Charitable Sector

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Tuesday 5th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bilimoria]

My Lords, it is a great privilege for me to follow the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which, as predicted, was absolutely marvellous. I am privileged to have known the noble Baroness from the time when she was appointed as Chancellor of Exeter University and I was Chancellor of Thames Valley University. I will never forget when she said that she had changed the traditions of the graduation ceremonies whereby she would not just congratulate the graduates but embrace and hug them. I immediately thought to myself that if I tried to do that as Chancellor of my university I would be arrested.

The noble Baroness is one of life’s unique individuals. As she said, she was born in Trinidad, but she has made the most amazing contribution to Britain as an actress, an author, a businesswoman, a television presenter famous for “Playschool” and as a politician. She is a true renaissance woman. I am sure that, just as she has demonstrated with her passionate speech today, she will keep us all smiling and make the most amazing and tremendous contribution to your Lordships' House.

I attended a talk by his holiness the Dalai Lama in London a few years ago, purely out of curiosity. I remember he said how incredible he found it that all we seemed to hear about was bad news—news about man's inhumanity to man. Yet every day millions of people do millions of good deeds for one another and these never get reported. He reminded us that people are inherently good and care and share. As we have heard—I will not dispute the number—there are hundreds of thousands of registered charities in the UK, and every year 50 per cent of the adult population donates to one or more charities on a monthly basis. That is over half the adult population giving selflessly to causes they believe to be greater than themselves.

We should then ask ourselves whether—when we have a public sector that spends nearly £700 billion a year; with the state supposedly providing for all and redistributing wealth through the extortionate taxes we face today; with a top rate of 50 per cent and public spending of more than 50 per cent of GDP—there should be any need for charitable giving at all. But the reality is that the charitable sector fills a huge gap which the state never has or will fill.

What is more, we talk about foreign policy and interventionist foreign policy and what DfID does, when, without any strategic direction, the charitable donations of 20 per cent of the adult population are intended for overseas causes. That reminds me of one of my favourite sayings: “It is not enough to be the best in the world; you also have to be the best for the world”. Like many others in this Chamber, I am privileged to see at first hand the good causes that charities serve. The crucial thing about charities is their ability to act independently of government, when they are allowed to, which enables them to focus their resources appropriately after considered research, as we have heard, by specialists and experts in various fields.

I shall give just one example, as chairman of the advisory board of the Loomba Foundation. This foundation was launched in 1998 in the presence of the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Its objectives are,

“to promote the welfare and education of children and poor widows, orphaned children, and also children who have lost their mothers”.

It is currently educating 3,000 children of poor widows in states throughout India and giving these children a real chance of being uplifted from poverty. Raj Loomba, the organisation’s founder, was inspired to address the plight of widows worldwide by his own mother's courage and incredible endeavour in educating and raising seven children singlehandedly in India after becoming tragically widowed at the age of 37. This is the power of charities—the ability to address areas of need that are too numerous or too specific to be included in the scope of government-led initiatives. This is what charities do—they fill the void between the public and private sectors, and this is what we must promote.

We all agree that the Government have a crucial role to play in people's lives through their responsibilities for providing for the vulnerable—as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, said—for infrastructure and for the defence and security of the realm, though ideally in a society of low taxes and low regulation which allows people to get on with their lives and address their needs by themselves. The irony of the small state and “people power” which the Prime Minister's big society initiative talks about is that they do not create selfish, greedy individuals; in fact quite the opposite.

People may believe that public welfare support—which is today one-third of our Budget, amounting to nearly £200 billion—has suppressed the formation of volunteer-led initiatives in this country. However, the evidence leads one to the contrary conclusion. There has been a steady growth in the charitable sector since the formation of the welfare state. The Government need to understand how active communities are already achieving the goals set out by the big society.

However, the charitable sector is currently experiencing its biggest crisis in financial confidence for years. A survey conducted by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations for its latest quarterly forecast shows, as we have heard several times already, that 63 per cent of members who participated believe that their financial situation will worsen over the next 12 months. That is an increase of 11 per cent from just four months ago. Some 21 per cent—an increase of 7 per cent from June—plan to reduce staff numbers over the next three months. The NCVO, as has been said, warns:

“It is crucial that the government listens to the sector's concerns. Spending cuts must be managed intelligently, otherwise they will compromise the sector's ability to deliver vital services”.

As the noble Lord, Lord Wills, said in his excellent maiden speech, half of charities’ donations come from the Government. It is about partnership, as we have heard time and again.

The Government need to give people the freedom to live their lives, to make their own choices and to distribute wealth themselves. The Government must act not as a controller but as a catalyst—or as a facilitator, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said. Whether it be for business, for the big society or for charities, the Government need to create the environment in which charities can flourish independently through tax breaks and incentivising people. The charitable sector is the very embodiment of the best of human emotion and endeavour. It is the expression of collective empathy and altruism, and an incarnation of how mighty we can be if we all give a little to help the many.

In an interview that he gave some time ago, Nelson Mandela was asked, “What is it that makes you happiest in life?”. He said that it was seeing ordinary people every day doing extraordinary things for their fellow human beings. That is what people in Britain are doing every day, and it must be cherished, preserved and encouraged, because we are instinctively a nation of individuals who care and who share.