Public Sector Funding
Debate between Jeremy Corbyn and Baroness Keeley(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Is the real problem that the Government do not appear to understand the role of the voluntary sector? It is often professional, well run, well organised and extremely hard-working. It brings in lots of money from charities and other places, but it absolutely relies on basic core funding in order to succeed. The Government seem to confuse it with charitable good works in small towns, and that model simply does not apply to complex, urban areas such as the one that I represent.
Barbara Keeley
Indeed. That is right, if there is an urge, as the Minister has said, to discuss partnerships between Government, business and civil society. I talked earlier about employee volunteering from business in the voluntary sector. That has to be arranged, however, because there is a big, wide cultural gap between the private sector and the voluntary sector. We cannot just leave a new business volunteer to flounder in an organisation. I used to arrange business volunteering as part of a job that I did in the past. I know that someone needs to be the link in-between, so I very much agree with my hon. Friend.
The Minister described one strand of action for the Government as
“encouraging more social action in our communities”.—[Official Report, 28 February 2011; Vol. 524, c. 132.]
How on earth is that going to happen if we cut away the infrastructure of organisations such as TimeBank?