Finance Committee,

Meeting date: Tuesday, May 8, 2001

Official Report 155KB pdf

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Voluntary Sector Funding

I welcome everyone to the 11th meeting this year of the Finance Committee. I make the usual reminder about mobile phones and pagers. I have received apologies for absence from Adam Ingram, and apologies for late arrival from Elaine Thomson, who is attending a meeting of the Public Petitions Committee. As agreed, Donald Gorrie has supplied us with a briefing paper that outlines how he and Adam Ingram will conduct their research. I invite Donald to speak to his paper.

The paper is in official-speak, in which I am not an expert. I am therefore indebted to the officials who are expert in such language for writing it. I can assure the committee that the final report will be real-speak. However, the paper is useful for setting out the issues in a bureaucratically acceptable manner.

Members have been circulated with a copy of the Scottish Executive document "Review of Funding for the Voluntary Sector" which was mentioned at the previous meeting. The Executive's study of voluntary sector funding seems to be happening in two stages, one of which will finish by the end of July. That work will concentrate almost entirely on direct funding from the Executive to the voluntary organisations and will therefore omit the very important involvement of local government. Although the Executive's study is helpful and will provide good information, it does not cover the whole ground, which means that the committee can do something useful to supplement that work.

It would be helpful to get the committee's guidance on one or two points. Either we produce information on subjects the Executive is specifically pursuing or we try to fill in the gaps. For example, finding out the figures for overall funding of the voluntary sector from national Government, local government and other sources would be a useful exercise, especially if we went back a number of years. We should concentrate on the local government aspect of funding, because most smaller voluntary organisations receive their funding from the local authority, not from the national Government.

We should also examine issues that the committee has already considered, such as core funding versus project funding; how we fill in the gap when short-term funding from the lottery or whatever runs out; whether the prevalent competitive system, in which the voluntary sector bids to provide services for local government and national Government, gives best value.

There is good scope for the committee to produce a worthwhile report before the end of the summer and to build on it by co-operating with the Executive in its longer-term report that will come out in the autumn. I am very happy to co-operate with Adam Ingram and would particularly welcome suggestions from colleagues about groups that we should contact with a view either to visiting them or at least asking them for written information. I am sure that we all have our own networks. If we can draw on them we will get a better overall picture.

I will kick off questions with a point of clarification. On the first page of the briefing paper, the third last paragraph says:

"It is envisaged that the Committee reporters will undertake a paper exercise to build on the work already undertaken".

Who has "already undertaken" that work? Furthermore, your paper continues with the claim that

"a number of voluntary groups have already been contacted and visited".

Have you and Adam Ingram "contacted and visited" those groups, or are you referring to work that has already been undertaken by other committees? We have stressed the need to avoid any duplication.

I am referring to private enterprise work—as it were—that I or other committee members have done as individual MSPs. We could follow that up by including such information officially in a committee report. I am sorry that the sentence is ambiguous; it refers to individual members doing individual work.

But you do not mean any work that you and Adam Ingram have undertaken together.

The two of us have not visited any groups as representatives of the committee; we have just shown private, individual interest in these matters.

I think that the suggestion of a stage 2 process of feeding into the Scottish Executive's wider strategic review is worth while. We should review the matter in June, after the committee submission to the consultation exercise has been completed. That said, the briefing paper is good and covers some important aspects of voluntary sector funding. I can think of two organisations that we should contact, although I do not propose to name them at this stage.

Richard Simpson made some suggestions, although I cannot remember exactly what they were.

I am sure that we will all point you and Adam Ingram in the direction of various organisations.

I refer to page 6 of the Scottish Executive consultation paper. In paragraph 10—headed "Principles for future funding"—the Scottish Executive says that it will make available funding for bodies and activities that

"demonstrably contribute to meeting the Executive's priorities and objectives".

That might not cover some voluntary sector bodies, which might have been set up to address a certain need. Such bodies are not really an arm of the Executive. Will the reporters take account of that when reaching a conclusion that the whole committee can support?

We will try to cover that important philosophical and political issue. It has given rise to conflicting points of view. We need to seek the views of voluntary organisations on it. Organisations complain that when council officials say, "Our priorities are A, B and C," the voluntary sector has to distort its activities to meet those priorities instead of receiving funding for its own priorities. There is room for both approaches.

On page 8 of the Executive document there is a reference to looking for "generic power" to fund the voluntary sector in Scotland. It is further suggested that legislation to that effect might be introduced. Will the report consider that issue?

That is the sort of thing that this committee would certainly be interested in. Presumably, we would want to have a thorough discussion about any legislative changes.

As I have already said to Donald Gorrie, I am particularly interested in situations in which the Executive provides money to local authorities who then provide money to the charitable sector to undertake work that the Government and local authorities want done. In that context, I moved an amendment to the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Bill last week to put in place an opportunity for the care commission to comment on funding arrangements. I did that because the present situation is not joined up. I have suggested to Donald Gorrie that I would be happy to co-operate with him on this issue as I will be working intensively on it before stage 3 of the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Bill.

Are we prepared to accept the proposal in Donald Gorrie's paper with a view to a report coming back to this committee for us to endorse as our response to the consultation document?

Would that be before the end of June?

You mentioned mid-June, when we will be pretty busy. It must be done before the summer recess. We would like to see the report as early as possible if we are to give it proper consideration.

That will give me a chance to sneak out of some electioneering.

Do we agree to accept the proposal in Donald Gorrie's paper?

Members indicated agreement.