So the prime minister believes there is such a thing as society, and that it may require some help from the state. Building a “shared society” was the idea outlined by the prime minister in a speech to the Charity Commission last week. It sounds a bit early-Cameron/Hilton and, given how their “big society” idea went, it was a bold way to frame Theresa May’s domestic agenda.
Which is why it is worth considering. May made it clear in her speech that working with charities, campaign groups and social enterprises is key to the agenda. This is right, but then David Cameron’s team tried the same trick and failed to carry it off. The big society ended in a calamity of gagging clauses, bad relations between commissioners and delivery organisations and mutual mistrust. May’s government needs to do better.
She has made a decent start. Following a concerted campaign by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo) and others, May has already dropped the previous government’s gagging clause – a spiteful, self-harming doctrine that prevented charities in receipt of government grants from giving policy advice to government based on vulnerable people’s experiences.
She has announced a large government intervention in mental health, and her reference to Black Mental Health UK as a campaign group that “exposes injustices in the way black people with mental ill health in particular are treated, and ensures politicians take action to put things right” is as eloquent a meditation on the crucial importance of charitable campaigning as one might hear anywhere.
The test of the next few months will be whether she has the will to maintain this momentum. There are several issues that can be quickly put to bed. Consider the question of the second, equally harmful gagging law around elections and campaigns: the Lobbying Act.
Lord Hodgson has offered some useful recommendations to mitigate its excesses; she should not delay on implementing them. There is the pressing issue of charity governance: a critical mass of badly managed organisations would kill the “shared society” in its cradle. At present, the government has neither the clout, the funding or the top-level personnel to help with this.
There are yet bigger tests of courage ahead, none more so than public service reform. The new Work and Health Programme is due. Will this be another vestige of the poisoned relationship between state and society, which sacrifices community action while boosting the dividends of private sector juggernauts? Or will it mitigate the worst excesses of corporate super-delivery agencies while providing a way to catch potential abuses? The results are in soon – we shall see.
The big society idea ultimately became a millstone around Cameron’s neck. His beleaguered officials felt obliged to shoehorn it into every appearance, every statement. It also failed because, fundamentally, civil society in all of its belligerent, ingenious glory became his government’s archenemy.
Its eccentricities were seen as impossibilities. Its shortcomings were fatal flaws. May’s version must shake out this attitude of frustration and cynicism. It will take a lot of work and perhaps a considerable suspension of disbelief from both sides. But it will be a welcome relief that this prime minister has promised to be a “supporter” and “champion” of the sector at a time when it feels it has few friends among the political classes. And so her post-Cameron, post big-society vision is not doomed; not by a long shot. Not yet, anyway.
Asheem Singh is the outgoing chief executive of charity leaders network Acevo. He tweets @robinasheem.
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