The Big Society

Baroness Warsi Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for contributing to this debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for initiating the debate and providing an opportunity for an interesting, wide-ranging and at times challenging discussion.

The big society is about a volunteering, social action, philanthropic approach to life, but it is also about the opening up of public services to local control and the devolution of power from Whitehall to local communities. Listening to the contributions today, I have found that it is clear that the principles and ideas behind the big society have been alive and kicking in the House for many years. Almost everyone in this Chamber has been involved in some form of charitable and voluntary work, and in many cases noble Lords have been driving the social action debate.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, makes an important point, and I acknowledge the work already being done. My noble friend Lord Wei stressed earlier that the big society should go beyond party lines, and I support that. I welcome the comments made by my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno in support of that. I hope that he forgives me for not engaging with him again on all the debates around AV.

I visited an excellent example of the big society in action in east London: the Bromley by Bow Centre, created by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, back in 1984. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich is right to highlight the work of street pastors, whom I have had the privilege of hearing first-hand in three separate cities.

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, paid tribute to the volunteers at the League of Friends at Deeside Community Hospital, to Flintshire Neighbourhood Watch, to Flintshire Alzheimer’s Society and to the Flintshire arthritis care group. He paid tribute to those volunteers, and I pay tribute to him as president of all those organisations and a trustee of many others.

Today many noble Lords have raised the issue of funding. My noble friend Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon is right to say that financial support must be alongside empowerment. As I have said before in this House, it is undoubtedly unfortunate that we have to deliver the big society against the backdrop of the financial circumstances that we find ourselves in.

I do not treat the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, as a cheap political point. I accept what she says, but I hope she accepts that my comment that the coalition Government inherited the worst peacetime deficit ever is also not a political statement but a fact.

I assure noble Lords that the big society is not a cover for cuts. Rather, it is a positive agenda, developed long before the financial crisis. It was, as David Cameron said in his Hugo Young lecture in 2009, an answer to why the growth of public spending had failed to bring about the kind of social progress that we all wanted to see. I do not accept the idea that the big society depends only on more and more public spending. It is simply a way of making things better where state intervention and increased public spending have failed.

The big society can be realised only when people, organisations and community groups get involved. Without participation, there is no big society. It is therefore essential that the Government work to both encourage and enable participation. We are doing this by encouraging social action, providing the right funds to support community work, making it easier to volunteer and shifting powers from Whitehall to local people. I shall take each of those in turn.

First, we are encouraging people to take part in social action by putting in place a number of key programmes. Some 11,000 16 and 17 year-old school leavers will participate this summer in the national citizen service. I am sure that my noble friend Lady Benjamin will welcome that. They will gain a unique experience, learning about community action in a supportive and engaging environment. Some 5,000 community organisers will also catalyse and support community action in local neighbourhoods.

My noble friend Lord Greaves has asked a number of questions. I hope that I can answer some of them. He asked about remuneration for community organisers. The 500 senior organisers that he referred to will receive a bursary of £20,000 for the first year. He raised a number of other questions regarding terms of reference, how they will build on work done before and what relationship they will have with councillors. I hope that he will bear with me; I will try to answer some of those questions in correspondence to him.

The Giving Green Paper that was published in December, which has been referred to again in this debate, sought feedback on new and innovative ideas to further encourage social action. It resulted in some highly positive feedback. For example, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, the national charity that provides a voice for over 160,000 small charities and community groups, said:

“We find much to commend in the Green Paper, in particular in its emphasis on creating an environment for social action, giving and volunteering. We recognise that the government’s role in social action is limited, but believe that there is a vitally significant role for government in helping to create this environment”.

This feedback is supporting the development of a White Paper that will provide a framework for work to develop social action.

Secondly, the Government are introducing new funds to encourage participation. The community first fund will encourage more social action in neighbourhoods with significant deprivation and low social capital. The fund will include a £30 million neighbourhood match fund and a £50 million endowment match challenge to create sustainable sources of funding for neighbourhood projects. The big society bank will help to grow a market in social investment, bringing new funding into the sector and help people access capital to fund their projects. The noble Lord, Lord Haskel, is right to say that the ingenuity of the City should also be harnessed, and I am optimistic that the big society bank could be a vehicle to do just that.

Thirdly, the Government are encouraging people to take part in their local communities by making it easier to volunteer, and I welcome the perceptive points made by my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. My noble friend Lord Hodgson has been leading a red tape task force, looking at how to remove barriers to those wishing to become actively involved in their communities. He will publish his report next week.

We have also reviewed the criminal records, vetting and barring regimes. The Protection of Freedoms Bill proposes changes that will reduce unnecessary bureaucratic burden for organisations working with volunteers. My noble friend Lady Benjamin raises an important issue on protection. I will make sure that I write to her with more details on the specific points that have been raised.

In preparation for the royal wedding, the Government reduced bureaucracy to enable people across Britain to celebrate together. It was a moment when the nation came together. We scrapped central guidance on road closures and replaced the complicated bureaucracy of forms and risk assessments with a simple checklist. We estimate that well over 5,000 street parties took place around the UK that weekend, including the one that I attended, which the Prime Minister hosted in Downing Street.

The Government are leading by example and encouraging civil servants to volunteer more. We are turning the Civil Service into the civic service by giving special leave for volunteering. One civil servant who took up this opportunity at a local cemetery said, “These days are all about giving back to the community. I am over the moon to chip in where I am needed”.

It is also essential that inspirational examples of good practice are highlighted. My noble friend Lord Younger made the very important point that we should encourage copycat behavioural change. I refer to one statistic that was given in evidence at one of the big society seminars by J Mohan, who said that a civic core exists in Britain, which is currently responsible for the majority of giving and volunteering. Thirty-one per cent of the adult population provides 90 per cent of volunteer hours, 80 per cent of charitable giving and 70 per cent of civic participation. We must increase that percentage from 31 per cent.

We have also created the big society awards. Later this week I will attend a reception hosted by the Prime Minister in Downing Street to celebrate the winners, and to encourage and highlight those who are doing good work. We also continue to support the Queen’s Award for Voluntary Service. It is essential that we empower communities so that those inspired to do more have the ability to make a real difference. New powers contained in the Localism Bill will give local communities the tools to grow the big society. These include the introduction of powers to allow communities to take over the running of local facilities and give them the right to bid to take over local state-run services.

In conclusion, I say that this debate was just not long enough. So much more could have been added by all noble Lords around the House. I hope I have highlighted in response some of the key measures that the Government are putting in place to encourage people to participate in the big society. Through this we can create a country in which people are able to take an active part in their communities, play their part in solving the social issues that their communities face and improve the quality of life for all. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, being, like me, from Yorkshire, will accept this phrase; in Yorkshire we define it simply as doing your bit or mucking in. I thank all noble Lords again for their contributions to this extremely important debate, and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for initiating it this evening.