Lessons for Labour from six months in the Cabinet Office

Last year I spent six months on secondment at the Cabinet Office. My role was as the policy lead for the Compact, which is an agreement on how government and the voluntary and community sector work together in partnership to achieve common goals and outcomes for the benefit of communities and citizens in England. This agreement was established by the previous Labour Government back in 1998 and was refreshed by the Coalition in 2010. I was based at the Office Civil Society which included advising the Minister for Charities and managing the department’s relationship with Compact Voice.

As a Labour Party member and activist I wanted to share my perspectives and ideas on how a future Labour Government can use the Cabinet Office to promote proper partnership working between Government and the voluntary sector in order to deliver effective public services in a difficult financial climate.

The Office for Civil Society (renamed after the Coalition came into power in 2010 from the Office for the Third Sector) forms a small part of the overall Cabinet Office which covers the whole breath of cross-Government projects and initiatives.

An incoming Labour Government should ensure that the whole of the Cabinet Office is aware of and works to ensure all Government departments have proper engagement and partnership working with the voluntary sector to ensure they are involved right at the beginning to help form policy and commissioning decisions, where charities will be in a position to bid for Government contracts.

We have seen with the Work Programme how not involving the sector resulted in all the prime contracts going to mostly private organisations that cherry picked those who need the less help in finding employment in order to receive their payments based on results, as well as referring those who were the most vulnerable to sub-contracted charity organisations.

Also worth noting was the high awareness of the Compact principles across Government where the Office for Civil Society did take a leadership role through co-ordinating a Forum network of Compact champions which I was responsible for and chaired. There were also examples of good partnership working highlighted at the recent Compact Awards which included the work of the Transparency Team in the Cabinet Office who led on the UK Government’s National Plan on Transparency which was published in October last year. The Plan was an important development as it stated that all Government spend on the voluntary and community sector in terms of grants and contracts should be made available. I think a future Labour Government should support this initiative and work to ensure that there is complete transparency across all departments on how money is spent on the voluntary sector.

There were challenges though particularly over the length of consultations where there was a tension over what the Compact stated as a reasonable period – 12 weeks – and the red tape challenge which was trying to cut down on the length of decision making on Government. Also there were the personal political agendas of individual secretaries of state which put pressure on their departmental civil servants to take forward. An incoming Labour Government should ensure that the Cabinet Office produces obligatory guidance for all departments on having timely and transparent consultations. That would ensure proper time and opportunity is given to all potential providers and organisations which represent service users to feed into any proposals which will affect them.

The role of Compact Voice (hosted by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations) is very important in promoting meaningful partnership working where an internal review is being carried out at the moment.  In particular delivering training sessions to civil servants whose work impacts on the voluntary sector – such as the induction of Fast Streamers – where as future senior policy makers and commissioners they will fully understand the principles of partnership working, ultimately ensuring better outcomes are delivered for service users.

Jonathan Slater works at Voluntary Action Lewisham and is a Labour Lewisham Council candidate. He writes in a personal capacity.