Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and that is why he will know that in the Localism Bill we are establishing rights for every voluntary organisation in the country not to be rebuffed by local authorities but to make a challenge to provide services, if they can demonstrate that they can do it better. That is the right approach, but it did not happen during the 13 years of Labour party rule.
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
We all know that local councils are the largest providers of public funding to the voluntary sector, which has grown over the past 10 years, particularly through the partnerships that operate so successfully up and down the country. What was the Department’s estimate of the number of jobs that would be lost in the voluntary sector as a result of the front-loaded cuts the Government have imposed on councils, and will the Minister confirm that the Government’s transition fund, which was meant to help charities that have lost funding, was closed to bids on 21 January, before most councils had even finalised their budgets?
Greg Clark
I welcome the right hon. Lady to the debate; I had thought that her silence on matters concerning the voluntary sector might be terminal. We have made it very clear that councils should not cut disproportionately, but she has been absolutely silent, as have her Front-Bench colleagues, about Labour councils that are taking their cuts out on the voluntary sector. We have provided £100 million of transition funding, which is now being taken up. The first grants have been paid this week. I look forward to the right hon. Lady writing to members of Labour councils up and down the country and joining us in making it clear that they should not cut services.
Caroline Flint
Labour has always celebrated the partnership between local government and the voluntary sector, and under a Labour Administration we saw those partnerships grow. We saw local voluntary groups taking over some of the services that councils had traditionally run. The fact is that it is not only we who are raising concerns about the threat to the voluntary sector: 88 Liberal Democrat council leaders have made a public statement about their concern, and we know from a freedom of information request that Tory council leaders have also raised concerns about the front-loading of the cuts that they are facing, so the Minister should not make any party political points on this. However much he might pretend otherwise, is it not the truth that every Home-Start that goes to the wall, every over-60s club that closes and every domestic violence shelter that shuts—
Mr Speaker
Order. I think we have got the thrust of the right hon. Lady’s question, and we are grateful to her.