Examination of Witnesses (Questions 412
- 419)
THURSDAY 17 JANUARY 2008
MR STUART
ETHERINGTON, DR
PETER KYLE
AND MS
DEBRA ALLCOCK-TYLER
Q412 Chairman: Let us move
into our second half and extend a welcome to Stuart Etherington
from the National Council for Voluntary Organisations, Peter Kyle
from the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations,
and Debra Allcock-Tyler from the Directory of Social Change. As
you know, this is the culminating session of this inquiry that
we have been doing. We want to have one last go at some of the
issues with you. The fact that you do not all speak with one voice
makes it even more important that we do so. Do any of you want
to say something shortly by way of introduction or shall we just
fire off?
Mr Etherington: I would just kick
off, if I were you, Chair.
Q413 Chairman: Can I kick
off, then, with what Alex from Manchester said in that previous
session to which you were all listening. I was struck by that
which he said towards the end. I cannot remember exactly how he
put it but he said, basically, that the ideology that underpins
the argument about increased third sector involvement in public
services, the added value argument, is one that derives from the
characteristics of essentially small, local groups, but is then
picked up by these mega organisations which do the big delivery
stuff. He did not say it was a fraud but he said there was a kind
of mismatch between these things. Is he right about that, do you
think?
Mr Etherington: I think it is
easy to oversimplify the argument, in a sense, between large and
small. I view this as, sort of, "horses for courses".
The purpose of public services is to provide good services for
citizens in a way that is responsive to their needs. Different
types of organisations can do that better or worse. There is no
one-size-fits-all, it seems to me. That is true of small/large
but it is also true of private sector/voluntary sector. The whole
debate is a slightly wider one. Some organisations are better
at providing different sorts of services. Let me give you an example:
if you want local tailored solutions to particular complex problems,
then the probability is that you are going to try to work with
smaller, locally based organisations which reflect the needs of
local citizens. If you are trying to provide a similar type of
service from one place or another, then you may go for a large
organisation which has the capability of delivering that type
of service. To say "small good, large bad" or "large
good, small bad"—depending on who you are talking to—"private
good, voluntary sector bad" or "voluntary sector good,
private sector bad" slightly simplifies quite a complex argument,
and the argument is driven in the context of public services by
being able to commission services which reflect the needs of local
citizens. I think it is easy to fall into a trap about saying,
"This is good" and "This is bad" when actually
you need a more sophisticated evidence base about what works and
what types of organisations work effectively in different circumstances.
Dr Kyle: I would follow on from
that and agree with everything Stuart has very wisely said but
I think the thing to bear in mind is that we are looking at outcomes
here. It is very, very difficult to stereotype any particular
type, size, shape of charity. There are examples of very small
organisations doing some fantastically innovative work; there
are examples of large charities doing some fantastically innovative
works which are very locally focused, which are very, very locally
networked, which to all intents and purposes are small, locally-provided
services in the eyes of the service user. I can also think of
charities which have begun as very small, locally-led organisations,
community organisations, which have expanded very rapidly on the
basis of an innovative service which has not changed in style
or in delivery as the charity has expanded very rapidly based
on this innovative approach to solving problems. It is very easy
to stereotype and to pigeon-hole different charities based on
size or ethos or background but I just do not think that it is
particularly helpful to the service users to do so.
Ms Allcock-Tyler: I think there
is an issue here about what we mean by the definition of public
services and that is where a hell of a lot of the confusion happens.
There is a question, is there not: has the Government defined
support for the homeless as a public service that it has a duty
to do something about and which it therefore wants to engage,
as an example, in contracting out? If that is the case, then,
inevitably, what is going to happen if it is seen as a national
issue is that bigger charities are going to win those contracts.
We would say that part of the problem is that the whole approach
that the Government is taking to this contracting out of public
services is muddying the waters. Nobody is quite clear, either
charities or local or central government themselves, what they
mean by public services. There are a lot of charities who, previously,
were in receipt of, for example, grants for the work they do,
where, all of a sudden, that grant has now become a contract which
is tendered out to other charities and to other private-sector
type organisations. It is not so much about whether it is big
or not big, it is a factor—and there is evidence to show
this, which NCVO do have—that, because of the way in which
the Government is engaging with the voluntary sector, it is pushing
towards much larger organisations, it is effectively forcing often
very uneasy partnerships and using terms like "get together
and be a consortia" for an organisation that, frankly, might
be better, as Sylvia was saying, being able to operate in the
way they are in their own area.
Q414 Chairman: Just to continue
this: looking at the stuff that your organisation produces, Debra,
you are ill-disposed towards this whole direction of travel, are
you not?
Ms Allcock-Tyler: We are.
Q415 Chairman: You are pretty
robust about that.
Ms Allcock-Tyler: We are.
Q416 Chairman: Yet you sat
there listening to Sylvia. How on earth could anybody think it
was not a good idea to give Sylvia public money to go and deliver
services in the way that she is delivering them?
Ms Allcock-Tyler: Nobody could.
But I would argue that this is about the concept of public services
and contracted delivery. If you were to say to Sylvia, "I
will give you £300,000 of unrestricted grant money to go
and do your work or I will give you a contract" I can guarantee
you ... Well, I cannot—I cannot speak for you, Sylvia, to
be honest—but I suspect she would probably say, "Yes,
please, and give me freedom and let me do it in the way that works
for me and my community." This is not about public money,
in that sense; it is about the way the Government is engaging
with the sector and it is the point about publicisation—is
that the right word?—of voluntary activity that Alex made.
Q417 Chairman: We must not
all speak for Sylvia, because Sylvia is here—
Ms Allcock-Tyler: And spoke very
well for herself.
Q418 Chairman: -- and can
well speak for herself. She was not moaning. In fact she was saying,
"We want proper monitoring, we want to be properly evaluated."
She was not complaining about all that. She wanted longer contracting
periods but, on the whole, she was not moaning about it.
Ms Allcock-Tyler: No, because
she is an absolutely classic example of what works about the voluntary
sector: she is a passionate, bright woman who will do what she
needs to do in order to make her organisations work. Of course
she will. Of course she will, but if you gave her different options
and said ... I am sorry, not necessarily Sylvia but people like
Sylvia—in fact there are lots of people like Sylvia. That
is the point. If you gave them a different way of accessing funds
to do the work they do, we would not get into this argument about
commissioning and contracting and all that kind of thing, all
this dreadful blurring of what is going on, the situation we have
where—I have to say, through no fault of their own—these
large charities to which you referred effectively end up being
forced into competing with the small local ones because of the
way in which the Government is engaging with the voluntary sector.
Q419 Chairman: Let us try
to clear our head of some of these questions. We have had evidence
along the way that the role of the third sector is to further
the contestability argument. We had this put to us very powerfully
by Martin Narey from Barnado's, that there was nothing intrinsically
better about providing services from the third sector but they
were useful in advancing the contestability agenda. When I look
at what NCVO and ACEVO are saying, they are saying different things
about this. NCVO say, "Contestability in itself has limited
capacity to bring genuine improvements for the users of public
services"[7]
but ACEVO says, "By opening public service markets to increased
competition, contestability should drive up quality, efficiency
and innovation."[8]
If we are not clear about basic propositions like that even within
the sectors, we are not going to get very far, are we?
Mr Etherington: I do not agree
with what Martin said. The idea that there is broadly no difference
at all between these various groups or organisations that are
competing to provide public services is stuff and nonsense actually.
If you take the contestability argument, we have always argued
that the interest in engaging voluntary organisations in the provision
or public services should be something to do with changing the
nature of those services and transforming the experience of the
users of those services. There is a really interesting argument
about contestability and about the relative balance between the
private sector and the voluntary sector in relation to somebody's
contractual arrangements. It is the case that the vast majority
of public sector contracts for service provision are being won
by private-sector organisations over and above voluntary organisations.
That is simply a fact. The reason that they do that comes back
to a point that Debra made. Much of the basis for procurement
and, indeed, specifying the nature of services, is driving to
scale. Most people in public procurement and commissioning are
given, if you like, quite contradictory messages in terms of public
policy. On the one hand, it is being argued that we need more
efficiency and that efficiency can be created by contestability
and therefore we need to do more for less. On the other hand,
they are saying, "We quite like the third sector and we think
this is quite an interesting way of providing services, so we
want you to think about that." Most contracts—and certainly
in the employment field, which is a significant area of public
sector provision being contracted out—are going to scale.
The recent report written by Mavis McDonald shows that.[9]
Where voluntary organisations are increasingly becoming involved
is subcontracting: offering to private-sector intermediaries,
who are running the contracts. That has been a very significant
development over the last couple of years. My own view is that
that will continue. When you talk about "contestability",
if you like, I do not think it is straight competition between
different organisations. There is, I think, an attempt by some
voluntary organisations to say, "What difference do we make?
How do we enter into this? Do we do things in a different way?"
Historically, the voluntary sector has done things in a different
way. It tends to involve users more in describing and developing
the type of service that it runs. It tends to be slightly more
risk-taking in terms of the sorts of services that it provides.
It is often more trusted in terms of provision by excluded groups
than the state or, indeed, the market. There are some characteristics,
therefore, which I think generally apply to voluntary organisations
that are engaged on this. Where Martin is saying "There is
no real difference between us; it is all about the construction
of contestability," I think that is very questionable.
7 Ev 155 Back
8
Ev 151 Back
9
ACEVO, Independent Inquiry into DWP Pathways to Work Contracting,
November 2007 Back
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