Following the conference earlier this week, David Ainsworth asks whether we know more about the Tories' policies for the sector.

There was a lot of energy at the Conservative Party Conference this week. There was a buzz in the air – a surprisingly self-congratulatory one for a party behind in the polls and with its MPs defecting to UKIP.

Everyone was very energetic. But there wasn’t much evidence that any of that energy was directed towards the charity sector.

Last year it really seemed that no one except the then-minister for civil society, Nick Hurd, was really interested in the sector. Hurd trailed a lone circuit of fringe events, more or less unaccompanied by any of his fellow MPs, and with no other minister anywhere in sight. He seemed quite annoyed with his party, at times, for not understanding his brief.

This year, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, which could be because his wife went into labour halfway through the conference. So we can’t read much into that. He's now a father of six, apparently.

Brooks Newmark was also notable by his absence, but that’s perhaps not surprising, under the circumstances.

Rob Wilson, the new minister, was only 12 hours or so into the job when the conference kicked off, so he wasn’t in a position to say much. He did turn up and keep most of Newmarks’ appointments, but restricted himself to some generic remarks. He stressed in his first public utterances that the prime minister had told him how important a sector this was, including to Cameron himself, personally.

To a certain extent you can get a sense of what a party thinks about a policy area by the number and seniority of MPs who turn up at events. And this conference had fewer and more junior MPs at its events than Labour. It's difficult to get a very accurate sense, but it certainly seems that the sector is a lower priority for the Conservatives, despite the prime minister's personal interest.

There were certainly still plenty of charities lobbying on their own issues, but they didn’t sound like they were getting great access to ministers.

So what was on the agenda for sector policy?

The honest answer is it’s difficult to know, because the minister didn’t know anything about his brief yet, and the only people who were speaking at sector events were junior MPs with little power.

Even if there were no formal policies, though, it was possible to get a sense of the prevailing attitudes.

There are two things to talk about, really. Campaigning and service delivery. The Tory party clearly feels that charities should do more and talk less.

First up, campaigning. Here, there’s a real dichotomy in the two main things we’re hearing from MPs. Firstly, the party's line is that the Lobbying Act doesn’t stop charities saying anything they might want to say. And secondly, that they shouldn’t be saying those things.

Listening to a small group of middle-of-the-road Tory MPs speaking about the sector – a group unusually well-intentioned towards charities, but otherwise I think fairly representative of the party – a kind of narrative became apparent: a very village-hall-and-cup-of-tea view of what charity is.

These MPs felt charities were important, that there should be more charity in the UK, that everyone should volunteer for charity, and that charities should be involved in doing more things. Civic service and helping those less fortunate is really embedded deeply in Tory thinking.

They felt it was OK for charities to raise issues, discuss their beneficiaries, and have a voice. But they shouldn’t make campaigning their raison d’etre, and they shouldn’t speak out about policies. There was none of this “the sector should speak truth to power” or “you should bite the hand that feeds you” which we’ve heard, albeit often through gritted teeth, from Nick Hurd and from the previous Labour government.

“When campaigning becomes the primary activity, charities are going to lose support from their base,” one MP said.

“The sector needs to be very careful or it will lose people like me who are incredibly well-disposed,” another said.

In short, it seemed as if they love charities and think they do great work, but really, honestly believe the sector should stick to its knitting.

Service delivery and PBR

Second, service delivery was discussed a fair bit. The Tories seem to want to grow payment by results. In the face of reluctance from the sector, a couple of MPs basically said that there was no reason why PBR should be a bad thing.

This is fair enough, actually. There is no reason why PBR has to be bad for charities, if it’s done right. And that’s the crucial element which wasn’t necessarily brought up. If it’s done right covers a lot of ground that the Tories tend to skirt over quite swiftly.

If a PBR contract comes with investment support so charities aren’t taking all the risk themselves, as a social impact bond does, and if it comes with really sensible, well-thought-through targets, and if the level of payment is sufficient to justify the extra risk, then a PBR contract has the potential to really free up charities to concentrate on the beneficiaries, because all charities need to do is make their lives better, however they think is best.

But that involves a level of sophistication among commissioners, and to be honest among politicians too, which has frequently been notable chiefly by its absence. It involves a level of investment support which often simply isn’t present. And it asks a lot of charities who have to learn a new way of doing things. So there’s some way to go before PBR works.

To be fair both Chris White, MP for Warwick and Leamington and Dominic Raab, MP for Esher and Walton, acknowledged these problems, and addressed what the government should do to improve commissioning, early intervention and PBR incentives. Raab called for a central Westminster fund to back early intervention where each individual commissioner couldn’t justify funding it personally. But while we’re hearing sense from backbenchers, it doesn’t always appear to be echoed by those with the budgets to actually commission.

I’d like to think you could just set charities the same targets and give them a grant. But it doesn’t look like politicians and commissioners are really willing to do that – for understandable reasons, actually.

David Gauke, the financial secretary to the Treasury, summarised the reasons quite nicely. “I’m a bit sceptical about spend-to-save schemes,” he said. “You find you often get the spending.”

So PBR may be something the sector should work on improving.