Big Society

Debate between Margot James and Mel Stride

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and the Backbench Business Committee on securing this valuable debate.

Let me start by looking at the origins of the Prime Minister’s conviction, which is driving the big society forward. It goes back to shortly after he was elected Leader of the Opposition six years ago. At that time, his commitment was very much informed by the work of the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and his founding of the Centre for Social Justice. In 2007, the Prime Minister stated clearly that the task of the next Government would be to reverse decades of social decline and that that crisis of social decline was every bit as great as the economic crisis that confronted the new Conservative Government in 1979. It is completely disingenuous of certain sectors of the media and of certain interests to suppose that the big society concept is some sort of cynical cover for spending cuts, and I am glad that some Opposition Members have acknowledged that that is not the case.

The difference between now and 1979 is that this Government confront both a social crisis and an economic crisis, which the Prime Minister probably did not foresee back in 2007. Those two crises are two sides of one coin, and one will not be solved without the other. This country has been living beyond its means for some considerable time—at least a decade. Throughout the boom years, we spent vast and increasing amounts of money on social problems that still persist, such as the 2 million or so people on out-of-work benefits, while new jobs were created but mostly filled by newly arrived immigrants. More and more money was spent on schools every year, but that did not reverse the relative educational decline of Britain compared with other countries.

Why do we have so many problems and what will the big society do to address them? I acknowledge the speech of the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), which was in many ways excellent, and I agree that the state and civil society are inextricably linked. However, I argue that things have got out of kilter and that over the past 10 years there has increasingly been a dominance of the state and a “Government know best” mentality. Let me give a few examples of the adverse effect that that has had. The Criminal Records Bureau is a laudable organisation, but it has become quite extreme in its intervention, affecting people who want to volunteer to drive one another’s children around. I am on my third CRB check, and I am just a school governor and a volunteer with an FE college.

Health and safety has got out of control, and I am delighted that the Government are going to tackle the excessive approach that prevents teachers from taking schoolchildren on much-valued trips. The risk of finding oneself on the wrong side of the law for intervening in a street situation is a problem, as is the fact that families are prevented from hiring carers or agency nurses to support their elderly relatives in hospital—I have argued with my hospital in Dudley about that. We have heard the reports about the treatment of older people in our hospitals, and if people want to hire additional support, they should be allowed to do so.

[Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case against health and safety legislation, which many of us know to be extremely onerous. Does she agree that another issue is the no win, no fee legal environment—the compensation culture—in which we operate, which puts an undue cost burden on voluntary organisations seeking to help in their local communities?

[Margot James]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention; I certainly agree. The compensation culture has grown up over many years—to a certain extent, we have imported it from the United States. I hope our Government will address that significant problem.

The bureaucracy of the grant and contracting process at local authority level has put off a number of smaller organisations, which, every year, have to make their case afresh for the same grant or contract for the same service. They cannot get any core funding. We are committed to changing that, and change is long overdue.

Some charities have become overly dependent on the state, particularly at a local level, so that too much of their money comes from local authorities. They almost cease to exist as voluntary bodies, which takes away a great deal from their esprit de corps and the motive that drove their passion in the first place. In many ways, the tail starts wagging the dog. Small voluntary groups are tailoring what they do to meet the criteria of the next grant body that they approach.