Community and Voluntary Sector

Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hastings of Scarisbrick (CB)]

My Lords, we all love a debate of this nature, because it shows the very best of British brilliance, so I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for allowing us to have this wide conversation together. All of us have interests that express our passion for communities and our voluntary engagement, and we all know that, as much as we may give voluntarily, we receive immense delight, joy, respect and purpose in the time and resources that we give away to others.

My many interests are in the register, but I will focus on a few. As president of UK Community Foundations, I am proud that we are in every single constituency of the UK, through our 47 community foundations that cover every postcode of the UK. Some £190 million of resources are contributed to individual and community needs every year through the Community Foundations network. We provided small things such as basic laptops, in the Covid years, which individuals needed so that they could undertake work from home. We provided support and resources for people to get access to psychiatry and individual support for mental health, so that people can ensure that they can work. That is the value of Community Foundations, and that money is gathered mainly from local contributions and giving. People feel so proud; 86% of people feel proud to give locally, volunteer locally and support locally.

I am also chairman of the Pathway Fund, and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, raised dormant assets, because we are awaiting the Government’s release of information on the availability of dormant assets and the expectation that the Pathway Fund will be one of those. I ask the Minister at what point a decision will be reached on the release of dormant assets for 2024-25. We are expecting a substantial allocation to do the work that the Pathway Fund was set up to do. I only recently became its chairman, in the last couple of months.

One of the greatest areas to which I contribute voluntarily is ongoing. I refer with grateful respect to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Porter, which raised issues of criminal justice. I have spent 21 years as a trustee and chairman of Crime Concern, where we helped to create neighbourhood watch and Victim Support. To this day, neighbourhood watch is probably one of the best community access linkages that we have across the UK. I know that from my own area, where you just watch the angst of the people going back and forward and their joy in realising that we are not under threat.

Community crime prevention was Crime Concern’s theme and we have carried that on into Catch22, which I was also delighted to found in 2009. All these interventions save the taxpayer substantial amounts of money but allow individuals to give to the better estate of preventing crime and making communities safer.

I am also the co-founder of My Brother’s Keeper, which is a prisoner engagement programme. On Tuesday, I made my 11th visit to HMP Isis, where it was delightful to spend time with 46 young men in the prison. Our team of eight is mentoring those 46 and has seen the transformation of that particular prison and its culture. None of us gets paid and we do not seek to be paid; the payment is in the delight of witnessing transformation and life for others.

As the Government look around for ways to save money, as well as invest it better, I ask them to please rely more heavily on the voluntary sector and volunteers to do the great work that we all love to do. Give others life and freedom.