Public Sector Funding

David Amess Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. I have some words of advice. Westminster Hall debates are important, and the proper procedure is for hon. Members to drop a note to the Chair beforehand if they wish to speak. Certainly, when I am chairing proceedings, those hon. Members will receive preference when I call speakers. If an hon. Member pops in, makes an intervention and clears off before the end of the debate, that is to be deprecated—hon. Members have to stay for the whole debate. Finally, I know which hon. Members wish to speak, but I do not know whether other hon. Members have come to the Chamber to make speeches or interventions. There are five Government Members and eight Opposition Members waiting to speak, and the winding-up speeches will begin at 10.40 am. As hon. Members have taken the trouble to be here, I would like to call everyone. However, they can do the maths as well me, so it is up to them to share the time out.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I hope hon. Members will accept that the maths that I have done are correct. Four-minute speeches would get us all into the debate. Are you, Mr Amess, in a position to impose a four-minute limit?

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

Not officially.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I look forward to your unofficial imposition of a four-minute limit.

I welcome this debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing it. The voluntary sector is very important in our society. It is important for community cohesion and for newly arrived communities, and, in inner-urban areas such as the one I represent, it is a crucial part of the social fabric of both local government and health services. It is highly professional, efficient and well organised, and stressful for those who work in it. I am president of Voluntary Action Islington, formerly Islington voluntary action council, and a trustee of several local organisations, including Hanley Crouch community centre, Elizabeth House and a new-ish group called Light Project International, which provides weekend and after-school activities for young people, so I am acutely aware of and involved in the valuable work done by the voluntary sector.

The voluntary sector has always been a combination of a small amount of general fundraising from events and collections, and much larger funding from local health authorities, local government, various charitable institutions and, occasionally, business donations. That is complicated, and we should have regard and respect for those people who manage community centres and local organisations, and spend an inordinate amount of their time stressing over funds, staff and conditions, and funding applications. They spend a fantastic amount of their time completing funding application forms. An industry has grown up, with professional fundraisers offering to complete application forms and to fundraise for fixed fees or a proportion of the funds raised.

We must think through the efficiency of having highly skilled community centre managers spending sometimes 70% of their time on fundraising activities, which obviously diminishes a centre’s day-to-day work. A clearer, more defined role for local government and local health authorities in supporting and funding over a much longer period would be much more efficient. The current system is not efficient.

I have been involved in voluntary sector organisations in my constituency for a long time, and in a previous incarnation I was chair of community development in Haringey council. We developed community centres, particularly for minority ethnic communities, disability groups and others, as a way to bring in people in partnership with local authorities and health authorities. I strongly support the voluntary sector, but am sanguine about its role.

When I hear the Prime Minister talking about the big society, there seems to be a complete disconnect between my experience in inner urban London and what the voluntary sector means there, and the vision that he seems to have of fairly well-off retired people donating money to run a library and so on in a community with highly skilled people with time and money on their hands. That is not the reality of life in my community. If the council closed a library, which fortunately it has not done, and offered it to the local community to run, it would not happen, not because people do not value the library—they absolutely do—but because they do not have the time, the money or the skills necessary to do it. If we want to maintain the social fabric of our society, we must be prepared to put public money into voluntary organisations with the add-on benefit of community usage and all that goes with that. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South said, that core funding is essential.

Another point for the Minister, which I hope he will answer seriously, is the operation of the transition fund. As with every other community in the country, mine faces enormous cuts in local government expenditure and less grant money from the health authority, as well as less money from London Councils. There are great difficulties. The Government established the transition fund, but I have concerns about it. I received a good brief on it from Gerard Omasta-Milsom, director of Islington Peoples Rights, which is a very good voluntary advice agency. He says that to be eligible for the transition fund, applicants must be

“spending… 50 per cent of your total income delivering frontline… services”.

I wish that someone would define what a front-line service is. It is easy to say that we must support people on the front line and not those in the back office, but if a community centre does not have a bookkeeper, a cleaner, a caretaker or someone to repair computers and so on, it does not work. There cannot be a simplistic distinction between the front line and the back office. It is the totality of the service that is most important.

Another condition on transition fund applicants is that they

“have approved annual accounts that are no more than 12 months old which show that… your total income for that year was between £50,000 and £10 million and”

that

“at least 60 per cent of your total income came from taxpayer-funded sources.”

But £50,000 is quite a lot. We set up a community chest system in Islington, which operated until the Government cuts, and the council has now set up a new but smaller community chest. It gives small grants to new, seedcorn organisations such as new Somali organisations—we have a growing Somali community in Islington. The grant may be as little as £4,000 or £5,000, and in some cases even less. When such organisations are small and have only just come into existence, a small investment goes a long way.

The briefing goes on to say that free reserves could

“pay for your organisation’s total expenditure for no more than six months.”

I do not understand that requirement. Anyone who is running an organisation must have enough money to pay for ongoing costs and redundancy costs for at least three months. I hope that the Minister will tell me two things: first, whether the transition fund will be simplified and will continue beyond this financial year and, secondly, whether, as it has been so vastly oversubscribed throughout the country, he will speak to the Chancellor and obtain more money for it.

As every other part of the Budget seems to have been leaked, there will be no harm done if the Minister tells us exactly what part of the transition fund will be made available to the voluntary sector. It is vital to put money into such organisations and to keep them going. The health, well-being and strength of communities are so important. Removing the seedcorn funding and the basic running cost is damaging, and I hope that the Government will think again about that.

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[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley) on securing the debate. I want to follow what seemed to me to be her theme—what on earth are the Government playing at? In their wholesale rush to get rid of everything that the Labour Government did, they are destroying structures that would help to deliver the big society. I shall talk specifically, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), about vinvolved—the national young volunteers service. Its aim was to get 500,000 young people into volunteering. It developed out of millennium volunteers and was directly funded by the Government. It has eight days left to be saved.

The initiative was funded by the Government and run by v, the independent charity. There were 107 vinvolved teams nationally. Its focus was on creating new volunteering opportunities, including working with community and voluntary organisations, to create more high-quality, diverse volunteer opportunities for young people; supporting local organisations that work with young volunteers; brokering 16 to 25-year-olds into volunteering opportunities; finding the right opportunities for new and existing volunteers; helping young people to set up their own voluntary projects; and championing youth-led action, with each team including a youth action team made up of young volunteers giving advice on what projects and work vinvolved teams should get involved in.

What happened? Young people were matched to opportunities that suited their interests and aspirations, and that were sensitive to their individual circumstances. That was particularly important for young people with multiple barriers to participation—for example, people leaving care, asylum seekers, refugees and people with mental health issues. The vinvolved project particularly targeted young people who would not normally be involved in volunteering and who faced great difficulties in their lives. Such young people were at risk of being socially marginalised. However, apart from the effect on the young people themselves, there is also a real cost to society when young people are no longer part of it and have additional needs, which society must then tackle.

In matching young people with appropriate and fulfilling volunteering opportunities, which in turn acted as a stepping-stone for their progression, vinvolved allowed many young people to find a new, positive direction. The project enhanced employability and provided references for young people who had problems and who may never have completed their secondary education. Those young people may have had nobody in their lives to provide a reference for them, but they got one through their volunteering opportunities. The project also supported those at risk of social exclusion, increasing their confidence, helping to overcome feelings of isolation and loneliness, and improving community relations as young people from different communities came together to work across communities and with people from different backgrounds, including with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender young people, and black and minority ethnic young people. I should add that the voluntary work brokered by Manchester vinvolved equates to £232,380—I like the precise figure it has produced—based on salaries at the national minimum wage.

I could speak for a great deal longer about vinvolved, but I am aware of the time. I could also speak for a long time about the wonderful young people who have been involved in the project, whom I had the honour of meeting at an awards event for Greater Manchester a few weeks ago. Those young people have overcome their disabilities and other issues, such as the need to care for relations or the fact that they have come from broken homes or experienced homelessness, and they have gone on to contribute enormously to the society they live in. Without projects such as vinvolved, such young people will not get involved in volunteering, because they need organisations to support them, bring them together and give them the chance to make a difference to their lives and the lives of people in the community.

The vinvolved initiative is the sort of project that the Government need if they are ever to deliver their big society. I agree with my hon. Friends that we already have the big society, but if we want to extend and expand it, we must have projects that support the voluntary sector and that help young people and adults into volunteering. There are only eight days left to save vinvolved, and I really hope that the Minister will act so that we can continue a project that serves the needs of young people and their communities in such a splendid way.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I call Catherine McKinnell.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

I am here to listen to the debate and to contribute where necessary, Mr Amess, but I have not prepared a speech.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

I apologise. I am embarrassed, because we have six minutes left before the winding-up speeches. Does anyone else want to contribute?

[Catherine McKinnell]

I could certainly make a contribution, Mr Amess. You simply took me by surprise.

[Mr David Amess (in the Chair)]

In that case, I call Catherine McKinnell.