20 July 2000
LECTURE BY CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER, GORDON BROWN MP AT THE 17TH ARNOLD GOODMAN CHARITY ON THE "CIVIC SOCIETY IN MODERN BRITAIN"
An Event Hosted By The Charities Aid Foundation at Merchant Taylor's Hall, London
Introduction
I want to talk today about the voluntary principle, about how it is not only grounded in enduring British values but in this new century has a central part to play in a thriving modern civic society, and I want to describe the steps that we as a government are taking to encourage voluntary action and voluntary giving.
Today, Britain has more voluntary organisations at work for our communities than ever before - 200,000 registered charities, 200,000 non-charitable voluntary organisations, around 400,000 in total - one for every hundred adults.
Every month, 22 million men and women give of their time. Indeed every year half the adult population undertake some voluntary work - totalling more than 4 billion hours. They do so because they believe in a caring society - and because, as they rightly say, volunteering provides something the state could never provide.
I want to start this talk on voluntary action today not only by acknowledging the work of Lord Goodman, whom this lecture honours this evening - a man whose charitable work was much valued and highly praised - but, having seen the list of charitable, voluntary and community organisations represented here today, I want to thank you for the work you do and the service you give in making Britain a stronger civic society.
Now the importance I and millions of others attach to the voluntary sector and to voluntary giving has a clear ethical basis. It springs from a belief that human beings are essentially social in their nature and that the gift relationship is part of the necessary foundation for all human societies.
I shall suggest that these underlying principles point to a fair society - a society where opportunities are offered to all, but where matching responsibilities are also accepted by all. These responsibilities go beyond the merely personal; they are also social - extending to our neighbours as well as to ourselves. And we cannot simply leave it up to the state to fulfil the duties of care that we as citizens owe to others.
I shall argue that a fair society will come through building a new and more creative relationship between individuals, communities and government. We should neither place all the emphasis on action by government alone, as the old left has sometimes been caricatured as doing, nor on action by the isolated individual, as the new right has sometimes done. Instead we should seek to develop the great strengths that lie in society itself, in the vast web of social relationships and social organisations that bring individuals together below the level of the state, and which we call civic society.
It is my belief, after a century in which, to tackle social injustice, the state has had to take power to ensure social progress, that to tackle the social injustices that still remain the state will have to give power away, not just devolving power to empower local communities, but also enabling community and voluntary organisations to do more. And I shall set out how some of the most innovative proposals in the spending review I announced in July 2000 involve the government and the voluntary sector working together to meet shared objectives.
The new relationship that this reflects brings a new understanding to the rights and responsibilities of the citizen and to the reach and role of government. It involves a credible and radical view of citizenship as responsible citizenship, and a new view of the state as an enabling state. It is only by creating a new and mutually supportive partnership, stretching from the individual and family to the community and state, that we can build a Britain where there is security and opportunity not just for a privileged few but for all.
Civic society
Let me begin with what I mean by civic society - a term that I believe encapsulates longstanding and enduring British values.
It is often said that there is a thread running through British history, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights and the great Reform Acts - one of individual liberty, the individual standing firm against tyranny and the state's arbitrary exercise of power. And Britain has always rejected the ideologies of state absolutism and excessive individualism.
But an enduring concern for individual freedom is not to be identified with a crude ideology of self interested individualism. There is another thread, equally important, that runs through British history - the rejection of self interested individualism and of state power for the idea of association and common endeavour.
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited America in the 1830s, he was struck by the readiness with which the Americans formed associations. In America, he said, "there is no end which the human will despairs of attaining by the free action of the collective power of individuals".
But for centuries past, this had been a defining characteristic also of Britain. British villages, towns and cities are steeped in a rich and diverse tradition of voluntary organisations and supportive civic life, in which men and women with shared needs or common purposes have joined together in common endeavour, in guilds, mutual associations, trades unions and civic groups, to promote the general good.
This sort of society is familiar to me from the town of Kirkcaldy where I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, for it was a town with strong community and voluntary organisations at its heart. I saw there how in children's and youth organisations, in churches, in sports, community and voluntary organisations, and in trades unions, individuals were encouraged and strengthened, made to feel they belonged and, in turn, could contribute, as part of an intricate network of trust, recognition and obligation.
And that is the network of civic society. Our sense of it may begin in childhood in the small compass of a few streets, but it ripples out as we grow to adulthood, extending eventually to far beyond our home town and region - to define our nation, our state and our country as a society.
Some say that civic life has been eclipsed by the consumer economy, lost out to global markets, broken down in the age of mass communication, and that we are reduced to seeing Britain as just millions of isolated individuals on their own, sufficient unto themselves.
It is true that many of the traditional associations and organisations that rose in the nineteenth century or before faded in the twentieth century. But as some fall, others rise, as the recent study by Peter Hall has shown. From the playgroup and child care movement to Age Concern and other organisations of the third age, we can define - and British people want to define - a Britain of thousands and thousands of centres of energy and initiative, local neighbourhood civic associations, unions, charitable and voluntary organisations, that together embody an ideal of civic society.
The post-war neglect of civic society
More than the state itself, civic society is the expression of a principle that I take to be paramount: that the extension of individual opportunity through social action and the acknowledgement of responsibility to oneself and to others are twin and inseparable kernels of human progress and social life.
My feeling is that during most of the post-war period, as the pendulum swung back and forwards in the debate about social policy and the welfare state, neither left nor right struck a proper balance of opportunity and responsibility, and both tended to ignore the potential contributions of civic society to achieving that balance.
The immediate post-1945 context was righting wrongs that had denied millions opportunity to employment, education, basic health care, affordable housing and social security.
Few now would disagree about the benefits to Britain that came from the creation of the welfare state and the National Health Service. For millions, the welfare state and the NHS were a deliverance from evil, taking the shame out of need, giving British citizens opportunities they would otherwise not have enjoyed.
When they questioned these new opportunities, the right could be accused of focusing only on individual responsibility and forgetting about social injustice, and so simply blaming the victim. They seemed to be unconcerned about unemployment, poverty, low wages, the causes of deprivation. While rightly stressing the need for individual initiative and a personal moral responsibility, they ignored the need to couple this with a strong ethic of social responsibility.
But after a time the old left were too easily caricatured as concerned only about social conditions and forgetting about personal responsibility and choices. As a result, the old left of 20 years ago were accused, for example, of being unconcerned about crime and its victims, about parenting and the family, about dependency and its causes.
And both left and right often seemed to operate with too simple a dichotomy of individual and state - the one seeking to empower the individual versus the state, the other making the state overpowerful in relation to the individual. Both lost sight of civic society.
With the community left out of the picture, too often the left were seen as looking only to the state to solve social problems, too often the right to purely individual action. One side talked of entitlements, the other of there being "no such thing as society".
Neither gave sufficient attention to the great force for change that arises when individuals join together in community action.
That neither approach has worked is apparent from the challenges we still face - long term unemployment, drugs, crime, family breakdown and multiple sources of deprivation.
To find a solution means focusing both on diminishing structural injustices through the enabling power of the state and on enhancing personal responsibility on the part of each individual. But it also means recognising that the best approach to extending opportunity and responsibility together may often lie through new ways of drawing on and enhancing the great strengths of communities acting together.
We should therefore reject a selfish individualism on the right which ignores the importance of social responsibility, but also the social engineering of the old left which ignores the importance of personal responsibility. Instead we should embrace a politics of what I will call "responsible citizenship" - one that combines respect for order, family and responsibility with agreement to pursue the values of civic society and a shared sense of social purpose.
Once we place individual responsibility in the context of a responsible citizenship, the argument of the right that we should do nothing about injustice falls away. Personal responsibility does matter, but for individuals to exercise that responsibility, they need the fair opportunity that allows them to do so. Social justice is its necessary precondition.
But our commitment to social justice must be expressed through an enabling state, not a controlling or engineering state. It is advanced not just by balancing rights against responsibilities, but by constantly seeking to strengthen the local and neighbourhood structures that are the essence of an active civic society.
The philosophical basis for civic society
I see our free and cooperative association in civic society as having its roots in what the Scottish Enlightenment philosophers called the moral sense, by which they meant a set of moral sentiments or dispositions that all human beings possess in common. These philosophers argued that the true source of human sociability lies not in self-interest but in a shared feeling of mutual sympathy.
And as James Q. Wilson has shown in his book 'The Moral Sense', there is a great deal of empirical evidence in favour of this view.
If we make the mistake of looking for universal moral rules, Wilson argues, a failure to find these can give rise to moral relativism. But while there may be no universal set of absolute rules that all human societies recognise, we do find in people everywhere a common set of moral dispositions. For in every society, people manifest the general dispositions to be dutiful, to exercise self-control, to believe in fairness and to empathise with one another.
These innate moral dispositions coexist with more selfish dispositions such as greed and vanity. They are expressed differently in different societies, for they are influenced and shaped by the surrounding culture. That we are disposed to duty and to fairness does not in itself define the extent and nature of our duties or the character of a fair society - as to which, cultural views certainly vary. But the shared impulses to duty, self-control, fairness and empathy are a necessary and universal moral core that makes society possible.
And the evidence shows that these basic dispositions begin to appear in very early childhood. By the age of four, for example, many children are disposed to share even when it is not in their interests to do so and even when their parents are not watching. They have already internalised a standard of fairness.
If the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers were right to say that society stems from a shared and innate moral sense, not from rational self-interest, then Jonathan Sacks is also right to see the basis of civic society not as a contract but rather as a covenant. For as he points out, a contract is a deal based on self-interest and sustained through the external force of law, while a covenant is an agreement that is morally based and internally sustained, through shared values, common purposes and mutual obligations.
The challenges that still face us in this new century will never be met by the state acting alone. It will take a renewal of our civic society. For this, a first essential is a fresh understanding of the covenant on which it rests. But what are the lines of a moral agreement to which all in our diverse society might freely subscribe? I suggest that a solid and widely acceptable basis of agreement has to begin from our modern commitment to the equal worth of every individual, regardless of sex, race, religion or social background. That offers the greatest prospect of general assent, for it gives people of every sort an equal claim to social recognition within the covenant, simply by virtue of being human.
It follows from this premise of equality that the best and fairest way to give shape to a new covenant is to ground it in the moral dispositions that everyone has a natural tendency to display, not in a set of absolute prescriptions that only some adhere to. A covenant for a modern and inclusive civic society must, I believe, be rooted in our shared dispositions to duty, self-control, empathy and fairness - for these are all dispositions that transcend differences of cultural and social background.
In my view, two important consequences follow for the character of civic society, both central to my themes today. First, the new covenant - and the society it leads to - will be one in which we extend opportunity and demand responsibility in return. And secondly, the outcome will be an active civic engagement, not a passive civic obedience, restoring the principles of voluntary and community action to a central social place.
Because I believe that as moral beings we have responsibilities as well as rights, I see the social expression of equality as residing in a genuine equality of opportunity, not in a crude equal outcome.
The imperative that this yields, I suggest, is a moral covenant to rebuild civic society around the extension of opportunity to all, to realise our shared impulses to fairness and empathy - but also around the assumption of responsibility by all, to recognise our innate dispositions to duty and self-control.
But for fairness to be meaningful, the opportunity has to be genuine, and it has to start in earliest childhood, and it has to continue for a lifetime in educational, economic, employment and cultural opportunities accessible to all.
A genuine equality of opportunity means that we recognise a diversity of need while insisting on an equality of right, but it also means that we credit individuals with a personal responsibility to make good use of the opportunities they are given. And responsibility, to be consistent with fairness and empathy, has to be directed not just to our own selves but to others as well. If we expect to receive the social help we need to develop our own potential to the full, we must in fairness acknowledge a matching social duty. This is a duty which requires government action, but it is not a duty which can or should be left entirely to the state.
For a social covenant that truly reflects our moral dispositions will not simply be a sullen and passive agreement to follow a common set of moral rules. It will be a means of giving active social expression to our shared moral impulses to sympathy, fairness, self-control and duty. And these are dispositions to behave towards others in sociable and moral ways, not simply to abstain from doing wrong. They prompt us to participate actively together in shared endeavours for our mutual good, and to offer help where help is needed. The social institutions that stem from a new covenant must surely be ones that allow for and encourage these positive impulses to practical action.
This means that civic society too must be understood not in a passive but in an active sense. It is an idea that only comes alive when individuals are given a genuine chance to participate in the shaping of the local communities and the larger society to which they belong.
And it means that the revival of altruism is a necessary part of the new covenant to renew our society. In encouraging voluntary action, we strengthen civic society by giving a proper recognition to the importance of the gift relationship, of a free and altruistic giving to others, as a fundamental principle in social life.
The individual, the community and the state
Just as there is a debate in Britain about how opportunity and responsibility should be reconciled to make for a strong civic society, so too there has been a debate about means - about the relationship between individual, community and state.
Let me again set the post-1945 context. The welfare state and the National Health Service replaced an untidy patchwork of local municipal and voluntary provision, providing comprehensive services at a scale previously unknown.
Before 1945, and especially before 1900, the individual had been on his or her own, left to his or her own devices, or the whim of charity, or that untidy patchwork of provision, with the state having an uncertain role.
After 1945, a new relationship emerged between the state, the individual and the community, where the individual was empowered with new rights to education, employment, health care and social security - rights guaranteed by the state acting on behalf of the community.
But after a time hostility to the new collectivism grew, as the sentiment also grew that individual initiative was being stifled, personal responsibility undervalued, local endeavour undermined. So in time a new right-wing anti-state and anti-collectivist approach gained support, even to the extent of theorists arguing that the state should wither away, society did not exist, market ideology should dominate even in the social services, and individuals should be left to their own devices.
In the 1980s in particular, this view triumphed. But when by the 1990s people saw services and responsibilities the community had traditionally taken for granted under stress or even at risk, a shift of opinion occurred again.
So while in the 1970s Britain appeared to reach the acceptable limits of the old 'big government', in the 1980s and 1990s we saw just as clearly the practical limits in our society of a market free-for-all.
Out of the reaction against the left's over-emphasis on government and the right's over-zealous faith in market dogma, a new more balanced approach has, in my view, emerged - one that sees the individual enhanced by a supportive community and sees a strong and effective civic society in what we might think of as the middle ground between markets and state.
And I think three major consequences follow which strengthen the very idea of civic society, all of them relevant to the future of voluntary action.
First, people now rightly want power devolved to communities, not centralised in a bureaucratic state.
A clear distinction is now drawn between advancing the public interest - which they see as essential - and equating that public interest with state ownership, state bureaucracy and centralised government. So government has a duty to see opportunities extended, without there being an obligation that if the service is in the public interest, it must automatically be run from the centre by the institutions of the state. We can demand that a service be promoted by government without insisting that government is best at managing each service.
So there has been a rejection of centralisation and of another old automatic equation between public interest and public ownership.
And to promote the ideal of civic society, there is increasing support for the devolution of power and the strengthening of local institutions. Instead of people looking upwards to Whitehall for all their solutions, from locality to locality more and more people will themselves take more charge of the decisions that affect them. Indeed, with devolution throughout Britain, new centres of initiative are already developing. In the new devolved framework, the whole of Britain can learn and benefit from the energy of each of its parts. So the next stage, as with elected mayors, will be the democratic strengthening of local government. With Britain no longer defined to its people by the centralisation and remoteness of the state, they will more easily recognise the shared values and common purpose that make it greater than the sum of its parts.
So this is government enabling and empowering rather than directing and controlling - something which is humbling for government, because it forces government to recognise its limitations and the strengths of local and indeed voluntary action.
And this is why there is a second change afoot - a renewed interest in the voluntary sector and the relationship between voluntary organisations and local and national government.
The devolution of power goes beyond regional and local devolution of government. It involves devolving power from government even further to local communities and neighbourhoods. Problems once solved only by the state acquiring more power can be solved today only by the state giving much of its power away. Power taken for the people from powerful or privileged interests in the interest of democracy must for the same interest, that of democracy, be handed back from the powerful state to the people.
The remedy to many of our social problems lies not in the state acquiring more power on behalf of the people but in the state giving existing powers back to the people.
Now in the past, as the battle swung between left and right, voluntary organisations have been often caught in the middle of an unnecessary political fight.
Parts of the left saw the voluntary sector as a threat to the things government should be doing, with old Labour accused of seeking to substitute state for charitable action.
The right, for its part, used the voluntary sector to relieve government of government's proper responsibilities, the new right seeking to substitute charitable action for the state.
So both got it wrong.
The contracts of the past did not help and I hope we have learnt from the mistakes of the past.
The way forward is not a constant war of attrition to decide the proper demarcation between charities and government, as if the success of government meant less charity and the success of charity meant less government.
The way forward is a recognition that the voluntary sector is not a cut-price alternative to statutory provision, nor a way of ducking the responsibilities of families, including the extended family or society - but is government and charities working in partnership, based on mutual respect, one that recognises both the public interest and the strength and autonomy of voluntary organisations and the distinctive role they want to and can play.
For if we consider how to push further the extension of opportunity on an equal basis to all and the ending of social exclusion, it is clear that just as there are some steps forward that the state is best placed to take, so there are others for which community and voluntary organisations may be better equipped.
In the immediate post-war years, the most urgent priority was to provide, on a national basis and to a national standard, essential social services such as education and health care. This was a major stride towards greater equality and fairness, and it could only be achieved through direct state action.
But as we can now see, the existence of national services is no guarantee of a truly equal opportunity. A bar to equal access need not lie with the educational system itself - it may stem from the sort of childhood poverty that makes the opportunities of school much more difficult to seize, or a culture of low expectations that prevents people from seeing and attaining their full potential.
For reasons such as these, children from different backgrounds may have a very different capacity to benefit from the educational opportunities that government places on offer. To bring about a more genuine equality of opportunity then requires supplementary action beyond the educational system itself. And the further action needed to give a more genuinely equal access to existing statutory services may well be of a sort that the voluntary sector is better placed than the state to take.
In these further steps forward, the role of the state will therefore often lie in empowering community and voluntary organisations to do things that they are better equipped than the state itself to do. This is not to say that the state should cease providing, and indeed improving, the educational and other opportunities that it currently provides - far from it, for our public investment plans show our commitment to improving the range of services. Rather, it is to say that when we look closely at the continuing barriers to a genuinely equal access to these opportunities, or at the continuing causes of social exclusion or low cultural expectations, they are often of a sort that the state is not very well placed to tackle through its own direct action.
This means that there is no necessary conflict between that area of provision where central or local government acts as the direct provider, and an area of supplementary and focused help, which is building bridges to opportunity for those excluded. The two forms of action are wholly consistent means to the same end: an equal opportunity for all. Those who are not cut off do not need a bridge, nor does equality demand that we build them a bridge.
Often the voluntary sector is a more effective builder of bridges for those cut off - but if it is to undertake this task, it needs empowering and resourcing by the state.
And this leads to my third point, that to create an effective partnership between the state and the voluntary sector, we must debate more carefully the circumstances in which voluntary action offers the better approach, and the resources it requires from the state.
It will already be clear from what I have said that I believe there is a strong moral basis for the principle of voluntary action. Voluntary action is an outlet for our natural altruism. It is the expression of an active community and as such a central ingredient in civic society. It is part of a protective shield for the individual against the might of the state. It is a source of social cohesion.
But we also know that there are areas where it cannot be a substitute for direct government action in the public interest. To emphasise the areas where social purposes are best achieved through voluntary action, we should spell out its particular practical strengths.
The practical strengths of voluntary action
At its best, voluntary action has four great practical strengths - its local character, its greater flexibility to innovate, its individual, personal approach, and its capacity to strengthen our citizenship. And in spelling these out, I want to show how in our new policies for children and in other new directions we intend to value these great strengths.
It is precisely because today's social problems do not lend themselves to a standardised, uniform, one-size-fits-all solution or to an impersonal approach that the state has to devolve power to those organisations that have the deepest local knowledge, and the broadest capacity for innovation, and the greatest experience in the one-to-one approach.
For the first great strength of voluntary action is that it is local rather than remote, close to home rather than impersonal, involving volunteers and local community workers who are not only more able to see a problem that can be solved and take action to solve it, but can do so with advantage, because local action minimises the space between the problem and the answer.
Put it this way - once we thought the man in Whitehall knew best - that was a long time ago - now we know the woman from the WRVS - or the playgroup movement - might know better, that local, on the ground knowledge and engagement bridges not just the gap of size between neighbourhood and state but often the gap of knowledge and perhaps too often too the gap of trust.
And let me explain how our new Children's Fund represents a new approach, which recognises this great strength of voluntary action. By drawing on local knowledge and by involving local groups, the Children's Fund can help provide local solutions in one very big area - the problems of children in need and child poverty.
By raising child benefit, and by introducing the working families tax credit and the new children's tax credit, we tackle child poverty. By extending nursery education and playgroups and by investing in schooling, we expand educational opportunity.
But we recognise that the war against child poverty cannot be won by financial measures alone. It needs caring as well as cash. It needs practical day to day support for parents and children and young people, as well as week to week financial support. It needs to recognise the uniqueness rather than the uniformity of many children's problems, the special characteristics of many communities not just the similarities in their conditions.
That is why, when we set out our plans for the new Children's Fund, we proposed not just a national fund but a network of local funds, from which local voluntary projects that are making a difference in meeting children's needs can gain support. So we have set aside a special allocation for a local network of funds, and in my view it changes for the better the relationship between state and voluntary action. This is no longer the state directing and charities responding. But neither is the state walking away - with charities left to plug the gaps. The Children's Fund starts from a recognition of the value of local voluntary action, and seeks to build an effective partnership between local voluntary organisations and government that recognises both partners' mutual strengths.
And our new Children's Fund - plans for which we launched in July 2000 - is built on the other great strengths of voluntary action, not just the local engagement which we have recognised in the setting up of the local funds. For we have also recognised the other weaknesses of central government - less flexibility in innovation, less ability to work on a one to one basis - and the other strengths of voluntary action:
- The innovative capacity of the voluntary sector; and
- The voluntary sector's ability to move beyond an impersonal and uniform approach to problems to a highly individual and one to one approach.
So let us consider the second strength of voluntary action. It lies in a greater freedom to innovate and a flexibility of approach that the public sector often lacks. The voluntary sector has in abundance the creativity and inventiveness that I believe to be British qualities. Within the voluntary sector, new problems are identified and new initiatives can more easily flourish. It was Michael Young, I think, who coined the term social entrepreneur, meaning someone who has all the talents and the imagination and the drive of an entrepreneur, but who wishes to apply these to enriching society instead of themselves. But the people themselves existed long before the term was invented.
We know that last century we saw voluntary action pioneer work in settlements and in community development, among children, the disabled and the poor, and that voluntary organisations have a long and proud history of identifying new needs, pioneering fresh solutions, often cajoling governments into action, often long before government has admitted there is a problem.
Today, in countless areas of need, voluntary organisations are pioneering and leading the way in new directions: the hospice movement, the anti-aids campaigns, environmental organisations, the playgroup movement, the pioneering advocates for the disabled, the worldwide movement against debt. Long before government, these voluntary organisations saw a need and acted.
And we know that the innovation voluntary organisations show in meeting new needs is matched by innovation in the way they do so - voluntary organisations making the connections that others cannot, from Comic Relief to Children's Promise - and doing so independently and without fear or favour, free of government. And we recognise how centrally this process of innovation depends on their maintaining an arm's length distance from the state.
And it is a capacity to innovate that rests not just on the freedom and the flexibility of voluntary initiative, but on its diversity as well. And here we need to encourage better ways of learning from each other, so that innovative ways of meeting social need are quickly taken up and used elsewhere. As an example of this - again in one area of policy, the needs of children - we are not only proposing a Children's Fund but also an Alliance for Children, which will do more to bring together all those interested in the needs of children, from government, business and parents' organisations to the voluntary and charitable sector, so that we can continuously learn from each other.
The third great strength of voluntary action is:
- Its capacity for the individual and unique rather than the impersonal or standardised approach;
- The greater emphasis on the one to one, face to face, person to person approach, on being at the front line; and
- The capacity especially to offer an individual and personal form of help to those pushed to the margins of poverty, who are often mistrustful of the sort of authority that the state or any other form of authority represents.
When I say, put the emphasis on the one to one approach in supporting those in need, it is about being there. As has so often been said, you do not rebuild communities from the top down. You can only rebuild one family, one street, one neighbourhood at a time. Or as faith based organisations, who are so important, often put it - one soul at a time.
As one Jewish saying puts it: "If you have saved one life, you are saving the world".
It is about being there. John Dilulio quotes a conversation between Eugene Rivers, a minister in Boston, worried about his hold on a new generation of young people and a local youth who has not only become a drug dealer but has a greater hold now over the young people. "Why did we lose you?" asks the minister to the drug dealer. "Why are we losing other kids now?" To which the drug dealer replies: "I'm there, you're not. When the kids go to school, I'm there, you're not. When the boy goes for a loaf of bread ... or just someone older to talk to or feel safe and strong around, I'm there, you're not. I'm there, you're not ..."
Being there is about presence, but it is also about trust, and in both these respects, the voluntary sector can often have the edge over the statutory sector.
And it is not accidental that so many charities are called trusts. In the first instance, of course, they are called trusts because we entrust them with our gifts of money - we trust that they will use that money for the purpose for which it was intended. But they can also have the capacity to generate trust in those who have nothing but suspicion for authority. And so a government that is serious about social exclusion is bound to want to work with voluntary organisations to try to reach those parts of our society that it often finds it hard to reach itself.
The fourth great strength of voluntary action is that it is in itself an education in citizenship for volunteers and recipients alike.
The recent Pilot Light video is based on the idea of the volunteer being a recipient too - just as the recipient is also a benefactor. "Don't come to me to bestow favours," one beneficiary of charity is saying, "come to me if your liberation is bound up with mine." And those who embark on voluntary action out of a sense of duty often end up with the realisation that it has brought a new richness of meaning to their own lives - that in the giving, they have received in a different way as well.
So voluntary action is a form of active citizenship, of active engagement in the society in which we live. By participating in our community, we learn about the world beyond our front doors and garden gates, and our citizenship is stronger as a result. It is our own constructive contribution to the forging of good social relations and the rich civic society on which we all depend. And it is a contribution that the state cannot make in our place.
So the strengths of voluntary action are many indeed - the strength of local engagement, a capacity to innovate, a one to one approach and an education in citizenship that makes citizenship count.
And it is precisely because today's social problems demand local knowledge, greater flexibility and innovation and more one to one contact with those in need that the weaknesses of what by its nature is often a standardised, uniform, one-size-fits-all, impersonal approach and the strengths of the voluntary sector are increasingly recognised. It is why, to solve these social problems, the state, instead of taking power, has to devolve more power, and why a new partnership between voluntary sector and government is urgent.
Examples of the new approach
The Children's Fund - and the changes we are making to our policy towards children which reflect this new approach - is but one example of the forces of change now at work as government recognises the claims and benefits of civic society.
What we seek to achieve with the Children's Fund, where we wish to back voluntary action, we also seek to achieve with our extension of the programme Sure Start.
For we should recognise the importance of the principle that Sure Start brings into action in local communities - that services for the under-fours not only involve private, voluntary and charitable activities, but can be run through and by them.
When all the latest evidence is that the first three years are critical to a child's brain development and can have a lifelong impact on a child's intellectual and emotional well being, and when we know from our experience of children whose chances are crippled even before their life has begun, we would be failing in our duty if we did not do more to help the very young - to counteract disadvantages that arise from the earliest days. And with Sure Start, we are trying to tackle the cause of poverty - lack of educational opportunity, lack of health advice, and often the lack of proper parental support.
Spending £3,000 on average per child over the next three years, Sure Start's strength is that it is based on real communities. Some cover 500 children, others 1,000, the average 800. So this is work in a small area to help those most in need.
But Sure Start is based on even greater devolution of power. Sure Start recognises that local knowledge, innovative methods and one to one support are essential for both children and parents, and thus recognises why the voluntary sector, with its local knowledge, flexible methods and person to person contacts, should take greater charge of a range of services for under-fours in an area.
So instead of the state - local or national - running these programmes, these can be run by volunteers, charities, community organisations.
And I see Sure Start as a new form of partnership in which the voluntary, community and charitable organisations can take the lead locally, using their initiative, local knowledge and skill to put their ideas and projects to work - and of course by learning from what works and from each other, spread the best good practice as we extend the project.
The Children's Fund and Sure Start demonstrate how we recognise the strength of voluntary action in helping children in need - and thus the new role it wants to play in building our civic life. It shows, as I said at the beginning, areas where the state - which once had to take more power to tackle social problems - now needs to devolve power as the best means of solving these problems.
Let me give me one further example, not this time about services for children but about services for young people.
In the latest spending allocations, the government set aside new funds so that the New Deal for the young unemployed could become a permanent deal for all long term unemployed.
Youth unemployment which was, in the mid-80s, 500,000, is now 50,000. But every one of these 50,000 young people are individuals with special problems, difficult personal challenges to meet, and often in need of one to one support.
And we know we have a long way to go to bring back into work, or sometimes into work for the first time, a generation of young people who have often failed at school, who in many cases cannot read or count, and who, in some cases, have fallen into crime, drugs. and continuous, permanent unemployment.
So the New Deal is entering a quite different phase.
In the first phase, advice and information about employment mattered more. Now, in the new phase, the New Deal is not just about advice and information for employment, but it is about coaching and encouraging young people, often by greater personal attention. So it makes sense, as it moves into the next phase, that the New Deal will seek to work in ever closer partnership with voluntary organisations, as we both increase the opportunities for the hard-to-employ young unemployed and adults - with not just training but advice and coaching.
This is a tougher challenge, which must involve not just more time with young people and more local knowledge of their needs but more one to one support. I have myself looked at how, in America and elsewhere, coaching the hard-to-employ can make the difference between long term unemployment and exclusion and fully participating in community life, and the mentoring projects in Britain are yielding impressive results.
Here it is not voluntary action having to take on a responsibility that government should always hold - the responsibility for securing a full employment society. But it is voluntary action, with its local knowledge, the capacity to innovate and the one to one approach, that is often more able to deliver results.
So I believe at the centre of the next stage of the New Deal ought to be a closer and more effective partnership between voluntary organisations and government - each playing to their greatest mutual strengths.
There is of course always a tension between the gains from uniformity and certainty that state action brings - which is essential for rights or opportunities to be guaranteed - and the gains from the one to one local and innovative and more flexible approach that voluntary action makes possible. Perhaps it is true that at a particular stage, as in the second stage of the New Deal, a highly personalised, one to one approach is more appropriate.
Indeed there is a further danger in voluntary action, often seen as the problem of charity - that what can be given can often be withheld, that what is offered may not always be guaranteed, that what is here one day may have disappeared by the next. But I do not believe that the gains in equality from central state provision need be sacrificed for the gains from diversity in voluntary action - it is getting the balance right between the two that matters.
The initiatives to support children and young people are not the only areas where power can be devolved.
Here voluntary action need not be seen as a substitute for government's proper responsibilities, but voluntary sector and government can work in partnership - the voluntary sector taking a greater role, while protecting its autonomy and independence of action.
In addition to the Children's Fund, Sure Start and the New Deal, I see greater new challenges in, for example:
- Education, where I can see how government and the voluntary sector can do more together to extend the helping hand to schoolchildren - a new enhanced local network of mentors for children to help them read;
- In improving the environment, where the voluntary sector and government, local and national, can work together to secure better use of public space;
- In communications, new and better community uses for local TV, radio, media and the internet;
- In the classroom, better civic education courses, and from school more opportunities for young people to do voluntary work;
- In business, extending into a national network the use of mentors that will encourage local small businesses;
- In the internet, new computer learning centres engaging public, private and voluntary sectors at the hub of the community;
- In service overseas, a new boost to working in the developing world.
In each case people empowered as the voluntary sector is empowered, government not walking away but recognising both its proper responsibilities and the limits of its role.
And of course voluntary action extends to community economic regeneration.
In July I announced a long term budget for the Phoenix Fund, part of which will promote community finance initiatives. These provide finance for projects where there are high social returns. So this aims to promote the type of organisations that we have been talking about today. The report of the Social Investment Task Force also has an important part to play in looking at how we can encourage more investment in the UK in social enterprises - projects which have social objectives, and are not simply profit orientated.
So there is great scope for a future debate, with a view to consensus, with a view then to a more effective partnership, a partnership that recognises both the autonomy of voluntary organisations and their greatest strengths.
Promoting the giving of money and time
And it is because I recognise these great strengths of voluntary action that I wish government to do more to promote volunteering, both the giving of money and the giving of time.
For too long the voluntary sector has been held back by archaic rules, bad laws, poor tax legislation, and organisations represented here need a fair and sympathetic legal and economic framework, and a financial foundation that is the same that charities themselves want - a base of support from givers.
In the reforms we made, which the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) has estimated could encourage people to give a billion more, we sought to simplify the rules and multiply the returns, with tax relief for all donations, large or small, regular or one off, not just cash but shares. So today, for every pound a British taxpayer donates to charity, the government is prepared to contribute to that charity an additional 28 pence. And it means also that people and companies can donate their shares to charity, without having to pay any capital gains tax, and get extra tax relief for the full value of the shares.
One significant financial change I want to emphasise today is payroll giving, for in the autumn we launched a major campaign to advertise how advantageous it is to do so. We are not only putting additional funds into our campaign for giving but, by making contact systematically with employers, will move from one in five employees who have currently facilities for payroll giving to one in three. We are working together on this.
We have abolished the ceiling on how much money employees can give through the pay packet - so payroll giving can now be any sum an employee chooses. And until April 2003, we are offering a special 10 per cent supplement on all payroll donations to charities. So for every pound contributed through payroll giving, the government will contribute up to 50 pence worth of tax relief.
Incentives to encourage individual giving are the start of the new financial foundation for charities. But I want to work with you to publicise also the opportunity for starting in Britain a new chapter in corporate giving. At present in the USA around 1 per cent of company profits are given to charity. But in Britain, it is only 0.2 per cent of company profits. To encourage more local companies to be active in civic life in their areas, and to see more of our international companies becoming giving companies too, our companies, like individuals, can now give any amount to charity - no matter how large or small - and get tax relief for the full amount. And do so simply - with no tax to deduct from the gift, no paperwork, no bureaucracy. We want to work together to find new routes to corporate giving and to the creation of foundations that can make a difference.
We are also supporting a new campaign, led by the voluntary sector, to promote the giving of time as well as money.
So I want to conclude by emphasising the steps that the government is taking to encourage the giving of money, but also the steps that it is taking to encourage the giving of time.
When the Active Community Working Group published its report, it suggested that:
- By 2005, two-thirds of adults should be able to undertake at least two hours voluntary activity a week;
- By 2003, all secondary school pupils should understand how they can participate in community based activities;
- By 2002, local authority fora should be established to engage employers in community activity programmes.
- back to top
So, in addition to new financial foundations for charities and voluntary action, we need to do much more to create a culture of giving time.
Our next task is to encourage new volunteers, to create new volunteering opportunities, and to build networks that match those who can give help to those who need help.
How can this be achieved? Lord Falconer and Paul Boateng are already working with charities and the voluntary sector on key initiatives: for example, the internet-based database - www.do-it.org.uk - providing individuals with free and direct access to volunteering opportunities throughout Britain; Timebank; the Media Trust's Community Channel; new regional networks that link voluntary organisations to our new regional development agencies; the five area active community demonstration projects, testing ways of strengthening community activity and creating new volunteering opportunities.
And I can say this evening that, following the spending review, we will follow up our budget tax reliefs to encourage the giving of money with new measures to encourage the giving of time with our new initiatives. The Children's Fund will have 100 million pounds in its first year, then 150 million pounds, and then 200 million. Sure Start will have a budget of 184 million pounds in 2000-01, 284 million, 449 million, and 499 million a year by 2003-4. The Active Community Unit will have extra resources of 25 million next year, 35 million the year after and 60 million pounds by 2003-2004.
Discussion on how the money will be used will continue over the next few months. As you know, there are ideas for:
- A new experience corps for older volunteers, which will draw on the experience and talents of older people to involve them in their communities;
- Extra investment for strengthening the network of advice and support for volunteers; for better marketing of volunteering opportunities; and for training mentors;
- And for the first time there will be new targets for the relevant government departments to encourage volunteering.
And I hope the new campaign to promote the giving of time and money will be able the make to most of the new opportunities.
Conclusion
I believe a new relationship between individual, communities and government is taking shape.
I believe such a civic renewal is grounded in tackling injustice through opportunity and building civic strength through responsibility.
I believe too that this civic renewal will usher in a far more constructive relationship between individual, community and state in Britain, as we devolve power, empower the individual, and recognise and build upon the uniqueness and strengths of voluntary action.
To solve great social problems, the state of the last century had to take power from great vested interests and do so on behalf of the people. Now, to solve equally pressing social problems, the state in this century will have, as a vested interest itself, to give power away and give power to the people.
And I believe therefore that to talk of a strong civic society is not to recall a past long gone that can never be recovered, but to reach out to a better future we can build together - a Britain energised by a million centres of action and compassion, of concern and initiative. Call it a giving age, active citizenship, call it community - it is Britain becoming Britain again.
And your efforts, your initiative and your pioneering work - the work of voluntary organisations you represent and advance - are at the heart of this civic renewal and represent the better Britain I believe that, irrespective of age, creed or political persuasion, all of us will, in this new century, want to build.