Charitable Sector

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 5th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, on arranging this early debate on such an important issue. From the speeches we have already heard it is clear that this is a subject where your Lordships have an even greater wealth of personal experience than usual on which to draw. My congratulations too on the excellent seven maidens we have heard. They have been recommended for their number to the Guinness book of records. I would merely add that their contents deserve a mention too.

Two things about this appalling economic situation we all face give me some degree of comfort. First, there seems to be a growing acceptance at last that we need a different and more successful value-for-money approach in dealing with our social problems, and not least in penal policy. The second, as many noble Lords have already stressed, is that the practice and organisation of that approach should be as locally based as possible.

Future plans will need to fit within the Government’s big society, which is still a somewhat puzzling concept. I have to agree here with the noble Baroness, Lady Wall of New Barnet, who has sadly just left her place. She chose a quote from the excellent briefing from the Library, which I chose myself but will not repeat. But I would stress the NCVO’s words,

“for mutual support, to pursue shared interests, to further a cause they care about or simply for fun and friendship”.

I stress that because it is important that the voluntary work gives people pleasure and a feeling of fulfilment.

It is as well to remember that many of the responsibilities that the Government accept today were started in Victorian times as charitable efforts. Today, the initiative is still as likely to come from the voluntary sector, while requiring some significant help from the Government—probably local more than central. It is in those circumstances that the NCVO’s Sir Stuart Etherington—I declare an interest as a member of its advisory body—is clearly concerned about the difficulty of achieving that in the face of these funding cuts. As many noble Lords have stressed, cuts are already having a serious effect, particularly on the most vulnerable and deprived people who receive the services of that sector. How then would it be best to manage the distribution of such public sector and other funding that may be available? That will be crucial.

It is the value-for-money issue and the need particularly at this time to prioritise the actions that can produce the best long-term results that I want to urge on Her Majesty's Government. There is a need to cut costly bureaucracy drastically and to reduce overregulation of risk taking, which should be done ruthlessly. Who would be against it? But far greater long-term savings can be achieved if more emphasis is placed by civil society on, for example, early support for those children living in deprived or chaotic families to ensure that they do not end up as yet another product of Keith Joseph’s 37 year-old cycle of deprivation in the criminal justice system. The Prison Reform Trust’s recent publication, Punishing Disadvantage, illustrates graphically the widespread disadvantages and unstable lives of so many of those imprisoned for the first time.

The Justice Secretary, the right honourable Kenneth Clarke, is, I hope, moving in the right direction for future offenders with plans for far fewer offenders to be remanded or imprisoned, especially for offences carrying sentences of six months or less. The emphasis on community sentences, with work to be completed by offenders of considerable benefit to the community, is an obvious big society challenge. Of course, if prison has not been preventable, another value-for-money priority will be relevant education and apprenticeship training in prison and vital intensive resettlement support post prison. The Secretary of State’s recent announcement of a 40-hour prisoner working week, with companies setting up their workshops inside prisons, is certainly an interesting proposition. It reflects an idea from Demos’s Civic Streets research, which recommended a higher “doer” as well as a “giver” profile for the private sector.

Another issue, and one particularly relevant to community action in order to keep youngsters out of prison, is the availability and circulation of information about what current schemes are working successfully. Each community needs to decide what will work best for it, but there are now many examples of alternative action which remain relatively unknown. What is needed is sensible compiling and, above all, some form of national visibility. One example among many strikes me as very positive. As we have just heard, the Government are going to set up a national citizens service that will run volunteer training camps for 16 year-olds. But why start as late as that? Why not get the volunteering instinct embedded much earlier?

Summer Camps, an inspiration started years ago by Chris Green and chaired by my noble friend Lady Warnock, run several camps in the summer holidays for a mix of youngsters from eight years old, all from different schools and backgrounds. They are an excellent example of this kind of approach. With my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, I visited one this year at Hatherop Castle that was run by my noble friend Lady Warnock’s own daughter, a teacher who has been involved for all the years that the camps have existed. However, most of the leaders of the sub-groups had also themselves been enrolled children and were quite brilliant at handling and inspiring the very full range of activities we observed. To cap it all, my noble friend’s own daughter’s daughter, herself now aged eight, was able for the first time to be a full camp member and quite obviously loved every moment.

The scheme is a brilliant advert for big society-type action, and reminds me of another volunteering example. I refer to the Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod, a huge and impressive yearly week-long event that has been going since 1947, and which for the past five years has been chaired superbly by Terry Waite. It is run by no more than seven paid staff but is supported by no fewer than 600 volunteers, many of whom return year after year, with the majority taking their annual summer holiday to do so. Surely, that is the big society in action.