Big Society

William Bain Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to be called to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) on securing the support of the Backbench Business Committee for this debate. It is a pleasure, too, to follow the hon. Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman), whose book I enjoyed reading in preparing for this debate. I am afraid that I would be accused of misleading the House if I said that I enjoyed his speech just a little less than I did his prose over the weekend, but he made an interesting contribution.

There is a degree of consensus across the House that increasing levels of social capital in our communities should be a Government priority. There is also a sense, I detect, of shared purpose that local communities should be involved in the design of public services, where possible. Similarly, it is recognised that social change is best fought for and achieved from the grass roots up. The campaigns led by women for the right to vote and by trades unions for better employment rights and welfare at work are powerful historical examples. In the US, from the 1950s onwards, Saul Alinsky developed community organisation projects that delivered radical social change in excluded communities.

There is vast gulf between the Government and the Opposition about the means to achieve improvements in social empowerment, and huge uncertainty as to whether the Government view that in the context of greater equality and liberty, as we do, or simply seek to share the responsibility for the Chancellor’s excessive and overly hasty cuts in public expenditure. The Opposition note the progress made by Government Members in acknowledging that there is indeed such a thing as society, but the execution of the concept of the big society risks being characterised by incoherence and confusion at its core.

Social action plays a crucial role in generating social justice in my constituency. People in Glasgow North East are not mere collections of individuals co-existing by chance in a state of mutual indifference; they live in vibrant communities with shared ambitions to improve their environment and schools and to care for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, and they are prepared to work together to achieve those aims. I urge hon. Members to consider the work of these organisations: the disability community in Possilpark, one of the most deprived places in the country, provides meals, social interaction, and shared activities for disabled people in north Glasgow; Royston Youth Action works to reduce the impact of territorial gang disorder and the lack of organised social activities for young people in Royston, Germiston and Provanmill; the Alive and Kicking project in Balornock provides advice, activities and low-cost meals for the elderly; and the integration network in Petershill and Sighthill gives the many asylum seekers in Glasgow North East the opportunity to train for new skills, if they are awarded refugee status and are permitted to work in the United Kingdom. Those are examples of people coming together to organise day trips or social activities that they simply could not afford, if they had to do it alone. As Robert Putnam, a strong supporter of the theory of social capital, might have put it, it is about people choosing to bowl together, rather than bowling alone.

What all those great voluntary organisations have in common is the requirement for a willing partner in government at all levels, whether at local, devolved, or national levels. They have all received funding and support from the state over the past decade. Social action groups in Glasgow North East and across the country need a hand up, rather than a handout, but the Government’s approach on the economy and on funding for local and devolved government threatens to snatch away this helping hand just when it is most needed. Voluntary groups are being hurt by the pressure on costs from the hike in VAT to 20% from 4 January this year, and the uncertainty over the continuation of local government support. Charities are also suffering through the £3 billion in cuts to be imposed over the period of the comprehensive spending review.

The previous Government had a good record in supporting the third or voluntary sector. Funding to the sector more than doubled from £5.5 billion in 1997 to £12 billion in 2009. At the end of 2010, there were approximately 62,000 social enterprises in the UK contributing at least £24 billion to the economy. Some of the initiatives pursued by the Government originate in the plans of the previous Government, including social investment bonds and the social investment bank. The Financial Times leader asked on 10 February:

“But can these new forms of investment, and the Big Society Bank, possibly plug the gaping holes left by the spending cuts? In the short term, absolutely not.”

Where the Government’s vision is limited is in its refusal to challenge some of the real inequalities of power and wealth that persist in the country today.

There seems to be little appetite on the part of the Government to respond meaningfully to many of the grass-roots campaigns supported by thousands of people in the past few months. Let us take the issue of capping the total costs of credit to end the abuse of high-cost, short-term credit faced by the poorest in our society, which is an approach championed by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), or even the fairer taxation of bonuses paid to highly paid employees in the banking sector. Both are policy areas where a genuine redistribution of power to people would see government action follow social action.

The Government’s version of the big society sees no role for communities seeking to organise to challenge concentrations of power where people believe that markets should better serve them, not the other way around. The rhetoric of the big society is indeed ambitious, but the scope of its vision in reality is disappointingly small. What the country needs is a strategy to deal with the unacceptable levels of social disengagement and inequality of wealth, opportunity and power that still scar our society. That is the essence of the good society. Failure to tackle these issues will mean that the Government will fail in their ambition to create a society with more liberty and more equality—the two concepts are inextricably linked. If the Conservative party cannot meet these challenges, Opposition Members will make it their task to do so in the months and years ahead.