Curing Cancer

Good to hear the news from Cancer Research UK about the huge progress in cancer survival rates, with most people surviving 10 years after diagnosis in sharp contrast to years back when it was less than a year .

There are some fantastic advances being made in diagnosis and treatment. The research on the genetic makeup of cancers is hugely promising. I suppose I'm taking a somewhat greater interest in all this having had prostate cancer. In fact the day that Cancer Research announced their findings was exactly one year to the day that I had my successful brachytherapy operation which cleared me. It means that I am now officially radiation free and babies and pregnant women can now sit on my lap with abandon.

And who is largely responsible for this major transformation?  It is charities. The vast bulk of the research is carried out by charities; either directly or in work that they fund. We have pioneered new treatments and care systems and supported people living with cancer. It is charities who are the major source of information and advice. It is charities who campaign for better treatment and hassle the NHS to get better at early diagnosis and health care. We campaign against NICE when they won't authorise new drugs and we work with Government to ensure the NHS gets its act together in early diagnosis. I was lucky. It was by chance I discovered I had prostate cancer. I had no symptoms but a relation had a PSA test (not positive), so I told my doctor I better have one too!

Charities' role is so often forgotten since people think it is the NHS that does all this work. And it is a sharp reminder of why our charity sector needs to pay appropriate salaries, on a par with the NHS, for professional staff.

We should not be afraid of banging the drum for 6-figure salaries if that is what it takes to get a top scientist or academic. As I said at the PASC hearing in the Commons in December, people with cancer deserve the best, not the cheapest. We want to find the cause of cancer, and if that means employing top scientists at large salaries then that is what we must do.

As the ACEVO "Good Pay Guide" said, it's all about outcomes and value for money. Transparency isn't just about a process. It's about the narrative. And it's about setting out our case on our terms, not those of our critics. It would be a disaster if trustees now think they can't advertise for top jobs over 100k, if that is what it takes to get the best. What beneficiaries need is a high performing charity, led by a high performing CEO.

After all, if you pay 50k and get poor performance that's 50k of charity money badly spent. If you pay 150k and get top performance - as judged by beneficiaries, trustees and staff - then that's a great investment. Let's not be coy about selling our case! The work of the cancer charities demonstrates why we should be bold.

Ethical Investment

Time to pull our socks up.  The Panorama programme this evening, which in many aspects was rather thin, has nevertheless highlighted an issue the sector needs to grapple with.

When organisations have endowments (like many Foundations) or big reserves they must invest these both for the good of their beneficiaries, and ethically, for the wider good.

Charity Commission advice used to be too blunt and unhelpful: that trustees should only invest for the maximum return. Now their advice (CC 14 to be precise) is more nuanced and encourages 'mission driven' investment. Not enough charities are taking notice of this new more flexible approach. They need to.

Because, quite simply, it doesn’t seem right that charities invest in tobacco or arms companies.

We need more people in the sector looking seriously at ethically managed funds. The argument is that they don't give as good a return. But you might be surprised to learn the size and strength of the ethical investment industry. There is around $34 trillion under management in funds that subscribe to the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment. That’s about a third of all money under managed funds anywhere in the world. So there’s plenty of choice and we expect that choice to grow.

Impact investment funds, though in their infancy now, may also become an investment option of choice for charities further down the line. Why shouldn't our sector be looking at how we can expand opportunities for social finance; for loans to develop and grow our sector

So, I'm giving our sector and those associated with it a call to action. I have two messages.

One is to the fund managers themselves. Why are you not alerting your charities to ethical problems with proposed investments?  Before you put our money into an investment you think raises issues then consult the charity trustees responsible. Fund management companies need to get their act together and understand the ethics of their investment decisions.

Secondly, to charities. Charities traditionally delegate their investment decisions to a sub committee and they in turn appoint fund managers. So many trustees simply do not know where their investments go. Time for the full board to review investment policy. The full board should review the Charity Commission advice and question whether they are investing in line with their mission and with their own ethos.

The sector needs to do more to engage with ethical investment principles. Ensuring that their investments conform to the particular and the wider good will help ensure that our sector remains true to our collective mission in all aspects of our work.

This is our wake up call.

Work Programme

An early morning start today (I hate early mornings), for breakfast in the Commons with a key MP whose identity I will protect! An unhealthy bacon butty but no doubt I'll walk it off over the day...

The main event was the launch of the acevo/Shaw Trust report on the Work Programme (WP), "Refinement not reinvention". Worth reading - you can find it here: http://www.acevo.org.uk/document.doc?id=2623. 

It was good to get the new Employment Minister Esther McVey to the launch in Whitehall. And doubly good to get the opposition shadow Stephen Timms along as well. Rather impressed with Esther; someone who has had a real job before the Commons, in her family business in demolition and then in media and in various TV programmes like Channel 4's "Nothing but the Truth" (as I said in introducing Esther; useful for DWP in particular). 

The key point for the third sector is that whilst we know many of the shortcomings of the WP (and there were many in the design of the programme), the architecture can work.  In designing the new contracts for 2016 we can learn from how the WP has gone, and change it, but we don't want it all to be abolished. That will create more uncertainty for the sector, not to mention the consequences for those we are trying to help.

I had a word with Stephen Timms afterwards to make that point, especially in terms of Labour's job guarantee proposal, but the programme can be built on that.

On from the Launch to lunch with Michael Pragnell, who Chairs Cancer Research UK. We were getting together to talk about the whole CEO pay saga, but more widely to discuss the work of one of the world's most prestigious charities; the research that is going on into cancer cure and prevention is remarkable.