Public trust local charities - not the central state - to help people in need

Yesterday evening we posted about some of the headline findings from a YouGov poll for the TaxPayers' Alliance.  One other finding deserves its own discussion.

The TPA investigated how Britons would choose to spend £200 that had to be allocated to a good cause.  It's the exact same question that YouGov asked for the Centre for Social Justice in July 2005 and it has produced very similar results...

The results reveal that very few people would entrust the £200 to local or central government.  Fifteen times as many people have more faith in a local charity, a campaigning organisation or a third world charity.  Local organisations are preferred to central organisations.  Organisations undertaking practical work are preferred to campaigning organisations.

My own work at the CSJ and during the Listening to Britain's Churches consultation convinces me that innovative, community-based charities are much better at poverty-fighting than the state.  I would love to see the voucherisation of a large proportion of the money that the state currently dispenses to the third sector.  Other stakeholder-directed funding mechanisms would include more use of matched funding and asset transfer.  The recent IDS report included a number of recommendations as to how the best poverty-fighting organisations might receive more help from the state.  Cameron Watt discusses the main parties' different approaches to the voluntary sector here.

Comments

[Radical Tory]

The best way to tackle poverty is to reduce tax. People will give more to charity as they won't be squeezed as much plus the idea that 'the govt will take care of it' will be undermined. Also people who are poor shouldn't pay any tax at all.

Other ways to tackle poverty include cutting unemployment benefit to tackle the dependency culture and freeing schools from LEAs so they can create their own aspirational ethos for their pupils.

[James Maskell]

I completely agree regarding welfare dependency. Unfortunately the National Consensus (Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats) doesnt agree, and they make the calls on it...

[TomTom]

A large part of the Middle Class earn the money to pay school-fees by administering the welfare state. They are not going to take kindly to having their living standards threatened by recalcitrant taxpayers.....

[Radical Tory]

TomTom - yes there are public secor middle class people. But they have always voted Labour and Lib Dem and will continue to do so. It's time to stand up for people who work in the private sector and the strivers.

[Traditional Tory]

yes there are public secor middle class people

I worked for the Inland Revenue for 17 years and always found myself surrounded by socialists, especially when I was in London. There were a few Tories, but they were not very staunch.

By the time I had become a long-serving union rep I was keeping a very low party political profile. So low that a former colleague expressed astonishment when he saw me walking past the TV camera at some party conference.

For no particularly good reason he had always assumed I was Labour, like 80%+ of my colleagues.

I can assure Mr Cameron and his acolytes that they will never win the support of these people.

[Stewart Geddes]

Turkeys will never vote for christmas ( or thanksgiving if American).

That however is not a reason to shirk from dealing with a bloated State sector. There are too many people employed by the Government.

Every on of these is a cost centre and not a fee earner. Other than the essential services of Police, Fire, Military and some of the health services they are a drain on society rather than a net contributor.

We need to reduce the size of government over a Parliament. As people have said elsewhere in the comments, the people affected aren't going to vote for us anyway so it wont affect the outcome of the election.

On the other hand those who are fee earners and feel agrieved at the avarice of Government will support us, and that could well make the difference.

[Tony Makara]

Radical Tory, on the subject of cutting unemployment benefit. I don't think its possible to argue that a single person on the dole has more than the basic amount to live on. However I do concede that those with large families can make a lot of money out of the system. Therefore I think that payments should be modified according to the number of children. It might be an idea where children are involved to make a percentage of the benefit available only as food vouchers which cannot be exchanged for alcohol or cigarrettes. That we we could guarentee that the money goes on food for the kids.

Returning to the subject of unemployment itself I don't think we can put ourselves in a position of limiting unemployment benefit to a specific number of weeks if the work just isn't available. We currently have 5.4 million without work yet only 600,000 plus jobs are availableat any given time. So it is physically impossible for everyone to work, unless, as I have suggested in other posts, the state provides waged work for the unemployed.

[TomTom]

I don't think we can put ourselves in a position of limiting unemployment benefit to a specific number of weeks

So why did Margaret Thatcher do just that ?

For 6 months maximum - single person £55/week - after 6 months Means-Tested Support.

No mortgage assistance for first 6 or 9 months of unemployment.

Stewart Geddes has a famous name...go read up on The Geddes Axe....must be a relative of Sir Eric Geddes

[Tony Makara]

TomTom, if people have benefit cut or actually stopped a number will resort to criminal activity. We don't want young women turning to prostitution or young men turning to robbery because they have nothing to live on. I agree we should do something about huge families that are receiving huge amounts in money. Ideally I'd like to see food/clothing vouchers used so that the kids get the money spent on food rather than other things. The problem is there are not enough jobs for every person that is unemployed.

[Yet Another Anon]

Returning to the subject of unemployment itself I don't think we can put ourselves in a position of limiting unemployment benefit to a specific number of weeks if the work just isn't available. We currently have 5.4 million without work yet only 600,000 plus jobs are availableat any given time. So it is physically impossible for everyone to work, unless, as I have suggested in other posts, the state provides waged work for the unemployed.
It is not realistic for the state to provide waged work for the unemployed, this amounts to state subsidised cheap labour for employers where otherwise there would be a job (because the job is only there if there is work that needs doing) that the employer would pay a wage for, if there isn't then it isn't a real job. The Manpower Services Commission jobs and schemes after their schemes amounted to creating and maintaining a dependency culture both among employers and employees and the Conservative government realised this in the 1990s and started winding up schemes leftover from the Heath\Callaghan\Thatcher administrations that merely maintained dependency and were hugely expensive, many in the Labour Party as well realised the futility of such an approach. Unfortunately Gordon Brown and Tony Blair do not seem to have.

The answer is to cut benefit rates for the able bodied and replace many benefits and free services with low interest loans, phase out income based assessments and deregulate the Labour market and leave filling jobs to employers whether public or private sector, not as some kind of glorified job creation scheme but to do necessary work.

[Yet Another Anon]

I'd like to see food/clothing vouchers used so that the kids get the money spent on food rather than other things.
This makes it too easy for people, it takes away responsibility for sorting out their own lives. In modern society, people have to be able to handle money, they have to be able to manage their own lives and make a concious decision to spend money on food, if they can't do that they are of no use to society. If they can't do that they may as well be allowed to starve and have their children taken off them.

if people have benefit cut or actually stopped a number will resort to criminal activity.
That's what the police are for and why people who break the law should be made to suffer. No excuses should be accepted from lawbreakers, and the police should be allowed to get very violent with those who cause trouble.

The problem is there are not enough jobs for every person that is unemployed.
Boost the economy and there will be more jobs, full employment is for the birds as is zero inflation ad infinitum - life can be hard and unpleasant, people just have to accept this.

I don't think its possible to argue that a single person on the dole has more than the basic amount to live on.
The current way that benefits for single people amount to more than half the amount they would normally get in a couple and that the income assessments are the same for single people and couples, means that people who really are a couple are already encouraged to sneak about and fiddle the system - sure it is cheaper to live as two than one, but the priority has to be to simplify the system even if it means a bit of rough justice. No human system can be perfect, whatever system is introduced there will be problems, people just have to accept that life frequently is hard and that for the sake of efficiency sometimes fairness is not a realistic goal.

[Dave J]

Tony, the exact same arguments were used in the US before Bill Clinton reluctantly signed Gingrich's welfare reforms. The result was quite the opposite, hence why he continues to take credit for it.

[TomTom]

COMMENT NOT PUBLISHED BECAUSE IT WAS OFF TOPIC.

[Yet Another Anon]

Bill Clinton reluctantly signed Gingrich's welfare reforms.
Although Newt Gingrich pushed for the Workfare reforms, the White House altered them massively - in the end the whole scheme ended up costing far more than it had done already with a huge number of grants added in by Bill Clinton.

Surely the whole point of Welfare Reform as well as removing disincentives is to achieve savings in the budget, not increase it to record levels.