Civil Society

Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gibson of Market Rasen]

My Lords, I, too, wish to thank my noble friend for instigating this debate. Today I want to concentrate most of my speech on voluntary organisations so it follows on quite well from the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Like my noble friend Lady Prosser, before I came into your Lordships’ House, I was a national official of a trade union. In my case it was the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, one of the forerunners of Unite. Like my noble friend Lady Prosser also, at one time I had responsibility for our members who worked in the voluntary sector, both full and part-time, in organisations and charities such as the NSPCC, the RSPCA and the National Children’s Bureau. I stress that these were and are workers, not volunteers, whose pay, pensions and working conditions are paramount to them. I always marvelled at our members’ dedication and commitment to those with and for whom they worked. These were and still are people on whom society relies every day to care for those least able to help themselves, such as children and adults, and especially the elderly and those with disabilities, or to take care of animals others no longer wanted or wanted to care for.

Workers in voluntary organisations often carry out the jobs that others do not want to do. I worked as a national union official in the 1980s and 1990s. Over the years views about the role of voluntary organisations have changed quite significantly, and Governments’ attitudes towards them are certainly very different today. Successive Governments have veered towards the voluntary sector and have wanted to work with it in developing political agendas—for example, in the health service, the education system and even in the criminal justice system.

More involvement with government and business has inevitably meant that the voluntary sector role has expanded and developed. In principle, for Government, business and the voluntary sector to work together sounds fine. As the NCVO has said:

“The voluntary and community sector … is a vital and vibrant part of civil society”.

As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said earlier, civil society is where people come together to make a positive difference to their lives and the lives of others for mutual support, to pursue shared interests, to further a cause they care about, or simply for fun and friendship. It is where “me” becomes “we”.

This is both encouraging and to be encouraged. However, it must be remembered that if the new formations in society are to work, voluntary organisations must be funded well enough for them to operate properly, to respond to the new challenges facing them and to ensure that their independence is not compromised. Unfortunately, in many cases this is not happening. Stephen Bubb, of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, recently expressed his worries about the possible impact of public spending cuts on this sector.

There are reasons for concern. I was recently contacted, as I am sure other noble Lords were, by the Charities Aid Foundation, a charity that works to improve the charitable giving environment to ensure that donations are used as efficiently as possible. Over the past year it has investigated the charitable sector and found some interesting but daunting facts. Donations to charities fell by 20% in real terms in 2011-12, the public having given £1.7 billion less than in the previous year. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, 17% of charities believe that they may face closure in the next 12 months, 26% of charities have already cut frontline services and 25% said that they had already made staff cuts. These are just a few of those findings. The effect on the viability of the organisations concerned is obvious.

Of course, these were national statistics, but the effects of cuts on local people and services are also important and are vital to civic society. The best way of finding out about these is to read local papers. I have recently seen two good examples. In my own area, Essex County Council is closing a centre in a little town near Colchester because it wants to sell the property. It has given a month’s notice to the organisations that use the centre, which include a local school of dancing and a youth centre. Needless to say, the local people affected are very worried. In Lincolnshire, where I was born and brought up, the county council wants to cut staffed libraries from 40 to 15, and to cut their opening hours. The small market towns and the villages surrounding them will suffer most if this happens.

In the Charities Aid Foundation paper there are some proposals for government and employers to consider to encourage charitable giving which have proved successful. These include reminding people that money can be left to charity in wills and encouraging employees to give to charity by including in a company appeal a photograph of an employee who already gives to charity. It also suggests encouraging effective ways of giving such as payroll giving, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, encouraging businesses to maintain or increase their support for charities and getting the Government to work with charities to modernise and improve fundraising. Do the Government have any plans to encourage employers to guide their employees towards charitable donations and will the Government be taking positive steps to assist charities, such as modernising and promoting payroll giving?

Finally, I turn to another phenomenon brought about by the economic circumstances in which we find ourselves. Last week somebody asked me about food banks and I explained that when those of us who can afford to give to food banks do our weekly shopping, we buy an extra item to place in the food bank boxes, which can now be found in many supermarkets and local shops. That item could be a tin of soup, a packet of biscuits or a box of breakfast cereal—anything that would be useful to a family struggling with its finances. A local food bank then collects the boxes from the shops and families go to the food bank as and when they need to. The food banks are usually established in premises that are convenient to local people, such as a shop that might have closed down on the high street. The person to whom I gave that explanation thought it was an excellent idea as, of course, it appears to be. However, it is a sign of how times have changed and how we as a society assist those who would once have probably been helped by charitable organisations or by the Government. I wonder what the Minister feels about food banks and what they signify for the civil society in which we live.