Big Society

Chris Ruane Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

We live in acute political times. We have a coalition Government for the first time in a generation and, as has been said many times in this Chamber, we have an historically high peacetime deficit. That makes for a somewhat sceptical political environment. I do not necessarily think that that is such a bad thing, as scepticism in our political system has stood this country in very good stead. Right hon. and hon. Members will be well aware that the great British public do not let us get ahead of ourselves too much. That great tradition has served us very well. However, with policy initiatives such as the big society, my concern is that scepticism has become something more destructive—cynicism. That is a great shame.

In our privileged position as key members of our local communities, right hon. and hon. Members from across the House experience the big society in action on almost a daily or certainly a weekly basis. That is my experience in the Crawley constituency. This morning as I was preparing what I would say in the Chamber, I happened to glance at my schedule for the past couple of weeks. Although it did not surprise me, I was struck to see that it was packed with visits to voluntary organisations and community groups, and telephone conversations with the chairs of local action groups. In addition to helping individual constituents, that is the fundamental work of hon. Members.

I will give a few random examples from my diary. Early last week, I met with Jack Doors, a local voluntary organisation in my constituency. It was started by Jackie Rose, who is disabled and has mobility issues. She realised that it was difficult for many disabled people to get out and about. Off her own back, working from her home and using her own resources, she established a group to arrange transport for disabled people so that they could get out on a fortnightly basis to visit the seaside, go to a garden centre, or to have tea or lunch somewhere. That provides a vital link for many people with mobility issues and it has made a huge difference. It is not something that the state did, but something that was done by an individual with passion.

At the other end of the spectrum, my experience of St Catherine’s hospice in my constituency echoes what my hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) said so eloquently about his experience of the hospice sector. It has minimal funding from the state and a great amount of funding and voluntary effort from individuals. With their support, it creates a massive difference for people in my constituency and the surrounding counties.

There are other examples. About a year ago, residents in my local ward were saying on a web-based community discussion forum where I have an e-surgery that the neighbourhood looked a bit unkempt and untidy. Through the online discussion, they organised a community litter pick. We all turned up on a Saturday morning—fortunately it was sunny and dry—with our black bags and the health and safety regalia of high-visibility jackets. For three hours, mums, dads, kids and all members of the community picked up litter, which made a significant difference to the neighbourhood and made it just a bit more of a pleasant place to live.

There are many more examples. I have am proud to have been a governor at three schools. It is important, like other hon. Members, to pay tribute to school governors who work hard—and freely, of course—to create the ethos in our schools and to ensure that those most important of institutions for our young people are successful.

The other weekend, I spoke at the annual general meeting of a gluten free society that was set up in my constituency.

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Good on you.

[Henry Smith]

Thank you.

[Chris Ruane]

I bet its butties were awful.

[Henry Smith]

Things have moved on a lot in the food available to coeliacs, and a lot of that is due to the work of individuals in the community. That is certainly the case with the Crawley Gluten Free Group, which has come together to make a positive difference to people’s lives.

I met another disabled access group and spoke to its users, in particular those with learning difficulties. They have been meeting almost every week for more than 10 years to improve their lives by discussing ideas and common issues and problems.

I contend that the big society is out there and is operating. The trouble is that it has been increasingly stifled by big government. To me, the conclusion seems straightforward. The way in which we can encourage greater services and far wider participation is for big government to become a little smaller and to become an enabling government who create the right environment for the voluntary and community sector to flourish. If the voluntary sector and individual carers who care for elderly relatives and disabled children ceased to exist tomorrow, the state would not be able to provide those services. We all know that that is true. It is important that the state is there. I think that the state is well meaning. I do not believe that it is malicious; just that its bureaucratic nature often makes it inefficient. It therefore often stifles innovation unintentionally.

Margaret Thatcher has been infamously misquoted as saying that there is no such thing as society. I am glad that our current Prime Minister has said that there is such a thing as society, but that it is not the same thing as the state.

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[Mrs Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to contribute to this evening’s seminar on the big society. I find myself rather under-prepared intellectually given the marvellous speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I look at the big society and find myself wondering what is not to love. Anyone who puts themselves forward for election is saying to the people who live around them that they want to do something for them. In some part, there is—or should be—a strong altruistic motive.

There are many projects in Darlington that will now no doubt be described as big society projects on every funding application. As a local councillor, I was often asked to look at funding applications from local groups. We would see, “This is an example of partnership” absolutely everywhere on such applications, and now I expect that people will say that their project is “big society”.

About three or four years ago, I was involved with one such initiative. A young lady called Ashleigh Trevarrow, a keen music fan, turned up at a local music venue, which incidentally is a social enterprise, but was turned away because she was only 16—people had to be over 18 because there was a licensed bar. She decided that she wanted to find somewhere to put on live music nights for young people. It would offer a safe environment. There would be an alcohol-free bar and it would all be run by young people for young people. One cannot get more big society than that. She found that what was needed was the co-operation of the local council, of a local business that would be prepared to host the evenings, and of the parents of the young people. That took some months. A lot of fundraising, co-operation and support from the local youth service were needed to enable her to achieve that. I am certain, and I think that she will agree with this, that that could not have been done without the support of the local council.

The issue with the big society is that some people see it as a national joke. I am a fan, but there is a difference between what the Government are saying and what they are actually doing. I took a delegation of people from the voluntary sector to meet the Minister, who is well regarded by them, but if one spent an hour in the company of some chief executives and chairs of voluntary community organisations from Darlington, one would be left in no doubt about some of their doubts about what the big society can achieve. In some ways, the voluntary sector in Darlington feels that it has been led a merry dance, because we have gone from a year ago, when we were told that we had a broken society, to now, when we are told that we have a big society. People in that sector are looking at their own situations, their volunteers and their budgets. They are trying to plan for the next year or two and they see not a world full of fresh opportunity but a world full of fear and threat. That is the big problem. There is a difference between telling people that we want them to take part and engage in the big society, as we all do, and showing them through our actions how they are able to do that.

Two weeks ago in Darlington, the best of Darlington awards were held. I can recommend such an event to anyone. The business community, the voluntary sector and residents come together. Nominations are taken and we have a wonderful evening of fellowship. We are able to celebrate community work in our town. This year’s winner of the Darlington citizen of the year—

[Chris Ruane]

Jenny Chapman.

[Mrs Chapman]

I can only dream. The winner this year of the Darlington citizen of the year award was Gordon Pybus. He is one of those tremendous people of whom I am sure there are examples up and down the country, including in Surrey. He is a real community champion; he has worked for years championing the needs of disabled people in the town. He heads the Darlington Association on Disability and works with local businesses to improve access for disabled people. He does advisory work and, if he has not been before a Select Committee before, he should have been.

One of the major funders of the association is Darlington borough council. It gives Gordon long-term contracts and spends about £5 million a year in the voluntary sector. We are hearing from Gordon and other voluntary sector representatives that there is a big threat to their organisations because of the cuts to the budgets of local government by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. There is a perception out there that the Minister here today understands very well the needs of the voluntary sector, and I am sure that that is true, but that that understanding does not permeate the whole of Government. That is one of the big problems. When we have a Government who want to sell off the forests and then say that we have a big society, we can understand the cynicism that exists in some communities.

There is another example in Darlington of how success can come from a failure such as the proposal to sell off the forests. It is the community cohesion that we have built around a campaign against a local skip hire company that, in the minds of residents, and I agree with them, has been committing environmental crimes at an estate in Darlington. The group has come together, meets regularly and campaigns to prevent some of the worst abuses of the local environment by that company. That group, without any funding, which is obviously seen as a bad thing by certain Conservative Members, comes together, complains together and will be a real champion of its local area. I say to the Government that it is great to have this big society idea. We all support that, but we do not want the Government to say one thing and then do another.

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[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I welcome the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), his party and his Government to the big society, which is something that we on this side of the House have been involved in since birth. It was what brought many of us into politics. Reference has been made by Members on both sides to Burke, Paine and Hobbes as the people who invented the big society, but it goes back a long way beyond them. It goes back to the time when man was a hunter-gatherer on the plains, when co-operation, camaraderie and esprit de corps mattered because people’s lives depended on them. This was reflected in all the great religions. Christians, Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs all make reference to the concept. They all declare that there is such a thing as society, that the worship of mammon works against society, that we are our brother’s keeper, and that we should do unto others as we would have done unto ourselves.

The Prime Minister had a Damascene conversion five years ago, and I welcome that if it was a true conversion. If, however, it was about countering the Tory dictum that there is no such thing society, about domesticating the rabid right of his party for the purpose of electoral gain, or about airbrushing his party’s past, it will not wash. The Conservatives’ philosophy in the 1980s was that greed was good, that unemployment was “a price worth paying”, and that people should get on their bikes when they became unemployed. Many people on this side of the House, and in the community and voluntary sector, find it hard to believe that they honestly believe in the big society.

We remember the Conservatives’ record of voting against measures to promote unity, cohesion, equality and inclusion. Many of them might have changed their position over the past 10 years. Let us take the issue of gay rights. Where did the Conservatives stand on that, 10 or 15 years ago? I do not think that there are any Conservative Members here tonight who voted against that measure; those here now are mainly new Members. Where were the Conservatives on the issue of the minimum wage? Where were they on the issue of help for the most persecuted and the poorest in society? The Conservatives coined the term “broken society”. We remember Lilley’s list, and his singing and vilifying single mothers. We remember the damage done to mining, to the steel industry and to inner city communities. We remember hooray Henrys awash with money and champagne stepping over the homeless in the west end. That is the historical perspective.

I shall turn now to the present big society. The Minister’s Department has made a number of big mistakes in introducing the concept of the big society. The first was the terminology that it used. The term “big society” does not resonate with the person on the street. People do not live in a society; they live in a community. Perhaps the Conservatives used the term “big society” because it had some resonance with the term “broken society”. Perhaps they thought that the big society could heal the broken society. It sounds so simple and easy, but it is so trite.

The Department’s second mistake involves the need to apologise for past actions and show a little contrition. It was the Conservatives who broke society in the 1980s. It was they who increased inequality and gave the green light to greed. It was they who denied the very existence of society. I shall give the House an example. The story from the holy book of the Good Samaritan was perverted when Mrs Thatcher said that it was not about being good but about being rich. She suggested that if the Good Samaritan had not had the money to pay the innkeeper, the poor man would have died. That totally misses the point.

The Government’s third mistake was to party politicise this agenda without even having the support of their own Back Benchers. Where are their big beasts? I do not want to disparage anyone sitting on the Government Benches tonight, but they are all newcomers. Where are the big beasts? Many of them do not support this agenda.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

They are having several suppers.

[Chris Ruane]

Indeed—[Interruption.] Ah, I see a big beast there.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) is more beast than big.

[Chris Ruane]

He is indeed.

The Government are presenting the big society as a simple solution to a highly complex issue. There are big issues out there around which we can build consensus. It can be built around defence, for example, or around Northern Ireland or Iraq. Those issues can be depoliticised. Another example is pensions. We all came together over pensions, except that the consensus was broken by the Conservatives just before the election when they tried to make party political points on the matter. There was also consensus on the constitution in Scotland, when we had the convention.

That is how this important issue should have been approached. It is probably the biggest issue that western society will face this century. The fact is that, across the western world, we are atomised and alienated. There are many theories to explain that. They have been put forward in cogent arguments with statistics to back them up. Oliver James, in his book “Affluenza”, traces the cause of the problem to advertising and the promotion of an ideal that we can never attain. When we get on to the treadmill of trying to attain it, we lose our sense of direction; we lose contact with our families and communities as everything becomes about ourselves.

Robert Putnam’s fantastic book, “Bowling Alone”, identifies television as one of the biggest reasons for the problem. He found that an individual today spends more time in front of his TV than he spends at work. That has consequences for the amount of time he can allocate to his community, to his family and to society. Wilkinson and Pickett’s book traces the causes of the present situation back to inequality, which increased rapidly in the 1980s. Are we going to be able to get on top of the issues of advertising, TV and inequality without coming together? The Government think that they have come up with a great idea, but we have known about it for thousands of years. They have party politicised it.

The Government’s fourth mistake was to introduce this idea at the wrong time, when they knew that they were going to make cuts. Some of those cuts are necessary, but many of them are ideological. The budget for the voluntary sector last year was £36 billion, of which £6 billion came from local authorities alone. Labour doubled the amount going to the voluntary sector over 13 years. If the present Government are going to cut that budget and make voluntary sector workers unemployed, they are not going to win the argument with the Churches, with the trade unions, with the community and voluntary sector or with the Labour party. They need to build consensus.

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[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr Brine), who was quite right when he said that the Backbench Business Committee has shown the diverse range of opportunities that it provides. Like the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who is not in his seat, I represent a coastal and port community, and I wish him well in his campaign on behalf of the port of Dover.

The hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) was right to say that the big society is not about ideology—left, right or centre. I consider myself a communitarian first and foremost. I live in, was brought up in and have the privilege to serve the rich, resilient and diverse community of the Isle of Anglesey. I was pleased to hear the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) make a contribution on the Isle of Anglesey. Like me, he was born there and brought up on a council estate there, although not the same estate. He rightly mentioned the late Iorwerth Rowlands, who died recently. He was a Conservative, and someone with whom I worked before I was elected to this House of Commons; indeed, when I became a Member of Parliament, he lobbied me.

I have roving surgeries in Anglesey, and I use the Iorwerth Rowlands community centre for that purpose. I was proud to be there on the day when that centre was opened in Iorwerth Rowlands’s name. One thing that he would have agreed with is that that would not have happened had it not been for grant aid. I helped him to get the money to build that community centre, which is in the heart of the community of Beaumaris.

I want to stick to the issues that have been discussed today and the big society. As the hon. Member for Winchester has said, it is predictable that we give examples from our own constituencies. I lived through the big society just this week. On Thursday, I attended a very special launch of the lifeboat at Trearddur bay, which attracted a crowd of 1,000, as well as the world’s media, who came from places ranging from Japan to Australia and the United States. The fact that two prospective constituents of mine, Prince William and Kate Middleton, were also in attendance made the launch a special focus of attention for the world’s media. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution is an example of the big society, although I declare an interest because I am a member of its general council.

The following day, I had the privilege of being the guest speaker at the Llangefni rotary club on its 50th charter. I am an honorary member of the rotary club and the Lions, and I acknowledge the work that they do for communities across the United Kingdom. Again, that is an example of the big society in action. On Sunday, I attended a St David’s day celebration. We are not being given the opportunity to have a Welsh day in this House this year, but I was able to participate in an excellent celebration of St David’s day with voluntary groups, the RAF, the private sector and everybody else who came together to put the event on.

I also believe in devolution, which has also been mentioned in the debate, and in localism. I want to talk not about the devolution of power from Westminster to Cardiff bay or to Edinburgh, but about real devolution that helps empower people to run their own activities. In the 1980s, prior to coming into this House, I worked as a manager of a centre for the unemployed. Society was very fractured in the 1980s, and it needed help and attention. As manager of that centre, I worked with the public sector, the private sector, the third sector and community groups to help people in society. We worked together and we built up many achievements, not the least of which was educating and training people for the world of work. That was the big society and the community coming together. We have heard some quotes from Mrs Thatcher and some defence of what she said. I can tell hon. Members that no matter whether or not she believed in society, we had hard experiences in my constituency and my community at that time, and the big society coming together helped alleviate much of that hardship.

In order to create a better society we need to work together. Hon. Members have talked about partnerships, but I am still struggling to understand what the big society is and nobody sitting on the Benches opposite has really explained it to me. We can all give examples of what we think it is and what we think it should do, but we have never heard a definition.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Albert Owen]

Before I take an intervention from my hon. Friend, may I say that he was right when he said that the Government probably picked the wrong term with the “big society”? I was surprised that the Prime Minister chose the term “big society” and was unable to market it or explain it to the public, given his public relations skills. The “big community” would have been a better idea and concept to sell, had he chosen it.

[Chris Ruane]

One of the 300 questions that I have tabled on the issue of the “big society” asks the Minister to define what it is. The answer has come back, and I have been told that there is no definition.

[Albert Owen]

The Minister is a very decent man, and I am sure that he will find 300 answers somewhere up his sleeve to say what the “big society” is, but we have not been given clarification in this debate. As I have explained, I am a communitarian. I live and work the big society, yet I am struggling to explain to people exactly what it is.

I wish to cite another example of the big society with a link to my constituency. The women’s institute was formed in Ynys Môn, the Isle of Anglesey, in 1915, and a few weeks ago, I had the privilege of going to the annual general meeting. The membership in my area is 500, and the institute mustered almost 200 of them to attend a meeting to listen to their Member of Parliament speaking. Again, that is the big society in action. The agenda that the women’s institute had in 1915 is the agenda that we are still running today; it talked about food security in 1915. So, fantastic examples can be given of the big society, but it is difficult to explain this concept and we need to make progress.

Some hon. Members have asked why cuts should be brought into a debate about the big society. I have worked in the private sector, the public sector and the voluntary sector. I still visit these groups and they raise the problems that funding cuts cause them in creating the community ethics that they wish to promote and in running groups and activities in the community—it is they who are talking about cuts. It would be a big mistake for anybody who has contributed to this debate to say that the cuts will not have an impact on those services in the community, which is what concerns me.

I wonder whether this is the wrong time to talk about a big society in many ways. We need to work to help communities, but we also need to get the right balance between state funding, community spirit and looking for finance from the private sector. I did that and still do it, and I help groups to do it. By working together, we will create not only a big society, but a better society—a society that people really want. As a communitarian, I believe that the Prime Minister rightly talks about “bottom up”, but then tries to lecture from the top about what the big society is, which is where the confusion arises. Do not just take my word for it; take the word of members of the RNLI, the women’s institute and rotarians, who tell me that they do not understand this situation. The Government talk about localism, but we see many measures that are centralised. So a confused message is being sent out, and it is difficult to understand. I hope that the Minister will answer my one question, not the 300 that have been posed. I hope he will tell me what the big society is and whether we live in a broken society.