Community and Voluntary Sector

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con)]

On behalf of the whole House, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Porter on her excellent maiden speech. It is a privilege to speak after her, and we can all see just how much she will contribute to this House.

We have known one another for many years. I first met my noble friend when she was working for the Maxim Institute in New Zealand, which is a think tank that works to promote the dignity of every person by standing for freedom, justice, compassion and hope. It therefore came as no surprise to me that, with this background, she pursued her commitment to human dignity, freedom and justice and made her way to the UK, expressing those principles in both the business world and the political world as a special adviser. It came as even less of a surprise to hear that she had rightly been elevated to this place, and that at the first opportunity she chooses to contribute to a debate on the importance of the community and voluntary sector. We are delighted that she is here.

It is easy in today’s individualistic world to conclude that there are two entities that make up our society: the individual and the Government. The noise in the public square in the advent of social media makes individuals feel atomised and makes the state feel powerful, but there is supposed to be a space between the individual and the Government, and that space is called family, civil society, community and the voluntary sector; together they bring life and vitality to our nation. It is the place where you can give and where you can receive. It is a place of reciprocity and mutuality.

I can remember a young girl in the care system saying, “I just want someone to take me to the dentist who wants to take me to the dentist and not because they are paid to do so”. It was a cry for family. It was a cry for community. In our atomised society, the danger for the voluntary sector is that in its pursuit of funding and professionalism, it forgets its unique contribution to the space between government and the individual—that is its humanity. There are many reasons for this. It is the voluntary sector that can break the norms of a maintenance culture and bring healing and transformation. What is it that transforms the human heart and restores the soul? Is that not sacrificial love? Person after person around this nation is serving their neighbour sacrificially in a volunteering capacity.

For 17 years, I used to run a community project for homeless people. We were able to say to them that if they came across someone who was hungry, they should feel free to give them something to eat; that if they came across someone who needed a coat, they should feel free to give them theirs. What professional organisation is still free in the 21st century to say these things to people? The act of sacrificial love coming from a volunteer was healing and dignifying for both the individual giving the care and the individual receiving the care. It was human.

The voluntary sector is free to intervene early, too; the voluntary sector is free to get ahead of social breakdown. For many years, many of us have spoken about the need for government programmes to be built around early intervention. It was the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, who co-chaired the CSJ’s work on Breakdown Britain 20 years ago, who said that it was better to build a fence at the top of a cliff than to drive an ambulance at the bottom. Even though there is nothing new about how obviously right this early intervention is, over the last 20 years, with Governments of all colours, who all believe that early intervention is the right approach, none of us has found a systematic way through the funding structures of the Treasury to change the orientation of government social programmes away from picking up the pieces towards early intervention on a systematic scale.

So far, it is only the voluntary sector that is genuinely free to do that. Take, for example, Safe Families, which is a great example of a voluntary sector programme that can save the Government literally millions of pounds by caring for children ahead of a family breakdown, so that the children do not need to go into care. Made up of over 5,000 volunteers from over 1,000 churches and community groups, with a staff of around 150 passionate, talented and dedicated people the UK, they care for children and families before they reach breaking point and prevent them from going into prison. We all know that, but can a Government—of any colour—get funding to reflect that? No. But that does not stop the determination of the voluntary sector or Safe Families. So let us not burden the sector; let it be deeply relational, let it take time with people, do not overprofessionalise it, and allow it to be free.