Social Policy

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, this debate is about partnerships. What does the word “partner” conjure up in your Lordships’ minds—a business partner, a transient dancing partner or perhaps a serious domestic companion? My wife detests being called my partner, and “domestic companion” refers only to our cat or our dog.

The dictionary defines a partner as a “sharer”, someone of equal standing in a relationship—not a wholly owned subsidiary or a camp follower but someone on an equal footing, a point that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made at the beginning of the debate. When we speak on the Motion about partnerships between government and civil society, we must avoid any latent assumption that the Government are inevitably the senior partner or the managing director, the holding company that at the end of the day calls the shots. Perhaps the Motion would have been better worded the other way around: to call attention to the role of partnerships between civil society and government. Which is the more primary reality, society or government? Surely this society.

The various agencies of civil society should stand alongside the agencies of government, whether local or national—or big or small, for that matter. Partnerships on education illustrate the point. The churches, especially the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, have a major stake in our education system. The Church of England alone sponsors nearly 5,000 schools, and our schools and boards of education have many fine people working for them. We have great expertise. Head teachers, teachers and education officers welcome the wider partnership with government, but they sometimes feel that they are not taken as seriously as they deserve to be and that local education authorities regard themselves as the senior partners. Perhaps the same feelings surround academies. I chair the governing body of a newly formed academy, and for all the theoretical freedoms of the academy it can feel like quite a regulated environment, not so much by local government as by central government.

There is a prevailing sense in some areas of the media, particularly encouraged by vociferous secularists, that church schools are interlopers in the state system. Actually, considered as a matter of history, the state interloped on the original church provision. The churches should not feel the need to be defensive or compelled to explain and justify where we fit into the partnership that we have with the state in the provision of education. Our record speaks for itself, as generations of parents have acknowledged. I am quite sure that other faith communities will come to enrich the provision of education in our country, and they are already doing so. This is the case with the many newly founded academies that have sponsors with no religious foundation at all.

The growth in the size and power of government in recent decades is a complex phenomenon, as we have learnt already in the debate, with many factors and causes behind it. In the circumstances of modern western society, it is inevitable that government, central and local, will have an important and vital role, but Governments always need to know their limits and avoid the slide into an ever greater role in the lives of citizens. A key way would be through a commitment to work through partners and civil society not just functionally in delivering services but in the self-understanding of what makes for a mature and healthy society, as many speakers have emphasised. We can easily oscillate between the corporate power of the state and the rights and freedoms of the individual, flowing a little this way and that way between the two, but both depend on a multitude of intermediary bodies including and especially the family.

Politics is fundamentally about power, as events surrounding the recent election and the emergence of the coalition Government so clearly remind us. Most of the headlines in recent years have been about either power or wealth. The management of both are central to society and important, but our vision of society is deeply impoverished if we focus too much or too narrowly on the dialectic of power and wealth. Civilised society is about much more—about the virtues of altruism, love, mercy, beauty, truth and justice, which are not subsets of power and wealth. It is those virtues that lead to a civilised society, which government and private businesses will not easily sustain without the deep partnerships with the agencies and institutions of wider society.

Much is already happening in society but it does not make the news. It is not bad news; it just does not make the headlines. I turn for a moment to the role of faith communities in promoting the common good. A number of surveys have been conducted in recent years in various parts of the country. The north-west of England, where I come from, has taken a particular leading role. Ten years or so ago, the various denominations in the north-west got together and funded a full-time churches officer for the north-west specifically to promote the interaction of the churches with the various agencies of government. The post has been held by a very able Roman Catholic priest, Monsignor John Devine, and the Northwest Regional Development Agency recognised the potential of this appointment by providing office space while we provided all the salary costs.

For 10 years or more, he has tirelessly promoted partnership working between the churches and other faith communities in government at all levels with striking results. Several surveys have been conducted in the north-west, and they have revealed a wide range of activities sponsored by and centred on the various faith communities. The NWDA has supported that research. Steve Broomhead, the distinguished chief executive of the NWDA, said in the latest report published last autumn, Faith in England's Northwest:

“One key finding in our research has been the strength of faith communities, their buildings and volunteers, in areas of highest social need”.

That is a key finding. It is in the areas of highest social need, where the agencies of government find it hardest to deliver the services that are needed, that the faith communities are there on the ground and most able to work alongside those in need. It is non-governmental agencies, charities, that are best able to meet these needs.

I illustrate this briefly by reference to two or three examples where I have some personal involvement. These examples are not exclusively faith-based. Indeed, it is interesting that partnership working is often between faith communities and other agencies on the ground with a common interest, rather than others who share the perspective of the faith concerned. Take a major social priority to which several noble Lords have referred, including the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis: the rise in the prison population, with persistent reoffending as a major cause. The noble Lord, Lord Low, also touched on this in his speech. It is becoming clear that programmes of restorative justice have a key role to play in reducing reoffending and, beyond that, in re-establishing people in society.

In my diocese there is a young offender institution, Thorn Cross, where an excellent chaplain runs a Sycamore Tree Project. This was originally developed by the charity Prison Fellowship and it is the leading example of a restorative justice programme in this country. It takes the parable of Jesus and Zacchaeus, the crooked tax collector, as a model for raising victim awareness and helping prisoners to understand the dynamics of criminality and crime. Last year the course ran in no fewer than 36 prisons and involved nearly 2,000 prisoners. More than 90 per cent completed the course and were credited with level 1 credits in the Open College Network. Research that is being carried out at the University of Sheffield is beginning to show benefits in reduced reoffending. It will be interesting to see what the longer-term statistics and evidence show in this area. I could say more about the splendid work that is being done, but the key point is that a restorative justice programme is more likely to be effective if it is not run by the Government or the prison authorities but delivered by agencies of wider civil society. It makes it much more credible for the prisoners involved. Already, the funding for this sort of programme is a soft target when the prison budget is frozen. That point applies across many of these issues.

I provide another example, again from the margins of society where social need is greatest—work with homeless people. When I first became Bishop of Chester, each day two or three homeless people, or groups of people, would call at my house asking for a mug of tea and a sandwich. Today, there are one or two a month, if that. I rather miss the conversations that I used to have with these interesting people who regularly turned up at my door. The change has been made by the founding and development of a splendid charity, Chester Aid to the Homeless, which provides a range of services and support to homeless people. The charity has had some support from local government but has drawn most of its support from the wider community, including local churches. I declare an interest: my wife is now a director of Chester Aid to the Homeless. She took part last year in a sponsored sleep-out overnight in the depths of winter. I had to stay at home to attend to important duties with our domestic companions. Again, this excellent work is done most effectively—and more cost-effectively, too—by a charity that operates at arm’s length from the agencies of government but in partnership with them.

I could give many other examples, both sacred and secular, of the value—in every sense—of partnerships between wider society and government, especially in our support for those on the margins of society. In the current cost-cutting climate, these activities are soft targets. I hope that the Minister will reflect on this and comment on the Government’s approach to try to prevent local authorities simply diminishing the grants that are given and that multiply their value many times over due to the partnership relationships in which they stand. The wisest course would be to promote many of these partnerships, which are key to the development of the common good in our society.