HC Deb 05 April 2000 vol 347 cc252-8WH

1 pm

Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton)

The reason for this debate is to focus on the importance of volunteering and the voluntary sector and to provide some new thinking, in particular on time banks and the role that they can play not merely in promoting volunteering and assisting the voluntary, public and private sectors, but in rebuilding our communities.

There are a variety of volunteers and volunteering tasks, from the scouts, guides, girls and boys brigades, to hospital friends and those who go into schools to help children to read. I am sure that the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Brent, South (Mr. Boateng), will agree that the volunteers in his constituency are as valuable to its life and vibrancy as volunteers are to mine. We need to celebrate them.

The borough of Kingston is blessed with volunteers—local organisations and community groups totalling more than 300. I take this opportunity to thank everyone who is involved with all those organisations because they have played such a key role in the royal borough. They are key in our area because, as the Minister will probably not be surprised to hear, we suffer from some underfunding. We are seen as a leafy borough. That means that such groups often struggle for funding, both from the local authority and the national lottery. We do not get our share of national lottery funding in Kingston, Mr. McWilliam, and therefore many of our groups struggle.

An umbrella body, Kingston Voluntary Action, tries to pull the groups together to assist them to develop. Unfortunately, it is strapped for cash, too. It is a shame that a certain political party in Kingston—the local Conservatives, who have a minority administration on Kingston council—has tried to cut the budgets of those struggling organisations. This year, it proposed a cut of £56,000. The Minister will probably be pleased to know that the Liberal Democrats, working with the Labour group on Kingston council, managed to restore those cuts and those much-needed funds for our voluntary groups.

Kingston churches are a strong source of volunteering. Kingston Churches Action on Homelessness plays a vital role in tackling our severe housing problems.

A superb network of people works for the local citizens advice bureau. I could not do my job as a Member of Parliament properly if I did not have the back up and support of the citizens advice bureau throughout Kingston. It does a fabulous job and has helped me on many occasions with the casework that I undertake for my constituents.

There are many social volunteers in Kingston. In mental health, we have MIND—National Association for Mental Health—and mental aid projects that undertake fabulous work. We have groups that focus on volunteering and promoting volunteers for senior citizens. CARE is a group in Chessington that brings people together to shop for, and talk to, each other and for house visits, and it does a fabulous job. We also have Age Concern and Milaap, which provide meals for elderly people from ethnic groups. There are voluntary organisations to help families. Welcare looks after families with financial problems and lone parents who need support.

We also have charities and voluntary groups that focus on those with disabilities, such as Kingston Association for Disabled People and Scope; on individuals in distress, such as Kaleidoscope, which is a cutting-edge drugs project, Kingston Bereavement Service and Victim Support; and on the needs of ethnic minorities, such as Kingston Racial Equality Council and Refugee Action. We have many such groups and they do a fabulous job. The challenge for us as politicians is to ensure that we value those groups, give them the support that they deserve, and encourage them to grow, so that more people volunteer and support the groups and more groups start up.

Time banks could play a role, not merely through the traditional form of volunteering, but through a new complementary form. Time banks move away slightly from the traditional notion of volunteering because a degree of mutuality is involved. People pledge time, for example to support someone by visiting them, shopping for them or giving them a lift, and receive a credit in the time bank. They can draw down on that credit for help from someone else. That is not the usual form of volunteering. Sometimes, people expect something back.

Interestingly, Mr. McWilliam, when the time banks are set up—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. John McWilliam)

Order. Personally, I do not mind that form of address—I have been Mr. McWilliam for a long time. However, the House has directed that, for the purposes of this Chamber, I am Mr. Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Davey

Thank you for bringing me to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.

In practice, although the time banks are based on mutuality, people often do not claim the credits that they have gained—they give them to other people or back to the time bank. However, they like the notion of being given time credits because it is recognition for the work that they have done for others. While some people believe that the banks are a totally different form of voluntary action, I believe that they are a way of getting people to volunteer who would otherwise not do so. That is their significant role: they help to build communities.

For that reason, time banks have a profound message on how we approach many areas of public policy and how we rebuild our communities. Indeed, the guru of time banks, an American, Edgar Cahn, described them as: a tool for rebuilding community. That is the core message that I would draw to the attention of the Chamber today.

Government policy on volunteering has been rather good. In recent weeks, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have made speeches supporting the voluntary sector. That is a welcome development. New Labour, unlike old Labour, does not appear to have any doubts about the important role that the sector plays, and that is welcome. The Prime Minister's speech at the Active Community convention and his idea for a paid day off for employees—he is to take the lead on that—are welcome, as is the millennium volunteers scheme and so forth.

Those ideas are important because it is clear from various surveys—the 1997 national survey on volunteering, for example—that volunteering is dropping off to some extent, in particular among young people. If we are to promote it and to ensure that it plays a central role, as it should, we must ensure that more people volunteer. That is where time banks have a role to play.

The time banks that I am describing are very different from the national time bank that was launched recently. That idea came from Comic Relief charity work. It is a good idea—a link between the BBC and the Government—getting people to visit a website and pledge their time to voluntary action and putting them in touch with people in their local community. I am talking about community-based, local time banks, which will be built, and participated in, by the people themselves.

I have given hon. Members a rough idea of what time banks are, but I will quote Edgar Cahn to give them a clearer notion. He described them as working like a blood bank or a baby sitting club. He wrote: Help a neighbour and then when you need it, a neighbour, most likely a different one, will help you. The system is based on equality. One hour of help means one time dollar, whether the task is grocery shopping or making out a tax return. In the Edgar Cahn scheme, the credits are kept in individual accounts in a bank or personal computer. Credits and debits are tallied regularly. In America, some of the time banks provide monthly balance statements, to record the flow of good deeds.

Time is the unit of currency. The idea is similar to the local exchange trading systems—LETS schemes—but is simpler because it focuses simply on hours of time, which buy things that money cannot buy, such as friendship, neighbourliness, community and people helping each other.

It is time spent visiting people or on small tasks, small DIY, childcare, caring for carers and listening to people. Therefore, it is a powerful currency. Time banks are a good way to organise our individual time for the collective good to make our community a better place. They can work on housing estates to do things that the council and housing associations would never do, or in general practitioner's practices—a prescription written for someone's time, what a marvellous idea. There can be time banks in a community centre, a prison, a school or a village. They can be turned to a variety of needs. They could be focused on the needs of education and training. People could provide courses for others as part of their volunteering. In schools, older pupils might mentor younger pupils and help them with their homework. Time banks can be applied to healthy living; they can break down the barriers between people and could, I believe, do marvellous things when it comes to the improvement of mental health. In addition, of course, time banks can be used to help the elderly.

Let me be clear on what is involved in making time banks work. They are very simple. A little technology helps, but basically they can be run by one person who would be paid as the broker of people's time. That person might need a small room, a telephone, a refurbished computer on which to run a small piece of software to manage the bank and produce the statements of the debits and credits that people have accrued over a month or a quarter. The person running the bank and some of those helping might need training on vetting and monitoring people, and on how to run the software. Getting time banks up and running requires only tiny amounts of money. Those tiny amounts of money can lever in huge amounts of time.

There are many working examples of the system in the United States. Seventeen inner-city schools in Chicago have a type of time bank system. Children mentoring others earn time dollars, which they can use to buy refurbished computers. What is amazing is that not only are computers recycled, but also the grades in the schools go up and bullying is reduced. We see a virtuous circle in schools that were previously failing.

Health insurance companies in Brooklyn use the system to improve health care facilities for their members. In Sentara hospital in Richmond, Virginia, the costs of dealing with asthma fell by 70 per cent. because of volunteers counselling people whose children and families were suffering from asthma.

I know of 11 projects in Britain that are using the time bank idea. There are two in Newcastle, and one was recently set up in Lewisham, in the Rushey Green doctors' practice, which is taking tremendous strides in promoting primary care. There is an hour bank in Peckham, a time swap in Watford and six fair share schemes in Gloucestershire, which promote a real sense of community in local villages and towns.

These projects are working now, providing huge social benefits. They are meeting some of the Government's key goals in rebuilding communities and putting people back to useful work. I think that they could be an adjunct to the new deal. There could be involvement with the sure start scheme. They could even be linked to the individual learning accounts.

I conclude by asking the Government to do five things to take time banks on to the next stage and build on the success that we have already seen. First, will the Minister be a strong advocate of time banks within the Government? I should like him to tell the Prime Minister about time banks.

Secondly, will the Minister ensure that people in the Government's policy units and task forces are told about the system so that they can study it in depth to see how it could be used to our benefit? Will the social exclusion unit, in particular, study time banks? Could time banks be built into the neighbourhood renewal strategy that is due to be published?

Thirdly, I should like the Minister to sort out a problem with the benefits system. In Newcastle, the social services departments are assessing time credits earned as income, and withdrawing benefit from those who earn them. I think that that is wrong, and I hope that the Minister will undertake to look into that problem.

Fourthly, can time banks play a proactive role in the Government's various modernisation programmes in education, health and crime?

Finally, the Minister will not be surprised to know that I want his assurance that he will ask the Chancellor to provide some money to promote time banks. I am not talking about huge amounts of money—billions of pounds, say—but a few million pounds. Only a tiny amount is required to establish and run time banks. If a few million pounds—a pot of money—could be found in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, possibly through the social investment task force that the Chancellor announced recently, and local communities and organisations could make bids for money to set up their own time bank, that would greatly encourage this development.

I believe that the Government should be sympathetic to this idea. They have certainly made sympathetic noises so far. This surely is the third way that we have heard about from new Labour thinkers, and I hope that the Minister will embrace it.

1.15 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Paul Boateng)

I am delighted to respond to the debate. The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) is to be congratulated on choosing this topic. The voluntary sector and volunteering play a crucial part in the local infrastructure of our communities. The hon. Gentleman has shared with us a useful insight into the 300 or so groups in his constituency. As he took us on a Cook's tour of some of the highlights of the voluntary sector in his constituency, I was, with my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Levitt), reflecting on how each of us, in our own constituency, could engage in a similar exercise and how the community life of our constituencies and our work is enriched by the experience, wisdom and activity encapsulated by volunteers.

It made absolute sense, therefore, for the Government to take forward an agenda that the Prime Minister has initiated and described as supporting active communities and the Chancellor has characterised as an exhibition of civic patriotism. It made sense that we should take forward a body of work—across government but led by the Home Office and its active community unit—to highlight and deliver a step change in the contribution of volunteering to the development of strong and sustainable communities. Therefore, we are looking, in this year, to see an increase in the number of people who are giving of their time, efforts and energy to voluntary activities.

The latest survey available to us showed that 29 per cent. of adults gave time regularly to such activity at least once a month and that 74 per cent. of adults have taken part in informal voluntary activity during the past year. That effort is vital to the success of our communities, and we want to see it stepped up. However, it is not part of the Government's role to preach or moralise. We need to inspire, support and create a context in which it is possible to have that explosion of giving of which the Prime Minister has spoken.

Volunteering is at the heart of strong, successful communities, and we want it to stay that way. We recognise what individuals can contribute to their communities, as well as the potential that they can unlock in themselves through voluntary activity. The life skills, experience and sense of common purpose that the hon. Gentleman has described in his constituency are engendered by volunteering.

We need to bring together voluntary organisations, business, the media and others to ensure that an active community strategy takes root to rebuild and refurbish that sense of community throughout the country. That is part of the role of the working group led by my noble Friend Lord Warner. We need to base that strategy on the experience of groups such as the one in the constituency of the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton. I assure him that I shall feed back into that process the experience of the time bank in Kingston and Surbiton and the value that he attaches to it.

Mr. Davey

There is no time bank in Kingston and Surbiton, although I hope that we shall create one. The experience is in other areas; I know of 11 such groups.

Mr. Boateng

We shall draw on the experience to which the hon. Gentleman refers in order to ensure that, as the Government's strategy is developed and rolled out, it acknowledges the role of time banks. We have not lost sight of their contribution. Indeed, our funding aims to help about 120 time banks get started by March 2003. The hon. Gentleman's constituency may be a beneficiary of that funding. I shall be happy to ensure that the active community unit informs him of the opportunities for support that are available for the time bank group in his constituency.

We must ensure that communities are enabled and empowered to determine how best to meet their local needs through the voluntary sector. The last thing that we want to do is to apply top-down solutions to local community issues. One of the great strengths of the voluntary sector is its independence and its closeness to the grass roots.

Sometimes, Liberal Democrats make the error of suggesting that new Labour has only just discovered the voluntary sector and that the grass roots are the sole preserve of the Liberal Democrats. I have news for the hon. Gentleman. We were, and are, the grass roots in the communities that we represent. We represent a good handful more constituents than the Liberal Democrats—

Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak)

Ten times more.

Mr. Boateng

My hon. Friend is right.

We well understand the importance of grass-roots community activity; the voluntary sector is an strong manifestation of that. I shall highlight several strands of the work on volunteering in the wider community on which we are engaged. In 1999–2000, the active community unit distributed about £17.1 million in grants to the voluntary and community sectors. In the current financial year, there will be £17.5 million. Resources are being made available. The time bank concept is important.

The report of policy action team 9 on community self-help provided about 33 recommendations to increase community activity and informal mutual support in our poorer neighbourhoods. A key plank of the strategy is to raise such activity in all neighbourhoods, not only in deprived ones. We do not want a stereotypical view of the voluntary sector as largely the preserve of the leafy suburbs—as the hon. Gentleman characterises his constituency. The sector has an important role to play in rural areas and in urban centres. It takes different forms in different places, but its value everywhere is that it binds communities together and is a reflection of them.

The strategy on which we have embarked is important. It is not about the provision of quick-fix solutions—there are none. It is a strategy for active communities over a five or 10-year period. The building blocks are being put in place. The hon. Gentleman referred to several of the Government's initiatives—for older volunteers, for young people and for black and minority ethnic communities—and to the millennium volunteer scheme. Those projects are rooted in community experience. Furthermore, we work with employers in large, medium and small businesses, to stress the value to them of promoting and supporting volunteering in the local communities that they serve. We can undertake such work together; it is about partnership and about unlocking community resources. We must do all that we can to make it possible.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the initiatives announced by the Chancellor in the Budget. We have taken steps to ensure that the Inland Revenue does not regard the benefits of time banks as taxable. I note the concerns expressed by the hon. Gentleman about the Department of Social Security. The Department is already considering benefits issues. It will be important for local offices to reflect in their approach to volunteers and volunteering the support that the Government has shown for the activities of the voluntary sector. I shall speak to the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Angela Eagle) about the problem in Newcastle to which the hon. Gentleman referred. We want to ensure that there is joined-up thinking in this matter.

It is a good news story, although we should not be complacent. We shall introduce new initiatives. My commitment to the hon. Gentleman is that we shall ensure that the example of good practice set by his community is taken on board. We shall celebrate together the work of the voluntary sector in building strong and effective communities. We have a real opportunity to mark the new millennium so that the spirit of the voluntary sector remains intact and is strengthened through what we do in the House and in Government but, above all, through what we do out there in the wider community