Why we must resurrect the big society

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/17/why-we-must-resurrect-big-society

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For a political idea that was disowned by the right and derided by the left, the big society has proved to be remarkably resilient.

I've heard it discussed by policymakers and politicians representing all three major parties in recent weeks. They have been talking about their manifestos for 2015.  Of course the exact phrase won't make  the published programmes and references are often prefaced with a hushed and apologetic: "I hesitate to mention the big society", but that it is mentioned at all and in so many different places is testimony to the enduring importance of the political territory to which it once  laid claim.  

Big society could mean almost anything you wanted it to mean and that, perhaps, is why it won't go away. For the Lib Dems, there was resonance with neighbourhood politics and localism. Mutualism, co-ops and community organising spoke to Labour values. Volunteering and the small battalions were less popular with ministers but still dear to Tory rank and file.

In practice, the worthy policies enacted in its name have been thin and fatally undermined by public expenditure cuts in other places but the fundamental  ideas were good ones, humane and enduring.

It was the appeal of those timeless principles that brought 20 "community leaders"  to the PM's big society summit at Number 10 four years ago this week. David Cameron and Nick Clegg led an open and lengthy discussion around the cabinet table. It was their first major engagement together just days after the election. The hefty allocation of time at a very early stage in the lifetime of the new government persuaded many of us that the PM wasn't exaggerating when he said that nothing in his manifesto was more important to him than the big society. Maybe good intentions were thwarted by deeper-seated inequalities, an obdurate party, an unyielding government machine or the unintended ravages of austerity. Or perhaps the "vision" always was a smokescreen for cuts. Either way, Nat Wei and Steve Hilton, introduced that sunny morning as the central operatives behind the big idea, were both to leave government within two years, trailing disappointment.

Four years on, Westminster cabals are reassembling remnants of the big society, not because it worked as a programme for government – it was never given a chance – but because the themes beneath the banner are too good to go away and too important to be ignored. Here's how I would like to see them resurface in next year's manifestos.

We all need the support of others, we all have something to give and we all benefit from feeling part of something bigger than ourselves. We who seek your vote understand this commonality of experience and the willingness to engage; it will sit at the heart of our manifesto, be designed into all our policies, not designed out, and made real through a set of practical changes to which we are deeply committed.

We know that the government alone can't do everything and that a top-down state is too often oppressive rather than enabling. But contracting out public services shouldn't be about passing this role unchanged on to the private sector or others. We will ensure that public procurement at central and local levels is accessible for the voluntary sector, and works with them – learning from their expertise and local experience as well as supporting them to innovate and deliver.

We acknowledge diseconomies of scale and will prioritise public service provision that is  "local by default", that builds from the principles of co-design and co-production, that, put simply, engages the people it seeks to serve.

If we are to involve more citizens in decision-making and allow local providers, statutory and voluntary, to pool resources and deliver the best service then, paradoxical though it may seem, the aspiration must have much stronger direction from the top. Requiring councils to work with local partners and to integrate budgets will generate the change that successive ministers have talked about but only tinkered with. We will introduce a local authority "duty to collaborate" with a matching "right to lead", empowering other local service providers to require the co-operation of the council if it fails to step up.

We will work with the long-term unemployed towards a range of outcomes that help them to support themselves and contribute to their communities – beyond paid employment alone – but we recognise that the essence of volunteering is compulsion from within, not from without. We will support that impulse but not enforce it.

The international baccalaureate involves a significant commitment to community service.  We  will ensure that the much more commonly experienced GCSE or A-level syllabus offers something similar.

A little under half of us volunteer beneath the radar. Informal volunteering knits our society together and is at the heart of the British way of life. Previous governments have developed fiscal incentives for the giving of cash. We promise something comparable for the giving of time.

The banks crashed the economy but we need them to play their part as responsible corporate citizens. The Brown government introduced legislation to gather and redirect unclaimed assets from the high street banks – estimated at the time at  £10bn. Less than £0.5bn has surfaced so far. There was an expectation at the time that the original group of contributors would be squeezed for more and the scheme extended to other financial institutions. Neither has happened.  Potentially this represents an important pot for a voluntary and community sector that has struggled in recession but is so important to so many in the UK. We will be going back for more While business leaders are spotting the spring shoots of economic recovery, it is still November in the land of public services.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies predict that by the end of this financial year 60% of the cost reduction programme will have yet to reach the frontline. We might expect a delay but this doesn't feel like the predictable lag between the time when an uplift in the private sector ripples out into the public. This feels like a disconnect. As the economy is picking up for some but grinding others further down, we will revisit the cuts programme and, in particular, reconsider the pace and scale. We have been in it together; we will come out of it together.

Political slogans are the bath water. Principles are the baby. In our desire to strike a radical new message for 2015 we will not throw out one with the other.

David Robinson is the founder, and now special adviser, of Community Links, a London charity