Big Society and spending cuts were top of the agenda at the Acevo summit yesterday. While Richard Reeves focused on the importance of ground-level thinking and how to win arguments against the Treasury, Stephen Bubb gave a stark warning that small charities may not be able to compete for service contracts.
In his last address as director of Demos ahead of taking seat as adviser to Nick Clegg, Reeves delivered his ‘final farewell’ from free-speaking society with a degree of urgency. Using Vince Cable’s analogy for the age of progressive austerity Reeves urged the sector to make a “strenuous effort to ensure that cuts don’t affect the most vulnerable” and to address the question: “How do we win arguments against the Treasury?”.
This, Reeves said, was “one of the biggest questions to face politicians and policy-makers for as long as (he) can remember”. A blithe discussion of how locals like to buy their beans at the same time as they post their letters had a surprisingly dark undertone in Reeves’ example of how ground-level issues such as this will not compute with the “incredibly young, incredibly bright economists that can destroy you in about eight seconds” at the Treasury.
Within Big Society then, he said, we must also think of and utilize the “Big Citizen”, the power of the individual with first-hand knowledge, to ensure that there is genuine intuition in decision-making.
Acevo chief Bubb, however, advised that we must “be careful of getting into a divisive argument about large vs small”. One audience member had questioned how smaller charities were supposed to compete with the larger charities to win service tenders within the Big Society plans. Bubb replied:
“Well, let’s just look at why do we go to Tesco?
“Because they offer a large range, are open all hours and are reasonably priced. Can the same be said about small shops? Often not.”
His caution was substantiated by Gillian Norton, chief executive of Richmond Borough Council, who advised that while the Big Society plans and cost cuts are leading to a “larger drive for localising services”, there are risks involved in de-centralisation as well as opportunities. But at the same time she highlighted a necessity to avoid bureaucracy, particularly when it comes to getting better at transparency and measuring performance.
