The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
I start by offering my utterly genuine congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Mr Amess) not only on securing the debate but on the passionate way he used it to celebrate people who give time to help others in our communities, because their contribution is absolutely enormous. It is right that we celebrate them and take the opportunity to ask what more we can do to encourage, support and value them.
My hon. Friend knows that this question is central to our vision of a society in which people feel more power and responsibility not only for their own lives but for the communities they live in and the services they use. It is the big society vision. Of course, we are not inventing something. As his powerful speech and the contributions of other Members made clear, there is already a huge range of amazing voluntary work being undertaken by individuals and groups across the country.
My hon. Friend referred to several organisations very worthy of mention and celebration in this place, including the scout movement and its work to engage and develop young people in communities, to which my hon. Friend has contributed throughout his chairmanship of the all-party scout group. It is genuinely impressive to see how the movement goes from strength to strength with the essential support of its volunteers.
We cannot be complacent or take the movement for granted, however. Statistics demonstrate that giving has flatlined and shows some worrying signs of decline. In all our constituencies, we wonder how we will replace the people who have taken a lead in our communities, but the Government are ambitious and we do not accept that decline is inevitable. We want to work with the voluntary community sector and, critically, with business, as my hon. Friend mentioned, to connect more people with the opportunity to make a difference.
I will set out some of our initial plans, which I hope will give my hon. Friend some reassurance that the Government are ambitious and extremely committed to the agenda, and perhaps address some of his specific issues.
Last month we published a giving White Paper, which sets out our stall. We want to focus on three things: making it easier to give; making it more compelling to give; and giving better support to the charities and voluntary groups that channel our generosity. That involves public investment, so we have said that we will invest more than £40 million in volunteering and social action over the next two years.
That investment will include a new social action fund to support some of the most creative and effective schemes that are being developed to inspire more giving in priority areas and to inspire groups, including young people. My hon. Friend suggested new incentives to get more people involved, and he may be interested to know that that includes piloting such initiatives as Spice “time credits”, which introduce new incentives for people to give time, including discounts and preferential access to local services. We are piloting, because new incentives may be required just to tip new people over the edge and into giving time.
We are also announcing challenge prizes to reward the best solutions for breaking down the barriers that get in the way of more giving, and we have announced a local infrastructure fund to help the amazingly valuable and important infrastructure that is out there to support community organisations and volunteering, and to help it become more efficient and more effective. Further details of how organisations can apply to those funds will be announced over the coming months.
I am delighted to say that the White Paper has received significant support from key figures in the voluntary and community sector. Sir Stuart Etherington, the chief executive of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, says:
“This Paper draws together a wealth of intelligence on what can be done to stimulate greater levels of giving…in the UK.”
The chief executive of Volunteering England says:
“The White Paper deserves to be warmly welcomed by the…movement. It promises to make a positive advance in how people volunteer in our society and in how organisations support them.”
My hon. Friend mentioned the national citizen service, which is a hugely important initiative. It was launched this year, with more than 10,000 places available for 16-year-olds this summer, and is a fantastic opportunity to connect young people with their own power to make a contribution to their communities. Of course my hon. Friend is right: once we have lit the spark in those young people, as we hope to, we must ensure that it is the start of a journey into other opportunities to develop skills and experiences and to make a positive contribution. So, yes, we do want to work with our providers to signpost those opportunities, and I have personally delivered that message to the scouts and to Youth United, because they are entirely complementary to the national citizen service.
It is not just young people we want to inspire, however. We believe that throughout communities in Britain there are people who would get more involved in changing things in their neighbourhood if they were encouraged and supported to come together. That is especially true of relatively disadvantaged neighbourhoods where there is less obvious so-called social capital, and that is why we are investing in training 5,000 community organisers, who will bring people together in their areas and encourage and support them to make the differences they want to see in their communities. That is why we are also launching a new neighbourhood grants fund, Community First, which will incentivise local people to work together to create the change they want to see.
As my hon. Friend says, we should look to cut some of the red tape that gets in the way, while making sure that we continue to protect the vulnerable. That is why I asked Lord Hodgson to lead a joint Cabinet Office and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills red tape taskforce. Part of the role of that taskforce was to look at how to remove barriers to those wishing to become more actively involved. He recently published his report “Unshackling Good Neighbours”, and we are reviewing the recommendations that relate to addressing barriers to the giving of time. I heartily recommend the report to my hon. Friend, because I think he will appreciate that it oozes common sense from every page. It is a thoroughly good read. As I said, we are reviewing the recommendations and seeing what we can action as quickly as possible.
My hon. Friend mentioned CRB checks. He will be aware that we have completed reviews of the criminal records and vetting and barring regimes. As outlined in our programme for government, the aim of the reviews was to scale back these regimes to common-sense levels. It is clear from my conversations with the sector and across communities that there is still frustration about how the CRB process works in relation to the time it takes and the restrictions on portability around the system. The main recommendations of the reviews, which are being taken forward under the Protection of Freedoms Bill currently going through Parliament, are to reduce the coverage of the schemes to individuals who have close and regular contact with vulnerable groups; to place a greater onus on employers and voluntary organisations to decide when to carry out checks and to make it easier to carry them around the system; and to introduce continually updated CRB checks to reduce the need for employees and volunteers to have new checks when they move positions.
In addition, we announced in the Budget—this is all in the context of trying to make it easier to volunteer—that all drivers who use their vehicle for work or volunteering will now be able to claim 45p per mile for the first 10,000 miles, an increase of 5p per mile. I am sure that my hon. Friend will know that there was frustration across constituencies about the rising cost of giving time in this regard, and we think that this will help. The Department for Work and Pensions and Jobcentre Plus have been working with the Cabinet Office and key representatives of the voluntary sector to tackle the real and perceived barriers to unemployed people volunteering.
We are very conscious of the need to lead by example. That is why we are encouraging civil servants to volunteer by turning the civil service into what we call a civic service. They will spend more time out of Departments and in communities working with organisations, and we believe that we will get better civil servants as a result. We are taking a lead in encouraging civil servants to do at least one day of volunteering each year using special leave. We hope that this sets a good example to other employers. One of the reasons I am so optimistic about this agenda is that increasingly businesses are recognising that it is in their commercial interests to encourage their human resources to give time and stretch themselves in different contexts. It is not just about PR value or community value but about developing their most important assets, which are human. We want to lead by example with the civil service, and we are very much encouraging business to follow.
I recommend to my hon. Friend an excellent speech made by the Prime Minister—of course, every speech that he makes is excellent, but this one is particularly good—called “Every Business Commits”, which speaks very strongly to businesses about what we expect as regards encouraging more social responsibility.
My final point concerns a matter on which my hon. Friend placed a lot of importance. In addition to implementing these programmes, it is essential that we recognise and reward inspirational examples of good practice in volunteering and social action. To achieve this, the Government have created the big society awards. I do not know if he is aware of that, but I can write to update him on how every single Member of Parliament can nominate individuals and organisations in their constituencies for these awards. We also continue to support and promote the Queen’s award for voluntary service. I was delighted to hear about his own personal initiative on celebrating local heroes, and I wish him every success with that.
I would again like to thank my hon. Friend for calling this debate this evening. As I highlighted, there is already a lot of excellent voluntary work taking place across the country. In the years to come, we hope to grow volunteering and social action and enable the existing good practice to become the norm. I hope that I have reassured him that the Government are extremely ambitious about and very committed to encouraging more people to get involved in their communities.
Question put and agreed to.