Tag: Tim Loughton

The speech made by Tim Loughton, the then Education Minister, at the BETT Exhibition, Olympia in London on 13 January 2011.

Thanks Dominic, and a very happy new year to you all. It’s a real pleasure to start 2011 with everyone here at the BETT Education Leaders’ Conference and thank you for inviting me.

Can I just begin by paying my thanks to EMAP Connect and the British Educational Suppliers Association for once again organising the exhibition so brilliantly.

It is a huge credit to BETT, its sponsors and its participants, that there’s such an extraordinary wealth of innovation on display. Reflecting the fact that a staggering amount has changed in both the world of technology and in the classroom over the 27 years that this exhibition has been going on.

Who would have thought back in the 80s, for instance, that teachers would be using interactive whiteboards rather than getting their fingers covered in chalk dust.

And who would have thought that instead of an entire class crowding around a single ZX Spectrum, or in my days at school crowding round the abacus, the ratio of computers to pupils would stand at around one to three.

The pace of change has, frankly, been phenomenal. And there is no doubt that everyone involved in all those BETT exhibitions down the years have played a huge role in helping young people and teachers to benefit directly from that change.

So, my thanks once again to everyone who has played their part, and to all those who have come along today. It is a privilege to be able to open the conference officially.

Now, technology is, of course, very rarely out of the news in one form or another. Partly because it is, by its very nature ‘new’ and offers up exciting possibilities – making it good newspaper fodder (or perhaps Kindle fodder as we should now call it) and partly because it so often splits opinion – leaving some of us heralding the endless possibilities it brings, and others worrying about the risks that accompany them.

Generally speaking, the optimists tend to outnumber the pessimists. But inevitably, with any new frontier comes new risks, and there’s always going to be some concern greeting the arrival of innovation.

The difficulty for school leaders, parents and politicians of course, is how to balance the concern with the opportunity – and that’s why it’s so important that we listen to the best possible experts.

Unfortunately, I know one of the most eminent of those, Professor Tanya Byron, can’t be with us today. But I am very grateful for the work she has been doing with the Department.

A few weeks ago, she came in to the Department and gave a very informative, very inspiring presentation to the Secretary of State about the use of technology by children and young people.

One of the many interesting points she made then – which any of you who were at the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust conference in November might have heard her talk about – was the history of ‘moral panics’ we’ve had in the past with regard to new technology.

She talked, for example, about the consternation in the church that greeted the arrival of printing presses. The panic that greeted the arrival of the film industry in the 1920s – although it started before this in my constituency…

And she also mentioned the apparently frenzied debate surrounding the arrival of the sofa – which people were afraid would lead to young people lazing around all day.

However, as Tanya has argued so well, the arrival of new technology almost invariably offers far more opportunity than it does risk – and never has this been more true than it is today in the world of education.

Now, more than ever before, technology is of profound importance to young people’s development. We know it supports good teaching, we know it helps students get better results, we know it helps to reduce truancy…

We even know it can support higher order critical skills: such as reasoning, analysis, scientific enquiry – and by engaging students in authentic, complex tasks.

So, even though when most of us were growing up, it didn’t really matter whether you were particularly computer or gadget literate – in 2011, the world is very different.

And whether we see only the endless possibilities, or see only the risks, there’s no denying that technology is – as Microsoft’s Chief Executive Steve Bullmer once said – something that ‘makes real people more effective, every day, in some basic and fundamental thing that they want to do’.

Here in the UK of course, we can take some pride in the fact that we’ve adapted as quickly as we have to that transformation.

As many of you will know, we have the highest levels of technology in our classrooms of anywhere in the European Union. The majority of our children have their own online learning space, and practically every school in this country is hooked up to – and in many cases making great use of – broadband.

This is a huge credit to great headteachers and teachers, fantastic ICT suppliers like those exhibiting here and, of course, to young people themselves.

And it has left us uniquely well positioned – I think – to equip pupils with the technical expertise they’ll need to achieve to the very best of their abilities in a very tough, very competitive world.

Nonetheless, this conference is about the future of education, rather than the past. And we’re now facing very different challenges, and answering very different questions, to the ones we were facing 10, or even just five years ago.

It’s no longer simply about shoehorning technology into the classroom. It’s about how we help schools to access and use it effectively. And it’s about how we help young people to benefit from innovation safely.

Today, I want to look at both of these points. But – if I can – I’m going to start with the second, partly because I’ve spent much of my time in Government, and before that in opposition, campaigning on issues like child internet safety and child protection.

And partly because there’s been a huge amount of attention focused on the issue over the last few weeks.

Just this Monday, for example, we saw the head of Woldingham School in Surrey, Jayne Triffitt, outline her concerns over the abuse of the social networking site Little Gossip, after some students used it to spread malicious rumours about their peers and teachers.

On the same day, we saw the National Association of Head Teachers publish guidance for schools on how to deal with internet campaigns that target teachers or pupils – an issue that has also been championed by the NASUWT, amongst others, in recent years.

All of this action reflects the fact that online abuse – and cyber bullying in particular – has fast become the bindweed of the internet.

No matter where you cut it off, it always seems to creep its way back onto computer screens and wrap itself around children’s lives – and as a result, it’s become a hugely, hugely damaging phenomena.

We’ve seen young people targeted in virtual gaming environments – we’ve seen them targeted on sites like Facebook and Twitter. We’ve seen them targeted through mobile phones and email.

It is, in short, a very 21st century problem – and also a particularly nasty, particularly virulent one.

It is the nameless, faceless, witless kind of bullying that is such a unique feature of cyberspace. The kind of bullying where a child comes home from school and finds a rumour splashed all over a website – or opens up an email to discover a doctored picture of themselves distributed to everyone in their address book.

In this respect, the computer, phone, tablet and games console have the potential to become like a Trojan horse, smuggling provocation, innuendo and rumour into the home in a way that no other generation has ever had to contend with.

For any of us who are parents, that kind of threat is of course hugely concerning. It’s bad enough in the playground or in the classroom, but when it infiltrates your home, it can make it impossibly difficult to know how to protect your children.

We think the time has come to restore the balance of power back in favour of parents – and to ensure that the opportunities that technology brings are managed both effectively and sensibly.

Can that be done through legislation? By increasing regulation? Or by policing every website from the centre of Government? We don’t think so – simply because the internet is impossibly fast moving and no one individual, group or organisation can realistically tackle it on its own.

Instead, we know it has to be a joint effort, with government, industry, business, retailers, schools and parents all taking responsibility to stamp out abuse in the system wherever we see it.

As an example of how this can work, I was at an event at Google a few months ago where the ‘Fix my street’ website was mentioned.

For anyone who hasn’t heard about it, it’s basically a site where people can go to report anything that might need attention in their communities – like pot holes in the road or broken street lights.

Over the years, it’s been pretty successful – and it’s now got to the point where we’ve even seen an Australian spin-off being launched – called, in the best of Aussie traditions: ‘It’s Buggered Mate’.

Now, the reason why I think these sites have worked is because they rely on the idea of collective responsibility. The idea that we should all take a stake in the issue, rather than rely on others to take it for us.

In the case of cyberbullying, that means encouraging the fantastic work that’s being done by cyber-mentors through the Beatbullying charity; it means parents reporting abuse; it means teachers alerting education technology providers to any potential risks; it means those in industry reacting quickly and decisively to protect children; and – finally – it means Government creating the conditions where all of these things can happen effectively.

That’s why my colleagues on the UK Council for Internet Safety, which I now co-chair, want to move increasingly towards tough self-regulation. With internet service providers having more responsibility for managing potentially harmful sites – and parents and children having greater power to report abuse.

At the same time, we are also discussing how we give those same parents the most up-to-date advice and guidance on new technologies, so that they are empowered enough to spot and prevent abuse at the first opportunity. Too often parents are not properly factored into the equation.

As many of you will know, we are currently in discussion with representatives in the sector about how all of this is going to happen. And there’s now a very clear, very determined commitment within the industry towards developing a robust and effective self-regulatory framework, that will combat cyberbullying and keep children safe.

A promising move I think, and we’re pleased that this is being backed up by organisations like Facebook and Microsoft, who are playing a vital role through their own membership of the Council.

Indeed, I am delighted to be able to announce today that BSI has just awarded its first ever kitemark for parental control software to Net Intelligence, which we will be handing over shortly.

A fabulous achievement on their part, and a hugely important one for two reasons in particular.

Firstly, because it lets us take advantage of the opportunities that technology brings and minimise the risks.

Secondly, because it allows us to place technology at the centre of educational reform in the future – a crucial point I think, because while we are doing fantastically well in terms of bringing technology into the classroom, we sadly aren’t doing anything like as well when it comes to educating our children and young people to reach their full potential.

We know, for instance, that we’ve been slipping further and further behind our global competitors over the last few years, with the OECD international performance tables showing that since the year 2000, we’ve fallen from 4th to 16th in science, from 7th to 25th in literacy, and from 8th to 28th in maths.

And we also know that there is now an historically high divide in attainment between those from the poorest backgrounds, and those from the wealthiest.

This drift cannot be allowed to continue. It’s unfair on children who only get one chance of a good education, it’s unfair on their families, and it’s unfair on our society and the businesses who form the backbone of our economy.
Fortunately however, technology does provide a unique opportunity to help us regain that competitive edge by supporting us to deliver the improvements we need to make.

And in our recent schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, we set out a comprehensive programme of reform for schools to allow us to build that truly world-class education system.

That includes paying greater attention to improving teacher quality, granting greater autonomy to the front line, modernising curricula, making schools more accountable to their communities, harnessing detailed performance data, and encouraging professional collaboration so that we can become one of the world’s top performers – and close the gap between rich and poor.

That is the challenge facing us – and technology – we think – will play a critical supporting role in meeting it.

Indeed, you only have to have a quick wander around the exhibition area here to see some of the brilliant ways that technology-based learning can enrich the curriculum.

For example, I’ve been incredibly impressed with how video games like the Sims Series and Civilisation can be used for education purposes. My daughters certainly spent hours on it when they were younger.

And I know many of you will also have seen the fantastic games that have been developed by mathematician Marcus Du Sautoy, which have shown how children’s imaginations can be harnessed to allow a deep understanding of even the most complex ideas.

However, in order to derive the maximum benefit from this kind of innovation, education leaders have to have the final say over what technology they use, and when they use it.

We don’t think that teachers or school business managers should come to BETT with a shopping list from central government. The world of technology is simply too fluid for Whitehall to be able to decree what should, or shouldn’t be in the classroom.

Instead, schools should come ready to make procurement decisions that are based on a detailed knowledge of their own pupils – and be ready to draw up their own wish list of technologies that will inspire young people.

That might mean introducing voting technology into the classroom, which has happened so successfully in many schools already – ‘democratizing’ the learning experience and making it more interactive.

It might mean installing a recording studio, it might mean setting up video links with schools around the world, it might mean using 3D TV.

Whatever it is, and however it works, we know that if we want to be truly, truly ambitious about maintaining a technological edge in this country, we have to give teachers and school leaders that flexibility and power to make their own choices – and we also have to free up as much investment as we can for them to spend on technology.

None of this, however, means that schools are being asked to work in isolation.

Over the coming months and years, government will continue to play a crucial supporting role – helping education leaders by taking on procurement and support for special educational needs; by supporting schools to achieve value for money in things like bulk software licensing; by identifying and sharing best practice as it evolves in the classroom, and by supporting suppliers to ensure value for money.

The straightforward reality though, is that schools, teachers and industry know the best way to extract value from technology in education.

And it seems to me that the BETT exhibition is a perfect example of how those freedoms can be used most effectively to help teachers raise standards in our schools – and to take full advantage of the opportunities that technology creates.

To end, let me just thank Dominic again for hosting this fantastic conference – and thank his team for all their incredibly hard work in setting up the exhibition.

The future of education in this country depends on how well we equip young people to go on and succeed in their lives. And all of us know that if we are serious about achieving that ambition, it has to include giving them access to the very best that technology has to offer.

The time has come to take advantage of that opportunity by encouraging school leaders to come along to exhibitions like this, and decide for themselves what pupils need.

The time has come to ensure that children and young people are able to take advantage of the wonders that technology brings – without the dangers.

The time has come to place technology at the absolute centre of our aspirations for a world class education sector.

So, thank you all once again. It has been a huge pleasure to be here today and I hope you enjoy both the rest of the conference, and the exhibition itself – which is such a wonderful advert for some of the truly outstanding British educational technology that is being used in classrooms right across the world.

Thank you.

The speech made by Tim Loughton, the then Education Minister, on 9 February 2011.

Can I start by saying how delighted and privileged I am to be asked to give the 20th Edith Kahn Memorial Lecture? My association with the excellent organisation that is CSV goes back to 2001 when I became a trustee, and whilst I regretfully and reluctantly had to give up that position after the election this year, that does not mean that my respect and association with the charity should be any less enthusiastic. And can I thank, on behalf of CSV, all the supporters – many of them represented here today – for all that you do to make the work of the CSV possible?

This year we are in the House of Lords – a slightly ominous development given the not-entirely apocryphal anecdote about graffiti in one of our noble colleagues’ loos here which poses the question – ‘What do you call 2 MPs at the bottom of the ocean?’ – to which has been added the answer: – ‘a good start!’ It is gratifying, however, that politicians are still invited to address such august audiences after everything that has passed.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a voluntary organisation in possession of a good idea and in want of a meeting with a minister will use the buzz phrase ‘Big Society’ before breakfast, lunch and dinner – to open with a cacophonous car-crash of mixed misquotes. But it does seem that every time I receive a letter or email requesting a meeting, let alone the subsequent meeting itself, there is something of a target quota system operating to see how many times ‘Big Society’ can be inserted into the dialogue.

The trouble is that most people don’t know what the Big Society really means, least of all the unfortunate ministers who have to articulate it. What actually is the Big Society, let alone is it good or not? Exactly how big is it now or is it going to be? Is it, in fact, Ann Widdecombe? Is it a very British thing? Or is it another American import?

In America, the Big Society can, of course, mean something completely different, as a recent survey showed that one in three Americans weighs more than the other two put together – a statistic that gave rise to a recent Sun headline to an article on an environmental report that ‘Fatties cause global warning’.

More appropriately, however, we perhaps heard early rumblings of what it meant when President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke in 1964 of America’s ‘opportunity to move not only towards the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the great society’. His predecessor John Adams, however, the second president of the US, warned more ominously that ‘the happiness of society is the end of government’.

On the other side of the Channel, Rousseau put it more desperately: ‘Nature makes man happy and good but society corrupts him and makes him miserable’.

So is there anything more British about the Big Society? Well, of course Britishness is something of a movable feast these days. Being British these days is about driving in a German car to an Irish pub for a Belgian beer, then travelling home via an Indian restaurant or grabbing a Turkish kebab on the way, to enjoy a TV supper sitting on Swedish furniture, watching American shows on a Japanese television.

Only in Britain can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
Only in Britain do supermarkets make sick people walk all the way to the back of the shop to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
Only in Britain do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a diet coke.
And only in Britain do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
Clearly then, to be born British is to be born into a world of contrast and contradiction, where eccentricity and manners, faith and cynicism, tradition and modernity, have all conflated to create this collective sense of identity that is framed far more by its ambiguities than its consistencies.

And yet, through some quirk of anthropology, those same great ambiguities also combined to create one of most enduring, and famed, of all national characteristics -the British sense of fair play – with the nation both admired and mocked, in almost equal measure, for its strict codes of social conduct and propriety, which Sir Malcolm Bradbury once jokingly described as ‘the most rigid system of immorality in the world’.

Now, in part, you could argue that that reputation was never much more than a fig leaf, conceived of on the playing fields of Eton. But in reality, the British sense of social justice and generosity goes far deeper than that, with an extraordinarily rich catalogue of great names and moments that have helped shape, and distinguish, our communities over the years. Whether that was the first time William Wilberforce stood up in the House of Commons to make the case for the abolition of slavery. Whether it was Mary Seacole setting sail from Jamaica to volunteer as a nurse during the Crimean War, or whether it was the RAC volunteers who gave up their cars to take men and women to hospital during the blitz, and the continued, unabated acts of charity by organisations like the British Red Cross, Barnardos and – of course – CSV. Each, in their own right, helping to define what it now means to be British.

Increasingly however, volunteering and acts of charity have become a less and less visible feature of our national conscience, largely forgotten and bypassed by successive governments who have tended to ignore the good and focus on the bad when they design and institute policy. Which explains, perhaps, why we’ve seen so many governments attempt to muscle in on family and community life over the last 30 or so years – in a well intentioned but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to make up for the fact that families have become increasingly nuclear, and communities increasingly fragmented.

Sadly, as we all know, this approach has largely failed – and many of the gravest problems we today associate with those social changes are, in fact, greater than ever, with the UK suffering from some of the highest levels of drug and alcohol abuse amongst young people anywhere in the world, having the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, stubbornly high levels of child poverty, and more than a million young people suffering from some kind of mental health condition.

So today I wanted to argue the case for a return to social policies that reinforce and support communities rather than supplant them. And a return to the kind of governance that promotes the work of organisations like the CSV, and its workers and volunteers, and helps families and local communities to tap into the spirit of generosity that’s such an important hallmark of British life. That is the starting point for the Big Society.

Because the simple reality, as I see it, is that although our society has changed in many ways, our nature hasn’t. For as long as humans have stalked the Earth, we have been distinguished by our altruism and sense of community. When hunter gatherers emerged from the tree line some 12,000 years ago, dragging their knuckles behind them, they didn’t survive by bashing each other over the heads with their clubs; they survived because they offered each other support. Altruism was, to put it bluntly, crucial to their social cohesion – precisely because a cohesive group was more likely to survive in interactions with other groups.

Even now, scientists argue over why that is – with many of the most eminent claiming it must be an evolutionary mistake and others, like Richard Dawkins, famously saying, ‘we have to teach generosity because we are born selfish’. But for the rest of us, it is, perhaps, simply enough to know that altruism does indeed exist. And that its benefits to our communities are vast, as, in fact, are its psychological and practical benefits to individuals. We know, for instance, that volunteering stimulates the reward centres in our brains. It helps people access social networks, provides opportunities for learning and developing skills, and gives us the satisfaction of making a contribution. In the case of CSV research, we notoriously know, of course, that 17 per cent of 18- to 24-year-old volunteers also claim that volunteering improves their sex lives.

In short, not only is being nice good for others – it is also personally rewarding and likely to be reciprocated. Conversely, of course, being selfish or unpleasant is likely to reap its own rewards.

A lesson was vividly highlighted to me on the train the other day by my private secretary, who told me a story about the late Alan Clark – who, although a wonderful politician and writer, had something of a reputation for his fiery personality. Apparently, whilst he was in government, one of his speechwriters decided to get his own back after a series of particularly bruising encounters – just before Clark was due to deliver an address at a major conference on employment law.

The speechwriter presented Clark with the draft just before he went on stage. The first page said something like, ‘Good morning. I’m delighted to be here. Today I will run you through seventeen complex issues in employment law, which are in desperate need of reform’. On the second page, the speechwriter had simply scrawled the words, ‘You’re on your own now, you bastard…’

I restocked the jelly babies I keep on my desk for officials almost immediately after hearing that story.

The fact is, we are healthier, happier, safer, and more socially cohesive when we are at our most altruistic – a point that has long been recognised by many of our greatest leaders, both past and present – with Churchill once famously saying that, ‘we make a living by what we do but we make a life by what we give’, and Barack Obama making the point, when he launched his new age of responsibility in the States, that people who join together ‘do amazing things’.

Nevertheless, I’ve heard the somewhat disingenuous arguments that the Big Society is either a way of providing public services through the back door or that it’s profoundly over-optimistic about the scale of change it can deliver.

The first is, perhaps, the most important to counter, because it makes the tacit – and frankly rather discredited assumption – that public services are like a glorious medicine chest of potions, lotions and tablets that have the capacity to cure all social problems. The simple reality is that too much government frequently adds to problems rather than solve them – by stripping away individual accountability and responsibility. That is what Rousseau was talking about. And by supplanting the family and community support structures that give each and everyone one of us our mental resilience, adaptability and strength.

As to the second charge against the Big Society, around the scale of its ambition, the answer is, I think, all around us. It’s in the work of great, great organisations like the CSV and its members. It’s in the continued commitment of the 22 million plus volunteers who support their communities. And it’s in the growing interest of business in corporate social responsibility – as we heard so strikingly from a previous Edith Kahn memorial lecturer, the Chief Executive of Timberland, who has been in the vanguard of corporate employee volunteering schemes. In short, no matter where you look, kindness, generosity and community activism are on display.

The London Olympics, for example, has already attracted well over 100,000 volunteers who want to help out for those two weeks in 2012 – huge numbers of people who have put their names forward despite the fact that most of them know they’re not going to be handing Usain Bolt his tracksuit top or marshalling the Opening Ceremony, but are instead doing it because they know that volunteering is something special.

In business there is a growing realisation amongst chief execs that the promotion of volunteering and social responsibility amongst staff has potentially huge benefits for both morale and balance sheets. I was at an event hosted by News International recently to mark its decision to allow each member of its staff to take up to four days off work for volunteering each year, which is then posted on their pay slip. Their scheme has been modelled on that of Timberland and I am delighted that it was CSV who helped broker that sharing of best practice.

Perhaps this is really a new manifestation of older schemes and even older notions – philanthropy, particularly local philanthropy. When I think back to my own constituency and the town of Worthing, many of the municipal good works that marked a period of frenetic development in the early nineteenth century when we officially became a town were instigated not from central government but from local businessmen and community-minded residents. The theatre, assembly rooms, baths and circulating library all have their origins in this period, and later the town’s drainage system, as Worthing promoted itself in contrast to nearby Brighton as ‘a nice place for nice people’.

Last week I joined a group of business leaders in Blackburn working with the founders of the Bolton Lads and Girls Club – the best youth club in the UK – to establish a network of similar youth facilities across the North West. Complimented by some seed corn public funds, they are looking to build state-of-the-art facilities for young people; help run and maintain them with volunteer time from their employees; develop them as hubs for other voluntary organisations, educational and other activities; and use them to train and bring on young people as potential recruits. This surely is a microcosm of what the Big Society is all about, with Government as enabler and supporter, and surely that contributes to a good society.

Elsewhere in our communities there are countless thousands of smaller projects, organisations and volunteering opportunities in action – whether that is acting as a ‘toad warden’ and helping toads across the road, or whether it’s taking the simplest of civic responsibilities in your community. Just a few weeks ago, for example, I was at an event at Google headquarters in London, where the ‘Fix my Street’ website was mentioned, which if you haven’t seen it online already, basically gives people the opportunity to report anything and everything from broken street lights, to pot holes on their road. I’m told it is now so successful that there’s even an iPhone app for it, and an Australian spin-off called – in good old Aussie fashion – ‘It’s Buggered Mate’.

The point is surely this: we’re all volunteers, even if we don’t realise it. It might not be the grandest gesture, or even a life-changing experience, but we all have that deeply ingrained understanding of the benefits of altruism and reciprocity.

And, as one of my old opponents, the former Home Secretary and longstanding CSV supporter, David Blunkett, once pointed out, this spirit of generosity should be a cornerstone of any good government. Or, in his own words: ‘People coming together on a voluntary basis to achieve common aims is a key feature of a dynamic democracy … Volunteering empowers people … it strengthens the bonds between individuals which are the bedrock of strong civil society’.

How right he was. And the Big Society is about harnessing this understanding and using the enormous pool of goodwill, sense of fair play and desire for social justice that we know exists in this country, to help create, as Matthew Parris has called it, a ‘big-hearted society’.

Does that mean Government wriggles out of its responsibilities? Does it mean Whitehall has no role to play in family and community life? The simple answer is no, absolutely not. A Big Society remains a supported society, where government has a hugely important role to play.

But I see our job as one of making it easier for the voluntary and community sector to step in – to provide that help – part of which is making sure organisations like CSV have the advice and support they need to develop and grow. Part of which is providing greater financial support and the policies to unlock volunteering and community action.
The Big Society bank, for instance, which formed one of the main compacts in the Coalition Agreement, will unlock hundreds of millions of pounds worth of new finance, using unclaimed assets to finance and sustain the voluntary sector.

We are also giving neighbourhoods the ability to take greater ownership of local projects. Whether that’s helping parents to open new schools so that they have greater control over their children’s education, or whether it’s giving communities the opportunity to take over local amenities such as parks and libraries that are under threat.

However, I do also think there is a trade-off in the sense that the voluntary sector itself needs to become more savvy about the way it works – particularly where it is being supported by government money. And we in turn, need to think smarter about how we use the voluntary sector in local services.

This is one of the reasons why we want to offer every young person in the country the opportunity to take part in an experience – through the National Citizen Service – that will help their personal development, strengthen their sense of identity, and give them the opportunity for community service. But provide it through civil society organisation rather than through an almost inevitably less effective, and less inventive, government programme.

In addition, we are encouraging local councils in particular to consider how they might use outstanding voluntary and community organisations to provide services for young people in particular.

We are providing neighbourhood grants for the UK’s poorest areas, with that money going to charities and social enterprises to work with new and existing groups in the most deprived and broken communities.

And we are establishing national centres for community organising that will train thousands of independent community organisers who can then, in turn, help communities to tackle the individual social challenges they face – a project that has, I must add, already been hugely successful in US cities like Chicago.

There is, though, another aspect to the Big Society because it is not just a one-way street where government withdraws and frees up local energy and talent and generosity to get on with it. Government – national and local – needs to do its bit too. Back in 1992 when I first stood for Parliament against David Blunkett in Sheffield and narrowly lost by 22,681 votes on the day, one innovation was the Citizen’s Charter and in particular, the Tenant’s Charter. Council tenants who did their bit and looked after their properties only to bang their head against a brick wall when it came to help from the Council with essential repairs, were empowered to have the work done privately and then send the bill to the Council. Yet even when tenants did join together and look after their own properties and even their neighbourhoods, there was no recognition of this and no two-way street when help was required.

This was self-defeating and the Big Society must mean that good citizens who do their bit must be recognised, and the local authority must do its bit in return. When you play to the strengths of people we know that many of them will step forward and go beyond their responsibilities. It’s cheaper, quicker and just better. Many innovative housing associations, such as the Irwell Valley in Salford, have been practising this for years. Tenants who look after their properties, keep the environment tidy and discourage anti-social behaviour in their localities are rewarded with a gold card discount scheme, faster repairs and preferential tenancies for their children. The Big Society has much to learn from Irwell Valley and its counterparts.

The point is, this is a new kind of governance that can adapt to the changes in society we have seen over the years, but takes as its starting point one of the most fundamental building blocks of our cultural development – altruism. Everyone can be part of it, although a bit of motivation and energy is preferable. Even those who might claim that they are not so much lazy but rather ‘blessed with a lack of ambition!’

Our society was not made great by big government; it was made great by big communities and individuals – with people willing to share, trade, help, cooperate and support each other – whether that is a man like Wilberforce, a woman like Seacole, or an organisation like the CSV. History remembers those who have given back to their communities rather than those who have taken from them.

So whilst it is true that the recession has made the case for radical reform greater and more urgent, the Big Society has never been an idea born of economic expediency. It is an idea based on optimism and on the example of great, great organisations like the CSV, its members and its volunteers. It is an idea based, at its most beautifully simple, on human nature.

So maybe everything I have spent the last half an hour articulating was academic and unnecessary, occasionally boring and occasionally irreverent. Because surely one of the starkest manifestations of the Big Society is right in front of me – CSV. Led by what we can call a one-woman Big Society in the form of Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, who in the 45 years she has run this wonderful organisation has been ahead of the game in promoting, in practical terms, what the Big Society is all about – and surely that has been, and is, an undeniably good thing.

Thank you.

 

The speech made by Tim Loughton, the then Children’s Minister, on 16 September 2010.

Good morning and thank you Kevin. It really is a very genuine pleasure to be here today as a guest of the EESI project.

Now, Kevin has outlined some of the uncertainties facing the voluntary sector as we lead up to the spending review next month. And, of course, the difficulties that our own West Sussex EESI project has been dealing with as its Big Lottery funding comes to an end after Christmas.

It is, clearly, absolutely vital that that funding challenge is resolved, and resolved quickly. And I’m delighted that the CVS network has been coming together to help make sure that the project can continue to deliver its services to community groups in the constituency.

It’s patently obvious when you hear about the work that the project has been involved in, and about the quality of its advice, that it is a hugely valuable commodity for our local services and organisations. Helping, among others, the West Sussex fire service. Along with a vast range of our local charities, from drug addiction organisations through to heritage societies. And, of course, any number of community groups.

The question I wanted to ask today is whether we have done enough in the past to promote that kind of work and volunteering more generally? My own feeling is that we haven’t. Volunteering and community groups have always been valued, yes. But they’ve very rarely been trusted to lead change. Instead, they’ve been marginalised by the architecture of big government. With quangos, arm’s-length bodies, bureaucrats and goodness knows who else, often crushing the capacity of local communities to take power into their own hands, despite what have often been very well-intentioned Government interventions.

The problem, as I see it, is that that approach hasn’t really worked. Successive governments have desperately tried to patch over the effects of the changes we have seen in society over the last 40 or so years – frittering away billions of pounds in the process on x, y, z glitzy Whitehall initiatives. Unfortunately, like a used car salesman who promises a ‘nice little runner’, but delivers an old banger that conks out a few metres from the showroom, we have all too often been left feeling a little cheated, with a series of underperforming programmes rolling off the shelves that have never quite lived up to the marketing hype.

The fact is: society has changed hugely. Families have become more nuclear, and communities more fragmented, and the UK has had to face up to the consequences of that change, with some of the highest levels of alcohol and drug use amongst its young people in the developed world, the highest teenage pregnancy rates in Europe, and more than a million of our children suffering from some kind of mental health disorder.

Unfortunately, over the years, successive governments assumed that the best way of addressing those issues was to supplant local communities rather than support them, acting as a surrogate parent. A policy that makes the rather depressing assumption that in the modern world we don’t really care enough about each other to be trusted. But the simple reality is that although society has changed, our nature hasn’t. For as long as humans have stalked the earth, we have been distinguished by our altruism and sense of community.

And while scientists argue over why that is – with many of the most eminent claiming it must be an evolutionary mistake, and others like Richard Dawkins famously saying: ‘we have to teach generosity because we are born selfish’ – the rest of us are left to say that it is, perhaps, simply enough to know that altruism does indeed exist. And that its benefits to our communities are vast, as in fact are its psychological and practical benefits to individuals. We know, for instance, that volunteering stimulates the reward centres in our brains. It helps people access social networks, provides opportunities for learning and developing skills, and gives us the satisfaction of making a contribution.

I’ve seen, however, as I’m sure we all have, the somewhat disingenuous argument that volunteering is a way of providing public services through the back door. But that totally misses the point, I think. As Barack Obama said when calling for a new age of responsibility in the States, people who join together can ‘do amazing things’.

That’s not something Government can conjure up through the traditional mechanisms of Whitehall. That has been tried and it’s failed. It is, instead, something that is done by properly supporting our 22 million plus volunteers to address the things that are important to them.

Indeed, one of my old opponents, the former Home Secretary David Blunkett, once said: ‘People coming together on a voluntary basis to achieve common aims is a key feature of a dynamic democracy … Volunteering empowers people … it strengthens the bonds between individuals which are the bedrock of strong civil society.’

How right he was – and it is that understanding that goes to the heart of the Coalition’s Big Society plans. The idea that big communities are based on the altruism and expertise of great individuals – not on big government.

In essence, the Big Society is about turning less often to central government to provide all the answers, and instead supporting local communities and volunteers to build their own solutions, helping projects like EESI to carry on the great work they are doing.

It does, though, challenge everyone to think differently. It involves a new relationship and partnership between the voluntary, private and statutory sectors. One where social entrepreneurs, charities and others collaborate in the design and delivery of complementary services and initiatives.

We know it works because we can see it operating with our own eyes, from the smallest community projects in Worthing, to the biggest worldwide events. Just this week, for instance, London 2012 launched its campaign to recruit 70,000 volunteers for the Olympics. Huge numbers of people are expected to apply, despite the fact most of them know they are not going to be handing Usain Bolt his tracksuit top or marshalling the opening ceremony. Instead, they are doing it because they know that volunteering is something special.

And it’s not always just about helping others; it can be just as empowering to take individual responsibility for improving your own environment or circumstances rather than relying on others. I was at an event at Google in London the other day where the ‘Fix my Street’ website was mentioned. If you haven’t seen it, it basically gives people the opportunity to report anything and everything from broken street lights to potholes on their road. It’s proving so successful there’s even an iPhone app for it now, and an Australian spin-off called – in good old Aussie fashion – ‘It’s Buggered Mate’.

The point surely is that in an age where information flows more quickly than ever before, when people are in greater control of their lives than ever before, and where we are more sceptical than ever before of attempts at large-scale social engineering, communities want and expect to have greater say over their own local priorities.

This is why we want to make volunteering and community groups the cornerstone of villages, towns and cities across the country through the Big Society. Using what might be perceived as the ‘old-fashioned’ virtue of altruism, to effect a thoroughly modern type of government. And, at the same time, to make those ‘amazing things’ happen that Barack Obama talked about.

Does that mean Government wriggles out of its responsibilities? Does it mean Whitehall has no role to play in family and community life? The simple answer is no. Government still has a vitally important part to play, and will of course always have a duty to protect citizens and promote their welfare. But that role should always be to support, rather than supplant our local communities.

I see our job as one of making it easier for the voluntary and community sector to step in. To provide that help, part of which is making sure organisations have the advice and support they need to develop and grow, part of which is providing greater financial support and the policies to unlock volunteering and community action.

The Big Society bank, for instance, which formed one of the main compacts in the Coalition Agreement, will unlock hundreds of millions of pounds worth of new finance. Using unclaimed assets to finance and sustain the voluntary sector, whilst we are already giving neighbourhoods the ability to take greater ownership of local projects, whether that’s helping parents to open new schools so that they have greater control over their children’s education, or whether it’s giving communities the opportunity to take over local amenities such as parks and libraries that are under threat.

In addition:

We have committed to provide greater information to local communities on what is being spent by central government in their area, and they’ll be given the power to influence how this money is spent.

Communities will be provided with detailed, street-by-street, crime data, enabling residents to hold the police to account.

We will provide neighbourhood grants for the UK’s poorest areas. With that money going to charities and social enterprises to work with new and existing groups in the most deprived and broken communities.

We will establish ‘National Centres for Community Organising’ that will train thousands of independent community organisers who can then, in turn, help communities to tackle the individual social challenges they face. A project that has, I must add, already been hugely successful in US cities like Chicago.

And, finally, we’re introducing the National Citizen Service, which will provide a programme for 16-year-olds to give them a chance to develop the skills needed to be active and responsible citizens, to mix with people from different backgrounds, and to start getting involved in their communities.

The point is, this is a new type of government that can adapt to the changes in society we have seen over the years, but that takes as its starting point one of the most fundamental building blocks of human nature: altruism.

Our society was not made great by strong government and weak communities. It was made great by the strength of its communities. With people willing to share, trade, help, cooperate and support each other.

In Worthing and West Sussex, we have some of the most profound examples of how volunteering and community spirit can create strong networks of anywhere in the country. Much of that is down to the resilience and support of organisations like the EESI project. I can promise you today, both as a constituency MP and a Government minister, that the Coalition is determined to build on that success and place volunteering and social responsibility at the very heart of British society.

The Big Society should mean a very big future for EESI, and the partners it supports so brilliantly.

Thank you