Helen Goodman
Main Page: Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)Department Debates - View all Helen Goodman's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberI would of course be delighted to meet my hon. Friend and the charity in question. As we restructure contracts in the way in which my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office mentioned—away from hugely prescriptive tender contracts and into payment by results—I hope we will find that there are huge opportunities for charities such as the small one in my hon. Friend’s constituency to participate and deliver excellent results. We should not have the huge bureaucratic burdens that prevent the smaller voluntary and community organisations from participating.
I am sorry to say that the Minister sounds rather naive. I went to visit Crisis in Sunderland. Three quarters of its money comes from a combination of housing benefit and local government grant. When both those are cut, how can it maintain its services?
I think the hon. Lady is ignoring the extent to which our programme of structural reform will enlarge opportunities for people to participate in services from the voluntary and community sector—[Laughter.] Opposition Members may not believe that, but that is because they did not try to find ways to deliver services on the basis of payment by results, or to find ways that actually work. We know that voluntary and community organisations are capable of that. When they do it, they will find that there is access to a large amount of revenue that is currently denied to them.