How the Big Society finds itself in the cuts front line

We are living in unprecedented times; living through a bout of Government cuts unlike any in the history of the welfare state. In an interview the other night, one of the key Ministers involved, Nick Hurd, effectively accepted that in most cases, they do not know precisely what they are cutting.

Over time, the Government has come to depend, quite reasonably, upon the voluntary sector to deliver services. The voluntary sector can achieve a less expensive, often more intimate outcome than big Government. It underpins what is a very old concept – the Big Society. Hence a vast number of charities in the UK do depend for a substantial element of their income upon tax payers’ money.

Because local authorities only raise a small proportion of their expenditure from local taxes, central Government ends up paying about 75 per cent of their income. So that when a Whitehall Department ordains a 25 per cent cut – that cut is actually made manifest at the local level and the cutting agency is the local authority. Understandably, local authorities tend to secure their own direct spending first. The voluntary sector is very much at the bottom of the pile. It is my anecdotal evidence that charities are being hit particularly hard.

I meet NGO staff who talk of anything up to 75 per cent to 85 per cent of their funding being cut.

It’s for this reason that I suspect some Ministers are somewhat surprised to find out what it is that has been cut as a result of their initial decision to reduce budgets. As for that transitional funding that Ministers talk of as a buffer to ease the pain for the charity sector – I am in possession of the small print. It forbids ANY charity from spending it on any of the services they are having to cut. It has to be spent on consultancy, and other elements required to aid the ‘down-sizing’. We live in difficult times.