Voluntary Sector

Nick Hurd Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) on securing the debate and for the sincere way in which he expressed his admiration and respect for the 300-odd local charities in Stevenage. He clearly does more than talk the talk: he walks the walk by being a patron and trustee of at least two of those organisations, which is admirable.

My hon. Friend and other colleagues are reflecting the importance of the sector to the country in a year when we are presenting to the world the best of Britain, and I have absolutely no doubt that the voluntary sector is part of that. The ecosystem of charities, supported by millions of people who give time and money to improve other people’s lives and the conditions in their neighbourhood, underpins our sense of well-being; it is massively important.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson) spoke well about organisations in his area. I vividly remember visiting the Living Well Trust on the Raffles estate when I first became a Member of Parliament. What was really brought home to me was that on a troubled estate the thing that made a difference—the people who made a difference—were Barrie, Kath and the team there. They did much more than anything a council could do to support residents from the estate. The Living Well Trust was the battery at the heart of the estate, and that forged a strong impression in my mind.

Times are challenging for such organisations: less money is around, there are more demands and there is a huge amount of change. We are sensitive to that. In the short time I have, I shall reassure colleagues that the Government are extremely committed to protecting the sector as best we can through a difficult short term, while putting in place measures that will underpin its resilience and effectiveness in the future. I will address specifically how we can make it easier for charities to access money and to help us deliver better public services.

First, we are trying to make it easier to run a charity. We all know that it is one of the most difficult things to do; it has always been difficult, but it is particularly hard now. The Government can do things to help, such as looking hard at the amount of bureaucracy and regulation imposed—my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle made that point—and we are undergoing probably the biggest and most comprehensive review of the regulation and legislation that affects the sector. Our instinct is to deregulate and to remove bureaucracy, so that there are fewer forms to fill and fewer daft questions to answer, freeing time and money that can be better spent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage mentioned CRB checks, which have been a huge source of frustration. We are certainly not going as fast as many people would like, but the reform is radical; millions fewer people will need to have CRB checks, and those who do will find it much easier to carry the check around the system. The reform, which my colleagues at the Home Office are working hard on, is complicated, but the new system will be in place at the beginning of next year. It will be a new era for CRB checks, with an injection of common sense in a system that had grown out of all proportion. That is only one example of the kind of things that we are doing to make life a bit easier.

Mention was made of how small charities can find access to what money is around. Information is important, so we have continued to fund a website called Funding Central, which I recommend to colleagues. It is probably the most comprehensive source of grants and pots of money available.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karl MᶜCartney) talked, importantly, about the value of trustees, which we are keen to encourage. The environment is challenging for charities, and most of them recognise that they lack certain things, such as business skills in particular, which will become increasingly relevant if they are competing for more tenders and public work. There are business skills in every constituency, but they happen to be engaged in different things. The impression I get in my constituency is that if we can make better connections between local businesses and local people with business skills and the charities that are on their doorstep, the effect can be transformational; it can raise the capacity and capability of small local charities. We will be doing a lot to make those connections work much better. Furthermore, some of those business people will be inspired to become trustees and become part of the governance of local charities.

Making it easier to run a charity, therefore, and helping the sector to modernise its skills is important. Behind most front-line charities, of course, sits a local council for voluntary service, or another support organisation, and we have invested £30 million in the CVS network to encourage the councils to think about how they can improve their offer to front-line charities. That is a serious investment when there is not a great deal of money around. Making it easier to run a charity is the first important strategic strand.

Secondly, how do we get more money into the sector? How do we get more resource in terms of more volunteers and people giving their time? I recommend to colleagues the White Paper on giving and the update we published last week for dissemination to local charities, because in those documents we communicate clearly our absolute commitment to broaden the base of people in this country who give.

I shall throw a spotlight on a couple of initiatives where we are putting up taxpayers’ money as a match to stimulate giving to local charities. Localgiving.com is a new platform set up by one of the participants in “The Secret Millionaire” to inspire more support for local charities. In September, we will be matching, pound for pound, local donations given through that site. It will be our third match. The previous one sold out in 24 hours, which tells us that if people are given information about the local charities on their doorstep, they are interested in doing more to support them. I encourage colleagues to get their local charities to register and get engaged with Localgiving.com, for the pound-for-pound match in September.

We have also put up £50 million to match donations from local philanthropists—people who have been relatively fortunate and want to put something back into their communities. We will match every £1 they give with an additional 50p towards the building of local endowments that will be a source of sustainable, long-term grants for local organisations. We are determined on such interventions for the long term, so getting more resources into the sector is hugely important to us.

Thirdly—a relatively new area—how do we make it easier for charities to participate in and help us to deliver better public services? Part of the problem is that the public services in the past have been closed and opportunities have not been available. The Government are opening up opportunities, but it is a big cultural change and will not happen overnight. Big question marks are raised about the capability and competence of commissioners throughout the country—many are new and many are being asked to do things in different ways—and of local charities, which need to step up and persuade commissioners that they have the resilience and ability to deliver.

We are working hard to make that a reality. We are sending strong signals to commissioners. We supported the private Member’s Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), which places a requirement on commissioners to consider social value in their commissioning processes. The “Best Value Statutory Guidance” issued by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to local authorities also makes it clear that we want them to consider social value. The Localism Act 2011 contains a right to challenge, so that local groups can question existing provision in a public and transparent way. We are setting up a commissioning academy, because commissioners need support, and the first cohort is going through this summer. That is about encouraging more intelligent commissioning, in particular at local level.

We are supporting local charities that want to do more in that space. A £10 million investment and contract readiness fund has been set up as a source of grants available to charities and social enterprises that want to do more public service delivery but recognise that they need a little more help and support to increase their capability and readiness. The principle is clear, however: we want the people buying on our behalf to have much more choice in who they buy from.

In some of the most stubborn and difficult social areas, charities and social enterprises frequently make the extra bit of difference in keeping people out of jail or off drugs, as has been said, but such organisations are often small. One of the challenges mentioned is a real one; commissioners naturally want to buy at scale, with all the potential efficiencies that can be pursued, but they find it difficult to reconcile that with including small, local charities that could make that additional bit of difference in the supply chain.

We are feeling our way, but there is definite progress. This morning, I had a meeting with the National Council for Voluntary Organisations and Serco, which have come together with a new framework to guide prime contractors—big private organisations or big charities—in their engagement with small charities in their supply chain. In an environment where we are paying people for outcomes, it is in the interests of bigger organisations to engage with the small local charities that, in our experience, can make just that additional bit of difference.

Finally, if my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage wants to bring any of the 300 magnificent charities in his constituency to meet the Minister, he is extremely welcome to do so, because I regularly have such meetings. I would like them to feel the appreciation of the Government for the incredible work that they do.