Health secretary Wes Streeting got an earful from charity leaders recently, when remarks intended to be private were published.
Streeting’s belligerent framing, that he wanted “to break the model of voluntary sector lobbying”, implied that he saw the sector’s advocacy as a nuisance, rather than a resource.
This was very badly off-message as the government and charity leaders close in on a covenant, based on the idea that national renewal needs the expertise and resources of the voluntary sector just as it needs those of business and the state, all working together.
It is also ignorant to assume that there is one “model” of voluntary sector lobbying to be “broken”. Charities vary enormously in the different ways in which they seek to influence public opinion or decision-makers.
Streeting has since made clear he respects voluntary organisations’ right to campaign, of which he was an exponent earlier in his career.
So, what are we to make of his outburst apart from the eternal truth that ministers of all political stripes don’t like being criticised, unappreciated, or campaigned at in a way they feel is unreasonable?
Are we stakeholders?
The clue may be in Streeting’s reported remarks that the voluntary organisations he had in mind were stakeholders, not partners.
It’s not an insult to be called a stakeholder. Health and care charities have a stake in what the Department of Health is trying to do, since they and their beneficiaries are materially affected by the outcomes.
To be recognised as stakeholders by the health secretary is in itself positive, and good stakeholder relationships can be a blessing.
Are we not partners?
But what about not being partners and what does partnership mean anyway?
Surely, partners share a purpose and work together closely to fulfil it. For example, partners in the private sector are equally committed to the success of the business, plan and work together and share the risks and profits. Dance partners must be exactly in step with each other for the shared purpose of dancing well. Tennis or bridge partners must have a close understanding of how the other player thinks and moves and how they can best be supported, for the shared purpose of winning.
However, a government department and a charity have different purposes. The charity must be focused on its particular mission but the government cannot share that single-mindedness. Unlike the charity, the government is involved in constant, arduous trade-offs between different priorities and political pressures, and must have regard to the much broader mandate of its manifesto and the interests of the public as a whole, not to mention winning the next general election.
The charity does not share in the risks if the government gets such judgements wrong – a minister may be sacked, or a government voted out, but the charity carries on regardless. With such different purposes, they will often not be in lockstep like dance partners at all. If a charity’s single-minded purpose is to advance the interests of those afflicted by one illness, it will probably lack both the motivation and abilities to understand closely how the government thinks and moves, and it may well feel no responsibility to support its wider aims.
Many charities move along a spectrum from close insider collaboration to outsider criticism and demands as priorities and opportunities change, and they vary enormously in their tactics and skillsets. Not so many are reliable partners to the state in the long term. The reverse is also true, as governments and individual ministers change and adjust their priorities to the political winds. Remember the Compact?
On top of that, true partners are equal with each other in status and are often indispensable to each other, whereas the apparent disparity of resources and power between a government department and any particular charity makes that sense of equality relatively rare.
There are, therefore, inherent limitations to any voluntary sector/state partnership; nor can most relationships between charities and the government helpfully be described that way. To that extent, Streeting has a point.
Collaborative partnerships matter
Nevertheless, that’s not the end of the matter. There are other important respects in which Streeting’s rejection of the P word is wrong.
Firstly, it makes a huge difference if you look at the sector collectively, rather than at particular charities. There is currently a genuine recognition in parts of government that the state does actually need to collaborate closely and consistently with the expertise and resources of the voluntary sector if any of Keir Starmer’s five missions for national renewal are to succeed.
Nowhere is that clearer than in the ambition to emphasise the prevention of sickness and promotion of good health and care. That recognition implies a much more active role for the sector than a mere stakeholder, and a much more respectful and open attitude to charities as important collaborators than Streeting’s dismissive model-breaking.
Similarly, the sector’s umbrella bodies, representing a big cross-section of voluntary organisations, cannot be defined as partners of government in general. However, they can be partners in the particular project of developing the covenant and maintaining a joint overview of the relationship between the voluntary sector and government departments.
More generally, coalitions of voluntary organisations can make it more realistic for government departments to collaborate effectively rather than trying to deal with lots of competing ones.
While charities and governments make unlikely marriage partners, there is plenty of scope for fruitful affairs where their purposes overlap. For example, if policies for the prevention of particular diseases, or the promotion of good health, are to be reviewed and improved, the necessary shared purpose is there of achieving a good result on a joint project. Such examples can be replicated right across government, centrally and locally.
So, however realistic we must be about the inherent limitations of a state/voluntary sector partnership, we must hope that the government – including Streeting himself – will rise above that private outburst, live with the untidiness and endless variety of our sector, recognise its massive strengths, and collaborate respectfully where purposes are genuinely shared.
