Finance Committee, 06 Mar 2001

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 6, 2001

Official Report 232KB pdf

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Voluntary Sector Funding

Item 4 is on voluntary sector funding. Members have a copy of Donald Gorrie's paper, which is a follow-up to last week's discussion. Donald, could you speak to your paper before we consider it?

The paper outlines some first thoughts on the subject. I know that members have just received it. I am not trying to rush anything through, but I thought that it would help members if they had an idea of my lines of thought. If members have additional thoughts on the paper, they can add to it or change it.

In the meantime, I am busy visiting organisations. I visited another two yesterday, which opened up new trains of thought. In a fortnight or so, I can come back to the committee with a report that clarifies matters and includes the thoughts of committee members and voluntary organisations.

I am not clear how long the remit for a reporter or the committee should be. Should it be five lines? This is a new animal to me, so I am seeking guidance.

It should be short.

Typically, the remit for an inquiry would be a paragraph—half a dozen lines, say. It should be condensed and focused.

As I was until recently a member of the committee that was known as the Social Inclusion, Housing and Voluntary Sector Committee, I know that the Social Justice Committee has a reporter on the voluntary sector. Karen Whitefield carries out that role. Have you spoken to her, or do you think that it would be useful to do so?

There could also be an overlap with the Local Government Committee. Although it is quite within our remit to consider this sort of issue, we should try to avoid overlaps as a general rule. I am sure that you would agree with that.

Absolutely. I apologise. I should have said that after guidance from our clerk, I spoke to the clerk of the social inclusion committee.

The Social Justice Committee.

Sorry, I meant the Social Justice Committee. I am never very up to date with my terminology. As I understand it, some time ago, Karen Whitefield produced a wide-ranging report on the voluntary sector, which contained a sort of menu. From that menu, the committee chose as a priority to consider charitable status and charity law, which is an important issue. However, the advice from the committee clerk was that there was no prospect in the foreseeable future of looking at the funding of voluntary organisations. Last week I wrote to Karen Whitefield asking for a meeting and for a copy of her report. I hope that, when I report back, I will be able to report fully that there were no concerns in the Social Justice Committee. I could also check that there is no concern among members of the Local Government Committee. I realise that we do not want to overlap but, equally, we do not all want to sit back and do nothing for fear of treading on somebody's toes.

It seems to me that the problems arise from the fact that the nature of voluntary organisations has changed substantially over the past 20 or 25 years. They no longer provide short-term, one-off projects, which are then absorbed into the general system by the local authority, the state or private providers. Now, voluntary organisations often provide core elements of care, which is covered by what Donald Gorrie says about core funding in his paper. My concern is the way in which the core funding is supported through the projects.

Two further elements need to be considered. The first is the continuation or extension of project funding. As we found last year with European funding, there can be a gap of three or four months when the funding runs out. Every voluntary organisation that had European funding suddenly had to find funding for three or four months to keep their projects going. There is therefore a question about the extension of projects until evaluation is completed or until the next tranche of funding becomes available.

The second element is roll-over. I have been approached numberless times with the obscenity of people having redundancy notices handed out to them because there is no extension funding. I have proposed that there should be a three-month clock stop on all voluntary project funding so that, until a decision is made about what is going to happen to a project, there should always be three months of funding available. Instead of having a situation in which redundancy notices are put out and then, a week or six weeks after the project's funding has run out, someone decides that it is a great project and that its funding should continue, anyone giving funding should be obliged to continue to give three months' funding until they have made a decision. That would end the obscenity of serving voluntary workers with repeated redundancy notices. I know one person who has had four redundancy notices in the past 10 years. It is obscene. It is a mismanagement of our human resources. Sorry, convener, but I get very worked up about this.

I can tell. Wearing another hat, I am a member of the board of the Castlemilk Partnership, which is not exactly a social inclusion partnership but is closely related. We deal with many applications along the lines that you have suggested. I certainly sympathise with what you say, but I have a slight worry that, if a three-month period were built in, that might delay by three months consideration of what was to follow. I am talking from experience of the Castlemilk Partnership; we begin looking at projects that have a year to run, so that we can avoid that situation, although that does not always meet with complete success.

I would like to see the three-month buffer built in, but not added on to the end, as that might just encourage people to say that they have longer to think about things than they thought they had. I sympathise with the problem and, having worked in the voluntary sector, I certainly understand the benefit of funding continuity. Lack of continuity is the voluntary sector's greatest bugbear and undermines what voluntary organisations do. Let us face it—the voluntary sector has an increasing role to play in the delivery of services at local authority and health board levels.

Another question about Donald Gorrie's proposal occurred to me. Point 1 mentions national Government and the lottery as sources of funding. They do not fall within the committee's remit, but we cannot consider the funding of voluntary organisations other than holistically, so we must be aware of the potential difficulties that are involved. However, I am not suggesting that that is a reason for not undertaking the inquiry.

I suggest that Donald Gorrie takes on board the points that have been made, refines his proposal and returns with it. As members will be aware, I was unfortunately snowbound last week and could not attend the committee's meeting. I take it that Donald's role as reporter involves his producing a proposal with which the committee would proceed if it agreed to it. The extent of his role as reporter is to provide a basis for a committee inquiry.

At the previous meeting, I asked whether another member would help with visits and drawing up reports, so that we could cover twice as many organisations. I do not know whether anyone else is interested, but Adam Ingram told me that he would be happy to participate. I am not suggesting that we go round on a Noah's ark principle. If we visited organisations individually, we could cover twice as much ground for a written report. Presumably, I would produce a first draft of the remit for the reporter. I could expand on the issues. The proposal shows the background of where we are coming from and the questions that we would ask.

You would take the work further than just providing the remit. You and Adam Ingram would conduct some research and return to the committee with something that would be worked up a bit. Then we would decide how to proceed.

As I understood it, the process would have two stages. We would produce a remit that the committee would agree to or adjust. We would then go out and talk to a whole lot of people to answer the questions and to find the information. We would return with a full report that the committee would decide whether to pursue.

Is that agreed?

Members indicated agreement.

We look forward to receiving a further report from Donald Gorrie in due course.