On Saturday, I blogged about what in my view a
Labour government under Ed Miliband may mean for the country. However, in my
overview I only briefly touched upon Labour’s potential plans for the third
sector and social enterprise in the UK, which have been indicated to be a
critical aspect of the One Nation Labour platform.
Lord
(Maurice) Glasman, a previous Miliband advisor and one of the leading
thinkers behind One Nation (originally ‘Blue’) Labour, has always emphasised
the role of non-for-profit and community endeavour in the social vision he
pressed Labour to adopt, citing the Labour movement’s original pre-1945 roots
in the trade unions, cooperatives, guilds, provident societies and so on. The
commitment of both Ed Miliband and Labour policy review chair Jon Cruddas MP
(another Blue Labour founder) to this vision has in turn influenced the wider
party. At an April 2013 Progress
event
discussing what One Nation might mean for ‘ownership’ in public services, I
remember Shadow Care Minister Liz Kendall talking up the potential role for
charities, mutuals and social enterprise in health and social care, describing
these types of organisations as “where Labour came from”.
 |
| Lisa Nandy MP, now shadow Civil Society minister, addresses a joint NCVO/ACEVO Labour Conference fringe, 2011 (Photo courtesy of NCVO London/Flickr) |
Miliband
on the third sector
In the case of Ed Miliband himself, his first
frontbench job in 2006 was as Minister for the Third Sector within the Cabinet
Office. Writing in 2007, Matt Ross of
PlacemakingResource commented that “Unusually for a junior minister in his
first role, Ed Miliband seems genuinely enthusiastic about his remit” and that
Ed had “charmed many of the sector's leading figures with his empathetic, warm
and highly approachable style”. At an NCVO reception during Labour’s 2013
conference, Miliband himself described the post as a “privilege”. Ross also commented
that as minister, Miliband defended the contracting out of local authority
services to the third sector from traditional left-wing critiques about erosions
of democratic accountability, on the logic that improved interaction with users
represented "another form of accountability", while simultaneously
noting that "with the local authority as the commissioner, the democratic
accountability still lies with it".
One of his early acts was to work with the Carnegie
UK Trust, the Economic & Social Research Council and the Scottish
government to found the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy (CGAP),
tasked with providing research into fundraising and the drivers behind
charitable donations. At the time, the NCVO described the establishment of
the centre as “a very welcome development”, and CGAP has continued to provide analysis on the nature and
scale of charitable giving in the UK to inform the sector. Miliband also helped establish a £125m
Futurebuilders fund to help the sector secure public service contracts, a £30
million Community Assets Fund to assist the transfer of assets from councils to
third sector organisations, and a £2 million training plan to encourage 2,000
public sector commissioners to contract more services to third sector, for
example by educating them about social clauses in contracts.
However, Ed’s time in office was not wholly without
controversy. In March 2008 following Ed’s
promotion to overall Minister for the Cabinet Office, controversy emerged over
whether certain funds available from another department, Douglas Alexander’s
Department for International Development (DFID), could be granted to charities
engaged in lobbying against the UK government (or certain international
organisations and companies). DFID’s guidelines were interpreted by some in the
third sector as a potential breach of a pledge made by Miliband regarding the
right of charities to lobby - he had previously assured the NCVO that charities
"must be able to bite the hand that feeds you". This is a continual
sensitivity for the third sector, and one of the potential hazards represented
by the decades-long trend towards the charitable sector becoming more
financially reliant on government in the form of grants and contracts, so it is important
that a post-2015 Miliband government upholds his original pledge.
Current Labour plans
In opposition, Labour has already sent a
strong signal about lobbying rights. A key Labour promise to the third sector has
been the party’s opposition to the coalition’s Transparency of Lobbying Act (‘the
gagging law’). This now includes a pledge to repeal the act and replace
it with more targeted lobbying reform legislation, including a “universal
register of lobbyists and a code of practice with sanctions”, which will be
formulated “in full consultation
with charities and campaigners”. An ACEVO poll found likely public
support for this approach to reform – while 71% of the public distrusted lobbying
consultants and more than 55% were also suspicious of companies, trade unions
and think-tanks, 49% did still trust charities to influence government (the
public also perceived charities to be in by far the weakest position to
influence government, with 66% assuming charities had “no influence” – over
half felt all the other interests mentioned had a “fair amount of influence”).
Labour’s shadow Minister for Civil Society, former CentrePoint and Children's Society officer Lisa Nandy MP, has also talked about reforming
commissioning in order to “level the playing field” for public contracts, perhaps
reducing dependence on Payment-by-Results (PbR) contracts, and about the need to release
funds for capacity-building. In May, she launched a
consultation
on the future of the charitable sector and issues including procurement,
campaigning and volunteering, pledging that Labour would “renew our partnership with
the voluntary sector” (submissions can be made here). Nandy also spoke of the need for larger
charities to work with smaller ones, rather than continually competing, and
called on more organisations in the sector to institute the Living Wage.
Labour will also be appointing regional
ministers, part of the broader
One Nation approach of decentralising government and devolving power within
the UK. This will mean a Labour government will rely less on top-down
Whitehall-led programmes than in past – Nandy has said the “answers to the
problems we face aren't in offices in Whitehall or town halls, they're in
communities…we need to invest in what’s already there and work together to
strengthen it.”
Picking
up where the coalition leaves off?
However, the political vogue for
the third sector
in recent years has not been restricted to the left, of course. The
Conservatives spent much of their time in opposition developing the ‘Big
Society’ agenda, aiming to incorporate the voluntary sector, social enterprise
and mutuals into their own vision for society, and have sought to implement this
agenda in government. This means that if there is a change of government in May
2015, any incoming Labour administration will have a set of existing
programmes to build on. It could also mean that there might be somewhat
greater policy continuity post-election in some aspects, from the perspective
of the sector.
The Big Society agenda has resulted in some
of coalition government’s more commendable domestic achievements, including the
founding of the £600m independent Big Society Capital bank in April 2012,
the first social investment institution of its kind. In the health sector there have also been
similar efforts, including the founding of the £4m Excellence and Strategic
Development (IESD) Fund and £1.6 million Health and Social Care Volunteering
Fund (HSCVF). I have admiration for aspects of Cabinet Office Minister Francis
Maude’s public service reform agenda, particularly
his consistent promotion of public sector mutuals. In September 2013, I also noted that on the Lib Dem
side of the coalition Shadow Care Minister Norman Lamb was pursuing similar efforts,
appointing King’s Fund chief exec Chris Ham to lead a review of NHS
mutualisation. As I have noted before, in the event of a hung parliament and
the possible need for a Lib-Lab coalition deal, apparent policy
similarities
between Lamb and Labour on key health issues such as this will be very helpful.
However, Labour maintains that there are
critical differences between the Labour and Conservative visions for the third
sector and its role, something Ed Miliband has been articulating ever since David
Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ ideas first started to emerge during the latter’s time
in opposition. In 2007, Ed said the
following:
"The difference
between us [Labour] and them [Cameron’s Conservatives] is that they want to say
that the welfare state has failed and can't make our society fairer, and thus
we need social enterprise. I think that's wrong…The right kind of enabling
state can make a big difference to people's lives, and social enterprise must
not become an excuse for Government to abdicate its responsibility to fund
public services. Generally, the opposition want a smaller state, and they think
one way to get there while looking caring is to talk about social entrepreneurs
and charities."
Whether or not you regard it as fair, this
has become a familiar critique of the ‘Big Society’ on the left – that it is a ‘smokescreen’
for an absolute shrinking of the scope and responsibilities of the state. Miliband
therefore believes that the difference between the two approaches is that
Labour, while certainly more critical of centralised Whitehall government than
before, now seeks to emphasise partnership between an empowered, expanding third sector and a strong,
but newly-decentralised state.
Conclusions
As in other policy areas, we currently know the
broad contours and key features of Labour’s plans for the third sector, but as
usual we will have to wait until the manifesto is finalised for full details.
All the same, Labour has outlined a vision of society that will deemphasise the
central state in favour of traditional, community-based means of providing
social goods, and have made clear a determination to ensure that voluntary
organisations and social enterprises are able to step up in this new
environment.
Labour will also repeal and replace the government’s
lobbying reforms to ensure that the advocacy role of the third sector is
safeguarded, something representative bodies including ACEVO have stressed as a
priority. And Labour’s current thinking continues on from both what Miliband
himself fought for in the New Labour years and from the current government’s
commitment to the third sector and mutualism in public services, offering the
sector a measure of predictability and continuity at an uncertain time. All
good things.
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