Public Sector Funding

Chris White Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

With regard to TimeBank, is the hon. Lady aware that it is seeking to set up an initiative whereby MPs can bank their volunteering? Would she support that initiative, as I do?

[Barbara Keeley]

I would certainly support that, but I cannot imagine how the hon. Gentleman thinks that TimeBank will set up new projects if his Government are cutting away its infrastructure funding. It is astonishing that he should raise that today.

[Chris White]

rose—

[Barbara Keeley]

No, let us leave it at that. The Minister and hon. Members have to understand that we cannot remove £500,000 of an organisation’s funding and then expect it to carry on with new initiatives. Clearly, it would not be able to do so.

I was discussing the vital scheme that TimeBank is setting up with carers. The groups with which TimeBank works are crucial in our society, but carers are in a special category. Carers who care for more than 50 hours a week are twice as likely to suffer from ill health, while those who care for a person suffering from dementia or stroke disease are even more at risk of ill health. If we do not support carers, therefore, we are causing additional health problems in our communities. In my local area, there are some 22,000 carers, one in four of whom care for more than 50 hours per week.

How are we to take initiatives if we cut the infrastructure funding for organisations? Last week, the Carers Identification and Support Bill, which I introduced, was not debated because we spent much of the time discussing a string of Bills introduced by the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope). I am sure that hon. Members who are here on Fridays understand that that is a common occurrence these days. There are no new measures to support carers in the Health and Social Care Bill, so how will they be supported? Will the Minister tell us why his Government’s cuts to TimeBank have been made, as they will cause the potential loss of a new way to support carers—people who give their up so much of their lives caring for family and friends?

The debate on funding must focus on the important issue of support for the infrastructure of the voluntary sector. Organisations such as TimeBank are on the front line of finding and supporting volunteers for charities, such as hospices and the Olympics, and they help to support and mentor carers. Labour’s support helped maintain high levels of participation in volunteering. Cuts to the funding of volunteering charities will result in the organisational cutbacks that I have discussed, and which will lead to a decrease in volunteering, not an increase. I hope that the Minister will tell us today, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) encouraged him to do, that he will think again, and that some way can be found to reverse cuts which could be damaging to the cause of volunteering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I, too, am grateful for the opportunity to speak in the debate. The issue affects a range of communities, including in my own constituency.

We all appreciate that these are difficult economic times and that it is tough to find savings, but the first message that we should be sending out from the debate, and one that I support my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in articulating, is that local authorities should consider every other available saving before reducing support to our voluntary services. We should be squeezing budgets, sharing services, cutting back-office institutions, generating efficiencies and trying to get maximum value for money in procurement before we even begin to consider reducing funding for voluntary organisations. Warwickshire county council, for example, has cut its youth service budget, yet it has so far made only a 2% reduction in staffing. That is not how it should be. Every local authority should view reducing spending on voluntary organisations as a last resort.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

In my experience, quite a lot of councils have risen to the challenge from my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. My local borough council in Castle Point has gone so far as to cut members’ allowances this year to secure the funding for Crossroads, the Association of Voluntary Services and the citizens advice bureau, because it recognises their importance to the local community. Many councils are doing a very good job in that regard.

[Chris White]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. It is clear that her council is a very good example of best practice.

[Emma Reynolds]

Has not the chair of the Local Government Association, who is a Conservative, said that the cuts imposed by central Government on local government go way beyond efficiency savings and will therefore necessarily put local government in the impossible position of having to cut some services?

[Chris White]

I refer the hon. Lady to the fact that these are difficult economic times, which were not brought about by the coalition, and something needs to be done. At the moment, I do not see the Opposition doing anything at all to begin to address some of these issues.

Voluntary services in a range of areas, from welfare to social care and from youth services to health care, enable the public sector to reduce “failure demand”, which is one of the biggest costs to the taxpayer. Because we fail to do the right thing the first time, we end up having to make more expensive interventions further down the line. That is not the right approach to providing services. Local authorities should work with the voluntary sector to use its expertise and understanding of the needs of service users to build better platforms. Although voluntary organisations can be a short-term expense, they can also generate significant savings in the long term. If anything, we should seek to shift funding towards voluntary organisations, rather than taking funding away from them.

An excellent report by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations called “Replacing the State?” gave four strong reasons why voluntary organisations are better placed to provide services than traditional in-house bodies. They are local and focus on the needs of their users, rather than on what is best for providers. They have higher levels of co-ordination, as they have a community-wide focus. They command a high level of public trust. They are incredibly innovative and able radically to change the delivery of services for the better.

There is an even plainer economic argument. Voluntary organisations are already saving the public sector more than £20 billion in staffing costs, given the fact that 17.1 million people volunteered in 2010. If we cut the funding on offer to the sector, we will reduce the infrastructure that channels those volunteers, either leaving people without services or leaving the public sector having to hire paid staff. I believe that if we integrate voluntary organisations further into public service delivery, we will not only see long-term costs go down, but we will be able to secure the future of many important groups throughout the country—something that can benefit all our local communities.