Big Society

Jesse Norman Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jon Cruddas]

I take it then that the plan for a Select Committee on civil society is suspended for the time being because it is covered by the Public Administration Committee.

I have to make an admission: I quite like the notion of the big society. It returns us to issues of duty, obligation, service and contribution that should be the hallmark of all political parties, so I do not think that a monopoly is obtained by any party. Moreover, I resist the simple notion that the big society is a sham and simply a veneer for ideologically driven cuts, not least because, as the hon. Member for Dover said, the Prime Minister’s attachment to that agenda predates the economic crisis and the onset of the cuts. I have read a number of what are supposedly the key texts in the big society debate. I refer hon. Members to the pamphlets of the hon. Member for Hereford and South Hertfordshire on compassionate conservatism and compassionate economics—his big society book.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am deeply grateful for that wonderful accolade but may I point out that it is Hereford and South Herefordshire, not to be confused with the doubtless equally marvellous county of Hertfordshire?

[Jon Cruddas]

I stand corrected.

There are some points of common ground in the texts that I have seen, which are interesting and add to the sum total of public knowledge. Aspects of the big society could lead to people having more control over their lives and to the creation of a more responsible society. That is a good departure point for the discussion today. Labour should welcome that and support empowerment and social responsibility.

I therefore refer Members to a pamphlet entitled “The Politics of Decency” written by my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who cannot be here today, a number of years ago, which set out many of the terms of the current debate; her substantive policy proposals predated many of them. However, despite all the warm words that I am offering for the agenda, my reservations start to become apparent when we talk about delivering empowerment and social responsibility on the ground.

I suggest that, for three basic reasons, the Government agenda will not succeed in delivering on its stated objectives. First, it is weak on the role of the state. Witness the amendment that was not selected, which clarifies some of the views of the Conservative party on the matter. Secondly, the agenda does not have a robust enough approach in its criticisms of the private sector. Thirdly, the agenda is essentially silent on central issues of social justice.

Fundamentally, the big society agenda is about a redistribution of power and responsibility away from Whitehall and towards local government, intermediate organisations, local communities and individuals. However, the Government will be unable to achieve that. Consider the argument that the Government are uncertain, to put it in a charitable way, on the role of the state. The Prime Minister regularly acknowledges that the state will have to play an active role in building the big society, but what is happening on the ground? The Government want to encourage giving, but despite lobbying from the charitable sector, they have said that they will drop transitional relief on gift aid, worth around £100 million a year. The Government want to encourage community ownership and management of local assets built around the right to buy in the Localism Bill, but in reality they prefer to flog public sector assets off to the private sector. Witness what happened on the forests. A similar thing is happening with the £500 million of regional development agency assets. There is clear potential for something similar to happen with the £37 billion of primary care trust assets.

Moreover, the Government say that they want more third sector delivery of public services, but the detail of their policies will not necessarily enable that to happen. For instance, where their reforms are most advanced in terms of welfare to work, the scale and cash-flow requirements of the contracts mean that the vast majority will go to very large private sector firms, which then may or may not subcontract to charities or social enterprises, and may or may not do so on a fair basis. I have heard that the welfare Minister in the other place recently said that he anticipated a “perfect car crash” among providers. That is dangerous, because of the human consequences, and because providers will go to the wall as a result. Future examples could include offender rehabilitation and health.

Another example is the way in which the Government want to encourage public sector workers to spin out and form independent mutuals. I was recently told that the Secretary of State wants one in six public sector staff to do so by the end of this Parliament. Under the Labour scheme, those public sector workers could keep their pensions, received significant transitional support, and were guaranteed a three-year contract.

I tentatively suggest that none of that would be the case under the Tory plans. Communities have a right-to-buy asset, but minimal support to do so. They have the right to challenge local public services, but minimal support to do so. Public sector staff have the right to provide or to spin out, but minimal support to do so. We must consider alongside that the inability to deliver because of the cuts. If the big society is about more than informal acts of generosity, we need the infrastructure to provide it: people to train and manage volunteers, and people to win public service contracts and ensure that the services are delivered to a consistently high standard. That infrastructure has been hit. The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations estimates that the voluntary sector will lose £1 billion as a result of cuts, the loss of gift aid transitional relief and the rise in VAT.

The cuts to the sector are beginning to stack up. Charities and voluntary groups in London have been subject to cuts of £50 million in the past 12 months. Council community grant programmes have been cut up and down the country. The list is growing by the day, and includes mental health services, autism charities, rape and crisis support centres, stroke associations, career support services, carers, housing and homelessness charities, YMCA branches, citizens advice bureaux and children’s charities. Similarly, some cuts to benefit services will leave people feeling less in control of their lives, not more. They include cuts to disability living allowance, tightened thresholds for social care, cuts to Supporting People budgets and cuts to housing benefit. That reflects a failure to deliver the big society.

The Government are silent on the private sector. If people feel disempowered vis-à-vis the state, the same applies to their relationship with the private sector. The Government essentially say nothing on redistributing power and responsibility in that regard. For example, they propose to reduce workers’ rights in the “Resolving workplace disputes” consultation, yet beyond praising best practice, they do not appear to have much appetite for doing anything practical to encourage more corporate social responsibility by giving time or money to good causes. Such contributions are significantly lower in the UK than they are in the US, which relates directly to levels of civic engagement and volunteering. For example, 82% of people who do not volunteer but would like to do so cite lack of time as a reason, and research by the Cabinet Office recently found that half of employees would like a volunteering and giving scheme to be established by their employer.

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[Paul Flynn]

I am glad to have heard that explanation. I was also relieved to hear from the hon. Gentleman that we are not going to have volunteers doing brain surgery.

We should all beware of Prime Ministers bearing three-word gimmick policies. I have served in this House under six Prime Ministers, and I remember “the cones hotline”, “the third way” and “back to basics”. Now, we have “the big society”. I think that the big society has most in common with the cones hotline. These were all pet subjects of various Prime Ministers who were willing to distort their own priorities to find money to plough into them over and above their general policies. There will be a degree of cynicism, when the cuts are taking place in all directions, if money is available to employ volunteers—

[Jesse Norman]

For some unaccountable reason, the hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten the third way, which was possibly the most bankrupt of all these ideas.

[Paul Flynn]

I mentioned the third way. The hon. Gentleman has only recently joined the House, but he might know that I was not the most enthusiastic supporter of the previous two Prime Ministers. The third way was a candyfloss and vacuous policy, as is the big society, and no one ever knew what the first and second ways were, let alone the third way. I am sure that my Front-Bench team will reinforce the point, but a host of initiatives have already taken place over many years.

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[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is an acute question. I do not always accept the notion of crowding out, although there are times at which one can point to that.

The Labour tradition, as it has evolved, has sought to create a critical relationship with local government and central Government, and that is the difference between ourselves and Conservative Members. As my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West suggested, the enabling state is part of the Labour tradition. When we look back to where we have come from, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) will imminently explain in beautiful prose, we can go right back to the late 18th century to the traditions of Paine and of critiquing the functioning of the market while believing in market principles. This was based on a belief that the state was not always a force for good. As Adam Smith argued, the state in the late 18th century was often a force for arbitrary activities, clamping down on the rights of working people and interfering in proper market practice.

[Jesse Norman]

I am thrilled by the robustly Conservative —indeed, Burkean—tone of the hon. Gentleman’s comments. However, I am interested in his support for Paine. Does he really believe that a person who backed the French revolution and its support for abstract rights over and above the legal privileges of the free-born Englishman deserves his support, and that he can be invoked in the context of the big society?

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The wonderful thing about Paine is that he can be invoked on almost any issue, and in this particular seminar we are talking about the associationalist Paine rather than the Jacobin Paine.

Another part of the Labour narrative is the Owenite tradition, which was about co-operation rather than competition, and about man’s character being formed through his interactions with others rather than through being born with original sin, which was the Conservative position. We can also point to the Liberal tradition of the Rochdale pioneers—this, too, is part of the Labour story of co-operation, self-help, mutualism and self-improvement. We have to ask why these institutions and forms came into being. Why did working people club together in friendly societies, trade unions, burial societies and other associations? It was because of the failings of the mid-Victorian big society—the failings of noblesse oblige, Lady Bountiful, the night watchman state, and the attacks that we still hear today, whether on health and safety or over-regulation. It was a Tory vision which failed for millions of working people, and that is why our tradition of mutualism, associationalism and the big society came into being.

[Jesse Norman]

I noticed the subtlety with which the hon. Gentleman moved from a critique of Victorian society to a critique of the Victorian state. Can he outline the terms in which the state was able to support the development of these priceless independent institutions which we all now celebrate?

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is right in one sense: part of the brilliance of the British tradition is our ability to create all sorts of forms of associational activity, be it limited liability companies or co-operatives. However, Labour Members point to our particular tradition of mutualism and associationalism, which comes from a failure of the Tory approach.

I would happily wax lyrical about the Labour tradition for many minutes to come, but I suggest to my hon. Friends that we cannot be too romantic about the past. Many of the worst actors in the recent financial crash were mutual organisations with co-operative governance structures. There is no inherent virtue in these modes of organisation that protects them from the kind of activities that we saw. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas) said, we need to think innovatively about how we take these forms into the 21st century. We need to think about tax advantages for employee benefit trusts, the right to request the mutualisation of public services—as well as what that means for pay and conditions—and systems of asset locks. A relevant and credible example of this was announced by Ministers today regarding the future of British Waterways. The Government seem to be heading towards the charitable model, but many Labour Members will think that a co-operative model, with all the differences that that entails, would be the best way. I am more hopeful about the hon. Member for Dover’s plans for Dover harbour.

The difference between Labour and the Conservatives as regards the big society is about the history of co-operation with forms of government—first, in the mid-19th century, with local government, again following Tory failures. In Manchester, in Birmingham and across the country, there was a coalition of the associationalist, mutualist tradition and local government. Then, in the early 20th century, when the new Liberals actually believed in progressive politics, it was a coalition with the central state based on the belief in an enabling state and a relationship between forms of civil society and forms of the state. That continues today in relation to the big society and our politics. We believe in a relationship with a progressive, activist, enabling state.

That brings me to the crux of the issue. Various Conservative Members have pooh-poohed us for suggesting that there is an ideological element to the Government’s thinking and said that because the Prime Minister wrote an article six years ago in which he might have hinted at some of these ideas, we should think that there is some noble tradition involved. The big society is being used as a vehicle for justifying some of the major cuts and assaults on the state that we are seeing today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) pointed out, voluntary institutions—the building blocks of civil society and of many of our communities—will be undone by the Government’s cuts, which are going too far and too fast. Some of the communities that we represent need capacity building, capability building and investment building. I say that not because, as the hon. Member for Pudsey suggested, we believe that poor people cannot organise themselves, but because we believe in investing in those communities to achieve better outcomes rather than ripping away support for citizens advice bureaux, youth services and all the other developments that are taking place. I took a delegation of organisations from Stoke-on-Trent, including Chepstow House and the citizens advice bureau, to see the Minister, who kindly listened to us as we pointed out the serious troubles that they will face—that the big society will face—as a result of this Government’s plans.

There are confusions in the Government’s belief in the big society. We are seeing, on the one hand, their ripping away of the capacity building that is necessary, and on the other, as in the case of the NHS and what they tried to do with the Forestry Commission, a neo-liberal belief in the market that has very little to do with an organic state-civil society relationship. The mixed social economy is best, with the virtue of the state and the virtue of civil society building up communities, but also reforming the state and, crucially, reforming markets as well.

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[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to speak in this debate and I am pleased that the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who unfortunately is not here, secured it.

Many hon. Members have set out the historical traditions behind this debate, but I come at it from a slightly different angle—as a psychologist analysing participation, the proposals that have been put forward for the big society, and the evidence base. From that angle, it seems that we start with a puzzle. In the points put forward by Government Members about the problems that they have experienced with public services and regulation, there is nothing to suggest that the removal of the state and the propagation of the voluntary and private sector will always achieve better results. Nor have we have seen any evidence about what shape the commissioning may take at either local or national level, and who will make the decisions or participate in that process.

Above all, many Labour Members, and I believe some on the Government Benches, wonder how a concern for increasing social activism fits with a Government who want a cut in spending in and of itself. That appears to many of us to be not so much nudging as shoving people into volunteering through a cut in public services, and that is likely only to destroy the social fabric with which we are all concerned. It is not often that I find myself on the same side as Phillip Blond, but we agree that making radical change is hard at the best of times and near impossible at times of extreme austerity.

I come to the big society, then, not with stories of jobsworth local officials or quotations from Burke, or perhaps even Paine, but with a more fundamental problem facing the Government. It is impossible to ally a Conservative ideology—the prejudice that personal liberty and the role of markets are undermined by collective action—with the recognition that when people work together to fund, run or do something, it has the power to change the world.

With that in mind, I wish to set out four problems that I see with the big society, and an alternative proposal based on the principles of fellowship that I see emanating from the left. The four problems are simple. First and foremost, it is a process-focused philosophy, and as such its purpose cannot be set out. Secondly, its shows a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary voluntary sector organisations. Thirdly, it shows a misunderstanding of the nature of modern communities and communal bonds, and fourthly, it takes no account of the lives that people lead or the willingness of the public to engage.

The question of purpose goes to the heart of political ideologies and public office. The big society, as currently articulated, seems to be very much about processes, not purposes, so it is about the process of volunteering or social action rather than the ideas behind it. Fundamentally, therefore, it cannot tell us what explains or sparks volunteering. A vague sense of shared interest and neighbourliness is not enough to hold and sustain involvement. Anybody who has had neighbours that they have not got on with, or been in voluntary organisations with people to whom they would not necessarily send a Christmas card, can explain that to us.

[Jesse Norman]

I think that is quite wrong. There is a large literature—I am sure that, as a psychologist, the hon. Lady is aware of it—showing that people are happier and live healthier, more contented, longer lives when they are able to link with other people and exercise compassion. The big society draws on such emotions, and it is simply nonsense to say that there is no substance behind it. Her own discipline contains a vast amount of evidence for it.

[Stella Creasy]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s passion for the subject, but if he lets me continue, he will hear that I am not saying that there is no substance behind it. I am saying that by not setting out the purpose of the big society, the Government leave themselves open to acknowledging a whole range of volunteering activities that they may not want to support. Taken to extremes, for example, the Ku Klux Klan and the English Defence League would be seen as wanting to bring people together for a particular purpose in their local community, but I am sure that none of us would want to promote such organisations and their values.

[Jesse Norman]

One marvellous thing about the set of ideas behind the big society is precisely that it is not subject to any overwhelming social purpose. A purpose for society, and a plan to put it on a purposeful basis, is a recipe for totalitarianism.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I therefore disagree about the value of purpose. I believe that purpose, and particularly people coming together with a common bond and for a common purpose, is how we get social change to happen. That is where there are disagreements between us about the value of the big society.

[Jesse Norman]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I am going to press on, because I do not have much time.

We on the left have always understood that for any organisation to work, it needs a sense of purpose and a common goal. It needs to know what it is trying to achieve, not just how it will try to achieve it. People can then be brought together around that current goal.

That leads me to my second point about why purpose is so important in the big society. It seems to me that in the points that are being made about it, a whole series of objectives are conflated, whether democratic engagement or increasing volunteering. We all understand that volunteering is not the same as voice, but the conflation of more meetings at a local level with encouraging more people to volunteer and looking to commission more within the voluntary sector seems to reflect a lack of purpose.

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[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

I am fortunate indeed to live in Herefordshire, which is the very model of the big society in action. I congratulate colleagues on both sides of the House on sponsoring this important debate. I agree with the insight of the hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman) that we are all motivated by a sense of public duty, and it is on that ethos of public duty that the big society seeks to draw.

I remind the House of something that is easy to forget. The big society is the most important idea in British politics for a generation. It is not like the so-called third way, as was acknowledged by the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn). The third way was a piece of triangulation designed to allow Mr Blair to have his political cake and eat it. This, however, is a fundamental rethinking that tries to lay the groundwork for our social and economic renewal as a nation. As such, its natural span is not over days and weeks, but years and perhaps even decades.

The Labour party helped to dig the huge hole of indebtedness that this country now finds itself in. It is a great shame that it is now trying to use the present economic crisis to take cheap political shots at the idea of the big society itself. This is an idea which it should support, not disparage—many Labour Members have already shown that, in some cases, it supports the idea.

At its deepest, the big society seeks to correct some glaring flaws in our most basic political assumptions. Ever since Hobbes 350 years ago, we have been taught to think of politics in terms of just the state and the individual; to see individuals as basically self-interested and financially driven; and to ignore the independent institutions that populate our lives and give them point and purpose. Those assumptions have been the basic drivers of Government policy for the 20th century.

The big society rejects those dogmas. Its focus is precisely on what they leave out: first, the value of free institutions, from the family to the school to the village pub, the city and the nation state; and secondly, a generous conception of human beings as social animals seeking to express their capabilities and to trust and to link with others. That is why volunteering, for all its value, is just one part of a far bigger picture.

[Tristram Hunt]

Does the hon. Gentleman have any sense that he is slightly over-selling this particular project? He talks about Hobbes casting a shadow for 300 years, but the trade union movement, associationalism and mutualism—all those elements of human capacity—have been a part of the Labour tradition for the past 200 years.

[Jesse Norman]

I think that those elements have been in British society for 200 years, but they have been very far from the ethos of the Labour party, as I will shortly demonstrate.

The big society is not itself either a left or right-wing idea. For one thing, it contains a deep critique of the market fundamentalism of the past three decades, and the past decade in particular—the idea that free markets by themselves are the solution to all of life’s ills. But, crucially, it also repudiates, as William Morris himself would have repudiated, the state-first Fabianism of the modern Labour party.

I am not an enormously ideological person, as the House will know, but I will waive my scruples in this particular case. In 1900, the political left was a teeming mass of different political traditions, encompassing guild socialism, religious non-conformism, civil dissent and suffragism, many shades of Marxism and communism, and mutuals, co-operatives and unions. There was no reason why that astonishing plurality had to yield a political party which for over 60 years has emphasised centralised state provision of public services above all else. On this point, I agree with the fragrant hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). [Hon. Members: “Fragrant?”] I use the word advisedly. That happenstance was the result of an intellectual takeover of the Labour party by Fabianism—the doctrine that intellectuals can make over society according to scientific principles using the spending and legislative powers of the state. Labour’s Fabian leadership—let us not forget that every Labour Prime Minister has been a Fabian—quickly made common cause with the unions, and that trend has worsened.

Under its present leader, Labour is even more in thrall to the unions than it was then, with £9 out of every £10 coming from union support, which effectively sets a massive dilemma for the Opposition. On the one hand, their leader can stay within the Labour comfort zone, and remain the darling of the unions and of the left of his party, trying to use the economic recession to political effect like the shadow Chancellor.

[Tristram Hunt]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jesse Norman]

Yes of course. [Interruption.]

[Tristram Hunt]

I apologise for my colleagues. During his wonderful speech, is the hon. Gentleman at some point going to tease out his pre-history in Barclays bank and the role of market fundamentalism in driving us to the crisis and hence the cuts and hence the veneer of the big society.

[Jesse Norman]

That point is ad hominem, but I am delighted to do so. I went to Barclays having run a charity in eastern Europe during the communist period giving away educational materials and medical textbooks to hospitals. I joined Barclays to work in eastern Europe, and I did so.

As I have said, the Labour leader can try to use the economic effect like the shadow Chancellor, who has attempted to rewrite the history of the deficit and his own role in it. The trouble, as we know, is that that is not a credible position, and the public know it. Alternatively, the Labour leader can reach out and seek to build a political coalition, as Blair did before him. He will know that a purely sectional appeal has cost the left roughly seven years in government since Labour became the official Opposition in 1922, but that more ambitious approach carries its own risks: it requires a more nuanced approach to the economy; it requires him to face down the unions, as Blair did over clause 4; and it requires Labour to rediscover its older, non-Fabian traditions—the traditions of Morris, Robert Owen and many of the people who have been mentioned today—and make them live again in its policies.

Which alternative is it to be? The truth is that the Leader of the Opposition is a little confused. In November, he said that Labour must reclaim the “big society” concept, and he made that the task of a major policy review. Just this month, however, he said that the idea is doomed, so we must ask whether he will recall his policy folk as a result. Must his squadrons of wonks return to barracks? What is his policy review to do, if the big society is, as he suggests, both doomed and a concept that Labour must reclaim.

In fact, the Leader of the Opposition was closest to the truth in his speech to the Labour party conference last year, when, under the influence of Lord Glasman and perhaps the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), he said:

“I believe profoundly that government must play its part in creating the good society. But our new generation also knows that government can itself become just such a vested interest. That unless reformed, unless accountable, unless responsive, government can impede the good society.”

His union backers may wish to look again at those words. Accountable, responsive government—government which is not a vested interest or an impediment to society. I congratulate the Labour leader on those remarks, which were spoken like a true Conservative.