Community and Voluntary Sector Funding

Susan Elan Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I am not sure whether this requires a declaration, but I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on civil society and volunteering, which is administered by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. I put that on the record; I might have got into trouble if I had not.

Six minutes is not a lot of time to talk about this. As it was in 1601 that the Charitable Uses Act came to this House, we have been discussing charities and their development for the past 414 years. In England and Wales, we have got about 180,000 registered charities and there are probably as many again that are not registered. Charities have a combined income of £40.5 billion a year, similar to the figure for 2006. Of that, £13.3 billion is from Government sources, down £1.7 billion since 2010-11, and 83% is from contracts. Many of those points were made most eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah), who spoke magnificently at the start of the debate.

Wherever we stand on the ideological spectrum, we all know that the public sector cuts will hit hard, so I will put in a plea for the charities’ old block grants. I know the history of contracts and the rest of it, but, as well as providing value in terms of simplicity for smaller charities, they also deal with capacity building. The core funding can and should be monitored. Indeed, when I was a manager of a small charity in London, I think I faced a lot more monitoring than Kids Company did for its multi-millions. That should be looked at, because it would enable those charities to develop and grow in funding and capacity.

It is right that controversies and indeed slightly dodgy fundraising practices are looked into, and it is right that we are considering those issues in the Charities (Protection and Social Investment) Bill. I, for one, will welcome the development of a fundraising preference service, but we know that charities need to raise money and always have needed to. We have seen that throughout our history, whether it was Dr Barnardo or those lesser known and less wealthy philanthropists such as those individuals and families who, in Victorian times, ensured that orphaned, destitute and illegitimate children became part of their family. They did not have the money or get the big plaques, but they were part of that bigger society.

To look to the new generation, I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Member for Chippenham (Michelle Donelan) that we must look again at gift aid. I suspect that many of us make direct debits and the like and sign the little gift aid forms in the old-fashioned way. However, there is a new generation out there. Demos, in its “Introducing Generation Citizen” report in 2014, made the point that 13 to 19-year-olds have a real desire to help others through social action. Of course, many younger people do donations by text, so we need philanthropy for a modern age and a new generation of givers. Think, indeed, of Stephen Sutton and how crowdgiving led to more than £3 million for a charity in a year—that is a phenomenal legacy from a phenomenal life. Cancer Research UK’s no make-up selfies raised £2 million for charity and received more than 800,000 donations by text.

We know the history of gift aid and as a society we should be proud of how it has developed and increased, but surely it is time to look at making it automatic for text donation. The Government must look at that. We made the point in the Small Charitable Donations Act 2012—this is not for gift aid, but it is similar—that charities can automatically claim back on a gift from an unknown donor, so I hope that the Minister will look at that.

We are looking at our communities and discussing the charities and community organisations, which I think reflect the diverse aspects of Britain: the different societies; the wealthy philanthropists; the miners’ welfare organisations; the Churches and other faith groups; and a whole series of initiatives.

Let us not forget that the NHS did not start off as a national, state-sponsored health service; it actually began in small communities where people had ideas. When we talk about the divisions between voluntary sector and state and private sector, we forget that often a good idea is piloted in the voluntary sector and people think, “This is good. We will have a bit more of this and then we will do it locally or nationally.” At the heart of the debate, we need to look at funding and where clear problems are caused by the funding cuts, but we need to be innovative and pluralistic and celebrate that work. It is not that we want a big state; what we challenge the Government for is a much bigger society.