The chief executive of Only Connect, and former speechwriter for David Cameron, has said that the post of minister for civil society should be abolished as it is “too junior a role”, and that the Prime Minister himself should be directly responsible for the remit.
Danny Kruger (pictured) was speaking last night at the launch of a report which suggested that the Big Society has failed.
Answering the question of ‘what would make a good Big Society?’, he told the room that the role of minister for civil society should be scrapped as it doesn’t hold enough power for the importance of the role. He went on to say that the remit should be undertaken by the Prime Minister himself.
He said: “I would abolish the minister for civil society, I don’t see the point of that department - it’s not even a department, it is a desk in the Cabinet Office. It was inhabited very ably by Nick Hurd, but he was a given a job to do it, not talk about it, and stay out of sight.
“And then we had Brooks Newmark. Who deserved to lose his job not for anything in his personal life but for suggesting that the charity sector should stick to its knitting – the most offensive thing that could have been said when talking about charities taking a stand on public debate.”
Kruger went on to say: “But forget the individuals, the role of the minister for civil society is too junior a role without enough power. The Prime Minister is the rightful minister for civil society, he should give himself that lead and he should take as his challenge and his task the role of exhorting public sector commissioners, business leaders, charities and the public, and challenging them to think differently.”
The current minister for civil society is Rob Wilson, who has held the post since September 2014, when Newmark stepped down from the role.
Kruger, who described the Big Society as a "great idea with an image problem", was on the panel alongside Chris Mould, chair of the Trussell Trust, and Caroline Slocock, director of the think tank Civil Exchange and principal author of the report that was yesterday being launched, Whose Society? The final Big Society audit. The seminar discussion was chaired and introduced by Patrick Butler, editor of society, health and education policy at The Guardian.
Asheem Singh, director of public policy at Acevo, asked the panel whether the Big Society initiative would have got more time if David Cameron had not been a Conservative.
Slocock said that David Cameron gave the Big Society a good label, and although both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had been talking about it, “they’ve all been useless at it”. She said that this is because they haven’t thought about the role of the State.
Kruger said he didn’t think that any political party could have got away with the Big Society, adding that there were particular problems with the Conservatives doing it but “no doubt Labour would have had different problems”. He said that the real question was: “Could anyone actually have done it?” The government set out to change the system and didn’t, but he didn’t think anyone could have done so as the political culture wouldn’t let them. He argued that the political system would have to change first.
