Chickens come home to roost
The Charity Commission has finally spotted what NCIA predicted at the beginning of the year, and long before -
“many charities will go bust because of their reliance on government contracts to deliver public services.”
Say No to Commissioning
One of the principal ways – perhaps the main way – in which the Government is mounting its assault on the voluntary sector is through the peddling of its latest ‘fad’ for PROCUREMENT AND COMMISSIONING. Statutory services of all sorts have been told – explicitly or implicitly – to develop strategies for this. There has been an unseamly rush to comply, despite the reality that in many places no two people seem to have the same idea of what ‘procurement and commissioning’ means exactly. One council officer asked why the authority was moving to commissioning told us, “because everyone else is doing it”.
Fighting back
Previous articles in Green Socialist have pointed out that privatisation does not just affect services formerly run by the statutory sector, and also (ironically) that privatisation can sometimes go hand-in-hand with increased state control. Voluntary organisations providing public services are being compelled to adopt the methods and priorities of private businesses through tendering and commissioning procedures. However, the pernicious undermining of the very concept of an independent voluntary sector goes even further. Below, Andy Benson, from the Coalition for Independent Action, looks at how the state and business are eroding this important element of our civil society.
Learning from the Bad Guys
As a “lefty American” traversing the ground of the voluntary sector in the UK, I have often had a strange mixture of feelings:
- a déjà vu experience of seeing very recognizable developments from the US in the 1990s being repeated here: at the behest of a governing party hewing to the perceived center (here the Labourites, in the US Clinton and Democrats), advancing policy prescriptions that rely upon “public choice” economics, privatisation of public services, faith-based approaches, charitable entrepreneurialism, public-private partnerships, and so on
- some envy and admiration of the greater cohesiveness of the UK social sector, which is far more “joined-up”, in terms of general public acceptance of an ethic of social service, and better success in aligning the work of public and voluntary sectors. The decentralization of American service structures means that many examples of progressive, excellent public/voluntary service regimes can be found at state and local levels. Yet most American progressives would gladly take the social, educational and health regimes in the UK over their own.
It’s time to get political
An Unservile Society – It’s time for the voluntary sector to get political
Compact – a failed initiative
Government hand washing guidance – the legacy of the CENs
“Community empowerment is local government’s core business”
Simon Milton (in DCLG’s 2007 Action Plan for Community Empowerment)
“Power is never given.”
Voluntary action and public services
Whilst Annie Kelly’s excellent article in the Guardian (19.3.08) captures my rage about what is happening to the VCS, it doesn’t quite capture the perspective in one important respect – voluntary agencies delivering public services. Locally-based voluntary agencies have been delivering services to people for ever and these organisations form the backbone of the sector. It would be daft to say that they shouldn’t do this. Some of these services – advice and advocacy work being a classic example – have to be independent of the State to do their job properly. The problem with this part of the discussion is that various things have been conflated. Read more
Cry freedom
By Mathew Little, Third Sector, 20 February 2008
Andy Benson, convenor of the National Coalition for Independent Action, wants to stave off creeping state control of the voluntary sector.
