Budgets, Blunkett and getting old...

So, the Budget. And the missing £40m. It’s disgraceful that the Local Sustainability Fund still hasn’t been launched, more than a year after it was first announced. This idea - promoted by ACEVO and agreed by OCS under Nick Hurd - has been quietly dropped for now. They hoped quietly but I intend to ensure there is nothing quiet about this manoeuvre. Of course we suspect why this has happened. The idea that you need a ‘sustainability fund’ implies there are many charities in danger from funding cuts and rising demand for their services. This does not fit the current narrative of the ruling coalition. I suspect the hand of Lynton Crosby in excising this particular ‘barnacle’ from the budget speech ‘boat’.

So will Rob, our civil society minister, now stand up for the sector and insist on the fund going ahead? We have only a week before purdah. I’m hoping that Rob will set the record straight at our ACEVO and CAF hustings on Tuesday. He will certainly be asked what happened!

Whatever the good aspects of the budget - raising tax allowances, moves on savers, etc., it is deeply worrying for our sector what might happen on cuts. The IFS comment about a “rollercoaster of cuts to come” will have been greeted with dismay in our sector as we and our beneficiaries will undoubtedly bear the brunt.

In fact I was in the Commons after the Budget. I was having a late lunch with Nick Hurd MP, for a catch-up and an opportunity to reflect back on the 6 years he spent in the job of civil society minister or spokesman. 

As you can imagine it was a wide-ranging discussion. But with a particular emphasis on social finance and how we promote it. And then onto a reception to mark the contribution that David Blunkett MP has made to society generally and to youth charities in particular. A great and emotional occasion as he is a towering giant of a politician and a friend for over three decades. Indeed there was a gaggle of us former local government types from the 80s reminiscing in the corner - led by the brilliant Margaret Hodge MP.

Of course the danger of getting older is the huge temptation to reminisce about the good old days. But more importantly, as the population ages, as the working life extends, as many of us get older and live longer with long-term conditions we need to look carefully at the role of our sector in working and supporting older people. 

Often this subject is approached from a negative and unhelpful position. Us oldies are a burden. We soak up resources. We get too many free perks. So it’s good that today we get the report Decision Time: will the voluntary embrace the age of opportunity? It’s the final report of the Commission on the Voluntary Sector and Ageing Ably led by Lynne Berry, former active ACEVO member when she ran WRVS. 

As they say, “longer life expectancy is opening up new possibilities for individuals and communities”. It offers the potential of an age of opportunity in which the third sector could thrive. Worth reading. Worth taking up the challenge. 

This is a good approach, and certainly for those of us in our seventh decade (me and Stuart Etherington to name but two!) this age of opportunity is something to be welcomed.

Winterbourne: closures will happen

One of the perils of having a weekend away is getting a cold. And as any CEO knows, taking any time off for a cold is a no-no. So this was perhaps not the best background for appearing before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the formidable but brilliant Margaret Hodge.

The PAC were taking evidence on the recent National Audit Office report on Winterbourne View and the care of people with learning disabilities. Basically, the report gave more detail about the failures of the health system to provide proper care for people with learning disabilities.

Its evidence very much backed up my own report last November, “Winterbourne view – time for change”, so I was pleased to be able to hammer home messages from my report.

I was keen to be fair and constructive in my analysis, and where I had criticisms to couch them positively. There is no point in not being constructive at this point. And I wanted to be fair in the sense that, as I told the PAC, I have agreed to recall my steering group to review progress in 6 months and then in a year. Woe betide them if they are not making progress on what I have told them needs to be done.

As I said, I think the change of leadership in NHS England is now driving institutional change.

I was critical was on the failure of NHS England, in their response to my report, to confront the need for closures. They retreated behind euphemisms like ‘reconfiguration’ and ‘reshaping’. This simply isn’t good enough. Large-scale institutions have to close. Institutional care is not the right way to look after people with learning disabilities. My report could not have been clearer. I recommended they bring forward a timetable for the closure of inappropriate institutions, but their response did not address this. Indeed it was thoroughly mealy-mouthed about it.

So obviously I laboured this point hard in my evidence session to the PAC.

I was therefore delighted when, in response to grilling by the MPs on the PAC, the CEO of NHS England Simon Stevens said that he wanted to see closures – and he did use the ‘c word’ – and that they will indeed provide a timetable for closures within 6 months. He made a very telling point drawing from his experience in Tyneside, working in mental health, where they closed the old asylums but left open the same style institutions for people with learning disabilities.

This new announcement is significant progress. It signals to the system that things must change. That the  ‘revolving door’, whereby people are discharged into community care and find the beds filled up when they leave, will end. All those lazy commissioners who have block contracts and refuse to properly monitor the people in their care will find they now have to look for community alternatives.

This demonstrates real leadership by Simon Stevens. He should be congratulated for taking a bold step and signalling to the system that the end is nigh for institutional care for people with learning disabilities. Of course it will take time. Community facilities must be developed. But the third sector is there – ready and primed to provide that facility. We now need to be engaged, to scale up our work, so that the institutions can close.

So a really positive outcome to the hearings. I spoke to my old friend Margaret Hodge afterwards and she too was pleased at how positive the hearing had been and a good outcome. She is going to review progress in 18 months so there will be a continuous external review of what the system is doing. This will keep them to the mark.

One of the problems is that there a range of players who need to coordinate actions. For example pooling budgets. I don’t believe a simple call for them will work. I told the PAC the Government should use their powers in the Care Act to mandate pooled budgets. It means the Secretary of State for Health can enforce pooled budgets between local councils and health CCGs. Knowing councils like I do, one-third will willingly pool budgets, one-third will decide it’s not a priority, and one-third will actively resist because it’s cheaper for them to have the health service paying the cost of an institution rather than them supporting people properly in the community. Change will come, but we still need pressure at every level both inside and outside government.

Furniture Reuse and Tony Benn.

In Nottingham yesterday (Eastwood to be precise; the birthplace of DH Lawrence) for the 25th anniversary conference of the Furniture Reuse Network. A brilliant organisation that takes beds, sofas and various white goods that people are discarding and puts them back into reuse by those unable to afford these things. It’s like the food banks, but instead of supplying things to eat, it supplies the means of cooking it.

My old Brixton friend Matthew Thomson used to be the CEO. Now he runs the great ’Fifteen' social enterprise and restaurant, down in Cornwall. Craig Anderson is the CEO now taking the organisation forward. An active ACEVO member, he argues for professionalism in our approach to fulfilling our mission, and is charting a strong course for the network.

Furniture re-use is big business now; not surprisingly the recession has seen a big rise in demand, making the Network ever more relevant. I'd been asked to give the opening keynote address alongside Eric Pickles MP. Eric was good - I've known him for decades, since his time as Leader of Bradford. I was able to pay tribute to him for pioneering the Localism Act. I chided the sector for not making extensive use of the Rights clauses of the Act: the right to challenge, to acquire assets, etc. And we still have not fully used the Social Value Act to challenge commissioners.

I spoke on the theme of optimism. Though there are many reasons to be depressed, there are also major opportunities for our sector to deliver better services and to use our voice to challenge and advocate for our beneficiaries. I talked of our proud history of "voice and choice". And I'm afraid I had to chide Eric for the Lobbying Act, which has hardly anything to do with lobbying, and a lot to do with gagging campaigning charities. I said although ACEVO and our friends had secured much change - perhaps we got as much as 70% of what we want - a third sector leader should never be satisfied unless they have got 100%.

I talked about sorting commissioning. Council officials and civil servants have not been terribly good at drafting contracts, and the private sector has got away with serious failing. A handful of big firms mop up most of the cash, as I said in my recent letter to the PM.

The Government needs to "get its house in order”, to ensure the contracting-out of public services to private providers is subject to proper scrutiny and provides value for taxpayers, MPs have warned. Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge said recent outsourcing failures involving firms such as G4S and Serco had exposed "serious weaknesses" in the Government's management of private contracts. Her committee recommended extending FoI legislation to cover the contracts.

Of course this would also mean we were covered too. I'm not sure extending the legislation is a good idea. It would be time-consuming and bureaucratic. But we will need to be more open on contract matters I suspect.

Richard Johnson, former MD of Serco and an adviser to ACEVO, told Today: “if your strongest motivation is to secure the cheapest possible price, you are ultimately going to be driven to the largest contractors".

Last but not least, it was very sad to wake to the new of the death of Tony Benn. When I moved to London in 1976 I lived in Notting Hill for a number of years, and got to know the Benns well. Tony's wife Caroline was the Chair of Holland Park Governors, where I was also a governor for a while. So I used to go round to their place; their eldest son Stephen is an exact contemporary of mine. And I kept in touch.

I used to debate with Tony about public service reform, though I’m afraid he had the view that public services were the role of the State and charities were at the margins. I even asked him to debate the issue at one of our ACEVO CEO Summits. He was brilliant and had the audience in the palm of his hand. I've heard him speak on many occasions. It was always a privilege. And his courtesy in debate would always win him admirers. His writing was a joy. He will be missed.