Cameron Lobbied Minister To Back Failing Youth Project

David Cameron tried to lobby government ministers to prop up his failing legacy project despite its failure to hit key targets, The Independent can reveal.

- David Cohen

His intervention on behalf of the National Citizen Service (NCS), which he set up in 2011 to run summer residential programmes for 16- and 17-year-olds, came in August 2020 as the government prepared to engage in a root-and-branch review to completely reassess its youth services budget. The former prime minister's youth scheme had raked in £1.3bn of taxpayers' money since 2011 - 90 per cent of the youth budget - while the rest of the youth sector suffered cuts of 70 per cent.

But earlier this month the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), which conducted the review, announced that NCS would have its funding cut to £171m over three years, or £57m a year, a fall from 90 to 30 per cent of the DCMS youth budget. The new culture secretary, Nadine Dorries, is said to be “no fan” of Mr Cameron, having mocked him earlier this year as looking like a “ticket tout”. He withdrew the whip from her in 2012 after she appeared on I'm A Celebrity and failed to disclose her absence to film the show.