Cameron ignores limitations on voluntary action
David Cameron the Conservative opposition party leader, made a speech last week on the ‘Big society’, which put forward his thinking on poverty and social intervention generally. As always, they’re against the state doing it, and many people can accept that there is a considerable degree of state failure in social provision. The problem for the Conservatives is that there’s a high degree of market failure in social provision as well. Often everyone accepts that the market is not the place for social interventions, or they have to set up some convoluted quasi-market system that is not really a market, and institutionalises complex state controls over voluntary action.
Voluntary organisations may be wonderful, but to rely on voluntary organisations to deliver wide-scale state services is inappropriate; it twists voluntary action by making it involuntary.
You can see this in the hospice movement. Hospices in the UK are mainly in the voluntary sector because St Christopher’s was originally a demonstration of what was possible in care for the dying and their families at a time when not a lot was done. Now Conservatives routinely say how wonderful voluntary hospices are as an example of how lots of other services should be run. But proper care for dying people and their families is a responsibility of society where government should take a lead and make sure that a high standard of care is widely available. They should not be pleased that they can offload that responsibility because enough sentimental and well-off people will make donations to support it,
Cameron’s speech on the web: http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2009/10/David_Cameron_The_Big_Society.aspx
The Touchstone blog by Richard Exell has a useful discussion of the speech, with references to many of the past Conservative documents on the topic that many people will not be aware of and rehearses the arguments against it; however, be aware that Touchstone is a TUC (ie trade union) blog:
http://www.touchstoneblog.org.uk/2009/11/david-cameron%E2%80%99s-big-society-speech/
November 21st, 2009 at 6:23 pm
It also seems to be, certainly in Social Care, the objective of the Labour Government. Many of their plans for the sector such as personalisation and the recently ending of attendance allowance are aimed at eroding any universalist basis to the sector. The personalisation agenda, good in many ways, opens the way to increased means-testing and also aims through the withdrawl of universalist block-purchased care services, currently offered by the state, to increase provision by the voluntary and private sector who will fill the gaps. When I say good in many ways yes, this increases choice – for those who can afford to top-up or opt-out but those relying on state support will experience residual services and the stigmas of means-testing. More of us need to argue for good quality state provision as a right otherwise government, whether blue or red, will take services away.