James – thanks for such a well thought out and nuanced critique. It is good to see you that you think Service Nation advances the debate on civic service.

The political debate is still in quite early stages – cautiously testing different proposals (Gordon Brown – 50 hours, Conservatives – The Challenge). In many ways this has been a very fast-moving area of policy and politicians are to be commended for having moved as quickly as they have – the Conservatives haven’t even been in government yet. Our intention with this report was to move the political debate on by trying to get politicians to engage with a broader, more pluralistic lifetime strategy within which their favoured schemes would fit. As such we are not sure that the difference between the so called “Demos “ and “Steve Hilton” model is as stark you suggest. The underlying principle that makes us look beyond a single age scheme is the notion that service should not just be aimed at people failed by the education system but those that have benefitted as well. Hence our proposals for a minimal level of compulsory service for undergraduates and more opportunities for service in the workplace.

The genuine difference turns on whether or not civic service should be universal and compulsory. Far from pulling our punches here we think that the arguments over compulsion and universality are red herrings that prevent civic service moving from the realm of polemic to practical policy capable of implementation.

The inspiration of the menu of options presented in service nation is to meet people’s varied experiences half way rather than imposing a compulsory scheme regardless of the various needs people have. The fixation with the model of post war military service obscures the possibilities for service opportunities in our own very different times. This requires a delicate balancing act between Ciceronian notions of civic virtue and today’s cultural expectations of choice and flexibility. While Cicero and Machiavelli opted for universal conscription this was for small city-states of male citizen soldiers on a scale incomparable to toady days complex and pluralist nation states. In contrast modern variants of civic republicanism work much harder to strike a balance between avoiding domination across polity, economy and household and the common good. A flexible set of service opportunities that modulates elements of compulsion and voluntarism to different life circumstances would better strike this balance.

There is an important, if under looked, difference between trends towards increasing indvidualisation and expectations of self-authorship on the one hand and the selfish egoism that is the targets of critiques of the “broken society” on the other. This is why we recommend making aspects of service compulsory and others voluntary without fetishising either. Compulsion will work in certain institutional settings and not in others. We back a plurality of options because we think this is what will work best for young people – it would be wrong and ineffective to force one model on all young people. With regard to our consultation with young people it’s is perfectly consistent to be in favour of compulsion 11-16 (this is mainly related to the education-related benefits rather than benefits to the community) but against compulsion post 16. We also think it is justified 11-16 as part of young peoples learning experiences though, and a small amount of compulsion is justified for graduates in light of the benefits they get from the state.

This need for a plurality of options was reflected both in the views of the young people we consulted with, and our own views. As other research for V and Prospects own poll has shown, people tend be happy for people younger than them to undertake service but more ambivalent when it comes to themselves. We think at least part of this reticence is due to the lack of flexibility provided by a single scheme imposed on people when they start pursuing varied educational and career routes.

“This assumes three weeks of civic service for some tens of thousands of young people at first—partly residential, partly in the community—at the age of around 16, with an ongoing commitment of about 50 hours community service spread out over the following year. But the Tories aim eventually to make this a “voluntary universal” programme — ignoring the fact that there aren’t any truly “voluntary universal” programmes anywhere in the world. ”

I ran such a programme – admittedly for thousands rather than tens of thousands of young people, but it was none the less successful. It’s failure was in the short sightedness of the organisation I then worked for and it’s inability to see beyond its own capacity, and the reluctance of other more famous national youth organisations to embrace and develop something they couldn’t claim to have created (thanks ironically to organisational selfishness and protectionism not disimilar than what these kinds of schemes seek to challenge in individuals!).

The Deputy Prime Minister and his entourage visited young people involved with running it, his then department used it as a case study, we were matched up with others to develop a much larger programme initially based on the same model – but bizarrely that became a completely separate entity called the “Big Boost” and in the meantime other schemes appeared including ‘V’ which surely could have just stayed as the MV scheme, and “Get Real” – none of which can claim to be radical innovations, none of which can realistically claim to be developmental to what was in existence before them in fact!

And now the UK take on AmeriCorps which has been talked about for 10 years or more, and yet the prospect of a Labour Government actually being in power to implement it seem distant.

I find the debate about compulsion depressing, in the same way that the notion people can be paid to volunteer is very depressing. Supposedly we want to design programmes that will instil in young people a genuine interest in community, help build relationship within communities and strengthen both individual skills and motivations and the networks to support them. And yet we don’t have the confidence that these things can be achieved without having to bribe, force or pay young people to actually do them.

This despite that it’s well known that young people can and do volunteer, and that the majority of youth provision in this country would not exist if not for the efforts of volunteers all over the country.

It is possible to design programmes that have genuine community benefit, that are led by young people and that include local adult volunteers, and that use activities they enjoy doing but that are structured in such a way as to be developmental for them. Furthermore it’s possible to do so without the ridiculous kinds of budgets allocated to other current initiatives. I know because I’ve done it – what’s lacking is imagination, and confidence and having faith that despite what many would have us think most young people are prepared to give their time and energy – if the opportunities are presented to them correctly.