Big society tsar exposes big society sham

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

The Big Society is unraveling, and took an embarrassing hit today as it was announced that Lord Wei – the big society Tsar – has cut back the amount of time he’s spending on the role as it’s taking up too much time and is unpaid. It’s the big society dilemma writ large – if a peer doesn’t have the time or the money to dedicate to managing the big society, where on earth will those who can’t take on “more non-executive directorships with private companies” find the resources to run schools, hospitals and libraries once they’ve been decimated by funding cuts and redundancies?

We all owe Lord Wei a debt of gratitude for exposing the big society for the sham that it is. Rather than being a community spirited movement which would improve British society, it’s a cover for the damaging impact of cuts, plugging the holes left by trained, professional staff with time of unpaid volunteers. This isn’t “devolving power to citizens”, it’s cutting away at services and then telling communities that they have to provide them for free if they want to keep them. As Nat Wei has so succinctly pointed out, working several days a week (unpaid) is incompatible with ‘having a life’, and doesn’t leave him enough time to spend with his family. Expect to hear that sentiment echoed across the country as all but the most well-endowed turn down the “opportunity” to work for free and save the government the embarrassment of cutting local services.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this whole sorry tale is that Wei believed that the post would be paid until the night before he was unveiled, when he was informed that it would be voluntary. This isn’t the only example of Cameron’s “ideas man” Steve Hilton using the big society as an opportunity to be a bit of a chancer. Yesterday the FT reported Hilton had suggested to media groups that they could provide millions of pounds of free advertising as a “donation” to the big society. He was unsurprisingly told where to go.

Evidently Cameron and Hilton believe there’s such a thing as money for nothing, an easy answer to the impact of cuts, and an untapped supply of free time for us to run our own services. Perhaps they think that we’re not pulling our weight, and that we’ve got plenty more time to give.

This morning their annointed head of the big society has told them, in the starkest terms, that isn’t the case.