Voluntary and Charitable Sectors

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for introducing this important debate. It is good that we take a good hard look at what is happening to the voluntary and charitable sectors in this country. It is difficult to get a full measure of this diverse and complex sector of the economy, but in my travels around the country you get an impression at least of what is going on.

Times are hard for the third sector, and sometimes it can all feel so relentlessly utilitarian nowadays. It can all feel so heavy as charities are drawn into the relentless struggle to raise funds, apply for bids and, of course, go for contracts with the state. Those of us who have danced with the dinosaur-like structures of the state for too many years to count have witnessed its effect upon virtually everything it touches—turning virtually everything it engages with into a pale reflection of itself.

I was involved in the early days of the housing association movement when it was being developed by leaders in local communities. At that time, these local leaders had real aspiration about the quality of design and radical ideas about the kinds of houses they wanted to build and the kinds of communities they were in business for. This energy and enthusiasm of course attracted the interest of the state, and many well meaning people were seduced by the lure of the state and its promise of large-scale and much needed investment in the movement. Slowly, step by step, with one piece of necessary legislation or red tape upon another, this lean, dynamic voluntary group of organisations was dumbed down, straitjacketed into well meaning policies and frameworks, and somehow in the process lost the sense of life and fun and risk-taking that were at the heart of their business. Somehow, these crucial human factors were lost in the drive for order, fairness and equality. It sounds a bit like the NHS—a similar story, I suggest.

For housing associations now to take up really imaginative and radical schemes—and there are some—it is often despite, rather than because of, the funding and regulatory regime they find themselves caught up in, so much so that many associations, I fear, increasingly look and operate as pale reflections of their past. This bureaucratisation, caused by the state and not by business, so often leads to a loss of the human touch. Yes, they do community development and are often sentimental about their relationships with residents, but they have lost the driven, entrepreneurial flair that brought them into being in the first place.

I am reminded of this because I gave out the community impact awards last week at the National Housing Federation, and here I must declare an interest. At this event, I saw some fantastic people and projects, but they were at the edges of the operation of these giant organisations, not at their centre. Residents and local people are not some addendum; they should be the core business. The £300 million housing company, a charity, we built in east London is radical. We created a resident-owned business and used our capital investment over the past two decades to trigger social and economic activity in some of the most challenging housing estates in east London. Twenty years later, the evidence is there for all to see in a £1.7 billion regeneration programme. Just look at the quality of the gardens we have built—they would be quite at home in Kensington and Chelsea. A deliberate strategic decision we made in Poplar 20 years ago was to stay and focus in this one area on relationships with residents and quality development, and not to try to expand across the country here, there and everywhere. We chose, in the words of the song, not to be “everywhere and nowhere, baby”, a policy too favoured by successive Governments.

In this bureaucratic, contract-driven world, a game which I have played many times, I worry that the cultures we are now creating in this sector, far from being free, adventurous and radical, innovating and challenging the logic of the systems of government, are instead in danger of losing their spark—in danger of being a bit too responsible and a bit too dour, certainly too public sector, and with a need to have more fun.

But what does fun look like? Well, at a project I am chairing in Blackheath at the moment—I declare the interest—last Friday we opened a beach with sand, an amazing picture of a Victorian pier as a backdrop, deck chairs, drinks and fairground music, 100 miles from the sea. This week it has been packed with children playing in the sand and parents sunbathing and chewing the fat with their neighbours. The project was brought together in a matter of weeks and I have, to date, seen no sight of a health and safety policy—oops! I am sure we have one.

I remember some years ago in Bromley-by-Bow having a bad day when a particular planning decision had not gone well. Instead of bemoaning our fate, two of us got into my politically incorrect yellow MGB sports car and set off to try and buy a castle in Kent. My colleague had heard it was on the market and we wondered why we should not try to reconnect the East End with its long association with this county through hop picking. Actually, we nearly did the deal until someone with rather more money than us stepped in at the last minute. This experience was followed a few years later with the offer of a manor house in the Cotswolds by the then dean of Westminster Abbey, which at that time housed a charity that had got into considerable difficulty. We had learnt something from the castle experience. We took Stanton Guildhouse on, and today it is a self-sustaining social enterprise used by business leaders, families and thousands of inner-city residents from across this country—here, again, I must declare an interest.

If, with the best will in the world, we lose this spirit of fun, innovation and enterprise in the third sector, what is the point of it? What difference is it bringing to our communities? Yes, we have to live with the world as it is, but how we do it and how we live within it really matters. What sort of charitable and voluntary sector organisations are we creating? Are we bringing new life and innovation to communities across this land, and a spirit of fun and energy, or are they in danger of becoming a pale reflection of the state and of what already exists?

I encouraged residents at the housing association awards evening to take more control, to remember where their association had come from, to take centre stage and build entrepreneurial cultures and not play at the edges—to live dangerously or not live at all. If we are to renew the life of this country, how we do it really matters and the spirit with which we come to the task will make or break us. Can the Minister tell the House what the Government plan to do in practice to ensure that charities do not simply become clones of the state?