National Citizen Service Bill [Lords]

Oliver Letwin Excerpts

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

[Karen Bradley]

We have announced a long-term review of young people in volunteering. My hon. Friend makes an interesting suggestion about the way in which the NCS can encourage volunteering within the scheme in future years.

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the examples that she has set out demonstrate clearly the Government’s continuing commitment to the big society and that, in contrast to some of the mischievous reporting in some of the media, that is wholly compatible with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s welcome promotion of the shared society?

[Karen Bradley]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. This is an aspect of a country and a Government that work for everyone, and of the shared society that we all want to be part of. I shall now give way to my newly knighted hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Sir Julian Brazier).

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. The House must be getting very bored with that reminder, although I was extremely grateful for the much undeserved honour.

I welcome this Bill, as I am a strong supporter of the NCS. I had the opportunity to meet some of the 130 constituents who did their National Citizen Service last year, and I was very impressed. Clearly, they had enjoyed the earlier adventure training phase and were producing some really interesting ideas for working with local charities. That combination of challenging activity and a sense of service will be a very important part of our former Prime Minister’s legacy, and I was really delighted to see that he has agreed to be chairman of the patrons.

I will focus my remarks on the first bit of the programme—the adventure training. Although I strongly support what is being delivered and the very strong team headed by Michael Lynas and chairman, Stephen Greene, whom I had the opportunity to meet just before this debate, I am concerned that there are some wider trends that lie outside the strict confines of this Bill. However, knowing how tolerant you are, Mr Speaker, I hope that you will allow me to touch on those trends as they are highly relevant to the supply chain for the NCS.

Adventure training, which every NCS student does for at least one week, and sometimes two, usually at the beginning of the programme, develops team work and confidence. It involves pushing the boundaries and learning how to manage risk in a positive and constructive manner. It is very, very important and also increasingly rare. As far back as 12 years ago, the then Education Committee pointed out that this country, which produced the team that cracked Everest, had actually slipped down the league and was, arguably, below average around the world in our capacity for adventure training.

Five years ago, the English Outdoor Council produced a list of residential centres that deliver good quality adventure training. Of those 180 centres, 30 have since closed. Equally disturbing, a number of others have been taken over by providers, which are giving a good commercial offer in the sense that their insurance premiums are low because their risks are extremely low, but which, according to one expert in the field, typically deliver every meal indoors for the children. In other words, these so-called adventure opportunities involve nothing that lasts for more than two or three hours at a time.

The NCS is firmly aimed at the right end of the market. All the NCS students I have met have had extremely good experiences drawn from good parts of the sector, but we must be clear that that element is shrinking. The reasons for that are twofold: our litigious culture; and the worry about prosecution. Two surveys that have been done—one in 2003 by the Sport and Recreation Alliance and the other in 2006 by the Scouts— revealed that the blame culture was the No. 1 concern among adult volunteers. We are also in the era of the corporate manslaughter charge, which is a very serious concern for the local authorities that run these providers.

I suggest that we have made some progress in rolling back the litigious culture. After an all-party effort behind a private Member’s Bill, which I was privileged to promote, the Labour Government introduced a small measure, called the Compensation Act 2006, with only one substantial clause that reminded the courts that if they make an award against an organisation, they need to take account of the damage to the wider interest in that activity. It had support on both sides of the House, but, interestingly, was opposed by a number of highly articulate lawyers on both sides of the House and in both Chambers.

The threat of prosecution remains serious. There has been a certain amount of banter in the media about stories alleging phony regulations and the Health and Safety Executive—I strongly welcome its new chairman, Martin Temple—has debunked lots of myths. The problem whenever I discuss this with people providing adventure training is never with regulation; no one has ever raised regulation with me as a problem in a serious adventure training context. The problem is the risk of prosecution if something goes wrong.

Perhaps the worst case of this was at a place called Bewerley Park. In 2005, a boy of 14 was drowned in a caving incident at Yorkshire’s top adventure training provider. The HSE decided to prosecute the local authority and the case took more than five years to come to court. Finally, in 2010, the local authority was acquitted, but that happened because a critical body called the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority, which considers standards in such organisations, had given the body a clean bill of health and testified in court that the standard of instruction and leadership was extremely high, that the freak and completely unpredicted weather conditions that had led to rapidly rising water could not have been anticipated and that in fact it was a remarkable achievement of the instructors that they got all but one of the children out alive. Had that prosecution gone the other way, we would have lost not only that centre but many others up and down the country would have decided that they were no longer willing to take the risks of continuing.

[Sir Oliver Letwin]

My hon. Friend and I have often discussed these issues. Does he agree that that example shows the importance of ensuring that the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority remains in a condition in which it can take such a stance?

[Sir Julian Brazier]

My right hon. Friend, who is an absolute expert on this matter and did so much in this area in his time as a Minister, not just with the National Citizen Service but in the adventure field more widely, anticipates my next sentence. That is why it is crucial that at a time when we are about to start a public consultation on the future of the AALA, which will be conducted by a panel appointed by the HSE, the licensing authority not only survives but has its brief expanded so that it can ask why such centres have been closing over the past few years and, crucially, ask not just whether the practice is safe in the centres but what the quality is of the adventure that is being delivered. It is very easy to make so-called adventure training safe if it is not adventurous, so the authority needs to be able to ask what the character-building quality of the activities is.

I am delighted to say that the HSE has taken the decision to include on the panel one outside member, Ian Lewis, the director of the Campaign for Adventure— one of the patrons of which is, I should mention, another former Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I very much hope that when we have a National Citizen Service whose patrons are headed by one former Prime Minister and the Campaign for Adventure is represented on the panel considering the future of the AALA, that panel will come up with a conclusion that will guarantee a future for the AALA that ensures it can continue to speak independently and expands its brief so that we discover why the centres are closing and get the focus back on the high-quality adventure that is so essential to the future of the National Citizen Service.