Please excuse the extraordinary length of this blog. It is a speech that I will be giving on Saturday at the TUC conference i Newcastle that I wanted to share with you.
It has become customary to start a speech by saying how delighted that I am to be here, well actually I’m not delighted to be here. I am here because I am increasingly concerned about the reckless way in which the coalition Government is behaving, and because I believe that the path that they are leading us down is doing real harm to vulnerable people, and to the communities that we live in. I take no delight in that. We need to give a clear message, collectively that enough is enough.
So I want to stand firm with you, on behalf of the voluntary and community sector in the North East to say we are together on this – the cuts are disproportionately affecting the north east, ruining the lives of vulnerable people and limiting the life chances of our young people.
This time last year there was a real buzz around Big Society – everyone was talking about it, but very few people had any sense of what it really meant. The key architects of the Big Society were Nat Wei and Philip Blond. Nat Wei was immediately promoted to the House of Lords and given the role of Big Society tsar, he was at the forefront of the drive to increase civic participation urging people to give up their time and get involved in neighbourhood initiatives. But after a few months in the role, he stepped down claiming, and, in the words of Theresa May – you couldn’t make this up, He said that doing the role in a voluntary capacity was interfering with his ability to make a living and his work life balance.
As for Philip Blond, founder of the think tank Respublica and author of the influential book The Red Tory- all of the senior staff at Respublica have walked out after they didn’t get paid. It’s not his ideas and philosophies that have been making the headlines of late but the size and nature of his expense claims!
Not surprisingly we are hearing fewer and fewer references now to big society.
From the start some were convinced that Big Society went to the heart of big C Conservative ideology. The words Big Society rather neatly are a more pleasant way of saying smaller state. Essentially People should get on with things themselves without the dead hand of the state dominating, dictating what was done, how it was done and crucially paying for it to be done.
Others dismissed it as a completely vacuous branding exercise. An attempt to reposition the conservative party away from Mrs Thatcher’s “There is no such thing as Society” Comments.
Over the past year there has been a raft of government initiatives aimed at the voluntary sector and civil society – localism; your square mile; the 25th hour, the giving green paper, strengthening civil society, community organisers and so it goes on. It seems endless, and a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that the voluntary sector has never had it so good. That could not be further from the truth.
In the North East of England – Three quarters of the voluntary organisations that we surveyed have seen their funding cut, Two thirds of voluntary organisations are now operating on their reserves and nearly a quarter face closure in the coming months if their finances don’t improve. It looks unlikely that things will pick up – NCVO the national umbrella body for the voluntary sector predicts that as a result of the spending cuts announced already the voluntary sector nationally will lose £3billion in public funding over the next years.
That translates to lost jobs and lost services.
The Voluntary and Community Sector in the North East employs 37,000 people , 40% of the Voluntary sector organisations that we surveyed said that they had lost staff in the past 12 months, through restructures, redundancies and job freezes that mean when staff leave they are not replaced. Jobs in our sector continue to be under threat. We need to make sure that Voluntary sector organisations as employers work with the Trade Union movement to ensure that were job losses are unavoidable, that the staff involved are treated fairly and with respect.
I am not an apologist for failing organisations that no longer have a purpose, But that’s not what we are talking about here. Over half of the organisations that we surveyed had seen an increase in demand for their services. This is not surprising if statutory services are being reduced or withdrawn.
I will give you a few examples of what we are talking about in terms of the services that are being squeezed, and the impact that this has on vulnerable people.
Anne Bonner runs the Riverside Community Health Project, she broke down in tears at an event last week as she described the distress and anxiety that her service users are under. Single parents who face losing income support as their youngest child turns 5, panicking about how they will cope, how they will find a job when so many people are unemployed and how they will pay for childcare. People queuing outside of her offices for hours for advice and support. People getting angry and upset when they are told that they will have to wait 3 weeks to get an appointment to see some one.
I will give you another example.
The North of England Refugee service has had a 60% cut in funding for its One Stop Service for people seeking asylum, and their contract to provide Refugee Integration and Employment Service was not renewed in September.
Daoud Zaaroura, their Chief Executive said “we are gravely concerned that cuts this deep and savage, will not only devastate our services that provides asylum seekers and refugees with a lifeline, but will also have a serious and lasting impact on the voluntary and public sectors, and the wider north east communities. Integration is a vital element towards community cohesion and a harmonious society.
Stephen Bell, head of homeless group the Cyrenians, has described the situation as desperate. I know Stephen well, he is an optimist and is not one prone to histrionics. He said that he is already seeing people committing crimes as the Coalition forces them off benefits.
He said that his charity will be left with no options but to cut beds (This is beds in homeless shelters, that we are talking about here) – and he predicted a winter of crime rises as a result of the blows to support given to homeless people. The crackdown on those claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance , will mean that homeless people with multiple challenging issues, even in recovery are almost automatically guaranteed to fail to meet the required criteria for Job Seekers allowance. Add to that a cap in housing benefit due to kick in around January and this will lead to a care crisis for the most vulnerable.
“I can see a situation in which the number of homeless people sleeping on the streets will go up, and at the same time we are going to have to cut the service we offer because of funding cuts.”
Last month Dr Hilary Emery, Chief Executive of the National Children’s Bureau said that children are bearing the brunt of the recession and austerity measures. Local Authorities have cut services for children and young people such as play, youth work and support for disabled children disproportionately. Rising prices and cuts in tax breaks for families mean that children are becoming poorer. Not only are their services being cut, but their home-life is becoming increasingly more stressful as parents worry about employment and the cost of food and fuel. We know families under stress can lead to an increase in domestic violence, child abuse, mental health problems, drug abuse and alcoholism – all of which have a greater long-term cost to the UK taxpayer.’
The Institute of Fiscal Studies forecast that 600,000 more children are likely to fall into poverty in the next 2 years. The forecast has doubled in a year.
Finally – it is important that we don’t turn inward and start fighting with each other. We know that Local Authorities like Newcastle have found themselves caught between a rock and a hard place, we commend Newcastle City Council for setting up the Newcastle fund, and for taking the Compact seriously. We know that opening up the markets and increasing competition in the delivery of public services will be seen as an opportunity by some voluntary sector groups and private sector companies.
We need to stand as one, with the clear purpose of ensuring that people in our communities, particularly the most vulnerable continue to receive the high quality services that they need and rely on.
The clear message is that the cuts are reckless, they are happening too quickly and too deeply. If we don’t stop this now, the damage that is caused will scar us for decades.
