FAITH AND THE BIG SOCIETY
Adapted from a presentation given at Welwyn Hatfield IFG
Public Meeting on 31 March 2011
Jenny Kartupelis MBE, Director, East of England Faiths Council
This is a brief consideration of the Big Society, faith, inter faith, and how they might fit in together.
First of all, the Big Society. It is rare that so much has been said about something, and yet so little remains known. The majority of the population have either not heard of it, or only vaguely registered it. Maybe this is partly because it as yet exists as a vision, and is not rooted in reality; and partly because each person interprets it to fit their desires, worries or agenda.
So let’s start with what it is not – it is not a programme of action, nor a legislative process going through Parliament, nor a manifesto nor even a promise. Nor, in my opinion, is it a cover for cuts or a cheap way of filling social service gaps – and I will explain later why I say that. It seems to be a way of describing what people might be like, or how they ought to view life.
For our purposes, the useful approach is to look at how this vision might make it through to becoming a viable reality and at what points in that process faith groups might play a part.
How is the government approaching this question? One of the key planks is the Localism Bill. This is intended to engage people more in their local communities, giving them more power over planning, policy and so on. As Care Services Minister Paul Burstow recently said: ‘This is about a new relationship between the state and citizens, where citizens hold more power than ever before.’ Other key features are that individual volunteering will be encouraged (possibly by fiscal incentives, we don’t know yet), that there will be community activists trained free but thereafter to be paid by voluntary bodies, and that corporate philanthropy will be encouraged.
That sounds positive, and it could be. However, we now need to consider how other government policy may interact with these aspirations. What might stop this potentially positive vision becoming a reality?
Firstly, and ironically, it could be our friend Localism itself. The trouble with acting locally is that you might start thinking locally. But the Big Society is at the least a national vision. Rather than helping people pull together, too much inward–looking by communities can cause fragmentation: different locations try to push problems over each other’s boundaries, different groups compete for voice or resources, the most vulnerable people fall into gaps between networks.
The Archbishop of Canterbury warns: "Localism does not mean the dissolution of a complex national society…. into isolated villages’, but the principle that decisions need to be taken at an appropriate level.
Local government may be able to take a strong lead to prevent the negative side of localism, but they have lost some of their room for manoeuvre – central government policy means that Councils have been unable to make their own decisions on, for example, over what period to implement budget cuts, and cannot have recourse to increased Council Tax even if their local communities wanted to take that route.
Many voluntary groups, including those providing linking and infrastructure, find themselves facing major and swift budget reductions. Localism is supposed to help charities bid for public sector contracts, so that commissioning could become a route to survival. But this may not favour the smaller charities who have the local knowledge, especially if payment is results-based, in other words, partly in arrears. The Transition Fund to help voluntary bodies over the ‘funding gap’ was geared for larger organisations rather than for small ones or the infrastructure bodies that support them, which did not augur well.
Yet these smaller charities, as well as the large ones, are the very bodies we urgently need if volunteers, encouraged by the Prime Minister, give of their time as he hopes. This paradox may arise from a basic misunderstanding about volunteering. It is not free! Many people, thank God, do acts of neighbourly kindness every day. Our neighbour, as Christ told us, is anyone who needs us, and such acts may range from making a cake and taking it to the elderly person next door to check they’re OK, to donating or fundraising for international disasters.
But this is very different from structured volunteering, which demands using people’s time effectively to achieve particular aims and meet specific needs. That requires training, management, equipment, premises – in fact, things that cost money and need organisation. To take one simple problem – if people who cannot pay their own travel expenses are in effect barred from volunteering, then we lose a precious resource.
Another issue here is that however valuable and desirable volunteering may be, how that donation of time is deployed, is usually a decision for the individual or organisation, who will naturally have their own views and interests. The job of government is not to step back and let things happen as they will, but to ensure that the needs of our most vulnerable and easily forgotten members of society are met. Faiths are very good at being alongside people who are unlikely to be ‘popular causes’, and have a track record of serving those who are for example homeless, addicted, offenders.
But that does not absolve government, local or national, from a duty of care. We may not want a Big State that crawls all over peoples’ lives, but we do need a state that is big enough to be there for everyone.
The same potential problems apply with philanthropy. Major donors may well be people of great integrity and humanity, but they will have to choose where their support is directed, and will that always be where it is most needed? And it is salutary to remember that the truly great Victorian philanthropists were not those who just gave large sums of money, but those who campaigned for social justice. Not always a comfortable relationship with the government of the day! I’d also remind you that these social campaigns were often driven by people of deep faith.
Now for some Big Questions: Society, Power and Money.
When he spoke of his vision, David Cameron said: ‘The Big Society is about a huge culture change, where people feel both free and powerful enough to help themselves and their own communities.’ It is interesting how society and community are conflated here, yet a recent poll of the public shows that while 51% of people would volunteer for their ‘community’ only 20% are keen to contribute to ‘society’. Clearly if Mr Cameron thinks people do care about their own communities, and wants to build on this, then he is on to a winner – but if he thinks the majority of people will contribute to society generally, he will find there are great holes left in the overall provision. Will we settle for that downside even if it the result is stronger local communities?
Which brings us to power. The East of England Faiths Council undertook a survey last year to find out how faith groups become empowered to participate in their community. Some findings were specific to faith, and we will return to those, but some would almost certainly apply more generally. People said that real empowerment is closely linked to the ability to influence spending decisions. Not necessarily to be given money themselves, but to have a say in where public money goes. In order for this to happen, Local Authorities need to be able to hear the quieter voices as well as the loud ones, and consult effectively.
It is true that under the Localism Bill Local Authorities will have a ‘duty to involve’ the public, yet the bodies that help this to happen, the Empowerment Partnerships, have already been dissolved. Planning Aid has also gone, the very body that would have helped local people to make an input to planning issues. Do we want only the articulate and well-informed to be empowered?
Those groups surveyed were quite right of course to focus on spending as one of the critical issues. This brings us to the point I mentioned earlier: I would challenge the idea that the Big Society is all about ‘The Cuts’, that it is just a way of meeting budget deficits, and reducing public spending.
If that were the case, spending decisions would be driven by the need for making savings to the public purse. Yet small cuts to voluntary bodies will reduce their effectiveness and ability to make major savings to public spending. Early interventions save far more money than they require to run. If they lose vital support then the public expenditure down the line, in just a year or two, will be greater. For example, our recent research shows that a faith-based offender support initiative has resulted in decreased spend on benefits, criminal justice, health, probation, and prisons.
So how do the government’s budgetary decisions, in terms of frontloading cuts, fit in with the Big Society vision?
Turning now to the role of faith in all this. In the early days of Big Society announcements, some faith-based organisations made comments such as ‘Our time has come!’ But the time for faith came long ago, and is eternal. The nature of our electoral system ensures that, in the grand scheme of things, governments and their policies are short lived. Faith is not an instrument of government policy, nor a means of delivery, but it does have a critical role in public life.
Seeking the eternal in no way absolves us from being in the here and now, and people of faith should be active in examining and commenting on policy.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has taken up this challenge. He welcomed the announcement of the Big Society idea as providing an opportunity for a discussion ‘about the proper definition of wealth and well-being, about individual and communal goals, about the sort of human character that is fostered by unregulated competition and a focus on individual achievement, and about where we derive robust ideas of the common good and the social compact.’
To take this role effectively, it is more important than ever that faiths come together and act together. Faith groups are often embedded in their communities, and so are in a unique position to understand and meet need. Working with Local Authorities, they can help direct scarce resources effectively. Faiths go where others fear to tread – would you have guessed, for example, that the Mothers Union runs a pioneering programme to reduce re-offence by sex offenders? At the same time, faiths have a national presence, and can give an overview of the practical outworkings of policy.
When faiths come together with common purpose, whether locally or nationally, they are at their strongest and best.
There is an opportunity for faiths working together to meet the challenges of Big Society, to ensure the less resourced voices are heard, to build cohesion, to integrate and celebrate diversity. I am very heartened to see how local government is keen to see this happen, to work with faith and inter faith groups, and within the severe constraints they are experiencing, to support them in practical ways.
Faith groups make an enormous, well-researched contribution to society. We give volunteer time, use of premises, provide employment, act as Councillors, Officers, Trustees, movers and shakers. We are business people, financiers, MPs, entrepreneurs – we do not stay in our churches, synagogues, mosques or temples.
This is a time for people of faith to work together to articulate concerns, to advocate for the spiritual dimension of society, and to cast light on where real need lies.
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