Select committees rarely bring about change

They scrutinise the working of government through conducting inquiries into matters they consider to be priorities for parliamentary attention.

The education select committee has produced two reports concerned with the changing nature of services and support for young people. Both make similar points: the government was premature to cut back severely on or scrap previous provision. The result has been a vacuum and replacement programmes are constructed on assertion and ideology rather than any real evidence that they will work.

The report on services to young people concentrated on the government's flagship National Citizen Service (NCS) scheme, questioning why a new programme needs to be started when there is already a plethora of supported youth volunteering initiatives. Why could these not have been harnessed to a framework that provided young people with recognition of that effort and experience, irrespective of the "flag" under which it had been achieved? It will be interesting to see how the government responds, especially as the NCS appears to be expensive when compared with a German equivalent.