Community and Voluntary Sector

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, along with others, I thank my noble friend Lady Morgan of Drefelin for introducing this debate. I have long held a very fond memory of the voluntary sector and the role of volunteers. Many years ago, I was lucky enough to work in the voluntary sector in the London Borough of Southwark. At that time, the Home Office had its community development programme and Southwark was one of the boroughs fortunate enough to be funded in this way. The CDP, as it was called, was established in an area of the borough that was up for regeneration. It was generally seen as pretty deprived. The work we did there was in reaching out to the local community and making ourselves known, via mother and toddler groups and the local youth centre—back in the days when we had youth clubs, of course—or through the churches and any organisations within that part of the borough where people met and got to know each other.

The whole difference between the voluntary sector providing services and services provided by what we might call the more formal authorities, such as the local authority or the Government, is that it is in a position to go into areas where local people meet and go about their business. We could set up our own little schemes by making ourselves known and giving confidence to those people who have questions to ask or are in need of some sort of service and advice. In that part of Southwark, there were a lot of what used to be described as problem families—they gave lots of problems to lots of people in the area, that was for sure. Those people really did not know how to organise themselves. The pity of it was that many children were therefore not properly brought up, advised or guided. We had community workers who worked with those young people, getting them back into school and a bit more on the straight and narrow.

We then applied for funding to establish a law centre, and I was fortunate enough to find work there. We had four qualified lawyers and two of us who did welfare rights advice and support. Again, we went out into the community, meeting tenants’ organisations and residents’ groups et cetera, to make sure that our services were known to everyone.

Back in 2010 David Cameron, now of course the noble Lord, Lord Cameron, launched what he called the big society. At the time—I have never been convinced otherwise since—I drew the conclusion that he had absolutely no idea what the big society was supposed to do and how it would be able to do it, because there was no recognition of the need for some kind of structure or support. There needed to be some kind of link to local government, to the Government themselves and to the community in general. I think it was somehow supposed to come out of thin air.

In much later times, I have been grateful for support from the voluntary sector in a different way. I am advised, helped and guided by a volunteer from Sensory Services by Sight for Surrey, an organisation that works across the county of Surrey, where I live. Its volunteers come and enable people like me who are now registered as partially sighted to do all kinds of things that, on our own, we would not be able to do. That is a very different kind of volunteering but it is just as good, as important and as meaningful as the voluntary sector where those being paid operate. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Morgan again because this is a very important debate.