David Cameron relaunched his ‘big society’ intiative yesterday though much of the detail remains vague.; in fact, the main concept is causing a lot of heated debate.
Below is an article featured on the Independent newspaper’s website. Is ‘big society’ about swinging cuts? Will the potential shift in expenditure and focus benefit community radio? What do you think? Do get comment below or on the corresponding forum post.
PM denies ‘Big Society’ is excuse to cut spending
By Joe Churcher and Matt Williams, Press Association, posted on the Independent website
David Cameron launched the next phase of his “Big Society” agenda today, denying the idea is a fig leaf for swingeing cuts in public services. The Prime Minister kick-started the initiative by announcing that community projects in four parts of the country will get support from civil servants.
He insisted the scheme was about engaging people rather than offloading the state’s responsibilities to the voluntary sector to save money.
But charities, unions, and Labour politicians raised doubts about how the plans would be funded while budgets were being slashed. Communities Secretary Eric Pickles also risked contradicting his boss by saying the Big Society was “unashamedly about getting more for less”.
Mr Cameron used a speech in Liverpool – one of the areas to benefit from state support – to hail the scheme’s potential for shifting power from the state to individuals. The other three areas picked to receive initial help with projects are Eden Valley, Cumbria; Windsor and Maidenhead, Berkshire; and the London Borough of Sutton. Each will get an expert organiser and dedicated civil servants to ensure “people power” initiatives get off the ground and inspire a wider change, the Prime Minister said.
A local buy-out of a rural pub, efforts to recruit volunteers to keep museums open and giving residents more power over council spending are among the initiatives being championed. Mr Cameron also confirmed plans to use funds stuck in dormant bank accounts to enable charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to take over the running of public services. Hundreds of millions of pounds should eventually be available in start-up funding as part of the push – which would see providers paid by results.
Mr Cameron said years of top-down government control had turned capable people into “passive recipients of state help”, lively communities into “dull soulless clones” and motivated public sector workers into “disillusioned weary puppets of government targets”.
Government had to be turned “completely on its head” to foster “communities with oomph”, public sector workers with freedom to innovate and “a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action”.
“These four vanguard communities will be the great training grounds of this change, the first territory on which real and ultra local power is a reality – and the Big Society is built,” he added. The Big Society Bank is based on legislation passed by Labour allowing money untouched for 15 years to be diverted to good causes if account holders cannot be traced by banks. Ministers hope it will be operational quickly enough to see the first money distributed to groups by April next year.
Speaking on BBC Breakfast ahead of his speech, the PM denied that the Big Society concept of people taking on more responsibility was merely a way of masking public service cuts. “It is not a cover for anything,” he said. “I was talking about the Big Society and encouraging volunteering, encouraging social enterprises, voluntary groups to do more to make our society stronger, I was talking about that way before we had a problem with cuts and deficits and all the rest of it.
“This would be a great agenda whether we were having to cut public spending or whether we were increasing public spending.” He added: “This is not about trying to save money, it is about trying to have a bigger, better society.”
Mr Pickles told BBC Radio 4′s World at One: “Even at a time when money is tight it is still possible to find different ways of delivering. “It is unashamedly about getting more for less. But it is about passing power down to folks so you can start to mould your own neighbourhood and put something back in.”
Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband said Mr Cameron’s declared commitment to the voluntary sector was belied by the cutbacks in Government support. “The problem with what he is saying today is it comes at the same time as there are very big cuts in funding to the voluntary sector,” he told the BBC. “This is essentially a 19th century or US-style view of our welfare state which is cut back the welfare state and somehow civic society will thrive. That is the reality.”
The chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Sir Stuart Etherington, said it was good Mr Cameron was “recognising the importance of the voluntary and community sector”.
“However I am very concerned about the tidal wave of cuts about to hit the sector,” he said. “These cuts will have a detrimental effect on the services received by some of the most vulnerable people in our society.”
Dave Prentis, general secretary of the union Unison, said: “Cameron’s Big Society should be renamed the big cop-out. “The Government is simply washing its hands of providing decent public services and using volunteers as a cut-price alternative. Mr Cameron hopes putting flesh on the bones of the Big Society philosophy – which he described as his “great passion” – will help it resonate with the public. Despite putting the idea at the centre of the Tory election campaign, a recent poll found more than a third of voters were unaware of it – although many approved when it was explained to them.
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This caught my eye from the Grauniad’s Patrick Butler
Whether this charities or CM orgs…
What’s your experience?
bests
Phil
Little evidence of support for charities
You may have seen my Guardian news story on Saturday about how grant cuts to many local charities threatened to undermine the “Big society”. A few reflections on my researches:
1./ I’ve seen little evidence that councils (or Whitehall) have done much so far to assess the strategic value of local charities and community groups, either in providing services, enhancing statutory services, or creating social capital.
2./ As as consequence quite a few charities that have demonstrated impact and value (and been lauded by ministers for doing so) still face serious cuts.
3./ The Compact seems to be dead in the water. If Capita or Serco had been treated in the same way as some charities have over funding, councils and the government would be facing a fair few law suits.
4./ Many charities feel powerless to complain about the cuts and are reluctant to speak out in case they are singled out for more pain.
5./ The way in which the cuts have been carried out has hugely dented trust in the government Big society idea.
There’s a sense that if some on the right get the important support role of small charities and state funding in Big society Nick Hurd, for example many do not. Karl Wilding of NCVO tweeted this piece on the Conservative Home blog, which gives you a flavour of some of the contradictory and muddled mainstream right-of-centre thinking. This holds that (a) charities should not be providing public services anyway, so if their grant is cut, so what? (b) ok, maybe charities are better at public services than the “monolithic” state, but the taxpayer shouldn’t properly fund them because they will become corrupted; and (c) if the charities are really good at what they do, they won’t be cut … er, will they?
Last week a senior manager in a national charity told me that he’d realised the Tories “didn’t actually see charities as partners”. What he meant was that for all the rhetoric, they instinctively really didn’t like or trust charities. They may not be part of the state, but they’d been living off the state, which made them suspect, and were most likely full of Guardian-reading lefties. As you can see from the Conservative Home blog post comments, the debate about broader societal role of charities and community groups quickly gets lost in a welter of pet hates and loathing for human rights charities and community arts projects.
None of this bodes well for Big society.
• Is your charity of small community group in danger of losing its grant funding? Tell us (confidentially) at Guardian.co.uk/cutswatch
July 26th, 2010