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Fears for Compact as government ignores final Commission report 1

Governance | Niki May Young | 13 Apr 2011

Representatives from the Office for Civil Society, including Nick Hurd, ignored calls for their input into the evaluation of the Compact overseen by the Commission for the Compact as its final act before closing its doors on 31 March.

Use it or lose it: a summative evaluation of the Compact, prepared for the Commission for the Compact by the new research partnership Practical Wisdom R2Z, comes at a “critical moment for the Compact”, according to Sir Bert Massie, commissioner for the Compact. But while the report is advised by 33 key informants, including Navca and NCVO chiefs Kevin Curley and Sir Stuart Etherington and head of policy at Directory of Social Change, Jay Kennedy, not one current government member would participate.

Meta Zimmeck, co-author of the report with partners Colin Rochester and Bill Rushbrooke, told Civil Society that efforts to gain OCS input were redundant: “We asked Nick Hurd to speak with us - no reply. We asked two members of staff at the OCS in whose remit the Compact fell to speak with us, and we had conversations with their PA who promised to get back to us, but no one did.

"We did speak inter-alia to senior civil servants (now retired) who played a role in the establishment of the Compact. Because of the short timetable we decided to concentrate our interviewing on people who had played a part in the initiation of the Compact and those who were currently involved."

A spokesperson for the OCS said: "The Commission was asked to contact the appropriate policy contact on the matter but as far as we are aware no further contact was made."

Use it or lose it

The report calls for the government and the sector to “use the Compact or lose it”. Informants felt that the Compact's best use had been at local level, and that this could be where it is best used, the report states, adding that "it may be that it is principally at the national level that we will 'lose it'". But its future on any level is by no means certain, Zimmeck advised:

"Like many people in government and in the sector who are committed to the idea of the Compact as a means of encouraging partnership working, we are extremely worried by the current state of play – the narrow focus and instrumental nature of the renewed Compact, the abolition of the Commission for the Compact, and the use of the compact as a fig leaf at hard times,” she said.

Professor Nicholas Deakin, who chaired the Independent Commission on the Future of the Voluntary Sector in England in 1995-6, added to concerns through his input into the report by suggesting that the current government's movement towards localism may actually present as a barrier:

“If government, central and local, is to withdraw entirely from delivery of public services of any kind (except justice and espionage), as seems to be the Prime Minister's present intention, then the state with which any Compact is made will be a quite different sort of animal. When there is a wide range of activities where the voluntary sector and the state share common interests and responsibilities, as they do currently, it still makes sense to talk about ‘partnership’.

“But once central government's role is confined to setting the level and terms of financing and determining the format for contracting it ceases to do so. In these new circumstances, all that would be relevant in the Compact would be a version of the former funding and procurement code, adapted to meet the situation which will now exist.”

National Audit Office review pivotal

A further review of the Compact by the National Audit Office, due to take place in the middle of the year, will be pivotal to the success of the Compact, advised Sir Bert:

“If, after that, the government introduces an effective mechanism for independent oversight of the Compact’s operation and for holding the government to account for its implementation of the Compact, we can see the Compact not just continuing but becoming revitalized.

“However, if the government does not introduce a mechanism of that sort we can see the Compact becoming worthless and devoid of effectiveness,” he warned.

Inhibited by change

Launched in 1998 the Compact provides the framework of partnership between the government and the voluntary and community sector. The Commission for the Compact was launched in 2007 as an independent public body to oversee its operation but was scrapped during the coalition government’s review of public bodies and as of 31 March, has closed its doors.

The success of the Compact has ailed, the report advises, due to “the ebb and flow of energy and resources devoted to its implementation”. Some 12 ministers have been responsible for the implementation of the Compact in its time, “a decidedly mixed bunch”, according to the report, and the administrative unit overseeing the voluntary and community sector has changed five times from the Voluntary and Community Unit of 1999 to the OCS of today.

Shifts in government policy, and the policy environment have seen three incarnations of the document: the original Compact of 1998, the ‘refreshed’ Compact published in December 2009, and the ‘renewed’ Compact drafted by the current coalition in December 2010. The text itself has reduced from 140 pages and 273 undertakings to just 11 pages and 48 undertakings, and the Codes of Good Practice have been removed. This has seen a “narrowing” of the Compacts’ focus of content and “the elimination of volunteering and community groups as meaningful subjects”, the authors claim.

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