Civil Society

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts

Thursday 11th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a crucial debate about our future well-being, because our country can only thrive and be at ease with itself if citizens of all ages, ethnicities and backgrounds are empowered to participate. I am therefore grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for tabling the Motion but also for spurring me on to reread the excellent pastoral letter.

The letter rightly speaks of the new direction our politics ought to take. The present system, which has served us well, is broken. Huge swathes of the population do not participate either as members of political parties or, more importantly, through exercising their democratic right to vote. Putting that cross in a box is a powerful act that can change the way in which we are governed at local, national and European levels, but too many think it is irrelevant to their lives. How many times do we hear on the doorstep, “What’s the point?”, “It won’t make any difference”, “You’re all the same, you’re only in it for yourselves” or, “I don't know enough about politics to vote”? I find it deeply depressing that only 43% of young people voted in the general election, whereas 78% of the over-65s voted. We are failing these young people. It is not that they are apathetic—far from it, they might be frustrated but they are also enthusiastic and creative; they know how to navigate the digital world in which we live—but their energies are channelled elsewhere. It is great that the older generation participated but younger people are our hope; they are our future and democracy needs their participation.

This in turn means that Governments focus more on policies for older people—with the dreadful exception of social care—so that young people find voting even more irrelevant. Our political system becomes even more remote because policies respond not to their needs, only to what decision-makers perceive as their needs. It is also clear that many people who lead the most challenging lives do not vote. For example, only one-third of people with learning disabilities vote. I pay tribute to a fantastic initiative, My Vote Counts from Gloucestershire Voices, an organisation run by and for people with learning disabilities.

We have to change the system. We should embrace community politics, working with and for communities, listening and engaging not lecturing, and focusing on the common good—on which the right reverend Prelate spoke. Enough of the adversarial politics, the shouting and hectoring, and enough of the adversarial approach to ideas in which opponents must always be wrong. It will be no surprise that I disagree with some of the Government’s policies. I simply do not understand why they will not allow 16 and 17 year-olds to vote on their future in the EU referendum, especially as we have evidence from Scotland about engagement and participation. However, I strongly support government initiatives such as the National Citizen Service and encourage my party to do likewise.

That brings me to active citizenship and volunteering, which are good for the individuals concerned and for the people and communities they seek to help: a win-win situation. I am proud to be a member of Step Up To Serve’s advisory council and I work closely with the NCS and other fantastic organisations such as City Year, London Citizens and Girlguiding UK. They do a tremendous job supporting young people to become volunteers, as well as nurturing their life and leadership skills, giving them confidence and enhancing their CVs. They help our youngsters create change, shape the world around them and build communities. Personally, I would like to explore the idea of extending the City Year model of a year of service to more organisations, as they do in the US—but that is for another day. Sadly, many of these organisations lack leaders—people prepared to give their own time. For example, I understand that more than 40,000 young boys would like to become Scouts but there are simply not enough leaders in their communities to help them. Much more needs to be done to ensure that the quality of volunteering makes the experience worth while for all concerned.

However, this is not just a matter for the voluntary organisations themselves. The state has a role. Funding is needed to train and support volunteers. Volunteering must always provide added value and never be a means of displacing paid jobs. The Government must invest in volunteering to ensure that citizens have the time and resources to engage in community life, and that they are empowered. The pastoral letter is absolutely right when it says that,

“a modern nation, where ties of kindred and neighbourliness are often very weak, requires state-sponsored action to underpin the welfare of each citizen”.

As a new report by Citizens Advice suggests, we need a new form of responsive volunteering which can address current social challenges such as an ageing population, loneliness and isolation, increased pressure on public services and labour-market insecurity. There are some fantastic examples around—for example, the superb volunteering scheme at King’s College Hospital and the charity Care Home Volunteers—but the potential is huge for volunteers and society.

This also raises the question of the devolution of power, of which the right reverend Prelate spoke. This is welcome but power should not only be devolved to local authorities, it must also flow to civil society and communities so that they can play their proper part in the decisions that affect them most. We also have to ensure that they are strong enough, have the requisite capacity to use those powers, and adhere to the principle, of which I have learnt today, of bridging social capital. Power must be shared between generations. Segregation and mistrust between the old and the young harms the communities that we need to rebuild and build.

In passing, I would like to say a word to local planners and developers. Vast new housing estates in which there are no shops, cafes, doctors’ surgeries or community facilities are simply not acceptable. This point is well understood by housing associations, which provide a socially useful good that is often much wider than the homes that they build and maintain. I met with the excellent Two Rivers Housing Association in the Forest of Dean on Monday to discuss the specific challenges that it would face in rural areas if it had to sell more homes. Even if it received an influx of capital receipts, which is unlikely, it could not spend the money in the villages of the Forest of Dean, where I live, because land is too expensive. I also learnt of the good things that it is doing to diversify, including setting up an ethical estate agency—no, that is not an oxymoron—and a facilities management service, which provides apprenticeships, training and jobs for local people, often tenants, paying the living wage. This is another means of investing in and sustaining the local community, as well as the charity itself, which would be under threat from the right to buy. Like credit unions and other intermediate institutions, housing associations have a strong unifying potential, serving poor people and others, but also wanting to benefit the wider community.

There is so much more to say about civil society and new politics and communities—not looking back with rose-tinted spectacles to the bygone era of the past, but responding to the needs of our citizens in the 21st century. I very much hope that we will have further opportunities to debate this issue.