Big Society

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

I want to start by addressing the criticism of the big society that it breaches the principle of additionality—that it treads on the state’s turf and requires the public to perform do-it-yourself public services. The debate on additionality is not a new one. We started this debate by hearing about air ambulances, and if we go into any hospital around the country we will probably find that the curtains around the beds have been purchased by the League of Friends. Furthermore, many health charities are providing services, including patient and health care education, care and support. Mention those services to the general public, and we will get a very mixed reaction. Some people will think that the state is providing those services, some will think that it should be providing them, and others that the state is claiming that it is doing those services.

When charities breach that principle of additionality and step in to provide those services, it is they who get criticised. They are being criticised sometimes by their own organisations. The head office phones up a local branch that has just bought something for the local hospital and says, “You are letting the Government off the hook. This should be provided under a national service framework.” A focus is not put on what the state has, or has not, been doing, and there is very little focus on why the state has failed to deliver those services. I hope that a side effect of a debate about the big society will be that we get more focused on what the state should be doing.

We have a reality gap. We have an NHS constitution that is supposed to enshrine and guarantee treatments approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, and in certain circumstances access to non-NICE-approved treatment. However, we know from our mailbags that that sometimes does not happen. We pay our taxes to support an education system that is supposed to provide education to every child according to their need, but the parent of a special needs child will know how hard it can be to get the right provision for their child. The list of what we want our local authorities to fund—whether flowerbeds or community centres—is year on year becoming less fulfilled. That is the case no matter what the colour of the Government of the time or, very often, the colour of local authority government.

I think that local and national Government need to do fewer things better. At a time when we are cutting services for people with dementia, we could probably do without the local street-naming team in my local authority. In areas where the Government take responsibility, they should be working to meet all the needs out there. In my local authority’s budget this year, under budget pressures, much was made of the ageing population and the prediction that, over the next five years, there would be 200 additional adult social care clients for whom the authority would have to provide services. However, there was not a squeak about the existing 1,500 people with dementia, but no access to services. If we are going to focus on and address that need, and close that gap, we have to enable charities to be on both the demand and the supply side of those services.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) mentioned, we need to create a level playing field. We need to ensure that charities hear about the opportunities for them to tender, and that when they submit bids according to best practice, having costed for full cost recovery, they are not the only bidder doing so. We need greater scrutiny of tenders to ensure that we are comparing like with like, and that organisations are not undercutting charities, only to pile on the costs once they have won a bid. There should be penalties for organisations that do that.

We should also allow organisations that are on approved provider rosters not to bid, without penalty, if they do not think that they are the best outfit for the job. Penalising people for not bidding is completely wrong. As we build capacity in the charities sector, I urge the Minister to look at organisations such as Community First that are already doing a tremendous amount of work in this area, and to give them some resources so that they can speed up their work.

We also need to build capacity in our communities. I want briefly to mention Wymering in my constituency, which has already been short-changed to the tune of £400,000 of section 106 money. Its community centre has been burned to the ground, but the resulting insurance money was not spent on those services. The historic buildings in the vicinity are continuously under threat, the most imminent case being that of the Wymering Arms, which will go before the local planning committee this Wednesday. We have a plan to take over some of those community buildings and refurbish those that are derelict. Some of them are listed buildings. There is great support for the plan from the community, but to date it has not really felt that it can step up and do those things. The people do not feel that they have the resources to do them, but if we were to introduce them to high-value donors, business leaders and charity fundraisers, that work could become possible. In addition to the big society enabling us to meet the wish-lists of our communities, which has never been achieved by any Government before, it should also be a catalyst to enable the Government to do their job better.