Big Society Seminar, Hillsborough Castle - 27 June 2011

Thank you for the invitation.  As the Minister for Social Development, my portfolio is a wide one.  An important part of it, and one I am especially pleased about, is the responsibility I have as lead Minister in the Executive’s relations with the voluntary and community sector within the Northern Ireland Executive.  It’s in that context that I thank you for organising this seminar this morning.  My Department has followed with interest the emerging thinking on the Big Society agenda and like many of you I welcome the opportunity that this morning affords to learn some more about it.  Whilst the component parts of it are largely devolved matters, I have no doubt that as an integral part of the UK, there is much of common interest to us.  I have valued my discussions with Hugo Swire as I know has my colleague Arlene Foster who holds the portfolio for Enterprise Trade and Investment including responsibility for social enterprise and the social economy sector.  

These are early days for me in my new role and I know you will forgive me for wanting to take my time to listen and learn and discuss with Executive colleagues before coming to a decision on whether or how we implement Big Society here in Northern Ireland and what we might learn from it.

There can be no doubt that in this Assembly term, there is a clear and compelling need to continue to prioritise the economy and job creation.  We can’t afford to overlook the fact that these are challenging economic times that are weighing heavily on hard pressed individuals and families.  Nor, however, can we fail to grasp the opportunity, after decades of conflict, to build on the real sense of hope for the future that is so evident.  

Building on these foundations requires us to think, not only about the economic imperative but about what I think of as the social imperative, not just about profit margins but fundamentally about the kind of society we wish to become as we emerge from decades of conflict, taking care to lay the foundations to ensure it will never happen again.  Indeed we have to understand that our economic imperative – to generate the wealth for the future – is underpinned by the social imperative of ensuring that our whole society can participate in the challenge, and the benefits, of our economy. This presents a challenge not just for the Assembly and the Executive but for civil society organisations, charities, community groups, churches, trade unions and indeed for every man and woman in this place to really think about the kind of society we want to be and to use the next decade to lay the foundations for future generations.  That’s why I’m interested in the Big Society idea and why, in particular I’m drawn to the sense that we in Northern Ireland, acknowledging the turmoil of our past and the progress that has been made, ought, perhaps to think in terms, not of building the Big Society but of building the New society, fashioning it from our collective efforts and the wisdom and experience of many in this room.

Of course I have my own thoughts on what that society would look like and so too does my party.  Our election manifesto acknowledged that change will only come about through agreement.  As a party, we are committed to work to bring about change for the benefit of everyone, firmly in the knowledge that the long term durability of Northern Ireland will depend on building the broadest support base and that includes all of you in this room.  

This New Society that, I think, we need to build, will rely upon our building a shared and unified community, where barriers are broken down between the Province’s two historical main traditions and where those from minority ethnic communities play an integral part of the building process.  My party wishes to be at the forefront of implementing a good Relations strategy and programme.  That, I believe, to be fundamental.

Building this New Society here in Northern Ireland will require careful listening and bold actions.  As a party, we‘ve committed ourselves to reducing spending on division and duplication in such areas as social housing and voluntary and community organisations.  We’ve set targets for having 80% of domiciliary care provided by charities and other non statutory organisations by 2015, releasing savings that we believe will extend to tens of millions pounds each year  We’ve committed to ensuring access to youth services, particularly for disadvantaged young people, enhancing sharing and integration in our education system.  That is the kind of new society that we wish to build, where early interventions, of the type so often provided by voluntary and community organisations respond to people and save the public purse.  This New Society will need to be joined up – research tells us that some families can have interventions from more than twenty different sources.  It will reward support what works, based on evidence.   And it will need to find new ways of funding what works, stopping funding what doesn’t.  We’ve made no secret of our interest in looking at Social Impact Bonds and alternative finance sources including philanthropic sources, helping voluntary and community organisations ease their dependency on government grants.  That’s why I noted with interest the Prime Minister’s recently published Giving White paper aimed at transforming the giving culture in the UK and increasing the giving of time and money to charities.  It’s why my party has an interest in the work of organisations such as the Ulster Community Investment Trust here in Northern Ireland, lending as they do and providing support to community organisations, charities and social enterprises.  There is no escaping the fact that restrictions on finance will apply across the voluntary and community sector as they do the private and voluntary sectors and we need to continue to find ways of supporting the sector make that transition.

The New Society that my party envisages will see a transformation in the range of services which are tendered for including areas such as social care and asset management and a commitment to overhaul procurement.  Our manifesto commits us to enhance partnership working with the voluntary and private sectors, including reengineering service delivery where appropriate and seeking to involve people from wider civic society where they add value to decision making.  We want to see renewed emphasis on communities and we want to see the introduction of a Community Empowerment and Renewal Bill providing the means to enable communities to acquire under – utilised public sector assets and deal with dormant land, strengthening communities and promoting social entrepreneurship.  We will focus energy on increasing volunteering and active citizenship, facilitating the community and voluntary sector including faith based organisations to deliver more services across government and review the level of auditing and accounting systems and processes.  

Recognising the value of community development work, my/our intention is to develop a province wide strategic review of support and training for local groups and individuals and assist more groups to be able to provide services.  Our commitment to fund new ways to tackle disadvantage and protect individuals are manifest in the Social Investment and Social Protection Funds being administered in OFMDFM.

Over the next few months, informed by the discussion we are having today and by the briefings I’ve been receiving within and beyond the Department, I want to engage more fully in what this New Society might look like and what my Department can to do achieve it.  Arguably more so than any other Department, the Department for Social Development is well placed to take a lead in shaping this new agenda, doing so in close collaboration with others without whom it cannot be achieved.  

It is a reforming agenda, about ensuring that we help all who can to participate in the economy, while supporting the most vulnerable. It is about helping people live in community, improving their quality of life. It is ensuring that people have the services they need, but ensuring that everyone fulfils the social responsibilities they have.

I recognise that the voluntary and community sector has a major role to play here. It is for that reason that I am delighted to have the championing role – not championing a sector for its own sake, but championing the role that the sector must play in helping us tackle need.

However we build this new order here in Northern Ireland, whatever we call it and indeed whether we give it a label at all or not, there are important new opportunities open to us at this time with a new Programme for Government in preparation and a better political appetite than ever before.  We need to remember that we are not starting from scratch.  There is a huge amount of experience and existing practice to build upon given the rich traditions of voluntary and community action in this place.  There are organisations in place and there is work in progress that I intend to build on.  As a Minister in the last Executive, I, like all of my colleagues at that time, approved the new Concordat for relations between Government and the sector in Northern Ireland.  In this new role, I intend to bring forward the action plan to breathe life into those principles and later this week I plan r to take a new volunteering strategy to the Executive.  Already we have almost a third of a million people volunteering in Northern Ireland.  I want to see that increased and I believe it’s possible to do so.   

The Executive will wish to discuss these ideas in more detail over the next few months and particularly as we come to finalise a new programme for government.  With party colleagues now at the helm in DETI, DHSSPS, DFP and OFMDFM, it seems to me that a significant new impetus and opportunity has been created for joined up working on the social economy here, for active and coherent consideration to be paid to asset transfer and alternative finance and for looking at the obstacles to procurement experienced by voluntary groups and community organisations.  

Before I close, let me touch very briefly, on Dormant Accounts Funding.  Since it is not yet entirely clear what funding will be available to Northern Ireland, we have yet to form a view on the priorities for the allocation of such funds.  This will be considered over the coming weeks.

In closing, we are a great and resilient people in Northern Ireland and using that powerful Ulster Scots word we can be a thran bunch – whatever the merits or otherwise of the Big Society, we may want to do it our way in Northern Ireland and for the reasons I’ve set out. I rather think we might.  But whether we have a Big Society or a Big Agenda for a New Society, as Minister for Social Development I look forward to playing my full part in shaping it, excited by the new times we are in.