Welcome to the Big Society

Criticised as vapid and a big fat lie, David Cameron’s vision of the Big Society faces critics from all sides. But for all that criticism, the Big Society does offer the sector opportunities it should embrace, finds Peter Davy


The Big Society is getting bigger. Dismissed as a gimmick at the election, David Cameron’s persistence has helped not just establish the idea as firmly as the Third Way in political discourse, but also threatens to bring cross-party support. While Blair’s chosen philosophy failed to convince even his own party, the opposition now seems ready to accept Cameron’s (if not the policies it supports).

“[W]e’ve got to take that term ‘Big Society’ back off David Cameron,” Ed Milliband told the party’s National Policy Forum in November – a claim h reiterated last month in his speech to the Fabians. He even criticised the Prime Minister for his “old fashioned view” of it – an achievement for a term barely older than Milliband’s new son.

Charities, though, are apparently less convinced. A poll of over 1,000 volunteers and support workers by social action network i-volunteer in January found almost two thirds critical of the Big Society agenda: 42 per cent said it was just “politically rebranding existing community action”; 21 per cent that it was a “cover for cuts”.

In fact, if anything, charities seem to be growing more sceptical. Take David Robinson’s open letter to the Prime Minister before Christmas, for example. A founding trustee of TimeBank, joint author of Change The World For A Fiver, the inspiration behind New Philanthropy Capital and co-founder of Community Links, Robinson was among those invited to Downing Street last May to discuss the Big Society.

He was, he said, initially sceptical that the idea was more than a sound bite, but had become impressed by the Prime Minister’s “perseverance”. Six months after the election, he noted in his letter, “there is scarcely any corner of the public domain that isn’t looking to embrace new forms of participation, ownership and management”. Nor does he doubt the sincerity of the government. However, he warns that the government’s cuts risked destroying groups like Community Links that must be its bedrock.

“The idea that we should all play a bigger part in the communities we share isn't a new one but it is a good one,” he says. “However, the implementation of other policies around it undermines that vision.”

A load of BS?
And it’s not just charities. In fact, for all the consensus, there’s still no shortage of critics of the Big Society from across the political spectrum. For Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail it’s “little more than a vapid aspiration”; in the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee writes that it’s “a big fat lie”. Matthew Hilton, professor of social history at the University of Birmingham, meanwhile, argues that the whole idea is founded on a faulty premise.

He has recently been researching the role of NGOs in Britain since 1945 for a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust, and last year co-authored a report The Big Society: civic participation and the state in modern Britain. It argues that the Big Society attempts to address a problem – the decline in civil society – that doesn’t necessarily exist.

In fact, he says, the statistics suggests quite the opposite. The number of registered charities, for example, has more than doubled in the last 30 years; charitable assets have tripled; levels of formal and informal volunteering are much the same.

“There is insufficient evidence of decline,” he says. There are, of course, signs that civic participation has changed in that time: regular church attendance has declined; membership of the main political parties halved between 1960 and 1980s; and the Mothers' Union, which had 538,000 members in the 1930s, had only 98,000 by 2009. But change is not the same as decline. Membership of environmental charities has soared; the voluntary income of overseas aid charities is higher than ever.

Take all the local and national civil society groups together, not just registered charities, and there are probably something like 900,000 bodies in all, he points out. “Do you really want to suggest that is evidence of decline?”

And if we insist there truly has been a fall in civic engagement, then there are significant practical problems in addressing it. Convincing the public to get involved will be a key, yet a survey for the Financial Times by Harris Interactive in December found fewer UK citizens willing to participate than those in both the US and continental Europe. Only 25 percent of British respondents said they would do voluntary work to support public services such as health care, education and policing, compared with 42 percent in Italy and the US. Just 15 per cent thought they had a responsibility to make the world better by getting involved with worthy causes.

A new way of thinking
Of course, supporters of the Big Society argue that this is precisely what it hopes to change. “It is about the change in our culture, in our communities, our confidence to do things for ourselves and the extent to which we see things as being the governments responsibility,” explains Matt Leach, associate director of ResPublica, the think tank established by “Red Tory” Phillip Blond, whose ideas inspired the Big Society.

However, it’s less clear how the cultural transformation will come about. The previous government oversaw the Giving Campaign, the Experience Corps, the Russell Commission, V and various other initiatives to boost volunteering and giving, with limited impact. Why, some ask, will the new government have any more success?

One possible answer, of course, is the cuts, and for at least some on the right, they are a prerequisite for the Big Society to take shape; an overbearing state has crowded out voluntary activity, they argue. As Richard D North, a fellow of the right-leaning Social Affairs Unit puts it: “As we shrink the big state good things will unfold and one word for them could be the big society.”

There are, however, a number of problems with this. First, of course, charities insist that without them it will be difficult to leverage public support. As Roberts says, you can attempt to sustain services with volunteers and perhaps corporate support but it still requires a degree of infrastructure, leadership and organisation to work. “If you take out the organisations providing that, it will reduce the amount you can achieve through voluntary contributions,” he warns.

It’s also unclear from the evidence that crowding out is real. Take Hilton’s review again, and it points to the significant increase in voluntary income at the biggest international development charities: an increase that coincided with rising government support.

Perhaps most importantly, however, those closest to the Big Society seem to go some way towards rejecting it, being careful to insist that the cuts are coincidental, rather than a component of the idea. “Nobody is happy with these cuts,” insists Jesse Norman, Conservative MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire and author of The Big Society: The anatomy of the new politics.

“Many charities have become overly dependent on the government, but no one, however ideological driven, would want to change that in two or three year period.”

Or, take Cameron’s own words. As he put it in his speech last July “[W]e shouldn’t be naïve enough to think that if the government rolls back and does less, then miraculously society will spring up and do more. “The truth is that we need a government that actually helps to build up the Big Society.”

Jam tomorrow
So what does the Big Society offer charities? The answer is still far from being clear. There is an increasing number of policies under the Big Society umbrella. However, for many it’s still early days. The government’s thoughts on promoting a culture of philanthropy are only at the stage of a green paper; for the flagship volunteering drive, the National Citizen Service (one of the best examples of the cultural change the Big Society is trying to bring about, says Norman) pilots only begin this Summer.

It’s also true that many of the benefits envisaged are to come from new groups that are expected to spring up as the Big Society progresses. Nor is it all about charities: look at Hammersmith & Fulham Council, for example, asking 21 west London charities to leave their premises, which is earmarked for a new free school.

In fact, Leach argues the Big Society is as much a way of analysis as a policy programme with measurable outcomes. Certainly, there are fewer obvious opportunities for existing charities to simply rebrand than with previous government programmes.

“When Changeup came along with a bit of money on the table for infrastructure bodies lots of organisations suddenly started describing themselves in that way so they could access the funds,” recalls Leach, previously the chief executive of Capacitybuilders. “With the Big Society there are not huge amounts of money out there.”

That doesn’t, however, mean there are no opportunities, insist supporters. And there are good reasons why charities should look to engage with the Big Society. The first is the most obvious: There’s little real choice.

It is true that in some cases on a local and national level it might make sense to concentrate efforts on lobbying against the cuts. With even the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank founded by Iain Duncan Smith, warning that cuts implemented the wrong way could see future taxpayers “burdened with increasing costs of social breakdown”, some charities will think they can make a persuasive case.

Robinson remains convinced the government might back down on its plans. “It is not inconceivable there could be a change of pace,” he says. “It will happen when the consequences of a number of different policies impacting on our most disadvantaged communities become clear, but I hope it is not then too late.”

And there is some evidence that government can be persuaded to think again: Look at Bookstart and the Department of Education’s U-turn on plans to cut its £13 million funding, or the decision to retain dedicated sports funding after complaints over the abolition of the grant to School Sport Partnerships. However, in most cases, the cuts are coming.

Up to us
There is, however, a positive case for engagement too. However ill defined, there is at least some optimism in the sector that opportunities will result. Partly that’s due to the greater scope for the voluntary sector to play a part in the delivery of public services. Within weeks charities consultation will open on the Localism Bill “right to challenge” councils to let them deliver public services if they think they could do it better than the existing provider.

Likewise, the NHS reforms announced in January promise to open up the area to third sector (as well as private providers) – no small matter, noted Acevo chief executive Stephen Bubb recently given that in 2007/08, the NHS spent just 0.05 per cent of its healthcare budget on voluntary groups.

Indeed, despite complaints over the way in which many local authorities are applying cuts, the likes of Acevo still remain hopeful. In November, Bubb told its annual conference that the opportunities for the sector to deliver more public services could see it increase its income in key areas by up to £2billion. “There are opportunities amidst the gloom,” as he put it.

More widely (and it’s worth remembering that the majority of charities receive no government funding) there is also some optimism at least that talk of cultural change may prove more than wishful thinking.

Look again at i-volunteer’s survey, for instance, and while many were sceptical, 37 per cent still said the Big Society provided an opportunity to encourage more people to volunteer or highlight the value of volunteers for local communities. “Given the current climate, with a lot of organisations facing an uncertain future, that’s actually quite high,” notes Jamie Ward-Smith, CEO of Red Foundation, which runs the network.

Partly that might be down to the government’s concrete plans, more of which were announced in the Giving Green Paper, such as the £42.5m fund for volunteering infrastructure and £10m matched funding for volunteering projects.

More likely, says Ward-Smith, it’s down to the profile the Big Society drive has given to the role of volunteers. “For the first time in many years, and perhaps ever, tabloids and a whole range of other media channels are referring to volunteers and the Big Society on a regular basis.There is an entirely new emphasis on volunteering.”

Likewise with philanthropy. Rhodri Davies, policy manager at CAF admits there was little revolutionary in the Green Paper: “I didn’t get a sense of exactly how that was going to have a major impact on the culture of giving.”

However, he is encouraged by the willingness of government to embracing new approaches such as behavioral economics. “That’s good news because these issues have been quite resistant to traditional public policy levers,” he says. It may be time to try something new, and while the government doesn’t pretend to have the answers, it is ready to listen if those in the sector can find them.

“There is an open door for a lot of us to be pushing against,” says Davies. “It is up to us to take that opportunity.” That’s some way short of a guarantee of better things ahead, but at the very least it’s at least sentiment in tune with the times.

Peter Davy is freelance journalist


Thinking BIG
One possible source for the answers posed by the Big Society will be Nat Wei’s Big Society Network.

Much of its work tends towards developing and fostering new community groups with innovative solutions to local problems: it’s flagship project is Your Square Mile, seeking to establish a network of mutual groups around the country – each focused on projects in the mile in which members live.

“A lot of what we’re looking at new opportunities; new ways of bringing people together,” explains Steve Moore, director at the Big Society Network.

A key strand of this, however, is new thinking and technological development to bolster civil society address social issues. Here there may be help for existing charities struggling to make ends meet, and on February 17, it will hold a conference on innovation in charities and philanthropy, showcasing some of that new thinking.

Moore says charities should get involved. “I hope charities that are struggling make it a priority to get involved in this rather than lobbying from the sidelines,” he says. “The question they have to ask is where to devote their resources and energy: do they just lobby against cuts or do they look at fresh new approaches.

“I’d argue that anyone who’s devoted entirely to lobbying is likely to lose out.”

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