Civil Society

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it is a particular pleasure to answer this debate on the future of civil society because with my FCO hat on I spend some time reading telegrams about attacks on civil society in other parts of the world—the tremendous pressure under which all autonomous institutions in Russia are now operating; the problems in Egypt; tremendous problems in Pakistan; resistance to the growth of autonomous bodies in Saudi Arabia and so on.

So we can at least start by welcoming the fact that we have in this country a thriving civil society alongside the state, but not too dependent on the state. It seems that we are moving towards a consensus in the United Kingdom that the state cannot provide everything that we are going to need in the next 10 to 20 to 30 years. We therefore need a strong and diverse of network of civil society institutions alongside the formal institutions of state and government at local and national levels.

When I was active politically in Manchester 30 years ago, and a parliamentary candidate for an inner city seat, I was appalled by the extent to which the local council and its officers treated the inhabitants of the largest single council estate in Manchester as people who had things done to them. The councillors and the council officials knew what was best for them, they would tell me, and were not going to change their minds—even though the large number of people I met and canvassed suggested that they were not happy with what they were doing—because, in the long run, it was best for them. As we all know, that left a lot of alienated people in our cities, who are still there. As I visit the big council estates in Bradford and Leeds, I find just how many alienated people there are, embittered by the fact that the state does not seem to do enough for them. However, they do not know what to do for themselves yet, which is part of the problem that we face.

On the other hand, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, warned us, some free-market radicals believe that there is no such thing as society, that we do not really need local government, that the only individual motivation we are talking about is economic and that the search for profit and financial gain is what drives everyone. I would say to him that it is not the aim of this coalition Government to radically shrink the state. There are some free-market radicals around who would love to do so, in the Institute of Economic Affairs and elsewhere, but we all recognise that we cannot shrink the state very far, given the enormous demands that we all face. I think that we all share, across the parties, a basic emerging realisation that, first, the state cannot provide all that our society will need in the coming years, particularly as the number of people over 70 continues to grow, and as the demands on the National Health Service, on social services and on other services will continue to grow exponentially. I remember an article by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian a few years ago, in which she said that the NHS budget would have to rise at a compound 2% above the rise in GNP, otherwise it would fail. That is part of the problem that we are now up against in the NHS and elsewhere.

Secondly, we are discovering that the public will not pay for the state to provide everything that we want. That, again, is a problem which all political parties now have to recognise. We have to persuade the public that these things are worth paying for. I am afraid to say that almost all of us find on the doorstep that the Daily Mail tells people every day that the state should cut taxes and raise benefits, but that is not possible. I think we also agree that financial gain and individual profit is not what drives everyone, and that altruism and community spirit also motivates citizens and provides, as has already been said, the essential glue that holds our society together. We have to find a way of building the strong local institutions—they have to be local institutions as far as possible—alongside the state, which will help provide the services that the state itself cannot entirely provide.

That raises all sorts of questions about regulation, how far organisations should be financially dependent on the state and how far the state should encourage, as a number of noble Lords have said, giving through one means or another, such as tax advantages. There are other forms of support as well, such as the nudge unit suggestion that one puts in the corner of various government things, saying that you should leave money in your will to various charities, which will increase the amount of giving that takes place.

I recognise the tension that has been spelled out in a number of speeches between national voluntary organisations and local civil society organisations. My experience in Yorkshire is certainly that some of the best voluntary organisations are those that are rooted in their communities, but they are very often too small to attract the attention of national commissioning authorities. The Cabinet Office and other sections of government are struggling with the issue of how you get down to discover which are the really useful local bodies.

Of course, part of that has to be that we devolve more decisions and eventually more authority to local government. The City Deals will help us in that respect, as will double devolution, which we have much talked about but not sufficiently carried through, to re-empower local communities. We also recognise that the character of the sector is in some ways difficult to pin down. Many of the most impressive voluntary organisations that I have met exist as they are because they have a small number of charismatic people driving them along. They can be impossible. Indeed, they succeed partly because they are impossible. That is part of what keeps voluntary organisations going and it is difficult to put that into a major institutional framework.

Much of this has to take place at the local level. I am conscious that the loss or the weakness of the church networks, and particularly the nonconformist ones that did so much, is part of what has gone wrong in many of these areas. I am conscious of this in particular because I live in a village, Saltaire, that has a historical society, a festival committee, an arts trail, a Friends of Roberts Park society and two allotment societies, and frankly does not need anything more by way of local civil society. Three or four miles away from us, in Bradford, there are a number of areas that have very little going on and in which the community organisers, who are part of the Government’s big society initiative, are doing their best to teach people how to get together and do things themselves, rather than sitting around being deeply bitter that someone else is not doing something for them.

I am a strong believer in the big society and there are a number of initiatives that are also pushing us in that direction. National Citizen Service is going into its third summer this year. I was entirely converted last summer by taking part in one or two National Citizen Service schemes in Bradford. We helped show teenagers what they could do for themselves and what they could do together for others, thus teaching them the principle of community service, including how to organise things together, raise money and work together. It is a similar case in local schools around the country. Primary schools and others are learning about how you work and help people in the community. This is all extremely desirable.

I am also a great fan of community foundations as a means of diversifying sources of funding for local activity. I would like to see the Community Foundation Network given a great deal more support. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, that part of the problem with community foundations and other local activity is that it was the local entrepreneurs and companies that provided local charity. As we have moved towards multinational companies, how you get them to think not only about London but about what happens in York, Bradford and Leeds, all of which have lost so much of their local corporate leadership, is a problem with which we all have to struggle. We are doing our best to learn from the process that is going on. I say to my noble friend Lady Barker that this morning I printed out the Institute for Government report on making public service markets work and it is one of the things that I intend to read at the weekend if my wife allows me not to pick all of the soft fruit on the allotment. I am a member of the Saltaire Canalside Allotment Society.

A number of other major points were raised in the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, expressed his regret that the Government have not yet published their response to his extremely useful report last year. The Government thought that it might be preferable to wait for the report of the Public Administration Select Committee that came out on 6 June and was in many ways not just a post-legislative scrutiny of the Charities Act but a commentary on Lord Hodgson’s report. I assure him that the full response to both of these will come out shortly.

A number of noble Lords talked about the problems of a large drop in charitable giving. I am told there are different assessments of how severe that drop has been. Different surveys provide different answers, but in a number of ways, including by encouraging payroll giving and encouraging companies, we are doing our best to encourage more people to contribute.

Perhaps I should say at this point that part of what we all have to do in this country is to change the moral atmosphere from that which was around, in a way, in 2010—the corporate pursuit of individual gain and the City culture as such—and to remind everyone, including my neighbours in London who earn so much more than I do, that they are living in a society to which they should pay not only their taxes but their other dues. As we are all part of a national society and, within that, of various local societies, part of our responsibility is to contribute in all sorts of different ways in time and in money to the society around us.

I welcome those who mentioned the utility of the Social Value Act. We very much hope that that will help in shifting the way in which commissioning takes place. I welcome the fact that the Crown Representative for the voluntary community sector is now beginning to look at social enterprises. In my experience of visiting charities and voluntary sector organisations, I have on occasion been horrified to discover large charities that are entirely dependent on state contracting. That is not healthy for the third sector. I like those that do their best to make sure that they earn some of their income from what they do. That is a definition of a social enterprise that is also a voluntary organisation.

The Government have been making a number of efforts—payroll giving, Big Society Capital, the Innovation in Giving Fund, the Social Action Fund—to ease the transition and to encourage more people to bring in money to this very important sector. For example, the Communities First campaign is a £80 million government-funded programme that helps communities come together through different community groups. I am sure that noble Lords will be familiar with community challenge, the community right to buy and various other schemes that the Government are developing.

In answer to other points, we need to consider corporate giving further. I suspect that we will, in time—whether this Government will be able to do it or whether it will have to be post-2015, I do not know—have to consider a change in company law to make sure that a company’s duty is to all stakeholders, not just its shareholders, if we are to create a sea change in the approach to corporate giving.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, spoke about the role of women and the extent to which voluntary organisations support them. This is one of the most fascinatingly difficult areas in the evolution of civil society. My mother was a stalwart of civil society, among other reasons because when she married, she had to give up her job and her career. From then on, she poured her enormous energy not entirely into her children—thank goodness—but also into doing good works wherever she was living. We all know now that the transformation of the role of women means that that dimension of civil society has half disappeared as young women attempt to combine careers, children and family. In their place, the fit retired of both sexes have come to be part of what holds our civil society together.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby asked how we maintain or revive the traditional pillars of civil society. I am not sure that that is entirely the role of the state. The state can do some of that, but it is certainly something that the churches themselves should be playing a very large part in and reminding us of. I am happy that the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury talks about the church providing real moral leadership to the nation.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gould, mentioned confidence-building for vulnerable women. There is a wonderful charity in Yorkshire called Together Women which picks women up as they come out of prison and does its best to give them a sense that they really can do things again. This is an extremely important part of the work that needs to be done. I entirely share her view that it is a tragedy that we still have a society in which dedication to the welfare of animals is very often stronger, both in financial and commitment terms, than dedication to the welfare of human beings of both sexes and all ages.

The noble Baroness, Lady Gibson of Market Rasen, talked about the current challenges to the sector and asked about the Government’s plans to guide companies to encourage payroll giving. We are providing as many incentives as we can to encourage companies to expand payroll giving. Again, that is not merely a matter for the Government. Companies, the CBI and others should also be encouraging it. It is part of our shared corporate responsibility. None of these things is for the state alone. We can provide leadership but the rest of society has to provide it as well.

The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, said a number of things about the Lobbying Bill, as published yesterday, which I did not entirely recognise. We are having an all-Peers meeting on this in Committee Room 3 at 4 pm on Monday and I very much hope that she will come along—

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

If it helps the noble Lord, I will explain the point I was making. The Lobbying Bill suggests that third-party organisations would not be allowed to be involved in campaigning during a general election. I wanted to ensure there would not be the unintended consequence of stopping them campaigning at all during elections when there might be legitimate reasons for them to do so.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I can allay her concerns on this. I was very struck when I was briefed this morning on this by the sheer scale of the funds some organisations have used and targeted. It is that sort of development we are thinking about. I hope I have covered most, if not all, of the points made in the debate.

[Baroness Pitkeathley]

Can the Minister answer my specific question about social investment and the Government’s view on what proportion of social investment will eventually find its way into the sector?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I would prefer to write to the noble Baroness rather than give her a half-informed answer now, if she will permit me. There are a number of social investment schemes under way but I do not have them entirely in order in my head at the moment.

We all share a commitment to a stronger civil society. I hope we all share a commitment to a stronger local civil society. I am very struck by the problems of large communities in some of our cities who feel themselves powerless but do not know what to do about it. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, that is part of what the big society initiative is really concerned with. It will take a long time. For example, in Harehills and Gipton in Leeds the local Methodist, Catholic and Anglican churches used to do an awful lot but almost no one goes to church any longer. Creating alternative social networks and a sense of local empowerment and local confidence is a huge challenge for all of us and the state, society and others have to work together on it.

I hope we are all committed to this. I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and I recognise that this is a challenge that will face every Government in Britain for the next 20 years and more.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

There were some more questions about the commissioning of services. It would be really useful if the Minister would undertake to ask other departments, beyond the Cabinet Office, to look at the commissioning process to see whether it can be made better. I do not know what his dialogue with the other departments is but it would be really useful if he was able to play a co-ordinating role.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

There is now a commissioning academy. We are working with other departments. We are learning from experience how to work more effectively with local organisations where we can. The social value Act also helps us in that regard. I must not overrun my time; I give way to the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser.