Local Government and Faith Communities

David Burrowes Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for South West Devon (Mr Streeter) for the huge amount of work they have done to highlight the importance of faith groups in our communities, and for encouraging colleagues, including me, to request a debate on the subject. I am delighted to have been successful in the ballot, and to be in such good company in Westminster Hall today.

The trigger for this debate is the excellent report produced by Christians in Parliament together with the Evangelical Alliance entitled “Faith in the Community”. The report clearly shows that the work of faith groups is thriving, and that their contribution to society is varied and highly valued by local authorities and the communities they serve. All local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales were surveyed for the report, and 155 of them replied, which is roughly a third of the total number. It is clear from the many responses that local authorities see faith groups as valued and vital partners who are committed to their communities, serving the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

Faith groups provide activities and services for all ages, ranging from mother and toddler groups and youth services to care for the elderly, and from street pastors to food banks. I will pick out a couple of quotes from the many local authorities that responded to the survey. Runnymede borough council commented:

“The strength of the churches is their presence in the communities and their long-term work in the parish. This is of particular benefit when working in areas of deprivation”.

Harborough district council said:

“Faith groups are based within the heart of the local community and are able to identify individuals who may not feel able to come forward and access help and support by themselves”.

The report was not all rosy, and it highlights the concerns expressed by some authorities. Those concerns can be grouped into three areas. First, there is an issue with the “people” capacity for councils and faith groups to engage with each other, and it can be difficult to ensure that they make enough space to understand each other. Examples were given of situations either where a council could not allocate staff to co-ordinate service provision with faith groups, or where churches, on occasion, were unable to deliver a service that they might have undertaken to provide.

A second challenging area is the potential for organisational culture clash. The financial and governance requirements of councils can be quite onerous and difficult to meet for faith groups that want to provide a service to their community. Sometimes local authority terminology and the complex protocols can be a bit of a barrier to success.

For me, however, the most worrying hurdle to good co-working between councils and faith groups relates to the fears and suspicions about what each partner might require the other to do. Councils expressed concern that faith groups might provide services only to their own faith community and might refuse to support people from other faiths, or from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Another barrier was cited by Rochford district council, which said that

“a key challenge would be the potential for faith based groups to use funding for the delivery of services promoting their faith”.

Although the survey provided evidence that these perceptions are not generally borne out, as shown by the wide-ranging access to services provided by faith groups, Tamworth borough council pointed out:

“The mere fact that activities take place within a faith setting will mean that many members of the community will not attend due to a misconception that the event is an attempt to draw them into the faith group.”

North Yorkshire county council drew similar conclusions, but went on to say:

“Generally, all of these perceptions are false or can be overcome through discussion and better understanding of each other—but they do create barriers.”

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

I apologise for the fact that I was not in the Chamber for the beginning of my hon. Friend’s speech, but I congratulate her on securing such an important debate. Is it not interesting that a consistent theme emerged in responses to the survey regarding organisations that have become prevalent across the country? Street pastors, for example, drive a coach and horses through some of those perceptions. The organisation is based squarely on Christians out there, rolling up their sleeves and delivering a great service, restoring confidence in the streets and helping to reduce crime.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I will come on to the subject of street pastors shortly.

There is a great deal that can be done to lift those barriers, and I will take the opportunity to discuss just a few of the projects and groups operating around the country, including in my constituency, that make a real difference to the communities that they support. Increasingly, one of the best-known groups is Christians Against Poverty. CAP is a national charity, working across the UK to lift people out of debt and poverty. It offers free debt counselling to everyone and anyone, working through a network of 233 centres based in local churches. Each year, they help 20,000 people to find their way out of the black hole of debt, helping them to work out budgets, to negotiate with creditors and even to go through insolvency procedures. It also runs CAP money courses, which teach 10,000 people a year from across all faith groups, all belief backgrounds and so on, to budget, save and avoid debt. CAP has just launched CAP job clubs. There are 32 CAP job clubs across the UK, and the aim is to have 80 up and running by the end of the year.

The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, spoke out last weekend in the press against the exorbitant interest rates charged by payday lenders, and he proposed that new credit unions should be set up in church halls. He pointed out that the thousands of churches across the UK are a perfect platform for such practical work to be based in, again without heed to what background, faith or otherwise that any of the individuals who might benefit from it come from.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)on securing this important, welcome debate. Like her, I congratulate Christians in Parliament—and the Evangelical Alliance, which did much of the work—on the “Faith in Community” report. It is an enjoyable read. I want to contribute to this debate on the basis of my work with the all-party group on faith and society.

The hon. Lady makes an important point: a wide range of contributions are made to communities from a starting point of faith. She is right to draw attention to the work of street pastors and Christians Against Poverty, whose headquarters in Bradford I visited last month. She also mentioned food banks. If we had had this debate five years ago and asked what would happen if hundreds of thousands of people suddenly found that they were unable to afford enough food for themselves and their families, I am not sure that we would have identified faith groups as the institutions that would come forward to meet that need, but they certainly have done. The Trussell Trust reports that 750,000 people resorted to one of their food banks last year. It is currently opening one new food bank per day, such is the scale of the need, which it is meeting impressively.

The all-party group on faith and society, supported by FaithAction, which provides its secretariat, was formed in April 2011 and aims to promote understanding of faith-based organisations engaged in social action in the UK, to promote recognition of their value and to consider regulatory and legislative arrangements that can make the most of the potential contribution of faith-based organisations around the UK. The group took evidence from some innovative faith-based organisations in this country.

We had four meetings focusing on the following areas: welfare to work, in respect of which faith-based groups have been doing impressive work; meeting the needs of children and young people; health and well-being; and international development. For each meeting, FaithAction put out a call for evidence to member organisations, other networks and partners, and asked for groups to make contact if they wanted to present evidence at one of the roundtable meetings. At the meetings, we asked each group to present for five minutes on their current work, setting out what they are doing and the barriers they face.

At the welfare-to-work roundtable, for example, we spoke to the Nishkam centre, which is an impressive Sikh organisation in Birmingham. We also heard evidence at that meeting from Spear, which is based at St Paul’s church in Hammersmith. At the children and young people’s meeting, we heard from the Hawbush project in Dudley and the Pathway project in the west midlands. There were half a dozen organisations at the meeting on international development, including Jewish Care, Parish Nursing, Khalsa Aid, the LifeLine Network and Muslim Aid.

[Mr Burrowes]

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman for his work supporting the positive contribution of faith, not least in his position in the previous Government. In his role within the all-party group, has he reflected on how one can improve religious literacy across the country? The myth-buster document was, in many ways, one of the best documents to come out of the previous Government. Does he see the need for guidance, or would he seek to follow the role of the Department for International Development? The 2012 document, “Faith Partnership Principles” outlined the Government’s relationship with international aid, and it could be a good framework to follow in our relationship with local government, too.

[Stephen Timms]

The hon. Gentleman makes some important points. The all-party group has identified three main areas of concern, the second of which, religious literacy, he has highlighted. Many, if not most, of the concerns are about the relationship with local authorities.

First, local authorities and grant-making bodies often seem to be pretty uneasy about faith playing a part in service delivery, as is highlighted in the report that prompted this debate. Consequently, faith-based organisations often feel that they ought to downplay the role and importance of faith in their work. Such organisations are absolutely clear that they cannot take faith out of their faith-based work, and if they attempted to do so, there would not be much left. That would result in a lack of integrity on their part, because faith is the heart and driving force of what they do.

Secondly, it is difficult to explain what the faith-based organisations call “faith logic” to local authority service commissioners. Jewish Care, for example, talked to us about its struggle to express the faith needs of the Jewish community in a particular local authority area to local authority officers in an understandable way—and that is in a community in which 20% of the population is Jewish. Similar concerns were raised in other discussions, and there is a widespread perception, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, of religious illiteracy among local authority officers—not malice, I do not think, but difficulty in understanding what such organisations are about and how best to relate to them.

Such religious illiteracy has led to local authorities being hesitant to work with faith groups. One organisation that presented to us described how there was often scepticism about whether its services are professional, even though the organisation in question is accredited by Ofsted. Another organisation found that its local authority is reluctant to work with a single faith group in case doing so offended other faith groups. Such problems are often the result of a misunderstanding, rather than malice.

Thirdly, some local authorities are just not aware of the work undertaken by faith-based organisations in their area.