The new government’s first few months in power will be tough in terms of spend but will also produce real opportunities for charities to influence policy, according to pollster Peter Harlock.

Harlock, the chief executive of polling and research consultancy ComRes and a former chief operating officer at Save the Children, told an audience of charity activists convened by NCVO last week that the new parliament, with 50 per cent of MPs new to the job, offered an excellent opportunity for the sector.

Backbenchers will play a more important role and it will be much more difficult for the whips to keep them in line, making it easier for sector activists to have impact on them.
The House of Lords could have a more prominent role to play too, Harlock (pictured) said.

Charities wishing to influence the government should remember that top of its immediate priority list will be the survival of the coalition and of its political parties. He said polls taken immediately after the new government was announced showed that most of the public wanted the coalition to work, and did not want to be pushed quickly into another election.

While the Conservatives and the LibDems have their differences, they seemed to be agreed on the urgency of bringing down the budget deficit and of rolling back the state –potentially positive news for charities, Harlock said.

He expected the coalition to last until at least next spring, and added that neither of the two leaders will want to be seen as the deal-breaker. “There is good chemistry between David Cameron and Nick Clegg and they will want the coalition to work until there is clear political advantage in it not working,” Harlock said.

He said there is advantage in the partners collaborating long enough to demonstrate that they have achieved something together, and that is most likely to be around reducing the deficit.

However, he also warned there are backbench activists in both parties that would love the coalition to fail as soon as possible.  The party conferences in the autumn are often unpredictable, “and it wouldn’t take much for the activists to stir things up and put the coalition under strain”.

But in the meantime, charities should make the most of the promised reduction in bureaucracy around tendering, the fluid and dynamic policy positions, and the huge proportion of new MPs and their willingness to be approached.

“My advice is to get in there,” he said. “Policy will change on the hoof as we go forward because of backbench pressure so don’t wait.”

Harlock also said the new government’s propensity for setting up commissions to examine areas of policy that the coalition parties couldn’t agree on, was not a bad thing.  “No commission chair is going to recommend something that he doesn’t believe has a reasonable chance of getting through, so in some ways it is the best bet.”