When the Minister responsible for Sport refuses to treat matters fairly, it is surely time to challenge her in a way that goes beyond being asked a few written questions? As this question from Labour MP, Steve Reed discloses, our Government are treating youth services as though there is one rule for their own scheme and another for all the rest. The fact is that at the end of January it is over a month since Tracey Crouch spoke in Parliament in any other arrangement than answering written questions. Back on 21st December was the last time she took part in a debate. So perhaps the Government could be persuaded to hold a proper debate on youth service, even if this requires the opposition parties demanding it. The question referred to above is as follows:

“To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness and (b) value for money of the National Citizen Service in comparison to other youth programmes with similar aims.”

As I have written before on this blog, the NCS is a very questionable type of youth provision which costs a huge amount for a very short burst and has displaced many of the traditional long term youth facilities that have all but disappeared as the Government has removed funding from local Government and at the same time continues to invest around £1.2bn in NCS on an annual basis. I was Chair of a charity that helped set up one of the first NCS schemes in Sussex and whilst our approach did follow the principles behind NCS, of bringing people together from a range of backgrounds, other schemes that were being supported failed to do so. However that was back in 2011 and no doubt the scheme has moved on from there. However Tracey’s answer to the above question is very concerning.

“DCMS commissions independent evaluations of the National Citizen Service to assess the impact and value for money of the NCS programme. The youth sector evidence base is not yet sufficiently developed to enable robust comparison between different programmes. DCMS is supporting youth organisations to develop the sector evidence base such as through funding for the Centre for Youth Impact and the £1m made available to evaluate the Youth Investment Fund.”

The worry is not that the DCMS is spending money on independent evaluations of NCS, but rather that they have thrown a sum that is very modest in the context at the rest of the youth sector to develop the sector to ‘enable robust comparison’. It is of course important to compare NCS to places where no NCS schemes are in place, but to fail to compare to alternative forms of youth work is a major error and risks ignoring much more effective schemes that cost a great deal less than NCS to operate on a weekly basis.