HOW TO MAKE A FRIENDLY SOCIETY

Don't knock do-gooding. Martin Vander Weyer

says the volunteer principle could make this country a better place

ONE of the sharpest criticisms of the Conservative leadership contest is that neither Nicotine Ken nor 'Captain Oblivion' Duncan Smith offered anything resembling a big new idea. The media wanted to talk about Europe and race; the candidates wanted to talk about schools and hospitals; but nobody, to any significant degree, wanted to discuss what I wanted to hear about, which is the role of active citizens in shaping a better society for themselves without reliance on the state. This is one of those philosophical themes with powerful economic implications that have slipped so far down the current Tory agenda that they might as well come under 'any other business' just ahead of 'date of next leadership contest'. And guess who hijacked this one in the meantime? Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

The theory I am about to sketch is drawn partly from recent ministerial speeches and initiatives, and partly from observation of daily life in my Yorkshire home town of Helmsley — sources of inspiration which rarely coincide. At the core of it is the simple idea of volunteering: people using their spare time, unpaid, of their own free will, to do something useful in their local community.

The word 'volunteering' apparently does not play well with Labour's focus groups — too preachy, middle-class, job-threatening — so it has been tucked away behind slogans about 'the active community'. But what the government's policy thinkers have discovered, largely by studying American examples, is that volunteering is remarkably good for both the giver and the receiver. Whether it means church bell-ringing at one end of the spectrum or drug counselling in a rough-sleepers' hostel at the other, volunteering adds cohesion and balm to an increasingly incoherent and unhappy society; it breaks down barriers and creates mutual respect.

In the case of older volunteers, perhaps forced into early retirement by technological or corporate change, it revalidates lives and recycles skills. In the case of younger ones, it provides the education in practical citizenship that the National Curriculum omits, while reducing consumption of lager, drugs and mindless television. It creates a patchwork quilt of extra social provision and leisure amenity that the state cannot possibly afford to offer. And the real beauty of it — the point that Labour ministers do not dare to emphasise, but Tories should is that it is free, or almost so.

Let me come back to that in a moment,

after a brief tour of Helmsley. Here we have, of course — and I apologise to those who think I mention it too often — our celebrated volunteer-run arts centre, a little glittering jewel in the northern cultural landscape. But much more than that, we have on a small scale every kind of citizen-led institution you can think of, and others besides: an archaeological society, meals-on-wheels, the British Legion, Young Farmers, cricket and bowls teams, a horticultural therapy project, a support group for the partially sighted, a playgroup, literature classes, choirs, luncheon clubs, Bible groups, Scouts and Guides, fund-raising committees for lifeboats and cancer relief, a masonic lodge. Some of this is relatively frivolous, some of it a bit squirearchical, some of it a reflection of prosperity rather than poverty. But I do not know anyone in the town who is not involved in, or helped by, one or several of these not-for-profit activities.

Back in the commercial economy, the town has about 100 businesses, ranging from a large landed estate to a selection of tea shops and a man who will carve a portrait of your dog on the head of a walking stick. We also have a public sector: a primary school, two GPs, a parking warden and two sets of conveniences; and we all (I assume) pay our taxes. But what is interesting about the Helmsley economy in its widest sense is that if you priced all the unpaid activities at suitable wage rates, and all the in-kind contributions at modest profit margins, then the voluntary sector would add up to a substantial segment of the whole economic cake, almost certainly larger than the public sector.

This may be a casual estimation, but I suspect that the impact of all that mutual organising and do-gooding is that for most people who live here — not the very rich, not the very solitary, but the 90-odd per cent in the middle — it doubles the quality of life. If you asked us whether we would like to pay a little more tax in order to have more of our activities organised and provided by the state, we would answer, in the Yorkshire manner: of course we bloody well wouldn't. If you asked us whether we would like to do a little more volunteering in areas where the state does provide, and pay a little less tax in consequence, we would almost certainly say yes.

A Tory-voting rural market town is hardly the sort of social model New Labour likes to have quoted at indeed, Helmsley — a tourism centre with foot-and-mouth lurking in its hinterland — is the sort of place this government gives the impression of not caring for at all. Driven by Gordon Brown's love—hate fascination with America, Labour is much more interested in Baltimore and Brooklyn, where skill-swapping time banks' and Big Brothers and Sisters mentoring schemes salvage some human sympathy amid the desolation of poor-black housing projects. The Home Office's Active Community Unit — formerly the 'Volunteers & Community Unit', and initially under the sponsorship of Dome supremo Lord Falconer and the slogan 'Giving Time, Getting Involved' — has been following the American way and promoting a variety of pilot projects since 1999, aimed at encouraging volunteers in deprived areas and among ethnic-minority groups.

Most significant of these is the Experience Corps, based on the American organisation of the same name, which is creating a structure to draw 50-65-year-olds into volunteering through a network of 'animators' around the country. Behind the idea in the USA was the thinking of writers such as Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, about the fragmentation of society and the unfocused yearning of the 'babyboomer' generation, now 50-plus, to do something about it.

These are policy areas that any enlightened 21st-century government ought to develop. Labour, to its credit, has boosted the voluntary sector in another sensible way by simplifying the Gift Aid rules on tax-efficient giving to charity, resulting in a sevenfold increase (that is. from a mere 1 per cent to 7 per cent of the population) in the number of people using the Gift Aid mechanism for their donations. The amounts of money remain relatively modest, however, and it is clear that we have much more to give, both in money and time. The truth is that Labour's 'active community' has barely pricked the public conscience, perhaps because many natural Labour supporters are intrinsically suspicious of volunteerism. A Conservative government. if we ever have another one, could do it all much better, and take it into much more radical territory.

What does that mean? In simple terms it means leapfrogging the current argument about public—private partnerships and exploring the boundaries between the voluntary and public sectors. It means saying to the citizen. 'OK, so you want American-style low taxes and European-style public services. So get off your butt and do something useful.' In one of several speeches in which he has reannounced his active-community initiatives, Tony Blair said in March 2000 that he wanted 'to challenge our public services to build a new partnership with volunteers .. . new help for teachers; new help to prepare prisoners for life outside; new help to support nurses; new help for older people living alone; new mentors for young people'. He quoted examples of parent involvement in Calderdale's Ryburn Valley High School and helpers in Pontefract Hospital 'providing services ranging from hairdressing to creches'. But he went on, as all Labour pronouncements on the subject do, to emphasise that this must not be 'as an alternative to professional, paid staff, but as an invaluable complement to the work they do'.

There is the crux of the matter: for the modern tax equation to work, the public sector has to shrink, which means that some professional paid staff cannot be afforded.

Labour's nervousness in this respect is all to do with its relations with the public-sector unions, who would scream blue murder if they thought their people were at risk of being replaced by volunteers. But, according to recent research, volunteers already provide the equivalent of £7 billion of support for health and social services. Why not £20 billion? In practice, why shouldn't an early-retired personnel manager from Lloyds Bank become a volunteer staff manager in an NHS trust? Our schools are apparently so short of teachers that we have to import them from Russia. So why shouldn't well-educated older people go in as volunteer specialist teachers, just as a vicar's widow in Helmsley used to go into the primary school as the 'reading granny' to help slow learners?

Of course, it would need structure, commitment and systems of accreditation and quality control. But imagine the benefit to public services and amenities of all kinds if everyone was expected to devote two or three years of their 40-year working life to a responsible volunteer task of his or her own choice, and private-sector employers, encouraged by low corporate tax rates, made that possible by offering flexible working, sabbatical periods and protected pension rights. In an informal, unthought-about way, it has already started to happen in wellknit, small communities such as Helmsley across the country; given sufficient impetus, it could also happen in the places where society is falling apart. New Labour has spotted the potential, but lacks the philosophical conviction to carry it through: that should be the new Conservatives' task.