Lesley-Anne Alexander, chief executive of RNIB, yesterday said she had a “struggle with the arrogance” of politicians, including the minister for civil society, who believe charities must learn from private companies.

Alexander told the annual conference of chief executives' body Acevo that she thought the general understanding of the sector by politicians was low, and that the sector deserved better support from Parliament.

And she appeared to criticise a speech by Rob Wilson, minister for civil society, who had addressed Acevo’s annual dinner the previous night.

“I’d like to see better support and understanding from politicians," she said. "I’d like a minister for the sector of whom we can be proud. I want a minister who doesn’t think we need masterclasses from the private sector.

“I struggle with the arrogance of the idea that we need to learn from the private sector. Who should we be learning from? Banks? Woolworths? Insurance companies?”

She said all sectors had something they could learn from one another, and should work more closely together, but it was not a one-way process.

“The general election returned to us many politicians who didn’t understand the work we do in the voluntary sector,” she said. “They don’t understand the safety net we provide when the state fails.”

She said she had seen five ministers for civil society, and that “some were more impressive than others”.

She said she wanted the government to reduce regulation, and that charities were regulated by far too many organisations, ranging from the Privy Council to the Care Quality Commission to the Pensions Regulator to HM Revenue & Customs.

“I burn too much charitable overhead on this when I should be – I almost said doing the knitting – helping needy beneficiaries,” she said.

Worst not over

Alexander also said that she felt that charitable beneficiaries “have not seen the worst of the recession”.

She said there were still tens of billions of pounds of cuts to be made to public spending, and a significant proportion of this would be passed down to the sector.

“I think the organisations supporting them are going to have one hell of a struggle on their hands over the next Parliament,” she said.

“There will be an increase in the work you do because government spending cuts will hurt the people who rely on charities disproportionately.”

Alexander also said that charities “were having to invest more in fundraising to bring in the same amount of money” and that they therefore could not rely on fundraising income to cover any shortfall.

She also said charities needed to do more to serve their beneficiaries.

“We ourselves need to be better,” she said. “We need to collaborate better. We need to stop picking fights with each other. Those are the easy fights. If we’re arguing with each other, we aren’t spending our energy tackling society’s really big problems.”

Commission 'not yet fit for purpose'

Alexander also said the Charity Commission needed to do a lot of work to become “fit for purpose”.

“We’ve had a Commission which shoots from the hip and says wild and wacky things,” she said. “It’s become involved in nasty spatting in the press.

“We need a Charity Commission which is fit for purpose. I listen to Paula Sussex and I applaud the ambition there but it’s not the Commission we see today. There’s a lot of work to do to get to the place you want to be.”

Is it worth engaging with government?

Chris Mould, chair of the Trussell Trust, who also spoke at the event, said that his charity had “seriously questioned” whether it was worthwhile engaging with government and campaigning to change public sector behaviour.

He said that engagement with the Department for Work and Pensions had been extremely difficult, and that he was now “ambivalent” about whether it was worth attending meetings with government bodies.

He said that this week his organisation, together with Oxfam and the Child Poverty Action Group, had published a detailed report about the reasons people went to food banks, but it had received little interest.

“If we published a report saying that hospitals were failing and people were dying it would get a reaction,” he said. “We published a report saying that benefits services were failing and people were going destitute, and it didn’t get a reaction.”

Mould urged the Charity Commission not to “water down” guidance on political campaigning.

“When we were criticised before we were able to say to people, ‘you haven’t understood the law, read this’,” he said. “It’s been helpful at putting people making public comments back in their box.”