Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for giving us the opportunity to debate a subject so close to the hearts of many of us. I have worked most of my life either in or closely with the voluntary sector, and my interests are declared in the register. I also chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Civil Society and Volunteering. As the noble Baroness has reminded us, the sector plays, and has always played, an extraordinarily important role in our society and that role has never been more important than now.

I want to focus on two aspects of that role, but first I want to remind the House that, when we speak of the voluntary sector, we often focus on the larger organisations—those that have a high public profile, are in receipt of government or local authority grants and provide services under contract or are funded by public donation. With these, we often have the debate about what constitutes a voluntary organisation. Should they always be distinct from, and additional to, what the state provides? My experience as a lottery distributor reminded me how very difficult it is to decide in these times what is actually additional to state funding, and the noble Baroness has reminded us about those blurred lines. The vast majority of charities do not recognise themselves as part of any sector. They are very tiny. They are run off a kitchen table—or in my local village hall—by dedicated volunteers who spend time and their own money for the good of their community and their fellow citizens.

The two aspects on which I want to concentrate my remarks are the role of the voluntary sector in preventive work and in campaigning. Much lip-service is paid to preventive work in many quarters, emphasising the importance of putting in help and support to those in need before their situation reaches crisis point. An example would be a friendship circle or community lunch facility to give the carers of an elderly person who is becoming frail a break, or a coffee morning for those with mental health problems. In each case, such events provide social opportunities, but they also give professionals a chance to see people with potential need, to check that they are taking their medication, to check that they are not going downhill and to ensure that they are making social contacts. In these days, when most local authorities are providing services only to those with substantial or even critical needs, these services are frequently provided by the voluntary sector at very local level.

These services are invaluable, but they are increasingly under threat, especially when contracts are being negotiated. It is difficult to prove their effectiveness, precisely because they delay greater need. When you are filling in all those forms which demand an exposition of proved outcomes, it is hard to be explicit. Customer surveys will show the effectiveness: “That lunch club was my lifeline”, says a user with mental health problems. However, that may not be enough for the commissioners, who are intent on this year’s budget rather than something which may—indeed, will—save money five years down the line. Yet if we do not give priority to these services, as well as funding the innovative services at which the sector so excels, we risk building up greater need for the future.

Turning to the campaigning role of the sector, I take the view that that is one of the most important, but I would say that—would I not?—as I had the privilege of leading the carers movement for some years as chief executive of Carers UK. I think that I can lay claim to the success of that campaigning, since no one had even heard of the word “carer” when we started, and now the 6 million people who provide most health and social care are recognised and acknowledged. Indeed, under the recent Care Bill, they were given rights to which we would not have dared to aspire in those early days of campaigning.

I know from my experience and that of others that campaigning activities not only bring about change but enable citizens to participate in the democratic process. As the briefing from the Quakers reminds us, there are many people who feel disengaged from party politics but who wish to engage in single-issue campaigns. The voluntary sector provides them with a way to be involved in political decisions, be that at local or national level. It is through the voluntary sector that politicians explore and understand key issues for citizens. That is also how many people become more engaged in their local communities.

Obviously, voluntary organisations also have a role in telling the rest of society about what they find with this campaigning work. It is often the case that the organisation seeking to end poverty is the organisation best placed to explain the intricacies of how poverty is caused. Indeed, in much of my experience of working as a campaigner, I have been tremendously aware that not only do people feel passionate about issues, but that the most important role of a campaigning voluntary organisation is to enable those voices to be heard, providing a means, for example, for the carers themselves to speak up and speak out about their needs. That has always been the most effective way of bringing about change.

Indeed, a very recent example of that happened during the passage of the Care Bill, where we changed the Government’s mind about particular issues. How did we bring about that change? By getting the users themselves—the young carers or parent carers—to speak directly to Ministers and to convince them and the Government of what their needs were. I give credit to the government Ministers who were willing to listen and to make changes as a result of that activity. I hope that we will always remember how significant the campaigning work of the voluntary sector is. That is important now and I hope that it always will be, and it behoves us all to remember that and not to try to restrict in any way the campaigning role of the voluntary and charitable sector.

Charity Commission

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of the All-Party Group on Civil Society and Volunteering.

I congratulate the noble Baroness on securing this debate. She will not be surprised to see that the usual suspects are gathered here today—that is, those noble Lords with an interest in and commitment to the charitable sector. For most of us it is a commitment of many years’ standing. I certainly remember the Deakin review extremely well.

None of us can therefore deny that the way in which the Charity Commission has been operating in recent times has been a cause for concern. The series of reports mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, make dismal reading. The PAC report of 5 February this year concludes in no uncertain terms that the commission continues to perform poorly and is failing to regulate charities effectively. The reasons for this have been well rehearsed. It has been too slow; too reactive rather than proactive; too narrow and legalistic in its approach to regulation; and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Barker, clearly stated, there has been confusion about its primary purpose. Is it there to support the voluntary sector or to protect the public interest?

In addition there has been a constant problem with resources. Is the commission being asked to do too much with too little? Undoubtedly the commission, like much of the charitable sector, has taken a severe financial hit in recent times and has had to reduce staff drastically.

Much controversy has surrounded the commission, not helped perhaps by changes of personnel at the top. The appointment of a new chief executive—which I understand will shortly be announced—will be of the utmost importance. It is vital that this person has the skills and experience to enable the commission to fulfil its important role, to be clear about its mission and to provide authoritative leadership, especially in developing strategic alliances.

It is certain that, in spite of the controversy, there is universal agreement within the sector that it needs an independent and effective regulator which focuses entirely on charities. For example, trusts and foundations which give grants to other charities have to give due diligence, and the less the Charity Commission does the more the trusts and foundations have to do. So there may be duplicated effort using donated money rather than the public money which enables the Charity Commission to do this kind of due diligence on which trusts and foundations and others who give money were habitually able to rely. It is vital that we continue with that.

Therefore the Charity Commission’s move to take firmer, swifter action with the few charities which offend—we should remember that, although there have been serious cases, few charities offend—and its desire to enhance further its legal powers has met with nothing but support from the charitable sector. Better use of data, as the noble Baroness reminded us, and closer working with HMRC are also moves in the right direction. The Government would be well advised to banish all thoughts of merger with HMRC, should they have such thoughts, which I hope they have not. If the Charity Commission continues with its programme of reform and delivers the changes it is promising, the Government must do their part to ensure that they provide realistic funding for this important—indeed vital—organisation.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on his maiden speech, and by drawing your Lordships’ attention to my interests in the register, especially to my roles as vice-president of Carers UK and as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Civil Society and Volunteering. I hope that I might be permitted to record my disappointment that neither of the Ministers on the Bill is currently in the Chamber.

I will concentrate on Part 2 of the Bill, and I will speak personally. As far as I am aware, none of us knows how we become a Member of your Lordships’ House—the reasons we are chosen and so on. However, I have a pretty good idea why the honour was conferred on me. It was because I was a campaigner and lobbyist—rather a successful one, I would suggest. I was chief executive of a charity whose raison d’être was lobbying and campaigning in pursuit of policy changes for carers.

Let me take noble Lords back to the mid-1980s. The word “carer” was unknown; it was frequently misspelt as “career”. Nothing of what we now take for granted about the issue was known. We had no numbers. Estimates were not believed. We had no idea about the range of activities that carers undertake, or the distress that caring can cause. There were few organisations that dealt with caring, no helplines and no legislation. No attention was paid to carers at all. It is hard to believe now, when the word “carer” is added to practically every document coming out of every government department—and sometimes, I think, every sentence of every document coming out of every government department. Think of the Care Bill and the focus on carers’ rights. Think of what we now know about carers for o1der people, young carers, parent carers, carers in the benefits system, carers in employment and so on. It is hard to imagine what it was like 20 or 30 years ago.

All that we have achieved for carers has been achieved by lobbying and campaigning by a registered charity, or by several charities working together. No Minister or department suddenly woke up and said, “Oh, sorry. This is a group of people whom we have been ignoring for years. We had better do something about it”. Of course they did not. They took notice because we drew attention relentlessly to what the situation was by focused campaigns, getting the media on side and getting carers to be willing to speak out rather than being a silent and hidden army. Figures on how many carers there are and how much money their contribution is worth did not come out of the blue. In fact, I remember successive Secretaries of State denying that the numbers of carers that I was suggesting even existed. We got the numbers because we ran a concerted campaign to have a question about carers included in the census, and then we used the figures, which surprised everybody—6 million, since you ask—at every opportunity.

Our campaigns for policy change were never more concerted and active than during election periods. I first attended party conferences in the late 1980s—all the party conferences, of course—and at the 1992, 1997, 2001 and all elections since, a carers manifesto has been produced and all political parties have been lobbied to make concessions for carers. A very important aspect of this work was the alliance that was formed to give the lobby the strongest possible voice. Originally, more than 20 carer, disability, older people and patient organisations came together to produce a manifesto. This made the call and the demands of the manifesto so much more powerful. Many of us have recently been in contact with the Care and Support Alliance, which played such an important role in both last year’s Health and Social Care Bill and the Care Bill currently being considered by this House. If each of those many organisations had had its costs counted, including its overall admin costs, I doubt whether they would have come together in such an effective way. Indeed, I am sure that they would not. The effectiveness of such coalitions has already been mentioned by several noble Lords.

What would have been the situation of carers if all these campaigns had not taken place? Eventually, what was a private trouble might have become a public policy issue—the one that we know so well today—but not as quickly or effectively, I would contend. Three Private Members’ Bills, a national carers strategy, the Standing Commission on Carers, and the Law Commission report that led to the Care Bill all came about as a direct result of regular lobbying and campaigning, much of it focused in election periods. I might add that the tradition in the United Kingdom of campaigning charities effectively lobbying for changes in policy is the envy of the world—and I do not exaggerate that, as I know it from my contact with emerging carers movements in many other countries throughout the world.

Of course, we have to emphasise that this is politically neutral campaigning, which requires a degree of political sophistication to bring about. Is it that political sophistication and political nous that frightens the Government and makes them put in place this sledgehammer of a Bill to crack what is, at worst, a very small political nut as regards charities. The Bill surrounds charities with an unwarranted amount of bureaucracy, as noble Lords have pointed out, while at the same time not being nearly strong enough with the real culprits, who should be addressed in Part 1 of the Bill.

I use the issue of carers as an example of what will be lost if the Bill goes through in its current form, because it is the one I know best. But there are dozens of others, as is apparent from the huge amount of correspondence that your Lordships have received on the Bill—from climate change to child abuse, through every variety of charity. That would not have come to public attention if it had not been for the efforts of charities, acting singly or in alliances. I am baffled as to how any Government who have sung the praises of the big society and repeatedly placed emphasis on the importance of the charitable sector can put before us a Bill so ill thought-out and with so much potential to stifle the voices of the disadvantaged, and ignore groups and issues that are the very essence of democracy.

If you really want to engage with charities and the voluntary sector, as this Government constantly assure us that they do, you cannot simply put them into the role of service providers, effectively gagging them because they are too dependent on contracts to utter a breath of criticism. What has happened to the Minister’s call, made so trenchantly before the election, that the charities should,

“keep our feet to the fire”?

I quote him directly. Is that to be interpreted as keeping their feet to the fire except in an election year—and only if you keep the costs down to the level that they have set?

Will the Minister take this opportunity to answer the many questions that are being asked? For example, what exactly constitutes campaigning? Does it include taking part in policy discussions or doing research on issues such as poverty, and publishing the results? How are partnerships and alliances to be defined, and their expenditure costed, without huge administrative burdens on already cash-strapped organisations? What is the Government’s reaction to the legal opinion that says that the Bill will restrict organisations’ ability to engage in campaigns or policy debates and will insulate the Executive from criticism? Above all, why the rush? There are so many problems with the Bill, and so many possibilities of unintended consequences—I give the Minister the benefit of the doubt and do not accuse him or the Government of sinister motives, though many might—that surely the right thing to do is to start again, or at least to pause and put the Bill through the sort of scrutiny that a pre-legislative process would have provided. Starting again would be a sign not of weakness but of a Government who have the courage to seek and take notice of the opinions of the society that they represent.

Civil Society

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, we are indeed all grateful to my noble friend for giving us the opportunity to have this far-ranging debate on civil society. However, I must say that at this stage of a debate, I feel a bit like the bishop who, when asked to make a speech about sin, stood up, said that he was against it and sat down again. If I am asked about civil society I can say, just as simply, “I am for it”. Similarly, when asked about the future of civil society, I can say, “There is one”. However, we are concerned to examine the current situation, the potential difficulties and the role that we expect civil society to play, although there are many different interpretations of what constitutes civil society, and we have heard them today. The single common factor that we should remember is that it is about participation in decisions about services in your community, in how services in your community are shaped, in delivering those services and, particularly, in decision-making.

We should be clear from this debate that, despite rashly delivered statements about a broken society, civil society is not in decline. Indeed, to the contrary, although membership of political parties, churches and traditional women’s groups may be in decline, membership of new social movements, non-governmental organisations and pressure groups is flourishing. I want to focus on some of the matters that have been reported to me, and I should declare my interest as patron and president of various charities and as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Civil Society and Volunteering.

The first thing that I want to mention is, inevitably, funding. I keep hearing Ministers say to the voluntary and community sector, “You must do more with less. Don’t expect government at local or national level to support you financially”. Okay, charities understand that; but let us not forget that, as we have heard, a quarter of civil society organisations rely on government for most of their funding, and that it is a drastic change to go from encouraging voluntary organisations to become service deliverers—encouragement which has been given by successive Governments—to finding that the funding is no longer there. As we have heard today, who is it who suffers when that funding is no longer there? It is, of course, the most vulnerable in our society.

Nor should we be tempted into thinking that more government necessarily means less civil society and that less government means more civil society, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, reminded us. It has been shown in inner cities in Russia and the United States that when the state retreats, the vacuum may be filled by crime and gangs, as well as by civil society organisations. Many of the nations with the most active civil societies still have very active and involved governments. We must be wary, too—with the greatest respect to the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin—of thinking that philanthropy will ride to the rescue. It is by no means certain that our society is yet at a stage where philanthropy can fill the gaps, as seems to be expected by some in government. Even the best community organisers and the most enterprising social entrepreneurs need support.

The Government seem to have a suspicion of the infrastructure that exists to support the charitable sector, and they are right to point out that that infrastructure may need reform and rationalisation—far be it from me to argue that we should not expect existing mechanisms to change and develop. As a veteran of two mergers I am an active advocate of mergers and collaborative working—and we have seen some very effective ones, such as the recent one between the NCVO and Volunteering England. However, we must not throw babies out with bathwater. Many of these infrastructure bodies are delivering through their local organisations exactly the kind of innovations—such as time banks, community pledge banks, social enterprises and civil action—that the Government and society need. Let us not forget that.

I turn to social investment. I was a member of the original Commission on Unclaimed Assets, which released the money in unclaimed bank accounts into the social investment sector, and am now a trustee of the Big Society Trust, which oversees Big Society Capital. There is no doubt that this field is developing. Social impact bonds are increasingly popular. They are designed to transfer the risk of social programmes from the public sector to the private sector. An interesting one was launched just yesterday. Developed by the Consortium of Voluntary Adoption Agencies and Baker Tilly, this social investment bond has raised £2 million from Bridges Ventures and Big Society Capital. The money is going into a fund called It’s All About Me, which is designed to invert the market so that a child seeks out adoptive parents, not the other way round. It is a very innovative and interesting approach. I recently saw another such social investment project in south Wales. It helps children who are normally very disruptive in class not to be excluded through intensive intervention. These are excellent initiatives and very welcome developments.

However, we must sound a note of caution. There is a long way to go before the concept is proved. Many would-be investors are having trouble finding investment-ready projects. I do not think that these can ever entirely replace the funding lost, about which we have heard so much today, although they certainly can be part of the funding mix. I would be glad to have the Minister’s view of what proportion of voluntary sector funding social investment will eventually provide.

I will say a final word about volunteering. The statistics about volunteering are always absolutely stunning. The proportion of people volunteering at least once a year has increased from 65% of the population a couple of years ago to 71% recently. The Olympic and Paralympic Games, as we know, inspired volunteering on an unprecedented scale—as is always quoted. However, we must remember that that particular type of volunteering was a pretty easy gig. It was fun, you got to see events, there was a nice uniform, a link with people who were volunteering alongside you and so on. However, it bore little relation to the kind of volunteering that goes on throughout civil society: bringing people back from suicidal intentions, driving people to hospital who are pretty difficult and often not grateful, sitting with people with dementia who are doubly incontinent so that their carers can have a break. I am sceptical about what the Olympics can teach us about volunteering, except for the fact that a lot of trouble was taken with recruitment and selection and fitting people into the right slots. There was a lot of emphasis on supporting those volunteers—investment was made in them. I hope that the Minister will reiterate that the Government continue to see that volunteering needs investment. Volunteering is very good value, but it is not cost-free. I think that that is also a pretty good description of civil society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can allay her concerns on this. I was very struck when I was briefed this morning on this by the sheer scale of the funds some organisations have used and targeted. It is that sort of development we are thinking about. I hope I have covered most, if not all, of the points made in the debate.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

Can the Minister answer my specific question about social investment and the Government’s view on what proportion of social investment will eventually find its way into the sector?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness rather than give her a half-informed answer now, if she will permit me. There are a number of social investment schemes under way but I do not have them entirely in order in my head at the moment.

We all share a commitment to a stronger civil society. I hope we all share a commitment to a stronger local civil society. I am very struck by the problems of large communities in some of our cities who feel themselves powerless but do not know what to do about it. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that is part of what the big society initiative is really concerned with. It will take a long time. For example, in Harehills and Gipton in Leeds the local Methodist, Catholic and Anglican churches used to do an awful lot but almost no one goes to church any longer. Creating alternative social networks and a sense of local empowerment and local confidence is a huge challenge for all of us and the state, society and others have to work together on it.

I hope we are all committed to this. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I recognise that this is a challenge that will face every Government in Britain for the next 20 years and more.

Charities

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will take steps to encourage giving to the United Kingdom charitable sector in the light of the recent report UK Giving 2012 that reported a drop in donations of 20 per cent in real terms.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my charitable interests as listed in the register.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the report does suggest a worrying drop in giving. However, this is yet to be confirmed as a trend, and there is some debate within the sector about whether this is what charities are experiencing on the ground. The Government remain committed to taking action to ensure that Britain continues to be a generous country, in giving both money and time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

The Minister is right that there is some dispute about the figures, but I wonder whether he is familiar with the latest report by the Charities Aid Foundation that one in six charities think that they will have to close over the next year and that half are already using their reserves because of a fall in donations, cuts in public spending and much increased demand for their services. How do the Government think that this will impact on their vision of the voluntary sector and charities being a vital part of the delivery of public services and, indeed, on the Prime Minister’s hopes for the big society?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I have also seen that report and looked at it in some detail. It is interesting, incidentally, that as of September this year there were 2,000 more charities registered than there had been three years before so the trend has not, so far, been downwards, but it is worrying. From my experience of the charities sector, and I have visited a large number of additional charities since I took over this post, I am shaken by some that I meet in Yorkshire that are almost entirely dependent on public funds. That seems unwise. I strongly approve of those that raise some of their money through their own activities. The social enterprise model is very much part of what charities should be doing. The Government are doing a whole range of things to encourage the new generation to give more of their time and money. The National Citizen Service is one of them.

The Big Society

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves. In my brief time, I want to make two points. First, the big society has not just been invented. While I understand the thrust of the argument that we must get as many new people to participate as possible, let us not forget that it is just as important to recognise and value those who have been participating in what we now call the big society for many years. I always think, for example, of the 6 million family carers who it seems to me are the absolute epitome of the big society, providing care willingly and with love to their relatives and friends, care which is valued at £87 billion a year—and I understand that figure is about to be reviewed and will come out massively more. Their contribution to the big society is immense and vital and we neglect support for them at our peril. It is good to see that the Law Society report today calls for more recognition of their rights.

We must also continue to recognise the contribution of volunteers. Again, I remind your Lordships that volunteering is a long established fact in the UK. It is worth in excess of £20 billion to the economy every year, has a huge breadth of activity and builds social capital, binding people together in a two-way relationship which benefits the individual and society. But we must beware of thinking of volunteers as cheap labour or that they are cost free. That is my second point. Spending cuts are having a considerable effect on volunteering, at both local and national level, because of not just the fact of the cuts themselves but also the speed at which the cuts are being made. The infrastructure organisations which support volunteers and their contribution to the big society are prepared to change their business models and do things differently, but they cannot do this overnight. Some transition money has been provided by the Government, but nothing like enough, and the danger is that once the support networks for volunteering have disappeared—and many of them are disappearing; we hear horror stories every day—how long will it take to re-establish them, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said? We have to think about the effects of cuts on a community transport scheme, for example. Older people cannot get out to the day centre or to their hospital appointments, which in itself is sad; but think of the longer-term effects on the health and mental well-being of those older people and their carers and the consequent higher costs which will be incurred down the line if we cut things now.

Big Society: Women’s Organisations

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Tuesday 8th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, this is a recurring concern. When we are having to make difficult funding decisions —I say again that this is because of the economic circumstances that this Government inherited from the last one—it is important that local authorities make those decisions in a way that preserves those much needed front-line services. I can also say that the transition fund, which was brought in specifically to support voluntary and charitable organisations in these difficult times, has already made grants, of which two are specifically to women’s groups: the Domestic Violence Integrated Response Project in Leicester, which received £103,000, and the Incest and Sexual Abuse Survivors network in Newark in Nottinghamshire, which received £26,800. I hope that noble Lords will see that the Government, even in these very difficult times, are prioritising the needs of women.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, the Minister will know that the transition fund that she has just mentioned was already oversubscribed almost before it was announced. Is there any possibility that the Cabinet Office will make more money available to women’s groups and others in the voluntary sector that do such important work on the themes that she has described?

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, we are in discussions at all times with local authorities to ask them to prioritise the areas that the noble Baroness has mentioned. However, she will also be aware that the big society bank, which among other things will be able to fund the projects to which she referred, will be on stream soon.

Social Policy

Baroness Pitkeathley Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

My Lords, I, too, thank the right reverend Prelate for giving the House the opportunity to debate this important issue, and the noble Lord, Lord Wei, for his fine speech. Perhaps I can take the tiniest bit of credit, as I may have been among the first to suggest to him that, with his background, this was the ideal forum for his maiden speech.

I begin by declaring an interest as chair of the advisory body for the Office for Civil Society, formerly the Office of the Third Sector, and as someone who has spent a large part of her life working in or closely with the community and voluntary sector. I therefore need no convincing of the importance of the incomparable contribution which the sector makes in shaping a good society or a good community. That contribution has never been more significant, because in the economic stringency of the times in which we live we all face the need for effective responses on all fronts: strong partnerships, integration and a society where relationships are underpinned with a strong commitment to a shared set of values. Those values help us all to understand what shapes a good society.

The importance of the community sector at both national and local level is not, of course, anything new, but the notion of real partnership between the sector and the state has not always been accepted. In fact, I think there have been times when only lip service has been paid to it. Partnership perhaps used to mean the state deciding what the community sector should do and the sector accepting the terms because that was the only way to achieve funding. Over the past 10 years or so, however, the partnership has become much more real and strategic. The sector has grown in scale and impact. There are more charities than ever before. Overall income has increased. More people are volunteering, and more people are setting up social enterprises. The sector is playing a greater role in supporting communities, tackling inequalities, creating opportunities and enterprise, and designing and supplying public services.

The previous Government placed heavy emphasis on supporting the sector. Examples include: the Compact as a framework for partnership working; a new Charities Act; investing in the capacity of the sector, including its infrastructure; introducing new forms of organisation; and many different funding streams. The creation of the special office within the Cabinet Office was itself part of making those relationships and partnerships real and effective, and I pay tribute to the skill and commitment of those who work there. I very much hope and believe that the coalition Government will remain supportive.

Of course, the sector cannot be immune to the economic challenges and must look for new ways of working to make the most effective use of short resources, and I am confident that the sector will do this. The sector is large, fluid and diverse and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, reminded us, we should never forget that three-quarters of voluntary sector organisations receive no funding from statutory sources. However, for those that do, it is important in the new financial climate that we remember their unique contribution and value organisations for that contribution, not for any notion that somehow this sector can provide services cheaper or even, I have sometimes heard it said, at no cost by the use of volunteers. Everyone who has real knowledge of the sector knows that volunteering does not happen without support and that organisation is vital. Let no one be under any illusion about that. It is wonderfully good value, but it is not cost-free, as many noble Lords have acknowledged.

When we think about partnerships across civil society, let us always remember the special contribution that the sector makes. In my view, two things should be singled out. The first is its ability to be innovative, spontaneous and entrepreneurial when addressing social problems. Because it does this, it often heads those problems off at the pass. As an example, I give the work of Citizens Advice. It works all the time: helping people with financial budgeting to prevent debt, or to manage the debt if necessary; negotiating where house repossession is imminent; and working with bailiffs to prevent a family being thrown out of its home. That is all free to the client. It is needless to say that these measures save the Government paying out significant amounts of money and save society huge amounts of distress, but this kind of preventive work is difficult to quantify and justify, and I hope the Minister will give us some reassurance about the priority that the coalition Government put on this preventive work.

The second thing that is unique to the community sector is its ability to engage with service users and the wider community. Only the voluntary sector has that unique perspective. It is closely in touch with disadvantaged people and communities and understands their needs. It is this which enables it to be an effective partner in the delivery of services and in developing social policy. This is the reason why partnerships are vital and why the voice of civil society, through its organisations, needs to be strong as such policies are developed. It is also the reason why we should always remember how important it is to ensure that the voices of users, patients, carers and families, especially those who are disadvantaged, are central in policy-making and why the campaigning side of the work of third sector organisations—the advocacy of which my noble friend Lord Judd reminded us—is so important. It is in this way that we ensure that policies are relevant, targeted and useful to the users, not to those who develop the policies. It is why, in my view, we must be extremely circumspect before we cut funding for this side of civil society organisations’ work, however tempting it might be to see the enabling, campaigning and advocacy work as somehow superfluous in difficult times. I seek the Minister’s reassurance on that point also.

This is National Carers Week, and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, for mentioning carers. Before I sit down I want to focus on the contribution of carers and their organisations. There is no better example of the big society, and no clearer example of how society is a very long way from being a broken society, than the contribution of carers. In some areas of social policy, taking note of the needs of carers is absolutely vital. It is vital that the voice of that part of civil society—the 6 million carers who contribute £87 billion to the economy every year with the care they provide—is heard and acknowledged in the areas of pensions, long-term care and the capacity of carers to continue to combine caring with paid employment. If we do not consider carers as central to the development of those particular policies, we shall never be able to engage them in the partnerships which this debate is highlighting and which are so vital to so many parts of social policy.