By David Williams
7 December 2010
Charity leaders have vowed to take control of the government’s Big Society programme, appointing a commission to set out what the voluntary sector needs for the initiative to work.
The Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations launched its Commission on Big Society today. The body, which will meet for the first time in January, will be led by former Liberal Democrat chief executive Lord Rennard, who has also been a member of Acevo.
Other members include Philip Collins, chair of the think-tank Demos; Jane Slowey, chief executive of the Foyer Federation and chair of Skills Third Sector; and Bishop of London Richard Chartres. A number of charity chiefs have also been appointed, including Action for Children chief executive Clare Tickell.
Stephen Bubb, chief executive of Acevo, told Public Finance that the commission would not pull its punches on issues such as council cuts to charity funding, which he has already said could undermine the entire Big Society project.
Bubb said: ‘This isn’t going to be a blue sky thinking commission – it’s probably going to be saying some harsh things about what councils have been doing and what cuts have happened. We’ll be highlighting the contradictions.’
He added: ‘A lot of our members were getting a bit fed up with the government always talking about the Big Society and defining it in their own terms.
‘In many ways the sector hasn’t been involved in that debate at all – it’s about time we said what we think the Big Society is about.’
Drawing a parallel with the US Right-wing group committed to slashing public spending, Bubb warned of a ‘Tea Party view’ emerging among ‘Right-wing ideologues’ in the UK, who want to pare back the state and ‘expect people to just get on with it themselves’.
Bubb said: ‘That could be quite dangerous,’ and said his new commission would set out what the third sector needs from government if it is to make the Big Society work.
The government’s green paper on expanding the role of the third sector in public services, Modernisingcommissioning, was also published today.
Civil society minister Nick Hurd is calling for views on how commissioning rules can be changed to make public contracts more open to charities.
The paper asks for respondents to identify new areas of government that charities could get involved in, and ways that government contracts could become more open to charities. It is also intended to open up discussion on how commissioners could take into account the wider social implications of their decisions, and involve communities more in their commissioning.
Hurd said the results would form the core of next year’s public service reform white paper.
