Community and Voluntary Sector

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure, as always, to follow my very good friend—my noble friend Lord Dubs—and to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on her wonderful introduction to an important debate. I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Porter, for a very impressive and effective maiden speech; we look forward to hearing far more of her speeches in the years ahead.

A few weeks ago, I spoke in this Chamber in the debate on social care and referred to the work of my own local authority in Wales, Torfaen County Borough Council, on the importance of community and voluntary groups in trying to solve the social care issue. That also applies to other issues and problems as well. Today we celebrate the community groups, voluntary groups, churches, Rotary International, charities, pensioner groups and youth groups, all of which play an enormous part in our society, locally and nationally.

Very often, they are unco-ordinated. Local voluntary groups can come together—of course they can—but I will bring to the Minister’s attention the work of my own local authority, which employs what it calls “community connectors”. These are individuals who go into various parts of the local authority, work with the community groups, identify issues such as isolation and then report back to the local authority.

The reason I wanted to say that to the Minister is because there is a tendency to ignore what happens across the River Wye in Wales—or, for that matter, in Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. For the five years when I was Welsh Secretary, it was often a battle against the establishment in Whitehall to learn best practice from the devolved Administrations. It was referred to as “devolve and forget”. In fact, we should do the opposite: devolve and work together.

The NCVO has pleaded that it should be allowed to have a more structured engagement with the United Kingdom Government and to make its comments on the civil society covenant framework, which the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, referred to. It seems to me that we can learn from each other in a very special way. Very often, we criticise each other in the different nations, countries and regions of our United Kingdom, but the Government themselves have decided that there should be a Council of the Nations and Regions. There is already a British-Irish Council and a British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, which bring together Governments and Parliaments from across these islands—and we learn from each other. There is still a reluctance in government here in London for that to happen. If one thing can go from this debate to my noble friends and colleagues in government it is: connect, connect, connect with what goes on elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Devolution does not mean separation; it means working together as much as anything else.