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The Big Society and the Third Sector

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The Big Society and the Third Sector Welfare beyond the state The Big Society and the third sector Pete Alcock, University of Birmingham [email protected] Introduction – The Big Society discourse ery; and where he referred to the Big Society as The Big Society was a central feature of Conserv- his ‘great passion’. ative Party policy planning in the run up to the 2010 election, and in particular was promoted by Although it was, and has remained, closely asso- David Cameron himself, who first mentioned it ciated with David Cameron, the Big Society has in his Hugo Young speech in 2009, and repeated had a range of other proponents and support- it in an election speech in 2010. In practice the ers both inside and outside Government. For idea received a mixed reception in the election instance, Nick Hurd was appointed as Minister campaign itself and it was not the centre piece for Civil Society within the Cabinet Office; and, of the Party’s campaigning. Nevertheless, shortly shortly after the 2010 election, Cameron ele- after the election and the formation of the new vated Nat Wei to the House of Lords to be an Coalition Government, Cameron again took the unpaid advisor on the Big Society. Conservative lead in launching the Big Society as a policy ini- MP Jesse Norman lent his support publishing a tiative in the garden of No.10 Downing Street book on the subject, which sought to trace the in May 2010, with the Deputy Prime Minister idea back through traditional Conservative think- Nick Clegg. Here Cameron confirmed that the ing over two centuries (Norman, 2010). Outside Big Society would be at the heart of public sec- of government the Respublica think tank, led tor reform, and would be based on ideas coming by Phillip Blond, supported the Big Society as from the ground up and not the top down. At the an alternative political direction between (the same time a policy paper, Building the Big Soci- failures of) the big state and the global financial ety, was published by the Cabinet Office outlin- market (Blond, 2009); and the Big Society Net- ing some of the priorities for policy reform, and work was funded by the Government and the was followed later by a string of other papers Big Lottery Fund to promote community based aimed at strengthening what the Government initiatives. now called Civil Society. The Big Society discourse promised to extend Central to the new Government’s early support beyond Cameron and the Cabinet Office there- for the Big Society was a broader political dis- fore, and to champion a new approach to course on the nature of public life and the role non-government collective action. It also coin- of government. The Big Society was contrasted cided, of course, with the introduction of the implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) with the massive cuts in public expenditure announced ‘big state’ of post-war welfare reform, which had in the 2010 Spending Review; and this led crit- stifled individual and community initiative and ics, such as the New Economics Foundation, to responsibility, and had become politically, and suggest that in practice it was little more than economically, unaffordable. The replacement of a fig-leaf to cover the yawning gaps that would top-down state control with bottom-up com- be appearing in public services (Coote, 2010). For munity innovation was championed in a later Cameron in particular, however, the Big Society Cameron speech in July 2010, when he launched was not just about government cuts, it was about a ‘Community Vanguards’ initiative in four local a new political rhetoric for smaller government, areas (Liverpool, Windsor and Maidenhead, Sut- which a Conservative government ought to be ton and Cumbria’s Eden Valley) to provide sup- promoting whatever the economic context. port for local people to take control of their own services, such as shops, pubs or broadband deliv- 124 In Defence of Welfare 2 Welfare beyond the state However, it was within the political discourse this – including retitling the Cabinet Office sec- in particular that the Big Society failed in prac- tion led by Nick Hurd, the Office for Civil Society tice to achieve traction, and over the course of (OCS). the following four years was gradually removed from its high profile in political exchange. First, The Cabinet Office (2010) policy paper outlined it is important to recognise that the Big Soci- key commitments here: ety was in practice only ever an English politi- cal initiative, with Cabinet Office responsibility • Making it easier to run voluntary organisa- for civil society now devolved to the separate tions administrations in Scotland, Wales and North- ern Ireland; and in the 2011 elections in these • Making it easier for organisations to work countries the Big Society did not feature signifi- with the state cantly, even in Conservative campaigning. • Getting more resources into the sector. Over the following years its profile in England waned too. In 2010 it was mentioned four times These were, however, rather like ‘motherhood by Cameron in his Party Conference speech. In and apple pie’; and they contrasted to some 2013 it was not mentioned at all. Its supporters extent with the significant cuts to the sup- began to fall away. Nat Wei quit his role, claim- port for the sector which had been developed ing that he could no longer afford to dedicate his under Labour. Indeed virtually all of the new time to such voluntary activity. Jesse Norman programmes introduced by Labour (Alcock and fell from favour after twice voting against the Kendall, 2011) were curtailed and support for Government in the Commons. Respublica lost the ‘strategic partners’ within the sector was financial support and political influence. And phased out. Although it has been the cuts to the Big Society Network was investigated by local authority budgets which has had the most the Charity Commission and the National Audit far-reaching effects on third sector organisa- Office for misuse of public funds. Key political tions more generally, with around two-thirds of commitments also failed to materialise. A Big public funding for the sector coming through Society Day, mentioned in early policy papers as local government. a national focus for voluntary and community action, was dropped; and the Vanguard Commu- Despite this there were some new policy initia- nities were also quietly side-lined – although not tives led by OCS. A Red-tape Taskforce explored before Liverpool had publicly withdrawn, claim- ways to remove barriers to local community ing that cuts to local authority budgets meant action; and a Mutuals Taskforce sought to pro- that supporting local action was no longer really mote the floating-off of public services to inde- feasible. pendent organisations set up by former public workers, under what was called the ‘Right to Civil society and the third sector Provide’. Funding of around £2m was provided to kick-start the training of 5000 local community That the Big Society should turn out to be some- organisers; and £50m for community first grants thing of a passing fad should not be much of a was used to co-fund local endowments. The surprise – big ideas rarely last long in political largest new programme run by OCS, however, discourse. More important perhaps, especially was the National Citizen Service, which aimed to for social policy, is what happened to the policy provide short term volunteering opportunities changes initiated under it. Here the focus was for 16 year olds in their summer vacations. These primarily on the third sector, which might in were fully funded and delivered by selected vol- practice be expected to deliver the bottom-up, unteer providers; but inevitably could only reach non-government, collective action that would around 30,000 young people each year (out of make the Big Society work. In fact the Coalition an age cohort of around 750,000), and in prac- Government did not like the term third sector, tice did not even reach target numbers in the preferring instead to use ‘civil society’ to refer to first few years. In Defence of Welfare 2 125 Welfare beyond the state Although the new government were keen to dis- practice. This was exposed in the debates sur- tance themselves from previous Labour policies, rounding the passing of the ‘Social Value Act’ in fact some of the more important civil society (Teasdale et al., 2012), most notably by one of policy developments continued ideas and trends the Conservative members of the House of Lords developed under Labour. Big Society Capital, (Lord Bates, 2010), who pointed out that: ‘There the social investment bank eventually estab- is a paradox at the heart of the ‘Big Society’ mes- lished to seek to bring commercial investment sage namely that it can be identified as desirable income into third sector organisations, had been by legislators, but it cannot be legislated for. For planned by Labour, as had the ‘mutualisation’ if we legislate for the Big Society then it is no of public services under the Right to Provide longer society which expands but the state’ (called the Right to Request under Labour). Most significantly the Coalition continued Labour’s This is a telling indictment of Big Society politics, policies of extending the contracting-out of and does much to explain why in practice it has public services to third sector providers. In 2011 been so difficult for the Government to deliver a White Paper proposing plans to Open Public on the political rhetoric of non-government Services was published, outlining commitments action. More significantly perhaps, it reveals a to increase the role of non-government provid- fatal flaw in the thinking behind the Govern- ers across a range of public services.
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