Cameron’s flawed vision

By Hazel Blears MP

When David Cameron re-launched the Big Society brand in February this year he responded to a question from the worried manager of a social enterprise with the immortal phrase “please don’t be confused.com.” I’m not sure if he doubles as a car insurance salesman in his spare time or whether he was just trying to sell his brand to the public – either way, his PR background will inform him that any time a target audience are confused about the product the problem is normally not presentational, it is a problem of substance.

Lest we forget, the Big Society was originally launched by Cameron before last year’s general election, and then re-launched in July with the creation of the ‘Vanguard Communities,’ technically making February’s event a re-re-launch. Confusing.

But after a week that had seen Liverpool withdraw from their Vanguard community status, Dame Elisabeth Hoodless criticise the government’s ‘attack’ on volunteers and the realisation that the £100million transition fund would not quite fill the £3billion gap facing charities the Prime Minister felt he had to act.

Cameron’s answer was a response to a question from Annys Darkwa, Managing Director of Vision Housing. Like TimeBank, Vision Housing seems to be an organisation that would embody Cameron’s Big Society – like TimeBank their reward for this is the withdrawal of government support.

Vision Housing is a social enterprise that provides rented accommodation over a long period of time, giving offenders a steady transition back into society. It’s run by ex-offenders, who have first-hand knowledge of the problems that other ex-offenders face and have designed a programme that provides higher levels of support with the aim of reducing re-offending rates.

The results have been phenomenal. The re-offending rate for those who are housed and supported by Vision Housing is around 15%, compared to 75% for London as a whole. They have housed over 400 vulnerable people across London.

It costs approximately £40,000 a year to the taxpayer to keep an offender in prison for a year. It costs Vision Housing about £5,500 to put an ex-offender into accommodation. The strength of this social enterprise is not only in the value that it brings to society by helping to reduce crime rates, but also by generating a financial saving for government.

Vision Housing’s reduction in re-offending rates for their users is estimated to have saved the government £10million – understandably David Cameron was pleased to support the organisation, telling Annys that “you’re exactly the sort of organisation that I think we should be looking at to work out how we try and expand.”

Confusingly, two days later the Government Crisis Loans scheme – the scheme that Vision Housing relies on to provide funding for the day-to-day existence of the scheme – informed Annys that she would no longer receive funding from them. Subsequent applications through different routes for funding have been rejected, putting Vision Housing at the risk of collapse.

The Department of Work and Pensions states that it has imposed new restrictions on crisis loans to protect the Social Fund Budget – in essence restricting the availability of credit a loan, not a grant to save money. In short, the government are refusing to lend money – a loan, not a grant – to Vision Housing to save money, even though lending money to them would mean they save money. No wonder Cameron is confusing people.

It’s no wonder that the Big Society is being criticised for a lack of coordination and flawed policy making. Yesterday’s report by the Commission on the Big Society warns that “wealthy areas are better placed to flourish.” The government’s failure to take into account the correlation between volunteering and deprivation is setting up poorer communities to fail. It’s one thing to empower communities, it’s quite another to abandon them and the Big Society is starting to fall on the wrong side of that crucial divide.

I’m told regularly by my colleagues of organisations like Vision Housing in their constituencies that are being abandoned by the Big Society – a political project that appears increasingly divorced from reality. It’s the lack of clarity and support from the government that is letting down charities and voluntary organisations. Mario Cuomo said that politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. This government campaigns in catchphrases and governs in chaos.

Labour should not be afraid to embrace some of the ideas behind the Big Society -indeed much of is it rooted in Labour’s past – but we should create a policy framework that ensures the sustainability of this sector. The difference has to be that our approach goes behind a political branding exercise and instead genuinely empowers and supports voluntary organisations and social enterprises.

Meanwhile as support for the Big Society falls week by week Cameron should remember that a re-launch is only necessary when something has failed to take off. Three different launches in the space of a year – and yesterday’s report suggests a fourth is imminent – should suggest to him that the Big Society brand is teetering towards a terminal decline.