Civitas

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December 01, 2004

The twilight world of tax-funded 'voluntary' action

Colbert, Louis XIV’s minister of finance, once gathered together a group of merchants from Paris and asked what they would like the government to do for them. One of them replied: Laissez nous faire – leave us alone. This is the origin of the phrase laissez faire.

Charitable bodies would do well to remember the words of this wise merchant as politicians of all parties try to conscript their services. At a meeting held to celebrate the centenary of Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel last night, Michael Howard outlined Tory plans for a voluntary sector in which charity schools and hospitals would be able to compete for government funding to offer more choice to parents and patients. Alan Milburn, on the same day, was predicting that the voluntary sector would one day play as large a role as the state and the private sector in providing public services. He wants to encourage local authorities, primary care trusts and other bodies to award long-term contracts to charities, backed by substantial funding.

Of course, this is not really a new idea. We are already there. Many so-called ‘charities’ are no more than vehicles for carrying out the government’s statutory responsibilities on the cheap. Take away the government funding and they cease to exist. This actually happened to an organisation which used to be in the office next to ours in Waterloo. Of course, anyone can do anything cheaper than the government, but since when has cheapness been the defining characteristic of voluntarism?

Voluntary action is an essential component of a free society. Charitable bodies are schools of citizenship. They benefit not only the recipients of the services, but the providers. They make us better people and better citizens, capable of acting responsibly and altruistically, meeting other people’s needs in a way that builds them up, rather than degrading them to welfare-dependent status, in the manner of state-run welfare programmes.

It is simply not possible for voluntary bodies to carry out this role when they are acting under directions from Whitehall. Instead of following their own vision, they have to help the government of the day to achieve its targets, with a view to getting them re-elected. They cease to be part of civil society, and inhabit a ghastly twilight world in which politics poisons everything.

It is said that when you dine with the devil you should take a long spoon. When it comes to negotiating contracts with Whitehall, voluntary bodies would be well advised not to go to the table at all.

Posted by at December 1, 2004 02:00 PM

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