When you go to hear politicians, the announcements are often bland and sketchy; you go to hear the subsonics about how they’re thinking about what should happen. Here’s a classic from Lord Freud, now the Minister for Welfare Reform; he’s the guy that’s advised both Labour and now the LibComs on cutting budgets. With a name like that, you’ve just got to look at the subconscious.

Obviously he’s got the lordship and the ministerial role to achieve quick results (for results read cuts). He made this speech to organisations interested in getting people off social security benefits. There’s a new bit of jargon for you ‘off-flows’ – the flow of people off benefits and into work that doesn’t cost the government so much.

What he’s saying here is that they’re going to be looking for organisations to help people off benefits: what sort of organisations will they be and how should they work? Listening to this, can the same principles be applied across government to other voluntary sector charities, say in palliative care of social work?

Here’s a bit of what he said:

To keep up the pace of progress we envisage, we will need well-capitalised and well-resourced groups that are prepared to take up the challenge of competition in this area. Given the greater off-flows we expect to see through migration from Incapacity Benefit to ESA (Employment and Support Allowance) under the new Work Capability Assessment, we will need companies with the scale to make an impact. And in view of the difficulties that we are all familiar with in targeting support to some of the hardest to reach, we will also need groups that already have – or can co-opt into consortia – the skills and expertise needed to provide real change to people’s lives. Consortia formation, financing and management will, I am convinced, lie at the heart of the successful operation of the sector. So if you represent a medium or larger organisation, you might want to accelerate your thinking about how you can work with partners with resources in other areas or locations. Many of you, I know, have already elaborated strategies in this area.

In other words, if you are a voluntary sector organisation wanting to get resources to do things on behalf of government, get big. Small local organisations, local contacts, representation may be truly lovely, but they want results, so big means easier to cope with for the government and more likely to bring widespace results. If you’re small and local with existing local connections this is gives feel-good, but get in a consortium with others so that you can get big.

Hospice managements: now apply this to yourselves. How are you going to get big and help with the government’s off-flows?

Want to see more of the speech: http://www.dwp.gov.uk/newsroom/ministers-speeches/2010/02-06-10.shtml