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Civil society assembly 'must not become sole sector voice' 1

Finance | Tania Mason | 19 Feb 2008

The new civil society assembly being set up by the NCVO must be careful not to become the only sector voice that the government consults on key issues of public policy, the Directory of Social Change has warned.

The DSC’s head of policy Ben Wittenberg was commenting on a plan by the NCVO to establish a 50-member civil society assembly comprising representatives from a range of groups including universities, trade unions, and co-operatives as well as charities, that will debate public policy issues and try to hammer out co-ordinated positions on them. (See story here)

Wittenberg said that while the DSC agreed that the term ‘civil society’ was a much better definition of the sector than ‘third sector’ – “we’ve always thought the term ‘third sector’ was a crock” – he warned there was a danger the new assembly could become an easy target for a lazy government.

“Creating a space for debate, somewhere to agree achievable objectives, is the right focus,” Wittenberg said. “But there is potentially a danger that irrespective of what it is set up to do, the expectation from government is that it becomes the only place they have to go to get civil society’s view.

“We all know that the government’s approach to consensus building is to go for the lowest common denominator – they won’t consult 100 people if they can consult ten, and they won’t consult five if they can consult one. I think there’s a danger they could see this as the ‘one’.”

He said the NCVO needed to manage the expectations of the government to ensure this didn’t happen, and also said the assembly needed to guard against diluting the various different viewpoints that it houses.

“The problem with having so many voices trying to find a consensus is it either becomes so watered down as to be meaningless, or some voices end up being misrepresented.”

However, he said the DSC thought the assembly could be a positive thing and would “in principle” be interested in joining it.  And he said the NCVO was a good place for it to be based: "Strategic policy is more their bag than operational delivery, I think."

Other civil society organisations also reacted positively and indicated they might wish to become members.

Trade Unions Congress general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Trade unions make an important contribution to civil society, and the TUC would make an equally important contribution to the debate about its future.”

A spokesman from the National Housing Federation said the idea was “something we would warmly welcome”. 

“We consider ourselves a part of the third sector anyway, but for some reason there is a vagueness about whether housing associations are part of the sector. So we would welcome something that formally recognises that we are.”

Etherington also admitted to seeing merit in recasting the Office of the Third Sector (OTS) as the Office of Civil Society. Asked whether Phil Hope, the minister for the third sector, thought this a good idea, or whether the OTS felt it would be practical, the Cabinet Office issued a statement saying: “Government is focused on bringing all the diverse organisations in the third sector and civil society together and building an environment which enables them to thrive and grow in their contribution to Britain's society, economy and environment.”

Acevo chief executive Stephen Bubb said: “Third sector is a term which we have used at acevo to define our membership, which has always included universities, housing associations and other mission-driven organisations.
 
“Amongst all of the priorities facing our sector chief executives, what we call ourselves is only a distraction.”

However, with regard to the assembly, he added: “Acevo would of course wish to be represented on a forum which was speaking on behalf of our sector and acevo members.”

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