Cabinet Office minister Ed Miliband refused to commit to a target for the level of public services the government would like the third sector to deliver, under questioning by a committee of MPs this afternoon.

Stephen Bubb is to reduce his employment at acevo to four days a week in order to spend one day as chair of Futurebuilders England. The chief executive of acevo is also chair of the Adventure Capital Fund (ACF), which recently won the tender to run the second phase of the Futurebuilders fund. Bubb, who is paid £10,000 a year as chair of ACF, will effectively become chair of Futurebuilders England (FBE).

The recent publication of DfID funding guidance stating that projects "must not involve direct lobbying of the UK government" appear to contradict the government's exhortation to charities to bite the hand that feeds them. The criteria for the Department for International Development’s 2008-9 development awareness fund stipulates that applicant projects must not involve direct lobbying of the government “or of any international organisations of which the government is a member”.

Training programmes for volunteers and a fund to get disabled people into volunteering have landed a £6m injection as part of the government's response to the report by the Commission on the Future of Volunteering. In January, the Commission published its Manifesto for Change, making a series of wide-reaching recommendations on how to develop the volunteering sector in England.