5 October 2010
Cuts to third sector grants risk derailing the government’s
Big Society policy, delegates at the Conservative Party conference were told.
Speaking at the ‘Big Society: what does it really mean?’ fringe session, Stephen Bubb, chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, said: ‘The past few decades have seen a real growth in our third sector and the challenge will be [that] significant public spending cuts could damage the ability of civil society to respond to these opportunities.’
Echoing comments he made to Public Finance last month, Bubb made a plea to local authorities to talk to the third sector when making budgetary decisions in the wake of the Spending Review.
It might come down to a choice between street cleaning services and a grant to a local charity, Bubb said, but he added: ‘Councils are going to have to make some very hard choices after October 20. I hope local authorities will start also to think about how they deliver things differently. Disruptive change like cuts is often a time for innovation.’
Bubb also pledged to speak out against government cuts, something that would challenge the third sector’s ‘relationship with the state’.
‘If we can’t speak out at the moment about some of the more zany aspects of Big Society and the cuts coming down the road and why you should not be cutting here we are not doing our job properly,’ he said.
During the same session, the Big Society was criticised by Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas. She called it ‘enforced activism rather than genuine civic engagement’, and warned it was being controlled too tightly by Whitehall.
‘In the guise of Big Society, the state is enlarging its
role… I’m concerned that any real flourishing community spirit is going to be
drained out.'
James Crabtree, comment editor of the Financial Times, said there had ‘not been a big enough push from the centre of government to make this [Big Society] work well’. There was a gap between Prime Minister David Cameron’s aspirations and what was happening on the ground, he said, claiming it is currently impossible for a community group to take over a library because of too many obstacles.
But Lord Wei, a government adviser on the Big Society, defended the concept, saying a one-size-fits-all approach to services was no longer appropriate. But he admitted the movement was currently in a ‘transitional phase that could go either way’.
He added: ‘It’s clear government can’t do this on its own. We are releasing lots and lots of powers which has huge amount of risk.’
