Big society? It’s a big con

By Dave Prentis, General Secretary of Unison

“The ‘Big Society”, the Tories big idea, is a big con and is gradually being recognised by people as just a smokescreen to cut public services. A key part of this BS seems to be an increasing reliance on volunteers. While there is no doubt that they play a vital role in society, it is foolish for any government to pin all their hopes on a “top-down” policy of voluntarism.

Getting volunteers is harder than ever. Numbers have been falling for the past five years. At the same time, the charitable and voluntary sector on which the government pins its hopes is being devastated by the withdrawal of grants, the slashing of contracts and by the latest increase in VAT. Job losses and lack of resources makes it even harder for, particularly, the smaller charities to survive.

Charities no longer rely on collection boxes, shops or individual donations to make up the bulk of their funding. In 2007/2008 the voluntary sector received £12 billion in public money – two-thirds in the form of contracts to provide public services, following a competitive process, and one-third in the form of grants.

Many large and medium-sized charities rely on contracts to such an extent that in typical organisations, 90-95% of turnover will be public money – in other words, these organisations, their employees and the people they work with in communities are completely reliant on public money.

With more than half of all state funding coming via. local authorities, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that if local government funding is cut, they will have less to spend and the sector will be cut as well. One estimate (New Philanthropy Capital) says the sector will lose about £5 billion. The transition fund available for the charitable and voluntary sector of £100 million won’t scratch the surface. We already have reports of local authorities cutting existing contract fees by up to 20%.

David Cameron claims the BS is about communities making decisions for themselves. Set aside the fact that we already have a system of local democracy, there is no point in communities making decisions if they have no money to put them into effect.

The government is really just pushing it’s ideological belief that the state must be shrunk. The ‘Modernising Commissioning’ green paper talks about increasing access to services for voluntary organisations, but it also talks about increasing access for organisations “which exist primarily for commercial objectives”. This is really about giving public services to profit-making companies.

We know that spending cuts impact most on the most vulnerable in society. In many cases it is voluntary organisations that are most able to help those vulnerable groups, working in our communities, giving a voice to the voiceless. So while demand for services goes up, they are struggling to survive.

The government’s BS is about pushing away responsibility and delivering services on the cheap. This is a complete misunderstanding of what the voluntary sector does and will be a disaster for our public services and the people who rely on them.