PASC Questions, Answers and Critical Thinking

Like many in the sector I was busy last Friday bashing out a response to the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) inquiry into the Government’s proposals for the “Big Society”

Below is a summary of some of the ideas I was trying to get across in order of the questions asked (the questions weren't very promising but that never stopped anyone giving an opinion) :)


Lame question #1: A definition of what the ‘Big Society’ is or should be

The definition of Big Society should be contested at defined at the local level by local people. Inevitably governments of all descriptions will seek to provide an overall framework hence the ‘Big Society’ as it currently features and is debated. In community development parlance Big Society is hegemonic, i.e. it is a political and ideological construct whereby power elites seek to shape the way the rest of us live. However this government descriptor merely shows the way, rather than ‘being’ the way. This is something government is alive to and appears to fully appreciate that local action is what matters hence there should be no final, once and for all definition but rather a purposive inquiry based on activity and learning. The collective action of community groups will be the true test and the most fitting definition. End of.


Lame question #2: The impact and consequences of reductions in public expenditure

They will be disastrous. It is hard to emphasis just how unfair it is that the profligacy of irresponsible banking practice coupled to bailout by taxpayers, followed by swinging public sector cuts passed on to the voluntary and community sector (VCS) as even more disproportionately high cuts: unfair but also actively harmful of the Big Society. Our part of the VCS, which is mainly smaller community groups, did not benefit as much as should have happened from the previous government’s increase in support and spending. In fact there is evidence via the Office of the Third Sector Third Sector Review 2007, that amidst overall growth, smaller groups got smaller and poorer. The vested interest of larger VCS bodies is something that this government has rightly been critical of, and by extension the failure of public sector spending to get results on the ground. However, flawed as public sector expenditure may have been, it was better than the little or nothing that is now defining our national life. The bulk of Big Society groups will be small community groups, who usually run on very little money BUT require support from both the funded VCS and local statutory agencies. At the present time, due to cuts, the support community groups need, the nurturing and encouragement provided by specialist community workers and agencies, is disappearing, and with it, the hope of realistically being able to build a big society.


Lame question #3: Delivering local public services: volunteering

The VCS has always delivered public services, picked up unmet need and innovated. However volunteering is not a substitute for public services and not everything is a market.

Crucially, for volunteers to take up service opportunities they would need significant levels of support and investment which at a time of massive cuts is simply not happening. Hence the probability that the numbers of people volunteering will decline, as usually happens at time of austerity. The more probable result is that private sector firms like SERCO and CAPITA, who’s CEOs earn far more than CEOs of local councils, will benefit from the desire to transfer services away from the state. This may lead to a smaller State but it won’t of itself build the Big Society, which can only grow from the bottom up, by the collective action of community groups, not large corporate brands.

The conflation of volunteering with services is misleading: volunteering arises for many reason, but rarely from a desire to play businessman or bureaucrat. It may be attractive precisely for its informality and lack of contractual ties. Volunteers choose to volunteer and were volunteering to become compulsory and tied to an all but state sanctioned means of service delivery the probability is that people will choose ‘not’ to volunteer because the ethos of volunteering will have been lost.

Lame question #4: Delivering local public services: commissioning

Commissioning has been a boon for a minority of groups in the VCS and often divisive elsewhere. It has led to a greater incidence of structural inequality between large and small groups, whereby ‘winner takes all’ leaving the most local groups without resource. On recent occasions the coalition government has this kind of vested interest but has yet to articulate how rolling out increasing rounds of commissioning can address what it has termed ‘differential capacity’ i.e. the fact that the majority of VCS groups will never get near a commissioning process because larger bodies will in effect exclude them and deploy inappropriate and unwieldy processes.

Stipulations that encourage and enforce greater accountability of ‘contract ready’ VCS bodies might address some of the problems, whereby priority is given to commissioned groups who can prove they are passing down actual resource to smaller groups, rather than building their own capacity. Likewise investment in local coalition and consortium building, whereby scores of local groups can come together as one entity in order to bid, may be a solution but requires community development and related work t o support it. For example, we know of numerous isolated and individual tenant and resident groups, run by local people and in contact with thousands more residents. Were they to combine in order to take on a housing commissioned piece of work, in one stroke, the big society comes closer to realization, whereas a bid from a large unknown corporate brand drives it further out of the hands of local people.


One of the difficulties with the big society approach is that it seems oblivious of the enormous differences between national charities, community and neighbourhood organisations, and informal groups, lumping them all together as one ‘sector’. The experience of voluntary organisations over recent years is that only a few large ones are in a position to handle contracts of any scale.


Lame question #5: Public service mutuals

There is merit in this idea but it in no way ameliorates the scale of the public sector cuts and requires a great deal of attention in how employees could manage a difficult process of change. There are examples of large former council run mutuals that are not especially empowering to their staff or well thought of by the public and whilst it would be unfair to name them, there is nothing inherent in the model that would ensure an improved service, despite some of the claims made by Res Publica. If staff is forced to take up opportunities or face unemployment this kind of Hobson’s choice will not be the foundation for a happier more motivated workforce, so the detail and circumstances around each PSA are key.



Lame question #6: Governance and accountability

With regard to governance and accountability of social enterprises and co-operatives, the jury is still out. Co-operatives have a long history of radical and progressive achievements but vary greatly in their governance from being deeply democratic to mere shells of business expedience. The more recent conflation of social enterprise has no one formula though the insistence of some on promoting business values over and above social objectives is a cause for concern since they then become ideological vehicles that promote the mistaken belief that individuals are feckless and lazy because they are not sufficiently entrepreneurial.

There is a wider issue about the governance and accountability relating to the Entire big society project as picked up by ‘our society’ in their response to you, which we hope you will address positively.


Lame question #7: Enabling or managing?

The semantics of this distinction may be lost on many people but it is clearly a case of both / and. Ideally a stronger civil society, led by the collective action of small community groups, who are 80% of all civil society anyway (!) would see leadership transfer from public bodies to local people. However for a stronger civil society to emerge the transition will not occur magically but must be prepared for by ensuring local public bodies are able to oversee increasing transfers of power and resource over a long time period. This is because most community groups are not in a position to replace the local State or even ideologically predisposed to do so, being under the impression that their taxes cover certain matters. Were community groups, as the leading civil society hence big society constituency, able to take on greater roles, they would need support typically from local bodies. Thus the answer to the question is public bodies need to both enable CSOs (civil society organizations) but also that this support needs a greater degree of management than is currently envisaged. It will not be possible for Councils, Primary Care Trusts, Housing Associations, Job Centre Plus or local Police bodies to ‘enable’ the big society if they do not have any resource left to do so.


Lame question #8: The role of local authorities

Under the current unwritten constitutional arrangements local government has ‘no right to exist’ as articulated by the Widdicombe Commission. This is because Parliament is sovereign. Until we have a serious debate about the constitution and governance of this country any debate on the superficial role of councils risks being undermined by this overwhelming political reality – namely that councils are a creature of central government not matter how many localism bills tweak the edges of this understanding. It might therefore be helpful to look at how local councils could become stronger relative to central government because it is unlikely that weak councils will feel empowered and enabled to pass power down to local people, if their own experience is based on a position of weakness and compliance, of having to look upwards to central control from Whitehall and Westminster rather than downwards to local people.

Stronger councils need a real power of general competence, not the play on words in the current localism bill. They need to raise a higher per cent age of their income from local taxation; at present around 75% of their funds come from the centre with often less than 25% raised locally, for this later figure to match European levels it would need to rise from 25 to 50%.

The mandate from local elections should have greater currency to offset the local democratic deficit whereby voter turnout is chronically low. For local elections to appear worth voting for, local people would need to be convinced their vote would go to someone with real as opposed to imagined power. The role of local authorities therefore needs to be grounded more in principles of democracy and an autonomous role distinct from the centre rather than the usual framing of delivery of local services, which becomes a code for a subordinate and disempowered role.


Lame question #9: Potential conflicts and postcode lotteries

Big Society appears to welcome conflict to some degree via its endorsement of Alinsky but it would be advised to look beyond the highly partial contract model of 5,000 part time organizers to the actually existing wealth of experience of 20,000 community development workers and similar numbers of youth workers active in the VCS but equally often in councils, housing associations and health bodies. Unfortunately the Office for Civil Society (Neil Smith) recently said that it was ‘not prepared to have the debate’ in regard to the links to be made between community workers and future community organizers. This highly prejudicial attitude is self defeating and has to be reversed. OCS’ willful and active disregard for community development is indicative of a narrow vision unable to unleash all the talents. In the past CD has proved adept at creative approaches to conflict through its own radical and transformative models – it has been prepared to be political unlike many of the wider VCS palliatives, so an appreciation of this tradition would be timely.

With regard to postcode lotteries this can be offset by careful and considered planning but remains a considerable concern to be addressed to ensure the principle of fairness is transmitted to all.


Conclusion

The concern must be that in a climate of cuts big society lacks credibility because it is seen as having an ulterior motive – rather than all being in it together, the rules are applied differently across the sectors. Bankers get bonuses, the Public Sector gets cut and the VCS, a net loss of funding and is likewise diminished. In this way local people get less and less support, leading to a smaller, impoverished and diminished society.

If the vision is for local people to build the big society this has to start with investment in small community groups using the skills and resource of community organizations including councils.

The argument is as follows:


1. Big Society = stronger civil society (but not necessarily a much smaller state)

2. Civil society = small community groups (at least 600,000 of the 900,000 CSOs in the NCVO Almanac come under this category along with a majority of charities receiving under £10,000 a year)

3. Small community groups need investment and appropriate support – the current cuts mean less support hence less community action

4. The bias towards social enterprise and a view of the sector as a market, hence the community rights, will bias the new resources ending up in the hands of larger corporate bodies and further weaken smaller CSOs who, without support and investment, will lose out on ‘opportunities’ that arise

5. If government wants to pass power away from Whitehall and Westminster, local government needs far greater powers and the ablility to raise a higher proportion of its own local income, as a prerequisite to stronger civil society, hence big society = smaller central state but stronger local state