Article
Cameron's 'big society' will leave the poor and powerless behind
There is no promise of equal opportunity in the PM's vision. Fair distribution of resources requires democratic government
The 'big society' involves giving local groups the power to do things on a voluntary basis that would otherwise be done by publicly funded organisations. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
Contrary to what you may hear today, David Cameron's plan for a "big society" threatens to undermine social justice and widen inequalities. While there is some effort to encourage people in poor neighbourhoods to do more for themselves, there is nothing in the plan to make sure that everyone – regardless of background or circumstance – gets a fair chance to participate or benefit.
Effectively, the "big society" abandons the idea of collective action and shared responsibility on a broad scale through the state, focusing instead on encouraging local interventions by the "little platoons" of civil society and businesses of all sizes. Individuals who are already marginalised by poverty and powerlessness will be left behind by the Big Society, where everything hangs on how much power is assumed by which groups and businesses, to do what, for whom and how. A much bigger role for the market is not a recipe for a bigger or stronger society, because in practice businesses – especially the big US corporations that are hovering over the NHS – are accountable to no one but their shareholders and much more interested in their financial bottom line than social justice or equality.
What's more, this scheme makes huge demands on people's time. A big part of the plan is to transfer power from state authorities to local groups so that they can do things on a voluntary basis that would otherwise be done by publicly funded organisations. Some people have much more time at their disposal than others. Individuals with low-paid jobs and big family responsibilities – especially lone parents – tend to be poor in time as well as money. Long hours and low wages undermine a key premise of the prime minister's vision, which appears to be that social and financial gains will come from replacing paid with unpaid labour.
Crucially, there are no central principles of fair play or equal opportunity. And even if there were, it is hard to see where we would find the means to enforce them. Local authorities and public regulators are being sliced down to the bare bones. And the very things that help to build equal opportunity and well-being for all – such as decent benefits for people out of work, housing support, child care, facilities for sports and recreation, not to mention free and fair education and healthcare – are all at risk from severe spending cuts.
What's needed is not just a transfer of power from the state to individuals and groups, but a new kind of partnership between citizens and government, where power and responsibility are shared on an open and equal basis between, on the one hand, professionals and other public service workers and, on the other, the people who are intended to benefit – especially those who are currently disadvantaged and disempowered. The central purpose of that partnership must be to promote social justice and to narrow inequalities. It should be about co-producing public goods and social benefits, not dumping on the poor. We shall also need to redistribute paid and unpaid time by moving towards a much shorter working week. There's already a big shift towards part-time working, which should be welcomed as a step in the right direction, not deplored as a short-term aberration. But it must be accompanied by things such as a higher minimum wage and flexible working conditions, to offset the effects on income for low-paid workers.
We don't want an overbearing state that depletes our capacity to help ourselves. But we do need a state that is democratically controlled, and that enables everyone to play a part and acts as an effective mediator and protector of our shared interests. Democratic government is the only effective vehicle for ensuring that resources are fairly distributed, both across the population and between individuals and groups at local levels. Businesses or third-sector organisations can supplement these functions but cannot replace them, not least because they invariably serve sectoral or specialised interests, rather than those of the nation as a whole. If the state is pruned so drastically that it is neither big enough nor strong enough to carry them out, the effect will be a more troubled and diminished society, not a bigger one.
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UglyLesbian
19 July 2010 12:40PM
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WhyTheFace
19 July 2010 12:41PM
Crucially, there are no central principles of fair play or equal opportunity. And even if there were, it is hard to see where we would find the means to enforce them.
So, you're criticising the absence of measures that even you can't imagine a way to make meaningful if they existed. Isn't that a bit silly?
Semioclasm
19 July 2010 12:42PM
At least the VAT increase hits rich and poor alike.
Same percentage for all.
ConDem equality right there.
RahereofSmithfield
19 July 2010 12:42PM
Government spend used to account for around 400bn of 1000bn GNP. That went up, and to bring things back again needs to be hauled back by around 150bn. However, the scope of cuts suggested may perhaps come closer to 250bn, which is the kind of overkill Maggie would have liked to impose on the Civil Service but never dared, not least because every Mandarine would have turned Orange on her.
Part of the problem is that despite Conservative commitments, nothing has been done to demonstrate transparency in this review. The purported overview of public spend turned out to be a hackneyed microscopic view of a minor sector of Social Services which had been out there for a couple of years, and never matched the label on the packet.
Now, I'm not saying that there is not a huge need for reform. But this is not reform, this is the Civil Service screwing things royally for everyone so that at the end of the day you'll see all the old warhorses who should be off to the knackers yard dressed up in freshly-spun candyfloss. And that then sudddenly becomes an entirely new justification for the bigger set of cuts - if glasnost is not an idea you can get your heads round, Mandarines, then it's time for Fruit Salad.
jeremyjames
19 July 2010 12:42PM
We don't want an overbearing state that depletes our capacity to help ourselves. But we do need a state that is democratically controlled, and that enables everyone to play a part and acts as an effective mediator and protector of our shared interests. Democratic government is the only effective vehicle for ensuring that resources are fairly distributed, both across the population and between individuals and groups at local levels.
All this is quangocrates for 'leave us alone; we know what is best for you.'
Labour's addiction to quangos has not made society fairer or more equal. Thanks to its education mess up, society is not fairer and thanks to its Mandelson led boot licking of capital, it is not more equal either.
C+ - go away and think again.
Wyrdtimes
19 July 2010 12:42PM
Looks to me like Cameron's "Big society" idea will only affect England.
ARSNOTORIA
19 July 2010 12:43PM
There are many ways to dismatle a social democracy, Cameron's 'Big Society' is one way.
The language the Conservatives are using really is Orwellian.
Vraaak
19 July 2010 12:45PM
Local volunteer groups aren't actually able to do much by themselves.
Almost every after school club, young peoples football team etc who relied on community development people and estates departments in councils to provide a place to do it in and some organisational input folds instantly when this support is withdrawn.
It's pretty well known that a pound spent on communities is worth ten spend on tackling crime. Somehow we've got ten times the money for police than councils then. Strange that.
Meanwhile apparently the local injection moulding SME trying desperately to stay in business will donate a corner of its factory for young people to do judo on weeknights instead right? Right.
You'd have to be some sort of upper class moat cleaning bentley driving bunch of nutjobs who never met a real person outside of a choreographed meeting during an election campaign to think this makes sense. Now it all becomes clear.
taffimak
19 July 2010 12:46PM
Have you seen the 4-minute film on the Big Society website? I have and I cringed when I saw the usual stereotyped permed, bespectacled pensioners marking their bingo cards.
Please, please, I am 84 and I haven't had a perm, don't wear pearls or spectacles, and would not in any way attend boring bingo, or come to that attend a Day Centre of the sort shown in the silly film.
At least the film demonstrates the distorted vision that Cameron has of 'ordinary' citizens who live in the 'poorer' areas.
Sweeting
19 July 2010 12:48PM
I love articles that tear into government initiatives and then halfway down assert What's needed... and you think, 'here we go - finally, some answers!' before reading on to find some nebulous utopianism proffered as an alternative:
a new kind of partnership between citizens and government, where power and responsibility are shared on an open and equal basis between, on the one hand, professionals and other public service workers and, on the other, the people who are intended to benefit – especially those who are currently disadvantaged and disempowered.
Sounds great, could you be a bit more specific though?
wotever
19 July 2010 12:48PM
I imagine those with the most spare time will be barred from participating in voluntary work by the Job Centre rules - As they will not be 'available' for work.
Likewise if someone disabled thinks they would like do a bit, voluntarily, then the government will say they are 'capable of work' and kick them off DLA.
I expect it will be the usual bunch of comfortably retired people and bored affluent housewives, who will participate. In other words the 'out of touch' brigade.
oldefarte
19 July 2010 12:49PM
The big Society is a recipe for unelected unrepresentative Hyacinth Bucket type busibodies 'organising' things to their own advantage. It represents an abrogation of one of the basic duties of government, which is to protect the weak against the strong in society.
flatpackhamster
19 July 2010 12:51PM
What's needed is not just a transfer of power from the state to individuals and groups, but a new kind of partnership between citizens and government, where power and responsibility are shared on an open and equal basis between, on the one hand, professionals and other public service workers and, on the other, the people who are intended to benefit – especially those who are currently disadvantaged and disempowered.
The 'partnership' you describe would not involve a transfer of power from the state to individuals and groups. It would extend the power of the state.
The central purpose of that partnership must be to promote social justice and to narrow inequalities. It should be about co-producing public goods and social benefits, not dumping on the poor.
So the purpose of your partnership is to achieve socialist redistribution.
We shall also need to redistribute paid and unpaid time by moving towards a much shorter working week. There's already a big shift towards part-time working, which should be welcomed as a step in the right direction, not deplored as a short-term aberration. But it must be accompanied by things such as a higher minimum wage and flexible working conditions, to offset the effects on income for low-paid workers.
Fantasy. It's as though a whole group of functionally innumerate communists sat together in a room with some biscuits and tea and decided how the economy should be operating.
We don't want an overbearing state that depletes our capacity to help ourselves. But we do need a state that is democratically controlled, and that enables everyone to play a part and acts as an effective mediator and protector of our shared interests. Democratic government is the only effective vehicle for ensuring that resources are fairly distributed, both across the population and between individuals and groups at local levels. Businesses or third-sector organisations can supplement these functions but cannot replace them, not least because they invariably serve sectoral or specialised interests, rather than those of the nation as a whole. If the state is pruned so drastically that it is neither big enough nor strong enough to carry them out, the effect will be a more troubled and diminished society, not a bigger one.
Your plans demand an overbearing, all-powerful state. They actually require it. Enforced reductions of the working week (penalised how, fines, jail terms?), enforced targets for 'social justice' (which is what we're calling communism this year), ever-greater control handed to armies of bureaucrats. Your plans will deliver exactly that, and the world has seen what happens when you try to enforce equality.
You can not help people by controlling their lives. That's what the NEF proposes and it simply doesn't work.
DBrown
19 July 2010 12:54PM
Crucially, there are no central principles of fair play or equal opportunity
Please give up the left-wing ideology that assumes that only state organisations can deliver fairness or morality. Society itself does comprise a huge number of decent people and we should cast off the Labour notion that wants us to mistrust each others' motives.
Britain was built by great people, not by great committees.
Peason1
19 July 2010 12:54PM
Gosh, however did this country function before we looked to the state for everything and the state didn't have its fingers in every aspect of our lives?
Gooid grief. Are the citizens of this country so helpless, useless and pathetic that unless the government is there to organise and carry them every step of the way they'll just die?
The world is changing.
tofu
19 July 2010 12:57PM
While there is some effort to encourage people in poor neighbourhoods to do more for themselves, there is nothing in the plan to make sure that everyone – regardless of background or circumstance – gets a fair chance to participate or benefit.
There are no barriers to participation except the ones we impose ourselves.
If some communities do not choose to play they will not be forced.
davesays
19 July 2010 12:57PM
Cor, remember the "Volunteer Corps pay £00.00" adverts? (I think it's called Volunteering England now ) Among the useful things you could do were " cooking for firemen" and "decorating a busy Civil Servant's house!" This Big Society is just an excuse for cuts. In any case, if I'm going to volunteer I expect to be very well paid for it.
CJUnderwood
19 July 2010 12:58PM
Yes, that's the point of the idea. Am I supposed to be surprised? He is a Tory.
madmonty
19 July 2010 1:00PM
A simple way to do this would be to return all the local government powers that were taken over by Westminster in the last 40 years. Allow local authorities whose cabinets are elected by local people, to deliver the services which their constituents demand.
Sadly my own local authority has decided to close down its voluntary network centre due to the budget cuts, and like all local authorities will soon be reduced to only providing statutory services to its own areas.
'The Big Society' is nothing but another Westminster con, a half baked idea by Cameron, who now demands its application with only £60 million pounds to try and stimulate a voluntary sector, which must somehow replace all the services about to be cut. I can see a lot of vunerable people being hurt by political dogma...
rosieh2
19 July 2010 12:37PM
Big Society is just another way of saying cuts to public services. Can you imagine being confronted by that motley crew in the picture?!