Public Services

Baroness Stedman-Scott Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, and congratulate him on securing this debate. I declare an interest as the chief executive of Tomorrow’s People and a trustee of New Philanthropy Capital.

The subject matter is important to our country, our communities and our Government. We need professional, effective and robust public services delivered by whoever can best do the job. Noble Lords will need no confirmation that I am completely committed to the voluntary sector and the role that it plays. That it has a role to play in the delivery of public services I have no doubt. However, there are real challenges for both government and the sector if this is to happen and if we are all to step up to the mark.

I hope that my contribution to this debate will be seen as challenging but helpful, ambitious but realistic. It is not a case simply of assuming that the sector can step up to the challenge; it will have to consider some significant issues. I have no desire to set the hares running, but while I know that the Work Programme is new and in its early stages, there are significant lessons that we can all learn from the process of becoming involved in it. That applies to the sector and to government. The sooner we learn those lessons for the benefit of the people we are all in business to serve, the better.

I will address my first remarks to the sector; I am talking to myself now, in the nicest possible way. There needs to be a maturity in measuring impact in a consistent way. This is crucial. It is not what we as a sector believe that we can do, it is what we know we can do, with evidence to back up what we know we can achieve. My second point concerns financial capacity and capability. The issue of working capital needs to be understood. The payment by results point made by the noble Lord, Lord Boateng, is critical. Nobody I have spoken to has a problem with being judged on their results, but it is no good going into these things believing you can achieve something if you cannot prove it. If the voluntary sector is going to come into public service in a serious way, we must face the issue of scaling up. Sometimes in scaling up, organisations lose the magic of what they can do. Sometimes in becoming too big, we lose something. We must not compromise mission for volume and vanity. Coco Chanel said: “Turnover is vanity, profit is reality and cash flow is sanity”. That applies also to the voluntary sector.

I turn now to the Government and say to the Minister that there needs to be maturity in the commissioning process. Progress has been made. This has been demonstrated by the DWP innovation fund. I am grateful to the Government for that, but some people have said to me: “If only the Government would commission what works rather than what can be traded at the lowest fiscal cost”. We may get value into that. I am the first to understand that we are in very difficult times and that cost is a major factor. However, sometimes we spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar.

It never does any harm to remember the people we are in business to serve. We have to hold them at the heart of what we do. Can the sector step up to the mark? Of course it can—but with changes. I am sure that with government procurement changes we can all do a much better job.