Community and Voluntary Sector

Lord Black of Brentwood Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Black of Brentwood (Con)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness on leading this debate and my noble friend on her excellent maiden speech. I am a trustee of a number of charities that are listed in the register and declare an interest accordingly.

I want to talk about a specific set of charities that rely on an army of incredible volunteers in communities across the country to look after one of the most vulnerable groups in our society: our pets and animals. Mine is one of the 57% of UK households that own a pet. Over a quarter of a century of owning cats, I have seen up close the work of animal welfare charities, which is not just about caring for animals that have been abandoned or cruelly treated—the tragic face of so much work in this sector—but about education for young people, giving support to bereaved pet owners, and many other areas that are crucial to a caring society.

Every day, the UK’s largest animal welfare charities—Cats Protection, Dogs Trust, RSPCA, Blue Cross, Battersea and PDSA—do astonishing work on limited resources that is made possible by the work of around 29,000 volunteers, contributing an average of 2.5 million hours of work each year. Cats Protection values its 9,000 volunteers’ priceless gift of time at around £37 million each year, while volunteer cat and dog fosterers at Battersea each gave an average of 200 hours of volunteering last year. PDSA has volunteer vets and nurses within its veterinary hospitals, providing essential care. As Cats Protection says to its volunteer army, and it is the same across the sector, “We wouldn’t be here without you”.

What these charities and their remarkable volunteers—increasingly, people under the age of 35 and many who identify as disabled—achieve in incredible circumstances is remarkable. Volunteers are there for not just animals but their owners. Anyone who has ever loved a pet knows full well the terrible pain of parting. Blue Cross is there to help by running a wonderful bereavement service, with volunteers dealing with over 20,000 calls, webchats and emails each year from those in distress.

It is not just the big charities that gain so much from volunteers: smaller ones rely on volunteers even more. Take the Suffolk Owl Sanctuary, where my husband and I help sponsor Titch, a tawny owl. Its volunteers get involved in aviary cleaning, feeding rounds for the birds and painting, decorating and gardening—all essential to the smooth running of a really small charity.

Equally vital is the role that volunteers play in raising funds. They give money themselves, organise events and encourage their friends and colleagues to do so as well, helping to ensure that 15 million people each year donate to animal charities.

There is another crucial role that volunteers for all these charities play as vocal ambassadors for animals, providing an independent voice for those who have none, ensuring that animals always remain high on the political agenda here in Westminster and in local authorities, and ensuring that we are held to account for delivering for those in need of care.

There are many things we can do to assist this army of volunteers, as the noble Baroness said, not least by developing a civil society engagement strategy and charter, as set out by the NCVO, to reduce barriers to volunteering. Training passports would help too, allowing volunteers to develop transferable skills, such as in health and safety or safeguarding, across different charities.

This debate has shown of how much we have to be proud as a country. I take this opportunity to applaud the tireless, selfless and often unsung work that so many volunteers undertake for our pets and animals, and to thank them for their devotion and energy. They are a jewel in the crown of our civic life; without them, our society, two-legged and four-legged, would be so much the poorer.