A little while ago I sat down with Rob Wilson, the former minister for civil society, to discuss charities. He had some pretty trenchant criticisms of the sector, and of government, and a lot of ideas about how things should be done differently.
Some large charities, he said, are too party political and need to be brought to book. He questioned whether some charities are too left-wing by nature to work with a Tory government.
He also said that charities were a “two-speed sector” in which big charities were increasingly dominating the smaller ones. He said that too many charities were completely out of touch with people in local communities and had been taken completely by surprise when their beneficiaries voted for Brexit. And he said too many charities were just standing in line, waiting for government handouts.
Wilson also criticised the apparatus of government. Government, he said, had never really understood the sector, and was completely failing to commission services intelligently. He said that government should actually be offering charities far more money – up to £100bn a year, he believes – and that it should be done on the basis of ten-year outcomes contracts.
And finally, he outlined how, if he had remained in power, he wanted to open up a new source of local grant funding worth literally billions, which he hopes government will still go ahead with.
‘Large charities must be brought to book’
A few months ago, just before the safeguarding scandal broke, Rob Wilson claimed Oxfam was “disappearing up its own morally righteous posterior” and was too left wing.
It was this particular comment which prompted our meeting. He said once again when we met that some parts of the charity sector are too party political, although he stressed he was not opposed to campaigning on behalf of beneficiaries.
“There’s a suspicion in the sector that government is trying to make it silent,” Wilson told me. “But some large charities are straying into the political arena a bit too much. They ought to be brought to book. I’ve no problem with people speaking out about their beneficiaries, but they need to know that the line is clear.”
He has previously articulated the argument that by taking an anti-capitalist stance charities are essentially left-wing, and therefore anti-Conservative, and this remains his view.
“It doesn’t do anyone any good if charities start venturing into the party political,” he says. “Oxfam clearly did that when it said it wanted to get rid of the capitalist system.”
‘There’s a lot of groupthink’
Wilson makes a similar point on Brexit, which he opposed before the referendum but now supports. Charities, he says, barely contain a single person who voted to leave the European Union.
“The sector didn’t understand the mood of the country,” he says. “There must be a disconnect between the leadership of the sector and local communities. As a result, charities weren’t articulating what people were feeling. They were completely caught by surprise.
“Business was caught by surprise too, but you would expect businessmen to be less in touch with the mood of ordinary people than charities. A lot of charities are trying to transfer their own belief systems onto cultures and communities which clearly don’t believe those things.”
His challenge is that charities have become caught in their own bubble.
“The charity sector isn’t self-aware enough,” he says. “There’s a lot of groupthink. No one is challenging you and you are getting into patterns of thinking that are a long way away from everyone else.”
Wilson’s mindset may not find much favour in the sector, but it is a concern if he is not alone. Charities may argue that they do not oppose the Conservatives, just all their policies, and this does not make them party political. But this may not cut much ice in Westminster. And the perception is potentially as bad as the reality.
‘The big combine harvesters of fundraising’
Wilson says that when he was in office, he saw a particular problem with larger charities.
“I saw a two-speed sector,” he says. “Big charities were out, making loads of money. The big combine harvesters of fundraising were out pulling everything in, and small charities were struggling. There was a power imbalance and I wanted to correct it.”
He is hardly alone. Smaller charities have consistently complained about the behaviour of the hundred or so biggest entities. And it is these charities, almost exclusively, which have faced criticism in the national press.
His solutions to small charities’ woes are unorthodox, and involve reducing grant funding.
“The thing about government grants is they are a trap for charities,” he says. “Charities become dependent on government.
“Charities shouldn’t be state-led,” he says. “They shouldn’t be arms of government. The notion that any charity should stand in line and wait for state handouts isn’t a good one.
“Big government is overwhelming the capacity of some charities to think for themselves. You need to roll back the influence government has and let charities breathe. Government should provide framework and structure, not micromanage.”
Wilson is keen to set out that he is not opposed to grant funding per se, only grant funding from government. His biggest play as charities minister would have been a massive new source of grants, funded with hundreds of millions of pounds a year from dormant assets.
“My vision was for a shared society fund which would have been an endowment,” he says. “We could easily have built that up to £10bn or £12bn. It would have been there to make sure smaller charities were sustainable in the longer term.”
‘Why not £100bn?’
He believes there is a need for bigger and better contracts.
“Much more government money should be flowing to charity,” he says. “The government has an enormous amount of money to spend each year. A lot of that money goes on extraordinarily wasteful projects. My view is that charities with their local community connections can deliver, within the right framework, at a lower cost than government.
“If you spend £850bn every year and you spend £450bn of it badly, there’s a lot of scope to find alternatives. We talk about how £10bn or £15bn of government money is spent with charities each year. Why not £50bn or £100bn?”
Government, he says, is extraordinarily bad at contracting with charities.
“Look at Transforming Rehabilitation,” he says – referencing the government’s disastrous and unnecessary attempt to remodel probation. “It was structured in a way that was impossible to deliver. Government just doesn’t understand the ability of charities to deliver life-changing interventions across the whole of social policy. So it doesn’t put time and effort into the partnership.
“But if someone is homeless or suicidal or on drugs, who is going to make their life better? Will it be government? It seems unlikely. It never has before.
“What we need is an ambitious partnership for social change, but that requires both government and charities to change their current mindset. And government is at least 70 per cent of the problem.”
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