Sir Stephen Bubb: The economic impact charities can make is "vast"
Stephen Bubb (Credit: Oxford Atelier)
8 min read
A straitened state is in retreat and banking on economic growth to fend off a return to austerity. But Sir Stephen Bubb tells Sophie Church it needs charities as much as businesses to mend the breach
With Labour’s dash for growth proving more a stumble out the blocks, the government hopes its wooing of industry will help kickstart the economy.
But according to Sir Stephen Bubb, executive director of the Gradel Institute of Charity at New College, Oxford, Labour is ignoring one player instrumental to growth: the charity sector.
“It’s a general perception problem, not just in government, that charities are lovely things and very good things, but they are mainly volunteer-run and small, so they’re not thought of in the same way as business or the public sector. They’re just not on the radar.”
The Post Office compensation scheme and Windrush have been appallingly managed by the state
The relationship between charities and government has always been “up and down”, he says.
Peaking under Tony Blair, the relationship struggled through the austerity of David Cameron’s government, before disintegrating in the Johnson and Truss years. Now, with Labour back in government, and with several cabinet ministers having worked in the sector, there has been a “sea change” in how charities are viewed.
But a fundamental “under-appreciation” lingers in Labour’s regard for charities, Sir Stephen believes – a problem he is determined to change.
“The mood music is good,” he says. “But have they actually thought – in terms of the challenges government now faces – how they could use the third sector better?
“There’s a really big opportunity for us as leaders of civil society to say to government: ‘Look, there are problems actually. Why not use us to solve them?’”
The House meets Sir Stephen, 71, in Oxford’s New College for a brief tour before our interview. Walking past 13th-century ramparts, into the 14th-century quadrangle and out via the 16th-century dining hall, we reach the college’s latest addition, the Gradel Institute of Charity, which opened last year.
The Gradel Institute is the world’s first and only research body dedicated to studying charities as organisations driving practical change. “It’s not Oxford ivory tower research,” Sir Stephen explains. “It’s around proper research that can be used by the sector.”
Today, the Institute has a research group of 11 people, “drawn from across the globe”. “It’s an impressive team,” he says. “Our feeling was we wanted to get cracking quickly.”
With wind in the Institute’s sails, Sir Stephen is keen to point out Labour’s early failure to collaborate with charities – using proposed cuts to Winter Fuel Payments as an example.
“There is a cliff-edge problem of people who are not on Pension Credit, who probably could be, but are deterred from applying.
“What I would have said to [Chancellor Rachel Reeves] when she was doing that is: ‘Why don’t you talk to Age UK and Citizens Advice Bureau, and give them a grant to work with the people on that cliff edge to ensure they apply for pension credit? Why don’t you tell them to revise that 243-question paper?” he says, referring to the government’s Pension Credit application form.
Recalling the fierce backlash – from both the public and members of her own party – to the Chancellor’s winter fuel announcement, Sir Stephen says: “If she thought about how we are using the sector to solve that problem, it would have enabled her to get that through with less hassle.”
While he maintains close links with government – Science Secretary Peter Kyle was Sir Stephen’s deputy when he was chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations (Acevo) – he was unable to offer his advice to the Chancellor before the winter fuel cuts were announced. However, he thinks these measures are “still something she could do in the coming budget”.
Charities are also ideally placed to reduce burden on the NHS, Sir Stephen says. Heading into the winter of 2015, he worked with Age UK, the Royal Voluntary Service and the Red Cross across 29 hospitals, identifying how charities can free up bed space by supporting elderly people at home.
“What those charities do is say, ‘It’s not a problem, we’ll sort it out’. So they get them back home, they’d check on the house, they’d check if there was bread and milk in – simple stuff like that.”
While the research proved useful, Sir Stephen says NHS England were “not interested”. He later heard the NHS chief had seen the paper and grumbled: “That’s all we need – a lot of do-gooders running around casualty, getting in the way of the doctors and nurses.”
Sir Stephen, who was knighted in 2011 for his services to the voluntary sector, is scathing about the red tape binding the NHS.
“I worked inside the Department of Health with NHS England for something like three months or so,” he says, “and it’s a Stalinist bureaucracy. The NHS is brilliant in so many ways, but it’s very resistant to outsiders. They just don’t get that actually a partnership with voluntary organisations like the Red Cross, etc, could be really, really valuable.”
In 2014, Sir Stephen wrote a report into the Winterbourne View scandal, after it emerged nearly 3,000 people with learning disabilities were institutionalised in mental health hospitals. But NHS England has still not followed his recommendations that institutions be shut down where necessary.
At the moment the sector is in Culture, Media and Sport. That tells you a lot about how the sector is thought of
“There are still around 2,000 people in those institutions. It’s a real issue of human rights and a gross abuse, and no one’s prepared to do anything about it.” Working with Mencap, Sir Stephen is now hopeful to “persuade Wes [Streeting, the Health Secretary] this is an issue he can take up”.
Though Sir Stephen used to be a Labour Party member, he has worked with governments of all political hues to emphasise the usefulness of charities. Asked by Cameron to review choice and competition in the NHS during the passage of the NHS reform bill, Sir Stephen remains the only third-sector leader ever to address the cabinet.
He points proudly to a framed rag of paper above his desk – his speech for that day. “I got up early, went into the garden, and thought, ‘Right, I’ve only got two minutes, what are the key bloody things I want to say?’ I wrote the words down on a piece of paper – which is that – and it worked brilliantly. I’ve always remembered that.”
Ultimately, the political class needs to reset its notion of what the state can and cannot do, Sir Stephen says – a view he shared with Cameron.
“The state is very poor at tackling mental health. It’s very poor at tackling rehabilitation. We’ve got a prisons crisis, and one of the reasons we have a prison crisis is because there’s a revolving door; because rehabilitation services are so bloody poor,” he says.
“The Post Office compensation scheme and Windrush have been appallingly managed by the state. It’s just not something they’re very good at, because it’s too tied up in bureaucracy.”
Sir Stephen’s solution? Expand current charity service provision to step into the state’s breach.
“If you’re into more effective delivery, it’s a natural move,” he says. “We are used to doing stuff under contract. We have decades experience of contractual delivery of public services, and so it’s an expansion of that”.
While Sir Stephen’s mission is to show government how charities can work practically, he also wants to convey their economic potential – worth £200bn to the UK economy.
“If there are something like a third of beds in hospitals used by frail and elderly who don’t need to be in a medical facility, for goodness’ sake, providing the support they need in the community is significantly cheaper than a hospital bed,” he says. “That, again, makes a real contribution to our fiscal problems.”
The “first thing” government should do to monetise charities’ potential is to create a “third-sector action plan” – similar to one he worked on with Ed Miliband, then Tony Blair’s minister for the third sector.
“You need something that’s more far reaching across – probably something that’s developed in the Treasury. At the moment the sector is in Culture, Media and Sport. That tells you a lot about how the sector is thought of,” he says.
While Sir Stephen says better public services will not be achieved via “a massive increase in public spending” but through “really effective and sensible use of the central organisation”, he also admits the charity sector needs more money from government to achieve its aims.
He hesitates to provide a figure, but thinks it “likely” charities will appear in the budget. Having talked with Miliband, Lisa Nandy, Baroness Smith and Yvette Cooper about the role of the sector, Sir Stephen says: “I’m optimistic, simply because there are so many – including in the intake of new MPs – who’ve got that sector of experience and knowledge.”
From anti-smoking campaigns to changing behaviours around wearing seatbelts, even to abolishing slavery, Sir Stephen says charities are generally punching above their weight.
“It wasn’t a bunch of parliamentarians sitting around saying, ‘Oh, you don’t really like this. Let’s change the law.’ They had to be pushed,” he says. “It’s again this issue around people generally not understanding what charities are all about and what they’ve achieved.”
With one and a half million people working in charities across the UK, and six million volunteering, the impact charities can make is “vast”. Now, Sir Stephen says, the Institute’s task is to prove it.
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