We need a better discussion of poverty and welfare

A while back I wrote about how conservatives needed to start talking about poverty.

Two days ago an old cinema in Shipley caught fire – it’s now being demolished as an unsafe building. One tweet I saw suggested that it might have started from a tramp lighting a fire to keep warm on a cold, snowy night. It may turn out that there was some other cause but, sadly, this suggestion could very well be true. For whatever reason there are people sleeping rough on even the coldest night – and this is poverty.

Too many of us look at this and throw up our hands in despair. After all we’ve had a welfare system for over 100 years and a welfare state for nearly 70 – and still there are people who end up unable to heat their home, wondering whether they can feed their children and lacking in any hope or aspiration. So when I see people “defending” the welfare state, I want to scream and point to the terrible injustice of poverty.

In rounds terms the UK government spends about £100bn on alleviating poverty (this is just the welfare budget bit of it so the true figure is maybe a bit higher) - there really ought not to be much poverty left if this money was distributed well. The problem is partly that government really isn't very good at running things and that we design general systems lacking the responsiveness and flexibility needed to respond to the reality of poverty. But fixing that won't fix poverty.

In one respect us Conservatives have it right - the best way to eliminate poverty is for people to have a job and the opportunity for personal betterment. But, even when we move away from relative measures of poverty, there remains, at any given time, a lot of people who by any measure are in abject poverty. When Bradford Council's corporate scrutiny committee looked at this, my back-of-the-envelope estimations gave a figure of 15,000-20,000 people in the City who are genuinely wanting, really are poor. Stretch this across the nation and we get to a figure of about 2 million or so people who are in poverty.

Blessedly, for many of this 2 million, the situation is temporary, they get the benefits sorted out, maybe pay off some debt or get a job and are able to move to a more stable place, at least for the time being. But this still leaves a lot of people - I don't know how many, suspect no-one knows for sure - who are living in terrible poverty and can't get themselves out of it. And, yes, we do a fine job most of the time helping them, either through the benefits system or through the wonderful thing that is people's charity. The thing is, however, that this isn't getting to the heart of the problem, it's treating the symptoms rather than the cause.

As conservatives, people who believe in the free market society that made most people much richer than past generations, we need to resist the temptation to line up with the progressive left and say that cause is down to the system, that liberal capitalism is somehow the reason for that ex-soldier sleeping rough outside Tower Hill tube station or that single mum crying herself to sleep because she's nothing to feed the kids tomorrow. If there are a million people stuck in terrible poverty, there are an accompanying million reasons for that being so.

It seems to me that our nationalised and centrally-directed welfare system, for all that it works for most of its users, simply cannot give the time and attention to people that would allow plans to get that ex-soldier or that single mum out of their poverty. If we are to redesign a system, it needs to come with space to allow better support for such things as mental health, drug and alcohol dependence, disability and budgeting. And, yes, this means challenging spending reductions in local government and looking at how we can make ideas like the (badly named) troubled families programme work. It also means recognising that providing emergency cash, food and clothing has to be part of a system - things like food banks should be seen as part of society's response not as a reflection of failure.

It also strikes me that we need to see how the creativity of private initiative can be directed to helping these million or so folk stuck in poverty. Big government isn't innovative (probably rightly) but there are a lot of people working in and around government who could be given the opportunity and incentive. I'm struck by the degree to which charities and voluntary groups are ready to take risks, do things a bit differently, in order to help those they were formed to help. How we get more of this should be something exercising the mind of government. David Cameron's 'Big Society' was a good start that was, sadly and wrongly, castigated by people in the voluntary sector suffering from a bad case of 'not invented here syndrome'.

The elimination of poverty is not something that can be achieved by government on its own, least of all by tearing down the system of liberal capitalism most likely to deliver a long term answer. That Cameron observation that "there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same as government" should be our starting point. The task of government is to enable people who want to help to do just that, to remove the controls preventing support. At the same time government needs to start being more trusting of the people who walk in through its doors seeking help.

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Are there too many VCS organisations?

OK it's the USA but Aaron Renn hits a chord with me:

When I look around older cities, I frequently see that they’ve got a veritable armada of non-profits. Rarely do I see these making a huge difference in the trajectory of the city.

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Try to do anything in a city and you’ll be told to meet with all these “stakeholders”, a large percentage of whom are non-profit leaders who claim to speak in the name of some constituency or cause but too often represent their own personal fief.

Anyone wanting to do things in a city has to run this gauntlet of non-profits and find a way to placate them.

Of course, here in the UK we call them the 'voluntary sector' or 'VCS' or 'Third Sector' but the same applies. There are brilliant organisations out there doing fantastic work but for each one of these there seems to be at least one other best described as a 'grant farmer' - sustaining itself and its staff by chasing grants to 'deliver' projects created and designed by local, regional or national public bodies.

As Renn concludes:

In cities, the Pareto principle likely applies to non-profits as it does everywhere else: the top 20% most effective non-profits deliver 80% of the public benefits.

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People working in the voluntary sector still don't get 'Big Society'

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I’ve lost count of the number of government initiatives and funding regimes that I’ve seen during my time in the voluntary sector.

And that's it really. The reason why the idea of a 'Big Society' isn't understood by those who earn their living working in the voluntary sector. For them - and this is borne out by any conversation with any of them - it's all about 'government initiatives and funding regimes'. I know they'll talk the talk about citizen engagement and 'helping people to help themselves' but their daily effort is more often directed to those 'funding regimes' and 'government initiatives' (and to moaning about how they aren't big enough or specific enough or properly targeted).

'Big Society' isn't about those funding regimes. It's about real voluntary action, about people doing things because they love the place they live and want to make it a better place. Or people helping poor people because they think those people merit help. And the involvement ranges from baking a cake for a fundraisers right through to running - entirely voluntarily - big organisations. At no point is it about getting a wage, recovering expenses, let alone having a career. The voluntary sector professional simply cannot get his or her head around the idea that someone might just do it because they want to do it - without payment, without needing their 'professional' input.

Now these voluntary sector professionals (metaphorically sucking their teeth) will then - in that uniquely patronising manner of such folk - explain that all this is fine in a place like Cullingworth, filled as it is with all that lovely social capital. But out there in those deprived areas (so often celebrated by people - I still inwardly cringe remembering the former leader of Bradford Council who wallowed in "I represent one of the 100 most deprived wards in the country" as if this was a good thing) there isn't any of this social capital so those voluntary sector professionals have to go in there and help. Give the community a great big cuddly hug and tell them it will all be alright once the right 'funding regimes' and 'government initiatives' are identified.

'Big Society' isn't about programmes or grand schemes, it's not about offices filled with paid workers (although all of these can and do play their part). It's about the bloke who, instead of moaning to all and sundry about the trough that isn't planted up, blags some compost and a few bedding plants and does it himself. Or the woman who pops in to see if the old lady next door wants a lift into town to do some shopping. A thousand different, small and simple acts of caring make up the big society. Some of them end up growing into fantastic nationally-significant voluntary efforts but most remain as simple and easy acts of kindness done just because it's the right thing to do.

It's this initiative - the real voluntary sector - that makes up the 'Big Society' which is why those making a career out of those 'funding regimes' and 'government initiatives' are blind to the idea. If people did those simple things - had permission to care - then a lot of the stuff the 'voluntary sector' employs people to do wouldn't be needed. And, rather than paid professionals using volunteers we'd have volunteers making use of paid professionals.

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The real voluntary sector - or the Big Society the sector's leaders want to kill off...

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The Community Development Foundation has published a report looking at what it calls the 'community sector'. This is the myriad of small local groups and charities - CDF estimate between 600,000 and 900,000 of these groups up and down the country. It is the real voluntary sector because, as CDF point out these groups mostly have an income below £2,000 per year and rely entirely on the efforts of enthusiastic volunteers. Nor have those volunteers been 'recruited', 'checked' and 'trained' in the manner of volunteers for big charities and 'voluntary' organisations.

The other thing about this real voluntary sector is where it gets its money from:

Figures from registered micro-groups suggest that community groups receive the largest portion of their funding from individual donations (65%). Other sources include investment (17%), other voluntary sector organisations (12%), government (4%) and the private sector (2%).

The important figure to note here is the 4% from government. Contrast this with the grand charities - Oxfam got £159.8m from various statutory sources in 2012, over 55% of its income and the same story can be told for Barnardos, for The Children's Society and many other big charities. Without grants and fees from government the 'voluntary' sector would be a whole lot smaller.

The government in its various guises provides around 35% of the income for the voluntary sector and, as we can see here, this overwhelmingly goes to large organisations. Partly this reflects the way in which the sector has developed over the years and especially the changes that took place after the election of the 1997 Labour government. That government set about transforming the role of the voluntary sector - or at least the larger organisations within that sector - from independent charities to agents of government policy.

So when the idea of the Big Society arrived the leadership of the voluntary sector saw immediately that the idea of voluntary social action threatened their control of the idea of 'voluntarism'. Rather than voluntary action being seen as the initiative of the volunteers, the sector's leadership preferred to see voluntary action as something to be managed by paid professionals. And this leadership sought out allies within the organisations that fund the big voluntary sector organisations - local councils, the agencies of the lottery, the Arts Council and elements in Whitehall and academia. A coalition of resistance to new voluntary initiatives was created and this set about demonising the idea of Big Society - 'just a cover for cuts', 'neoliberalism' was the cry as the paid professionals in the voluntary sector protected their interests.

The continued existence and success of the 'community' sector is a reminder of how out-of-touch that voluntary sector leadership has become - by focusing almost entirely on protecting state income and advocacy for the larger organisations that dominate the sectors lobbying the professional leadership of the voluntary sector has, in effect, allowed smaller organisations that make up most of the sector to sink or swim. These groups and organisations don't know about the conferences, the workshops and the action groups, they aren't connected to the networks of consultants, managers and directors that dominate the discussion about the work of voluntary action and their voice is lost in special pleading or calls for more funding.

The Big Society was the chance to put these groups centre stage, to celebrate the everyday voluntary action that sticks communities together. It may be that recession and the struggle to make the national budget's sums add up rather meant government took its eye off the ball but, at the same time, the professional leadership of the voluntary sector chose to be agents of the state rather than champions of the volunteer. In short that leadership failed the sector by campaigning to kill the Big Society.

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How Third Sector Professionals killed Big Society...and the idea of voluntary initiative

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A few years ago I attended an event organised by Julian Dobson and others that was, or rather purported to be, connected in some way with the government's Big Society idea. And, as a fan of the idea, I toddled along in what turned out to be a vain expectation of enthusiasm for thinking about civil society and the way in which voluntary social action plays a part in transforming society for the better.

What I experienced (and this was repeated again and again in my peregrinations round the voluntary sector) was quite different. Instead of people engaged in voluntary social action what we have in this visible part of the 'voluntary' sector are two sorts of people - political activists (almost exclusively from the left of politics) and what we might call 'sector professionals'. I was struck, as I am always struck at these sorts of occasion, by the almost complete absence of any genuine volunteers - people who have got up off their backside and done something for their community.

Today, various of the 'usual culprits' in "The Sector" have rounded on the Big Lottery and Cabinet Office over the manner in which they have funded a couple of organisations closely linked to the Big Society agenda. It is, we are told by these people who made it their mission to distance "The Sector" from Big Society, a terrible scandal requiring investigations and probably executions.

Yet these people - so self-righteous in their condemnation - are the very same people that spent the first year of this government undermining the idea of Big Society. They came up with different versions of it - one's untainted by the dread association. With the result that the winners in the game were new organisations - bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for sure but inexperienced and with ideas that needed work. But where were the experts? All those people from NCVO and ACEVO, all the parasitical consultants upon the multi-billion pound state funding of the 'voluntary' sector?

These self-appointed sector leaders set out to make sure Big Society failed. And they did so for one reason alone - it was an initiative from a Conservative prime minister. To these "sector professionals" (a surprising number having close links with the Labour Party) no Tory could possibly understand "The Sector" and therefore the initiative was either a smokescreen to cover up the evil neoliberal agenda of the Coalition or else a trojan horse aimed at smuggling in cackling Tory businessmen to take over voluntary action.

What these "sector professionals" and their new found activist friends fail to appreciate is that they are the problem rather than Big Society, the Coalition government or evil Tory neoliberals. It is the transforming of voluntary organisations of all sorts - whether working with a particular group people, in a particular place or on a particular issue - from organisations doing voluntary work into sub-contractors to the state that represents the single greatest wound to our civil society.

What these "sector professionals" presided over, and it accelerated under the Blair/Brown Labour government, was the de facto nationalisation of voluntary action. We got to a situation where nothing was deemed possible without government funding and without the employing of these "sector professionals". And just as importantly those professionals were recruited on the basis of their ability to attract funds fron the Labour government, from QUANGOs led by Labour supporters and regional agencies padded with Labour councillors.

So organisations - just like their funders - got stuffed full with Labour supporters. And, when the change of government arrived and with it the Big Society idea, these people were faced with two options - suck up to the evil Tory neoliberals or do what the Labour Party wanted and undermine the policy. Sadly, for the idea of volunteering and of the voluntary society, the sector's leadership chose to dismiss Big Society and campaign instead for the continuation and extension of a role for "The Sector" as sub-contractors to state agencies.

The latest round of attacks on Big Society confirms to me everything that is wrong with those "sector professionals". I see a group of well-paid, middle-class folk protecting their interests and crafting a language of entitlement to do so. Links into government at professional or operational level - along with ministerial fear of upsetting "The Sector" - has maintained the current system of funding more or less intact. New places to broker influence arose - Clinical Commissioning Groups being a fine example - and the idea of people doing something simply because they care becomes ever more distant.

Thankfully there's a whole load of voluntary action still going on and plenty of people loving the place they live and the people who live there. But these people have absolutely no connection to or links with the entitled grant-farmers that dominate the national discourse about the voluntary sector.

It saddens me that an idea such as the Big Society was killed off by a self-interested group more concerned with protecting state-funding and state contracts than with the idea of promoting and encouraging voluntary action. The idea of the state stepping out of the way and letting people do it themselves has been sacrificed so a bunch of well-connected lefties can carry on lecturing us while living off government grants.

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Don't believe everything the "Community Sector Coalition" tell you - especially when its members don't do much community work!

I stumbled across a bizarre critique of Big Society from something called the "Community Sector Coalition". For a moment I thought this might be a serious, thoughtful and considered analysis of the idea's weaknesses but instead it turns out to be another example of special pleading from a group of organisations that are what "third sector" folk refer to as "infrastructure" organisations.

These organisations adopt a representative, advocacy and advisory role for voluntary groups and organisations. Some - like those providing practical support on fundraising, finance, policies and HR - provide a pretty useful service which, frankly, voluntary groups should be prepared to pay for. But too many of these 'infrastructure' groups have got onto the merry-go-round of discussion, debate, analysis, pseudo-research and what the "sector" calls advocacy (but everyone else calls lobbying).

Now, I've nothing against any of this activity except to say that I do not see any reason at all why the government should pay grants to organisations so they can lobby the government to pay more grants to organisations that then lobby the government to pay more grants to...

...you get the gist?

Not surprisingly the "Community Sector Coalition" (none of whose members seem actually to do any community work) thinks the Big Society is a smokescreen for cuts. The "sector's" trade magazine - Third Sector - describes the meeting where this group discussed Big Society:

More than 30 organisations aired their concerns at the Community Sector Coalition meeting and made plans to tackle the "sham" of the big society initiative

More than 30!! Wow! Out of the tens or thousands of community groups only 30 want to have a pop at Big Society. And those 30 aren't really community groups at all but publicly funded 'networks', 'alliances', 'national associations', 'advisory services', 'institutes' and so forth. Not surprisingly such groups - as far removed from the Big Society as you can get - are worried that their cosy stipends paid with taxpayers' cash will disappear.

Big Society isn't about these groups but about not needing permission, 'infrastructure' or 'advocacy' to get on and do things - social action isn't about "the sector" it's about the rest of us. For all the great work done by voluntary groups, social enterprises and charities there are too many "Community Sector Coalitions" - too much talking, meeting and moaning and not enough doing, creating and having fun.

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Let's give 'The Big Society! a go - it has to be better than what we've got!

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There are two views of Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ – the cynical, knowing, left-wing view that it’s just window-dressing for spending cuts. And the rather more enthusiastic view from others that the ‘Big Society’ could mean a profound shift in the relationship between government and governed – a first stone in the tricky journey towards the voluntary society.

I’m rather more sceptical about the proposals – after all the social sector (“civil society” as we now have to call it) faces an enormous challenge over the next couple of years as the paymasters (mostly local government) retreat back into the redoubt under the onslaught of spending cuts. Most people in this sector recognise the real change that could come from the ‘Big Society’ but, as soon as the positive noises cease, another voice pops in; “how’s it going to be paid for?”

There is a further contradiction in the proposals published yesterday – how do we reconcile (especially in big metropolitan areas like Leeds and Bradford) the centralising and controlling instinct of the council with the liberation implied in the ‘Big Society’? This was David Miliband’s ‘double devolution’ that never happened – how can we be so sure that it will happen this time?

If we’re to set up training for community activists, will it be delivered by the voluntary sector or by bureaucrats within local council?

If we’re to transform the delivery of services within the most deprived places will that be community-led or yet another chapter in the “let’s all hug poor people” statist approach to community development?

If we do hand real influence to local communities over planning are we prepared to face the consequences and to argue that this is right?

Above all – in a time of spending constraint – are we prepared to make the argument for effectiveness trumping efficiency?

At the moment we’ve seen some fine words but I have still to enjoy my buttered parsnips. We don’t yet know just how all this will work – will big monolithic quangos like the Homes & Communities Agency be broken up? Will local councils be instructed to outsource services to the voluntary sector (so much for localism – eh)? And will the cosy oligopoly dominating the welfare agenda be challenged by smaller, creative approaches?

I may be sceptical but I know in my heart – as a conservative – that this is right. This is Burke’s small battalions, this is ordinary everyday folk doing things for their neighbours – not for cash, not because they’ve been told to do so but because it’s the right thing to do. Or at least I hope that’s what it’s about.

Lets' see.

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I'm alright Jack

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I while ago I posted a couple of questions prompted by a "survey" being conducted at my place of work. The second question was:

If there’s a choice between sacking some people or you all not taking pay rises or annual salary increments but you’re not threatened, would you still take the cash knowing someone else will lose their job?

I have discovered the answer - and it's "I'm Alright, Jack". More people indicated that they'd prefer to see someone lose their job than forgo an annual pay increment. So much for the caring, sharing voluntary sector, eh?

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