and I recognise that Wiltshire council represents best practice in many ways in supporting local voluntary organisations and local infrastructure. I am delighted about the local infrastructure fund, because it will help existing infrastructure assets become even more efficient and effective in supporting front-line voluntary organisations and encouraging local people to get involved.
Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
We all support efforts to encourage volunteering, but does the Minister share our concern that under proposals in the Protection of Freedoms Bill on the vetting and barring scheme individuals who are barred from working with children will be able to volunteer in schools, and without the school’s knowledge?
Mr Hurd
The Bill contains very important reforms to vetting and barring, and critically to the Criminal Records Bureau process, which many Members will know from their constituencies is a source of considerable frustration for people who are trying to volunteer. I agree with the reforms that will make that process simpler, more effective and more portable.
Karl MᶜCartney (Lincoln) (Con)
2. What steps he is taking to prepare for potential industrial action in the public sector.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
3. What steps he is taking to encourage increased levels of giving.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
The Government are anxious to encourage more giving. On 23 May, we published a White Paper that set out a range of ways in which we can help to make giving easier and more compelling, and offered better support for charities, community groups and social enterprises.
Andrew Bridgen
Although people in the UK are very generous compared with Europeans, the rate of UK charitable giving remains only half that of the rate in America. What further steps will the Minister take to encourage us to give up to the level of our American cousins?
Mr Hurd
My hon. Friend is right—we are a generous country—but giving has flatlined, despite substantial interventions from previous Governments. We do not accept that as being inevitable, and we want to help people to give more. He will know that the Chancellor announced generous incentives in the last Budget. The White Paper contains many ideas, including a social action fund to support creative, new models that incentivise people to give.
Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
More people would be encouraged to give, especially to health care charities, if the issue of irrecoverable VAT on all non-business supplies was sorted out. Discussions are being held with the Treasury, but will the Minister ensure that they are expedited so that a mutually acceptable solution is reached as quickly as possible?
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
I spent 16 years in the fundraising sector. Does the Minister agree that one giving barrier for many people is the abolition of cheques?
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
The House will note that the giving White Paper states that the Government aim to support and manage opportunities for giving, but what will the Minister do to monitor what sums are given and to which organisations? Does he intend to plug funding gaps, should they arise, so that poor areas of the country are not disadvantaged? Indeed, if donations continue to fall, is it a sensible strategy to rely on philanthropy to fill gaps in public funding?
Mr Hurd
The Government see a substantial opportunity to encourage more giving, bearing in mind that 8% of the country do 47% of the giving. The hon. Lady asks about money for more deprived areas. Our “community first and community organiser” programme, which is worth about £80 million, is exclusively targeted on the most deprived communities. The programme incentivises the local giving of time and money to support social action projects led by those communities.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
4. What steps he is taking to enable young people in (a) England and (b) Northamptonshire to participate in the national citizen service in the summer of 2011.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
6. What steps he is taking to enable young people to participate in the national citizen service in the summer of 2011.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) knows, we are offering more than 10,000 places to 16-year-olds this summer, including 135 in Northamptonshire. Our 12 providers are working hard to ensure full participation. I hope that he will lend his personal support to Catch22 and the Prince’s Trust in his area.
Mr Hollobone
What steps are being taken to encourage full participation in the scheme, and how can parents get involved to encourage youngsters to take up this challenge?
Mr Hurd
Our providers are working very hard to ensure full participation in the pilots by engaging schools, working with local media, and using social networking sites, including a dedicated Facebook page. The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General and I will write to every colleague in the House with details of how they can engage with their local provider, because we would like them fully to support this exciting and positive opportunity for young people in their constituencies.
James Morris
There are a number of national citizens service pilots in and around my constituency. Does the Minister agree that we need to find ways of increasing and deepening access to this scheme in the most deprived areas by using innovative ways of communicating with youth clubs and other local institutions?
Mr Hurd
My hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the key benchmarks for success of the scheme is creating the right social mix on residential courses. The aim is to create opportunities for young people to meet people they would never otherwise expect to meet. That is very much part of the obligation on our providers and we are monitoring it very closely.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I welcome this initiative, but does the Minister agree that the Government need to do much more to prevent a repeat of the ‘80s, when so many young people ended up on the scrapheap?
Mr Hurd
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his constructive engagement with the national citizen service concept. I obviously reject his thesis and would point him to the investment in apprenticeships and everything else that we are doing. I urge him not to underestimate the potential of this programme to transform young people’s sense of what they can achieve.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
May I ask the Minister again about the barriers to young people from deprived areas getting involved in this scheme, especially in the pilot projects, for which, in half of the cases, young people are being charged up to £99? Does he agree that such charges will be a severe disincentive to young people from those areas, and will he take action?
Mr Hurd
We have made it clear—I have done so personally—to every provider that money should not be a barrier to participation in the pilots. We are experimenting with a range of models to gauge people’s willingness to pay for the value that the models add, but we have made it very clear to providers that money should not be a barrier to participation.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
5. What progress his Department’s counter fraud taskforce has made in tackling benefit fraud.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
8. What recent representations he has received on the provisions of the Public Bodies Bill.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
As my hon. Friend knows, the Bill has completed a tortuous but constructive passage through the other place, and we hope for a Second Reading in this place soon. In the meantime, the Cabinet Office and other relevant Departments are holding information sessions for colleagues who want to discuss this important Bill.
Charlie Elphicke
I thank the Minister for his reply, his hard work and the excellent job he is doing on the Bill. Under the Bill, public statutory corporations such as British Waterways will be reformed and become mutuals. Have Ministers considered other similar public bodies, such as trust ports, for inclusion in the Bill?
Mr Hurd
I understand that my hon. Friend is frustrated by the pace of progress in his committed and spirited attempt to allow the people of Dover to take over the port. He will know that the Transport Secretary, who is sitting alongside me, has announced a consultation on the criteria for assessing the sale of trust ports in England and Wales, largely to reflect the Government’s localism and big society agendas. It is right for that consultation to conclude before further decisions are taken.
Tessa Jowell (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
In March, the Minister for the Cabinet Office claimed that he would make £30 billion of savings from his quango reform programme embodied in the Public Bodies Bill, so that he could
“protect jobs and front-line services.”
My freedom of information requests show, however, that nearly £25 billion of this £30 billion comes from front-line cuts to housing and our universities, including teaching and research. Will he apologise for these misleading statements about protecting front-line services?
Mr Hurd
No—and I am surprised by the line of questioning, because this programme of very overdue reform to the complex landscape of quangos and non-departmental public bodies goes exactly with the grain of the reforms proposed by the previous Government. We are going further in trying to deliver much greater accountability in government, and, on the way, delivering what we believe will be about £2.6 billion in communicative and administrative savings over the spending review period.
Mr David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
T5. By 2014, civil society will be losing £2.9 billion a year in revenue—the same as the amount forgone in corporation tax by big companies in the United Kingdom. Why are the Government being so soft on big business and so tough on charities and the voluntary sector?
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
I reject that statement absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is pulling numbers for lost income to the charity sector out of the air and completely ignoring the volume of public sector contracts going in, not least through the recent Work programme, which is worth at least £100 million a year. As for big business, I would simply refer him to a speech made by the Prime Minister last year called “Every Business Commits”.
Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)
T4. You will be aware, Mr Speaker, that my constituency will hold a national sporting event in the next fortnight, the enjoyment of which could be undermined by strikes proposed by the unions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that these strikes are unnecessary, and will he confirm the Government’s commitment to talks to ensure that they do not have to happen?