Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 7th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

There is plenty of good practice to point to. However, this area is effectively a devolved matter. In the case of the National Citizen Service, we came to the Administration with an offer, saying that we think this is a valuable experience for young people and we would like to make it available to young people in Northern Ireland. To their credit, the Administration said yes.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend update the House about progress on the social impact finance project in Peterborough and assure the House that in developing social impact financing, he will look carefully at how it can be applied to other public sector projects?

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. He takes a strong interest in the matter. The Government are ambitious to accelerate the development of social impact bonds, which create the space for commissioners to innovate and try new interventions in that space. We have already announced that we will shortly publish the details of an outcomes fund designed to do exactly that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We are grateful to the Minister.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I commend the Government for their actions following the consultations on taxation and charitable donations, but may I urge the Minister to look again at the gift aid structure, and perhaps to consider a transfer to a system whereby individuals can deduct their charitable donations from their tax directly?

[Mr Hurd]

Gift aid and all matters relating to tax are a Treasury matter. My hon. Friend will be aware that gift aid is under constant review, and in the 2011 Budget some welcome initiatives were brought in to make gift aid easier to claim for small charities and small donations.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

As the hon. Lady will be aware, under the Bribery Act 2010, for example, the reckless running of a financial institution can already constitute a criminal offence. Whether that should be extended further in respect of corporations is a matter that the Government would have to consider carefully, as would the House.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

The Attorney-General might be aware that one of the areas of economic crime where legislation might be lacking relates to the financial crisis. Will he advise the House on whether his conversations have included or will include the potential for investigation of the tax affairs of chief executives and directors of failed financial institutions?

[The Attorney-General]

That would normally be a matter for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, not the Serious Fraud Office. However, the position of any prosecutorial authority is clear: if there is evidence of criminal conduct, it is in the public interest that it should be stopped and that those engaged in it should be punished if found guilty.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I can provide a detailed answer to the hon. Gentleman if he requires. If he is concerned about classified Government documents going amiss, I suggest he raises the matter with his right hon. Friend the shadow Health Secretary, who in 2009 had to apologise for leaving a briefcase full of classified Government documents on a train.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

5. What recent progress he has made in establishing Big Society Capital.

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

Big Society Capital is all about trying to make it easier for social entrepreneurs to access capital. We think that we are making good progress, moving swiftly through the Financial Services Authority authorisation and EU state-aid approval processes, and we are confident that Big Society Capital will be open for business by spring. In the meantime, the interim investment committee, which made its first investment in July, will announce its next investment shortly.

[Richard Fuller]

I thank the Minister for his answer. My focus is on the voluntary organisations whose budgets are always tight, so will he advise me on how he can enhance their capacity to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by Big Society Capital?

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend knows from his lengthy experience in the area that we have fantastic social entrepreneurs in this country, and we want to make it easier for them to access capital, but, as he points out, some of them need more help to become more investment-ready. That is exactly why we have set up a £10 million investment and contract readiness fund—to provide grants for organisations that want to attract investment but know they need more help to become more investment-ready.

--- Later in debate ---

The Prime Minister was asked—

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 14 December.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Sapper Elijah Bond of 35 Engineer Regiment, who died in Queen Elizabeth hospital, Birmingham last Thursday as a result of wounds that he had sustained in Afghanistan. He was a dedicated and highly professional soldier, and at this tragic time we should send our condolences to his loved ones, his friends and his colleagues.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Richard Fuller]

Let me associate myself and, I am sure, all other Members with the Prime Minister’s words about Sapper Elijah Bond.

The people of Bedford and Kempston will be disappointed that this week’s report on the financial crisis in the Royal Bank of Scotland contained no provision for the criminal prosecution of executives, directors, regulators and Ministers for their failures. Can the Prime Minister assure me that, unlike the last Government, his Ministers will reinforce financial regulations, and will not undermine them as the shadow Chancellor did when he was in office?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right, and as he will know, we are considering specific extra measures. We are considering sanctions in relation to what was done by people on the board of RBS. However, the report was not just damning about the board of RBS; it was damning about the politicians who were responsible for regulating RBS. And it did not just name politicians who are no longer serving: it also named the shadow Chancellor.

Public Services (Social Value) Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Friday 25th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Thomas]

I have not, but the explanatory notes prepared by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington for Second Reading contained an assessment of the cost, which, if I remember rightly, was approximately £41,000.

Many social enterprises clearly have a strong trading and enterprise ethos, but most have required start-up finance or transitional funds, or funds for specialist advice. For voluntary sector organisations wishing to become social enterprises, strong grant income can help to provide a cushion allowing a business model to be properly developed. If there is no clear, thought-through process to make appropriate funding available, the huge cuts in Government funding for the third sector may not only put at risk the services provided by voluntary and civil society groups on which so many of our constituents rely, but hold back the growth of the social enterprise sector.

It is, I would gently suggest, not enough for the Government to talk about a strategy for social investment. I do not doubt the Minister’s commitment to growing the market for social finance, and the Government’s interest in social impact bonds and support for the big society bank—both Labour ideas—are welcome, but when those initiatives are set against the scale of the cuts in direct funding from national Government and, as a result, local government, there seems to be little hope that the social finance market will have grown sufficiently robust to replace the estimated £3.2 billion—possibly as much as £5.1 billion—of direct funding that will be lost. That estimate of the potentially huge loss to the third sector over the coming comprehensive spending review period was provided by the independent analysts New Philanthropy Capital.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I am listening to the hon. Gentleman’s speech with great interest. He is making a point not only about the need for a strategy, but about the impact of cuts in the near term. Does he agree that, in essence, the Bill in its present form retains the opportunity to support social enterprises, and that the Social Enterprise Coalition and other leaders of social enterprises support it?

[Mr Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point when he says that the Bill, although its scope is substantially restricted, offers some opportunity for progress to be made in support of social enterprises. The Opposition welcome and support that, but, as my right hon. Friend said, this Bill provided the Government with an opportunity to be far more ambitious in scope, and it is a tragedy that the Minister has not been able to persuade his colleagues in Government to support the more far-reaching measures.

New Philanthropy Capital has assessed the funding situation facing the voluntary sector in the coming years. It noted how the scale of the cuts would be far too big for public foundations or other forms of philanthropy to be able to compensate for, and also noted that charities funded by local authorities, which will bear particularly heavy cuts, are at great risk. The Minister will not, I suspect, be surprised by these difficulties facing the third sector, especially those resulting from the Government’s cuts on local authorities. This is yet another example of their cutting public spending too far, too fast. I am sure the Minister will know about the cuts at Hillingdon Community Transport, Hillingdon Law Centre, Hillingdon Arts Association and Hillingdon Women’s Centre. Those are just a few examples of local organisations that are being affected by the coalition’s economic strategy.

Social enterprises that trade directly with the public are all too aware of the extremely difficult trading environment on the high street. The latest news, which came out today, is that Sir Philip Green is having to axe a whole series of shops. That proves the error of the Government’s economic strategy, and if his business is facing such difficulties, it is unsurprising that social enterprises that trade with the public are also experiencing falling incomes. The crisis facing the economy, and therefore the circumstances facing social enterprises trading with the public, are yet another reason why the Chancellor should consider introducing a temporary cut in VAT and adopting the plan B proposed by the shadow Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls).

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

The right hon. Lady has a lot of support for the work she has done in her career to support social enterprise. Will she add to her point about urgency and immediacy the fact that social enterprises provide one of the most exceptional ways to enhance productivity in public sector areas? As we are looking for the opportunity to grow our economy, it would be beholden on the Government to make every effort to look at ways in which social enterprises can enhance the productivity in that sector of the economy.

[Hazel Blears]

I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s point. The economy is difficult, there is less money around and public authorities have less resource to spend, so we must ensure that we get as much value as possible out of every pound we spend. The social enterprise sector is often very innovative and comes up with new ways of working and doing business, and that has been one of its particular advantages. There is good innovation in the public sector, but small organisations that have a complete passion for something will often take the system apart, look at how things are currently done, and get more value and productivity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

I wholeheartedly support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), as it enhances both supply and demand in a very important part of our economy: social enterprise. I think that this Bill can achieve more than my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) has said can already be done. I encourage my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington to continue his efforts and, indeed, to continue to challenge the Minister to do more.

The aspects of the Bill that I find most intriguing and to which I give most support concern its role in enhancing our country's ability to meet the challenge of our economic situation. We hear every day about the demands for growth, the challenge of deficits and the overhang of debt, and we look for the remedies that we may have to overcome all those great challenges. We look at our televisions screens and see elderly people in many of our social services lacking in the care that they need and being denied the dignity that they deserve, and we ask why such things happen in our country.

The solution to those challenges lies not in some technological innovation or substantial additional contribution of funds, but in understanding and enhancing the entrepreneurship of every man and woman in this country. I often struggle to understand all the reasons and rationales for people wanting to become entrepreneurs, because it is not simple; it is not straightforward. We have heard many examples from both sides of the House today of people who started social enterprises and businesses. Underpinning all that is the fact that the individual wanted to step up. He or she felt motivated to step forward and do something that was different and innovative. Their motivation could be the desire to make money; it could be that they want to do something for their community or their country; or they could be motivated by some spiritual values at the core of their heart. This Bill takes us a step forward in saying to those whose motivation is to help the community that this Government believe in them, want them to step forward and want them to achieve things on behalf of our country.

The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) made a pertinent point about the social value rather than the organisation. Social value is what we are looking to achieve—not to define some particular circumspect or corporate identity—and it is at the core of my hon. Friend's Bill.

For people who have the motivation to step up, the Bill creates a market and demand. Members on both sides of the House have raised concerns about whether the provisions should cover services alone, or if goods should be included too. That is a fair point. We have heard that, perhaps, we are not pushing boldly enough for a strategy, and therefore condemning ourselves to dealing with just two or three local authorities rather than the country as a whole. That is a fair point, too. What we are doing is creating a market. We are creating an opportunity for people now to say to local authorities across the country, “What are you doing to promote what I see in my heart and what motivates me to do better in my community?” The Bill does not define a document; it creates that space for these entrepreneurs, and it could not come at a more opportune time to meet the challenges that our country faces.

I commend the Minister for his support for the Bill. We understand the scale of the challenges that we face, we support all the initiatives outlined today, we understand that there must be caution in financing initiatives, and we understand that there are limitations on what the public purse can support, but he needs to understand that the group of people who sit behind him—those individuals who want to step up and do better in their community—are looking to him to see this Bill not as the ending point of a particular piece of work, but as the start of what we hope will be a radical Administration in this area. I thoroughly and wholeheartedly support the initiative of my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and encourage the House to support the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We completely agree that the treatment of Mrs Tymoshenko, whom I have met on previous occasions, is absolutely disgraceful. The Foreign Secretary has made a very strong statement about this. The Ukrainians need to know that if they leave the situation as it is, it will severely affect their relationship not only with the UK but with the European Union and NATO.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Q5. Small business, not more Government debt, is key to job creation, and entrepreneurship is a noble endeavour, so will the Prime Minister join me in welcoming the support of Bedfordshire university, Cranfield university, Colworth science park, Bedfordshire on Sunday and 100 business leaders in my constituency for setting up an investment fund and mentoring scheme to support early-stage businesses in Bedford? Will he ask his Ministers to work with me to see whether that can be replicated in other towns across the country?

[The Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for what he is doing in Bedford. This Government recognise that it is going to be small businesses that will provide the growth, jobs and wealth that this country needs. That is why we have an agreement with the banks to increase lending to small businesses, why we are providing extra rate relief to small businesses, why we are giving the smallest businesses a holiday from new regulation and why we have got the one-in, one-out rule for new regulation. I applaud all efforts at a local level to give small businesses the mentoring, help and support that they need to grow.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the very thoughtful speech of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) about the phone hacking scandal and the work he has done. I know that he took a strong interest in our Select Committee hearing yesterday.

Although he is not in his place, I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Mr Whittingdale), the Chairman of the Committee, for the great skill and care he showed in chairing yesterday’s very challenging Committee meeting. I thank also the Clerks of the Committee, who have done a huge amount of work in the past couple of weeks in preparation for that meeting.

The Prime Minister mentioned FIFA reform as an example of a story that has been generated by challenges to that organisation that have been made by the media and others outside it. I have taken a huge interest in that story, and I think it is absolutely right external pressure has been put on an organisation that would not otherwise reform itself. It does not have any kind of proper internal governance structure or other means for reporting and holding to account senior people within it. Although we might admire the kind of journalism that points the finger at organisations such as FIFA, media organisations have to learn from some of the internal governance structures and faults within such organisations. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Member for Rhondda that it is not acceptable to have a situation in which, when wrongdoing is discovered, proprietors can say that they had no idea what had been going on at one level, and neither did the relevant person in the newsroom. If we believe what we were told by Rebekah Brooks in the Committee yesterday, stories were going into the News of the World without the editor, the news editor or that newspaper’s lawyers having full knowledge of their source. That is clearly not acceptable.

It is also unacceptable, when an organisation’s employees are under police investigation, when some are being sent to prison and when millions of pounds of compensation are being paid out by that organisation, for people at a senior level not to be fully aware of the seriousness of what is going on, and to be unable to act. That is a serious issue because one would hope that when people at the top of a professional organisation became aware of wrongdoing, they would become the drivers for internal change and reform and be the ones who make sure that things happen. The report of the Select Committee on Home Affairs shows that there are great concerns about how the Metropolitan police pursued this case and about the fact that evidence lay unchecked and unresearched for a good amount of time, which might have delayed the investigation for some years.

There is also a big challenge for News Corporation. Whatever comes out of the inquiry that has been set up to look into the work of the media and the police inquiry, News Corporation should reform its corporate governance structures so that it has a mechanism to ensure that this never happens again, and that people at a senior level can take the appropriate action at the appropriate time or be held to account at the highest level for the failure of that action.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a strong point, as the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) did, about corporate governance needing to be changed. That is absolutely correct. Would my hon. Friend not also say that the culture and the mindset within which executives, even those at the lowest levels of these organisations, are working needs to change? It is not enough not to know what people in an organisation are doing; they need to know what they should and should not be doing.

[Damian Collins]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The point I raised with Rupert Murdoch in the Committee yesterday was about where the boundaries of investigative journalism lie, and whether they are clearly understood. Most people who have worked with news organisations—particularly former employees of News International who have spoken out—would say there was tremendous pressure for scoops and news. Some former News of the World journalists, such as Dave Wooding, who was on “Newsnight” last night, would say that there was that pressure, but that does not mean that they broke the law to go and get stories; they just did their job very hard. There are allegations about other people in the organisation who might have broken the law to satisfy their paymasters, editors and proprietors.

There is clearly a great need for investigative journalism in this country. It gives us a transparent society, and there is a lot more to being a democracy than simply holding elections.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

Many hon. Members have referred to the strength of the media, but we should recognise that the corollary of that is the weakness of politicians. Many people want to see an end to the cosy relationship between the media and our most senior politicians. They want to know that the Prime Minister is his own man, or her own woman. We recognise that that cosy relationship has grown up over the past 20 years, but most particularly under the premierships of Mr Blair and the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown). The present Prime Minister has now called time on those arrangements, and he is absolutely correct to do so.

That cosy relationship is not in the British tradition. In fact, it is more of a European tradition. Let me give two quotes to illustrate that assertion. Napoleon said:

“Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”

The Duke of Wellington said, “Publish and be damned”. What the public want to see from their Prime Ministers is more of that Duke of Wellington spirit, and I am pleased to see that our Prime Minister gets that. The truth is that it was not The Sun “wot won it”; it was the political arguments that won the case in 1992. It was a conceit on the British public to put the press in such a powerful position.

I am very grateful that the Prime Minister is now setting the direction of greater accountability. The Leader of the Opposition, who is back in his place, mentioned that one of the important issues was for people in positions of power to protect those who are not. He is a powerful man—the leader of the Labour party—so will he use his position as party leader to call for his two predecessors to contribute fully to the inquiry on the media? Will he ask and persuade them to release all the records of their meetings when they were in office as Prime Minister, so that we can get a full and transparent disclosure of this overly cosy relationship?

What the people want is to move away from a culture of deniability to one of accountability in our institutions. It is not sufficient to say that we do or do not have the right governance procedures in place. The public can see that there is a difference between knowing something is wrong, and allowing a culture in which bad things take place without their knowledge; they know they are different, but they know they are both wrong. They know that if we create a culture whereby we put pressure on people to provide results and do not ask them how they got to those results, that is wrong, and we need to change that. The executives in all our institutions in the media need to understand that.

If we can get those two things right, by ending this cosy relationship, as the Prime Minister rightly said today, and by creating a structure in which responsibility and accountability are to the fore, we will have had a good day in Parliament.

Counter-terrorism

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I think that it is, in the end, for the United States to decide exactly what to release about the operation. All that I would say, on the basis of my limited experience, is that there are some conspiracy theorists who will never be satisfied. Some people still believe that Elvis will be found riding Shergar. You will never satisfy some people. I think that what the Americans have done so far is pretty sufficient in explaining to all reasonable people that bin Laden is no more.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

On that bright September morning in New York, no one really seemed to give a fuss about anyone else’s religion, but over 20 years Osama bin Laden was responsible not only for the murder of innocents but for a raising of disadvantage for Muslims in many parts of the world. Does the Prime Minister agree that terrorists like Mr bin Laden abandon their faith the moment they determine to slaughter innocent people, and will he recommit himself to an open, inclusive society in this country, which includes our Muslim citizens?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has put it extremely well. The fact is that there is no place in Islam for this sort of murderous ideology. It is against what Islam is meant to be all about. I hope that the argument that we can get across to people now is that that was an entirely blind alley for so many young people to go down, and that there is an alternative to the repression and frustration that they felt about regimes in north Africa and elsewhere: the democratic awakening that is taking place, which—as I said earlier—is one of the ways in which we will defeat al-Qaeda in the long run.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

VAT issues are obviously a matter for the Treasury, and I would refer that question to Treasury Ministers. As the hon. Gentleman knows—he is a former Minister—that is a long-standing issue for the sector. He will also be aware of a number of initiatives to look at how we can make the VAT regime more helpful.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

T9. Will the Minister relax regulations on investments by foundations and trusts to empower them fully to support innovations such as social impact bonds?

[Mr Hurd]

My hon. Friend will know that this Government are totally committed to helping to develop the social investment market, so making it easier for social entrepreneurs to access capital. The big society bank is our major player in that area, but we are looking at a range of ideas. He will also be aware that the Charity Commission is reviewing its guidance to foundations, which have a critical role to play in that context.

Big Society

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some good points, including the one about the proportion of income that charities are getting from statutory governmental sources. Should the Government consider stripping the charitable status from organisations that achieve 80% of their funding from the state?

[Margot James]

I would like to consider that suggestion more fully. It is a laudable one, which would address the problem of over-dependence, although I fear that too great a bureaucracy would be required to oversee such an idea, resulting in two steps forward and one step back.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

I am going to press on, because I do not have much time.

We on the left have always understood that for any organisation to work, it needs a sense of purpose and a common goal. It needs to know what it is trying to achieve, not just how it will try to achieve it. People can then be brought together around that current goal.

That leads me to my second point about why purpose is so important in the big society. It seems to me that in the points that are being made about it, a whole series of objectives are conflated, whether democratic engagement or increasing volunteering. We all understand that volunteering is not the same as voice, but the conflation of more meetings at a local level with encouraging more people to volunteer and looking to commission more within the voluntary sector seems to reflect a lack of purpose.

[Richard Fuller]

rose—

[Stella Creasy]

I am not going to give way, because the clock is ticking. I do apologise.

Either the big society is a programme about the devolution of power, with single, double or treble participation, or it is about encouraging more people to be involved in running services. A lack of purpose comes from not having a mechanism to ensure that the purpose of those processes is fair and balanced. We on these Benches are very clear that all the purposes of Government should be about achieving a more equal, fairer society.

Equally, there is no mechanism in a process-driven purpose for judging value for money. As a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I look forward to seeing some of the reports that will come to us. Above all, there can be no clarity about the tough choices that any Government or any public may have to make about the type of services that they want if there is no sense of what those services are intended to achieve. Why are free schools and encouraging people in the voluntary sector to work together more seen as the same thing? It seems like apples and pears.

That leads me to the second problem with the big society, which is that it does not show an understanding of the voluntary sector as it is currently constructed. The focus on processes obscures as much of the work as it illuminates and shows a misreading of the fact that civil society is intricately connected with the public sector as much as it works with the private sector. Many charities are little different from businesses, as I believe the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) set out earlier, and many people who work in the public sector do so with an ethos of care and concern for their communities. Taking the argument for reform of the state and using it to call for its abolition like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

The history of the co-operative movement proves that. It was set up as a form of protection against the absence of publicly provided services—to fill a gap rather than to replace those services. The modern voluntary sector is intricately interconnected with the state, whether through the funding that it receives or the people with whom it works. The voluntary sector organisations that many Members have mentioned having in their communities will struggle without a sense of purpose to draw people together.

We have to be clear that the voluntary sector in itself is not a panacea. Some voluntary sector organisations work well and others do not work so well, so there needs to be a sense of purpose and a series of tests to set against it. We must also consider the type of volunteering that people are prepared to do. We are seeing a rise in what people call “episodic volunteering”, and there are many questions about whether such volunteering can deliver the purported goals of the big society. There are questions about whether there will be the sustained involvement and participation that people wish to see, or whether people will be willing to turn up for a day to volunteer on a stall but not to volunteer in the long term.

That leads me to my third concern about the big society, which is that it shows a misreading of the nature of community. Basing our view of community on the “little platoons” that people are so fond of talking about makes little sense in a contemporary era when we can know and feel the consequences of riots on the streets of Libya, poverty in Asia or earthquakes in New Zealand. Connectedness happens in many different ways around the world, locally, nationally and internationally, and through many different life stages.

I appeal to Conservative Members to learn the lessons that we on these Benches did about the danger of reading too much into communitarianism and the work of Etzioni. I found it fascinating to find out over the weekend that Robert Putnam and Colonel Gaddafi had once met to talk about whether there was a connection between “The Green Book” and social capital.

If we are to secure change in contemporary society, we need a better way of understanding how and why people connect. We also need a better reading of how and why people are connecting in their current societies, given that nearly 40% of people already currently volunteer through formal organisations and a further 56% volunteer in informal ways. The idea that Britain is broken or a nation of people who are alienated from their communities is simply not true. Furthermore, there is a danger in forcing our vision of what community looks like on communities that may have many social networks but are not connected to the public sector. The big society needs a better analysis of the nature of community and community bonds than it currently offers.

That leads to my fourth concern about the big society, which is that it does not show an understanding of the resources that communities have to give to volunteering and public service. We can learn not least from the experience of the big society ambassador himself, who found that he did not have the time to be involved in the way that he wished to be.

Anyone who has worked in the voluntary sector knows that time, money and confidence are critical factors in securing the contribution that anybody can make. The big society needs a better articulation of how that time, money and confidence will be shared out more equitably among society, so that we can unlock the potential that many people have. Asking people to do so much in such a short period does not allow for the time and effort that is required to allow that potential to grow.

I urge Members to look again at a case such as Porto Alegre and see that it took 20 years for people to be involved in the delivery of public services in Brazil in the way that many now want here. Perhaps they should learn from New Harmony, a colony set up by Robert Owen in Indiana that for 20 years developed libraries, community centres and hospitals, and then fell apart because all the people involved decided that they hated each other. That is the reality of trying to get people to work together—it is complex, messy and difficult, and without a sense of purpose it is destined to fail.

That is why I urge the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) to read a little less Burke and a little more William Morris, who understood that fellowship is life and a lack of fellowship is death. We on the left understand from Morris’s work that fellowship was about not just asking people to work together but about the conditions under which they worked. He understood the tyranny of inequality and the ability to bring people together to work in co-ops.

I also encourage the hon. Gentleman to read Tawney, who talked about fellowship being expressed not only through relationships between people but through institutions. We see the national health service as the best social insurance policy that the nation can have, and we work together at many different levels to achieve such goals. We look to the purpose first, and then to the different models for delivering it, rather than starting with the process of volunteering and asking what it can do. I hope that in this short time I have set out some alternative suggestions, and I would be happy to discuss the matter further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in the debate and a particular delight to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), who counts my mother, father and brother among his constituents. They routinely tell me what an excellent job he is doing as their Member of Parliament.

[Stephen Pound]

Get on with it.

[Richard Fuller]

I shall, indeed.

It has been interesting to hear people’s different perspectives on what the big society means, so at least we know that the big society is something. We might not agree on our perceptions of it, but I am with my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) in being quite comfortable with that difference of approach. For me, however, the point of the big society at this moment is about building institutions—other than state bureaucracies—that can deliver effectively the social goods and services that we all desire.

The bureaucracy was, as we have heard, always only one model, not the only model, for the provision of social goods and services, but over the years it has come to dominate the space in social goods provision. In so dominating that space, it has created other organisations that are less sustainable and resilient because of their dependence for their continuation on state funding.

Under the previous Government, new forms of charitable organisations evolved, and in fairness institutional forms will evolve over time. It takes time to create institutions; we have only to look at the construction of different forms within the private sector and other aspects of organisational theory.

It is also important to recognise the imbalance between bureaucracies on the one hand and charities, social enterprises and so on, on the other. Over the past 10 years, charities have in many ways been co-opted by the Government. If we look at the earned income of charities in 2000, we see that 40% came from statutory Government sources. Within just seven years, that percentage had risen to 52%. How does that help the independence of those institutions? How does it help to create resilience within them?

Not all charities are the same, however. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) heralded the women’s institute as the paragon of a big society organisation, but as Government Members know, women’s institutes do not claim Government money at all. Smaller charities have a far greater reliance than larger charities on individual donations: 64% of the income of very small charities comes from voluntary donations and private sources, and only 5% comes from statutory sources. For the large charities, those that are pretty good at cosying up to the Government, 34% comes from individual sources, and 38% comes from Government sources.

That mirroring of the state can also be seen in senior executive pay. On many occasions in the House, we have heard people talk about the growth in senior executive pay in local and national Government, and, as we look to the big society, people will have questions about whether the chief executive officer of Barnardo’s should be paid £166,000 a year, whether the chief executive of Action for Children should be paid £130,000 and whether we should really allow the chief executive of World Vision to sneak in at £99,994 a year without pointing to it. These are areas where we have to say that we need change. Do we see these social organisations as institutions in their own right or just as agents of the Government? If it is the former, we need to enhance their institutional strength.

I have some suggestions, many of which are already emanating from our Government. It is sometimes argued that giving people a tax deduction for their charitable donation will have the same result as gift aid, but I think we should change the system. People will respond more positively if they know they are going to get a tax deduction for their charitable donation. We do it for venture capital trust contributions and for the enterprise investment scheme, so why cannot we change the system to do it for charitable donations too? We need to look at ways of simplifying the rules and regulations. In particular, can we ease the rules on mergers and acquisitions between charities so that they can be done more effectively? Looking at the big society bank, can we ensure that we limit its scope to focus on those who are most important for society as a whole?

Most importantly, can we use this opportunity to create centres of excellence for non-profit bidding expertise? ConsortiCo in my constituency has brought together 35 charities to help them to bid for local government contracts. That is important, because many charities find it hard to access Government contracts. These organisations will become the platforms for outcome-based financing in future, and we need local centres of excellence to appear with their local government authorities in order to gain the experience of writing contracts that can be used for outcome-based financing. Fundamentally, the fight between charities and bureaucracies is not fair because bureaucracies hold all the cards. If we do not give charities the strengths to compete effectively with bureaucracies, we will not achieve the big society at this time.

It is a challenge for Conservative Members to implement the changes of the big society in this period of office, and it will govern and colour the context of our time. For Labour Members, however, the challenges are even more significant. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) said, they have to decide whether they want to continue to move forward with the reform agents in social enterprises and charities or to remain as guardians of the status quo.