Roberta Blackman-Woods
Main Page: Roberta Blackman-Woods (Labour - City of Durham)Department Debates - View all Roberta Blackman-Woods's debates with the Cabinet Office
(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Phil Wilson
We would have done two things. First, we would have made sure that, as far as possible, we did not damage front-line services. Secondly, we would not have raised expectations, as I believe this Government are doing by saying that they will create a big society while at the same time undermining that big society by slashing and burning all the grants and facilities that provide for the third sector. We would not have done that.
We also need the Government to consider what they can do other than providing for charities and the third sector, because the big society involves more than doing just that. For example, one of the issues in my constituency is that some private landlords are neglecting the properties that they own. Those properties were owned by the National Coal Board many years ago. They were then sold off, and people bought them to get on to the property ladder, before selling them on. Private landlords came in and bought them. Now we have a problem, and I believe that, if we are not careful, whole centres of communities will be sucked out and the community spirit will be sucked out too by the behaviour of some of those landlords.
Labour introduced selective licensing schemes, which I am pleased to say the Government have allowed to continue. However, we were also going to introduce a national register for private landlords, which would have meant that you had to register in communities such as mine before you could go on to rent out properties. The Government are not introducing that register. I know that private landlords are not necessarily the Minister’s responsibility, but he has responsibility for the big society. He needs to discuss this issue of private landlords with the Department for Communities and Local Government, because it is ripping the soul out of some of our local communities and needs to be sorted out.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
I totally endorse the point that my hon. Friend is making about the lack of registration of landlords and what I think is a lack of consideration by this Government of the need for communities to know who landlords are, so that if problems with rented properties emerge, they can be tackled at local level.
Phil Wilson
My hon. Friend and I worked together a lot on this issue with Durham county council. Many of those private landlords are absentee landlords, and a lot of them live abroad, so what do they care about what is happening in the villages of Sedgefield or elsewhere in the country? It is an issue that needs to be tackled nationally and, if need be, internationally, too. I say that because if you are not careful what you will have in these areas is not a big society but a non-society, because the community spirit will be taken out of them.
If we really want a big society to flourish, and if we are “all in this together”, we must look internationally to secure a future for our communities that is protected from unstable international financial systems. We need a big society that is not underpinned by abolishing the future jobs fund or the education maintenance allowance, and by the Prime Minister basically reneging on his pledge to send back to the drawing board any Minister who came up with a proposal that affected the front line.
Finally, I want to leave you with this example of the kind of society—
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. We have had an interesting and wide-ranging debate. I shall begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on securing this important debate. His description of the community he serves is familiar to me. We are both very fortunate and privileged to serve as MPs for ex-mining communities. He is right to point out that, over many years, these communities have often been denied the tools to improve their areas, notwithstanding their ability and desire to do so. He was also right to remind us of the centrality of mutualism and co-operatives to the development of communities and, indeed, to the Labour party itself. Moreover, he was right to question whether the Government’s agenda is more than self-help.
The hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) made a number of interesting points about the role of the state. I say to him that, if Labour went too far in using the state as a way of improving communities, I hope that he would accept that this Government could be going too far in dismantling the state, particularly the welfare state. He might also want to consider the impact of that on disadvantaged areas in particular. He was right, however, to applaud the Localism Bill, which includes some useful elements and has created high aspirations for what it could deliver in my constituency. I hope that the Government will deliver on their rhetoric for my constituents.
As we might have expected, the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) started off by blaming Labour for the world’s ills, but I hope that he would accept that Labour set out a clear plan to reduce the deficit. We said that we would do it more slowly and carefully than this Government.
Roberta Blackman-Woods
As I said, we set out clearly how we would reduce the deficit more slowly. The amount of money that we would have reduced would, therefore, have been less, so there would not have been these huge, up-front cuts affecting local government. Interestingly, the hon. Gentleman outlined vividly one of the points that I wish to make—the voluntary sector and the big society were not invented by this Government. Much wonderful community and voluntary activity is already taking place, as he demonstrated so eloquently by talking about what is happening in his own constituency.
The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) outlined the obstacles that may prevent voluntary activity, but he gave little recognition to the fact that some individuals are more able than others to undertake such activity. Perhaps the atlas and geography of volunteering need to be taken into consideration. Nevertheless, I pay tribute to the many volunteers in his constituency and to the wonderful work that is taking place, as I do to the hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey), who has pointed out that much is already happening in her constituency and that the Government could do more to enable further activity to take place.
On the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield, he was absolutely correct to focus on what is undermining the big society, rather than to question the principles that underpin the idea of encouraging more volunteering, supporting community organisation and development, and giving a new impetus to social enterprise, co-operatives and mutuals. It would be churlish for us to do that. In government, Labour more than doubled the amount of money provided to the charitable sector, and we encouraged more volunteering. Organisations such as V did wonders to improve the number and range of volunteering activities available to young people, and that is just one example. The outcome of Labour’s support for the sector was greatly to increase the number of those involved in volunteering, and to expand the role of the sector in delivering services.
Surely, therefore, it is a matter of great disappointment that recent data from the citizenship survey for April to September 2010 show that 24% of people volunteered formally at least once a month, which is a lower level than that which existed previously and, perhaps, a surprise given the emphasis placed on volunteering by this Government. We should not, however, be at all surprised that, this week, we began to see questions in the media about whether the cuts might be choking the sector and impeding the development of the big society. All MPs are now becoming aware of how cuts to funding are impacting on not just the voluntary sector in their constituencies, but on smaller charities and agencies that undertake highly valuable work in all of our communities.
As if things on the funding front were not bad enough, it is interesting to note that Phillip Blond—one of the architects of the big society—is quoted in the press this week as having to argue that the big society is not in crisis. Of course, as soon as he tries to defend the big society, we immediately think that it must be in crisis and that his comments suggest that there is trouble.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield has so eloquently pointed out, Labour knows the value of supporting community development. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) did much at the Department for Communities and Local Government to put community empowerment on the agenda, but I sometimes wonder if the current Government understand the support that some communities and sections of communities need for that.
We know that levels of volunteering vary hugely across the country, yet it is the areas that have the lowest levels of volunteering—the poorest areas—that are suffering most from the public spending cuts. Those are the areas where most needs to be done. The deprived inner-city areas of London and the northern cities are experiencing the most drastic cuts, which undoubtedly will be passed on to the voluntary sector. If we are faced with huge cuts to services and funding, the Government will have to redouble their efforts if they are to succeed in developing more enterprise and mutuals in those circumstances. The big society bank has been put forward as a means of achieving that, but there are big questions about the delay in its implementation and whether it will have enough resources to do its job.
As well as flagging up what is happening with the levels of volunteering, the citizenship survey is important in other regards. It shows that 86% of adults in England were satisfied with their local area as a place to live, that 85% thought their community was cohesive and that 64% were not worried about being a victim of crime. That is hardly evidence of the broken Britain that the Government feel has to be fixed by an army of volunteers. That is not to say that volunteering is not important; quite the opposite, it suggests that much of what the Government say they want to create already exists in communities up and down the country. We saw many examples of that this afternoon. If they are to do more, they need support in terms of finances, resources and infrastructure, at least in a number of areas that face multiple and complex problems and have social needs. Social action can be a key feature in turning communities around, but it is not the only ingredient that is necessary.
I hope that the Minister will say what support he intends to give to groups and agencies suffering cuts beyond the inadequate transition fund and, crucially, how his community organiser programme will work with existing organisations. Perhaps he could answer the question posed in yesterday’s leader in The Times on why the Government still have to develop any signature policies or to bring examples of what the big society means. The Times was also useful for letting us know that the Minister has written to ask what ideas Conservative MPs have to make the big society a success. We will await the answers with interest. In the meantime, it is important to do what we can to support community and voluntary organisations and to develop social enterprises and mutuals, not least as a means of employment in our poorest communities. It will be interesting to hear from the Minister how he intends to achieve that.