Public Services

Lord Boateng Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Boateng]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to enable the voluntary sector to participate in the delivery of public services.

[Lord Boateng]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to ask this Question. I am even more grateful to the numerous noble Lords on all sides of the House who have indicated a willingness to speak in this short debate. The numbers themselves indicate the extent of enthusiasm and interest in the House in the voluntary sector. That comes as no surprise, because noble Lords of this House, on all sides, will have cut their teeth in public service in the course of engagement with and membership of voluntary organisations of all sorts. We are enthusiasts for the role of the voluntary sector and its capacity to contribute to the civic life of our country. We owe it a debt of gratitude.

This is a time of risk and opportunity for the sector. The opportunity lies in the undoubted commitment of this Government and indeed the appetite of peoples of all political persuasions and none for public service reform. We want to see the delivery of our public services improved and made more efficient. We believe— overwhelmingly, in my experience—that the voluntary sector has a role to play in enabling that to happen. It is a source of innovation; it permits a greater degree of connection with our citizens because it operates close to the ground; and it is a source of passion, enthusiasm and activism within communities up and down the country.

The opportunity is there for the public sector to take to its heart the voluntary sector, to embrace it and to enable it to contribute to the reform process. Many of us hope and believe that that was the impulse that lay behind the Prime Minister’s promotion of the big society. I have never been one of those who decried that term and ambition. I believe quite unabashedly in the big society where that means the active involvement of the citizen and their enablement and empowerment to take responsibility for the improvement of the community as a whole. It is summed up in the South African principle of “ubuntu”: we are what we are because of others, and our relationship with others shapes not only ourselves but also our society for the better.

That is why I was glad—along with a number of noble Lords in this House and honourable Members in the other—to accept the invitation of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations to join the Commission on Big Society. It produced a report which was widely welcomed by the voluntary sector and received by Government. We would benefit from a considered and detailed response from the Government. I hope that that will be forthcoming, and I look forward very much to the Minister’s response to the debate this evening, in view of his wealth of experience in the not-for-profit sector.

Central to the report’s findings was the call for a better partnership between central and local government and the voluntary sector. It made a number of practical proposals, which I will come to, as to how that partnership might be enhanced. The opportunity is there, if the Government will but take it, to find a partner for change and improvement in the voluntary sector. However, there is also risk. Only this week we saw published by the Charities Aid Foundation and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations a report on UK giving in 2012 that found that donations to charity had fallen by 20% in real terms in the past year. This means that £1.7 billion less is being given to charity. In addition, fewer people are donating to charity, and the average amount given by donors also fell. This undoubtedly reflects the period of austerity and the challenging economic times in which we live.

Even more worrying was the concern highlighted by a trawl of some 252 senior workers in charities by the Charities Aid Foundation. The results, also published this week, highlighted the severe threat facing many of our nations’ charities. The survey found that 17% of those asked said that is was likely that their charity would face closure in the next 12 months; 40% worry that their charity may have to close if the economic situation does not improve; nearly half—49%—of charities asked had been forced to use their reserves to cover income shortfalls over the last year; and more than one-quarter—some 26%—have cut front-line services.

This is not a plea for more resources for charities in these straitened times. Of course, one always hopes for more resources and greater giving to charities. I hope that the Minister will pass on to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Chief Secretary that there is more that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs could do in reviewing the gift aid system and to promote giving; I hope it will do so. However, the main purpose of this debate is to ask what we can do and we should be doing to promote the partnership between the voluntary sector on the one hand and central and local government on the other. I argue that this partnership is at the heart of the reform of public services and the better delivery of services to the public.

That partnership was enshrined in the compact between the voluntary sector and government which was initiated by the previous Government and which has been carried on by the current Government—and to their credit. It sets out the key principles of the approach which needs to be taken to improve the relationship to the mutual advantage of both. The compact is itself subject to stresses and strains at this time. The recent Compact Voice report on local authorities and the voluntary and community sector found that up to 50% of local authorities are in fact cutting the voluntary and community sector disproportionately. What will the Government do to ensure that local authorities are sticking to best value guidance? One year on from the publication of the NAO report into compact implementation, what demonstrable progress has been made in the implementation of its recommendations?

I also raise with the Government the issue of commissioning. If there is to be an effective partnership between the voluntary and statutory sectors at a time of public service reform, we need effective public service commissioning. We need to see that the Public Services (Social Value) Act is effectively implemented. We need flexible commissioning approaches which allow potential providers to deliver in consortia and partnerships and to assist that progress. We also need to invest in the capacity of the provider base, particularly those smaller organisations which are working with vulnerable or hard-to-reach groups. Very often it is those hard-to-reach groups that can be adversely affected by the payment by results approach adopted by government. I do not deny that there is value in the approach, but I fear that bad practices such as cherry picking and going for low-hanging fruit, the targets that are easiest to achieve, may lead to a situation in which we will fail to serve those most in need—the most difficult to reach of those suffering from a disability, and the most hardened of those being served by the excellent charities working in the field of rehabilitation, crime prevention and with the homeless—if we adopt a payment by results approach.

What are the Government doing to ensure that emerging payment by results methods have effective tariff systems? They can make a huge difference to ensuring that government and the voluntary sector are working effectively together to address the needs of the most vulnerable. What are the Government doing to support the voluntary sector in the transition to payment by results models?

I will end there. This is an important debate. I will welcome the Minister’s response to these questions and to the many others that no doubt we will hear from other noble Lords.