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12.48 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Fiona Mactaggart): I thank the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier), who has been a brick about the Bill. He knows that the Government have profound reservations about many clauses and that we are not confident that they can achieve the aims that he supports, but we recognise and share the laudable ambition to promote volunteering by reducing the perceived barriers and burdens that may affect people's involvement in their communities.
The hon. Gentleman has been a brick because he has made it clear in the Chamber and in meetings with me that he is prepared to give up little bits if they cannot be put right and amend aspects, if possible. I have to say to him in the Chamber, as I have outside it, that some of my advice is that it might not be possible to amend the Bill to achieve the aims that we both share. He has been very helpful, and I am grateful for the undertaking that he has given to work closely with the Government to see whether we can use the Bill as a vehicle to make progress on the aim of reducing the burdens and barriers that prevent people from volunteering.
I shall run through the reasons for my reservations. I do not intend to stand in the Bill's way, which is quite a high-risk position to take, and I have secured the agreement of other Departments to my taking that position. One reason why the matter to which the Bill relates is complicated is that it impacts on the areas of responsibility of at least four, and possibly more, Departments: getting our ducks in a row is therefore quite complex. Of course, the Government are united as one entity, but in practice when different Departments have different and particular interests, it can be quite difficult to drill through the detail of such matters. That is one problem.
Another problem is a real fear that the Bill might not have the positive impact that we want, but might have some opposite effects. We need to explore that problem in more detail, and I shall be happy to do so if the Bill reaches Committee. I do not want the Bill to achieve the opposite of its intention. I am certain that we all share the same ambition, and every speech that I have heard this morning confirms that. However, some Members have raised queries about whether the Bill will achieve that ambition. The proper way to proceed, although it will press quite a lot of work on some Members, including me, is to try in Committee to make the Bill make sense.
Let me make it clear that the Government are committed to increasing not only voluntary and community sector activity, but the number of people who actively participate in their communities. The Home Office active communities directorate was allocated £188 million for Government support to the voluntary and community sector between 2001 and 2003, of which a significant proportion was specifically to increase and support the level of volunteering.
That commitment to support the sector is not new. We have already implemented major initiatives that have benefited the sector, including the compact that we developed in 2000 and the associated codes of good practice. Those set the basis of a new relationship between the Government and the voluntary and
community sector. That foundation is continuing to be developed and enhanced through the establishment of local compacts, which will apply to local authorities' relationships with the sector.One reason why I want to focus on the compact is that an important concept is inherent in it, and it is partly because of that that the Bill gives me some unease. The compact contains the concept of professionalism—of being voluntary but professional. As a Minister, I commit to the need to recognise the cost of doing business, which is how we have put it in the compact pledge card—the short version that someone can keep in their pocket. We need to encourage voluntary organisations properly to assess the real cost of going about their business and to charge for that properly. We in Britain have a tradition of not doing that. Many voluntary organisations get into the habit of implying, and almost believing, that things are free, and that volunteers are free, when we all know that they are not. Volunteers' expenses, training and accommodation cost money, and we need to provide those properly, expertly and well. For example, we must ensure that someone who volunteers as a rugby referee has the same level of training as a professional referee, if that affects the safety of the people whom they are refereeing. We also need to ensure that there is no contradiction between being properly trained and being a volunteer, and that costs money.
As the Minister with responsibility for voluntary organisations, I have placed a lot of emphasis on ensuring that we get professionalism, excellence and recognition of full cost, as it is often described. It is also important, however, to examine ways of ensuring that people are not put off volunteering as a result of unfounded claims for negligence. People must accept the fact that some activities are inherently risky when they involve themselves or their children in them, but they should nevertheless have the right to expect high standards from volunteers. Similarly, volunteers have the right to expect high standards of training from the organisations for which they volunteer.
Mr. Brazier: The Minister is making a very helpful speech, and I shall underpin some of her remarks about working together in Committee if I get the chance to reply later. I would like to put this point to her now, however. While every single organisation supporting the Bill would agree with what she says about the importance of safety and proper standards, no form of negative recognition could be more damaging to volunteering than the second highest court in the country declaring a referee to have been negligent and to have caused an accident that most referees in this country believe came from a perfectly reasonable decision.
Fiona Mactaggart: It might be helpful if I deal with that case, which a number of hon. Members have mentioned. We are dealing here with urban myths. Urban myths have an effect on reality, but it is important that we should not allow an urban myth to grow about the nature of this court case. I have looked at the transcript of the decision of the Court of Appeal in the Vowles case, and it did not say that any risk was
unacceptable, which I think was implied by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr. Taylor). It referred to a very specific risk of injury, which a particular rule was intended to address. It is worth reading out a bit of the weekly law report in relation to that case.
- "Mr. Leighton Williams suggested that if we upheld the judge's finding that an amateur referee owed a duty of care to the players under his charge, volunteers would no longer be prepared to serve as referees. We do not believe that this result will, or should, follow. Liability has been established in this case because the injury resulted from a failure to implement a law"—
- "designed to minimise the risk of just the kind of accident which subsequently occurred. We believe that such a failure is in itself likely to be very rare."
- "Much rarer will be the case where there are grounds for alleging that it has caused serious injury. Serious injuries are happily rare, but they are an inherent risk of the game."
- "That risk is one that those who play rugby believe is worth taking, having regard to the satisfaction that they get from the game. We would not expect the much more remote risk of facing a claim in negligence to discourage those who take their pleasure in the game by acting as referees."
Mr. Burnett: During my speech I asked whether the Minister could find out whether the case was under appeal in the House of Lords. I have not read the transcript; I have only read a small précis. But, like other Members and like many members of the public, I want to know whether the referee's duty was discharged in relation to his discussions with the captain of the side, or whether he had to ask the individual player. Furthermore, is it not incumbent on individual players who decide to engage in a game of rugby football to be competent to know whether they are capable of doing so?
Fiona Mactaggart: I did ask whether the case was going to the House of Lords. I am afraid I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer at this stage, but I will find out and write to him.
The court said that the referee was aware of a risk that might be posed by the less experienced player. A series of problems was experienced with the set scrum after the inexperienced player had entered the game, confirming that it might have been right for the referee to operate the law as it stands. It was in the final scrum that the accident occurred. The Court of Appeal found that the judge had properly concluded that the referee had responsibility.
I agree with other Members that we should not encourage a litigious culture that might make our environment and activities "vanilla". I think that that summarises what was hinted at by my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson). We do not want it, because it limits children's opportunities. When I was a child, my favourite activity was tunnelling through the hay in a barn. We built caves
in the hay and lit them with candles. When I think back to that, it terrifies me—but my brothers and sisters and I, who all did it, are still alive today.What we were doing was profoundly dangerous. If a child of mine did it, I would stop it, brutally. Nevertheless, people do dangerous things, and most who do things even as dangerous as lighting candles when surrounded by hay survive. That should be our starting point. We, as community leaders and politicians, have a responsibility to say that activities are inherently risky, that we want them to be risky, and that even when your father has kidnapped every needle in the kingdom, you will still manage to prick your finger on the one that is left behind and fall asleep for a hundred years. We want the element of danger; it cannot be dispensed with. We must find a way of managing it carefully, through the use of volunteers whose standards are professional. That is why we have tried to build up the capacity of voluntary and community organisations. Some £80 million has been allocated to an infrastructure review to support voluntary organisations, and one of the issues to be considered is how they support volunteers and volunteering.
The law affecting charities in England and Wales is in the process of being reformed. One of the reasons why I feel as though I am being generous to the hon. Member for Canterbury in not standing in the way of his Bill is that I shall shortly lay before the House draft legislation on charity law reform, which will occupy a great deal of my time. Having volunteered myself for the challenge of responding to his Bill, making progress on my other important ministerial responsibilities, particularly race equality, will be challenging for me. However, I am prepared to put energy into this subject because it is one on which our track record is clear: we have invested substantially in voluntary organisations, especially those that have an overarching role in supporting the voluntary and community sector. Membership and umbrella bodies are better able to support their members in providing support and services to thousands of people. Every year, we put millions into funding new programmes to support more volunteers, to raise awareness of volunteering and to make it simpler for people to get involved.
I welcome the reforms that volunteering organisations have themselves introduced to strengthen volunteering, in particular the creation of Volunteering England, which has developed the infrastructure to support volunteers. I asked that body for its views on the Bill; I would not describe them as enthusiastic. It is important to recognise that there is no single view in the volunteering sector. Volunteering England's comments included:
- "The issues raised, whilst relevant, are not specific to volunteering and perhaps reflect the 'blame culture' and the more litigious times we all live in."
- "We have serious concerns that a Bill intended to support and encourage volunteering could have exactly the opposite effect. Although narrow in scope, it could in practice be applied to many other volunteering activities. In asking volunteers to accept liability for their activity we are likely to discourage people from becoming involved, thus creating a new barrier to volunteering."
Having described the place that I am starting from, I should now try to answer the points that hon. Members have made about the Bill. The hon. Member for Canterbury raised early in the debate the issue of Government action on obesity, and the contribution that the Bill could make to that. I agree, and that is one of the reasons why we have put so many resources into encouraging volunteering in sport—one of our more substantial volunteering programmes, on which we are grateful for the work of the Department for Media, Culture and Sport.
Although volunteering makes a substantial contribution, we should also recognise that the Government are doing a lot. Sport and leisure are part of the solution, but sport accounts for only 8 per cent. of all physical activity. For many of those who are most at risk of obesity because of their age, gardening is equally significant in maintaining physical activity and fitness.
The Government are developing a cross-departmental strategy on obesity, and the activity co-ordination team taking forward the game plan recommendations for a cross-departmental body to work towards a national physical activity strategy for England has brought together nine Departments. In the spring it will publish the first three-year phase of the 17-year national strategy, which will include measures to raise mass participation, especially in disadvantaged sports, and especially for school leavers, women and older people, who are among those most at risk because lifestyle factors and age combine to increase the risk of illness.
We need to tackle the couch potato culture among children, which some hon. Members have mentioned, and we shall do so as part of that exercise. It is a priority for the DCMS, which, with the Department for Education and Skills, has a joint target of increasing the percentage of school children who spend a minimum of two hours each week on high quality physical education and school sport within and beyond the curriculum to 75 per cent. by 2006. As one who would always have been in the other 25 per cent.—not until I was in my 30s did I find any physical activity that I enjoyed—I realise that that 75 per cent. target is ambitious.
The hon. Member for Esher and Walton and others suggested that the fear of litigation is having a substantial impact on the recruitment of volunteers. I think that that might be an urban myth, and it is
important that we do not allow it to gain credence through this debate. The Home Office citizenship survey has demonstrated that there are several important reasons why people do not get involved in volunteering.The first and most important reason is lack of time. That is one of the reasons why the Government are trying to deal with the long-hours culture in British employment. That culture means that people have less time to get involved in sport and volunteering, and they do less.
The second reason is lack of awareness and knowledge of what there is to do. People say, "I'd happily get involved if only I knew what to do." The Government take seriously the commitment to change that. I have spoken about the £80 million that we are investing in the infrastructure. Some of that will go to the volunteering infrastructure, and part of the role of that infrastructure is raising awareness of how people can become volunteers.
The third reason is lack of information—not knowing where to go, for example. There is also the inflexibility of options and opportunities. We are trying to address all those problems, because they are the most significant reasons that deter people from volunteering. The fear of litigation, although it is perceived to be an important issue, and in the debate hon. Members have assumed that it is, may be much less important in practice than people think.
For example, companies and others who have carried out research on the increase in insurance premiums suggest that litigation costs are certainly not the only, and not necessarily the main, reason for increases in premiums. That was found in the Government's review of employers liability compulsory insurance, which, in many ways, involves the same issues. Many factors contribute to the cost of insurance, and the Department is addressing the issue with energy. Our insurance cover working group is bringing together voluntary organisations and the insurance companies, because we recognise that the growth in premiums has been an issue for voluntary organisations.
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