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Third Sector Review

I am glad to hear that. I have already raised the issue in private. I think that the leader of the council, Councillor Bluh, would be horrified if applications were not supported for the reasons that I set out, but unfortunately other members of his party would not necessarily be as horrified. I have taken up that issue and a number of others. It makes me extremely angry that charities and not-for-profit organisations still come to me with that problem. I will not release those charities' names as a matter of honour, in case they are punished further. They have asked me not to give their names, and I cannot do anything about that unless they give me permission to name them. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will use his influence with the other people in his party. To return to payroll giving, one company that knows about the benefits of the scheme is Barclays, which has an office and branches in my constituency, and which celebrates 20 years of payroll giving next month. They work in partnership with the charity Leonard Cheshire on its ““ready to start”” programme for disabled entrepreneurs. Disabled clients receive equipment, training and support, and are matched with a mentor from Barclays. It is an excellent scheme, and at the end of September Swindon became the 27th place in which it has been rolled out. At the launch, I was inspired by two different things: first, by the enthusiasm of the ““Barclays buddies”” for the task that they were about to start; and secondly by the description that Liz, a wheelchair user, gave of her business start-up, which was made possible by the ““ready to start”” business mentoring scheme. Liz now runs a part-time business, offering bed and breakfast to fellow disabled people in her bungalow in Poole. The business is so successful that she has bookings for all but two weeks this year. The business not only allows Liz to be defined by her abilities, rather than her disability, but increases her income and provides her with more independence. Leonard Cheshire's 60 years of experience in working with disabled people, plus Barclays's business expertise, means that they are ideal partners to deliver that important scheme. They are also delivering on an important aspect of Government policy, which is to help people on disability and incapacity benefits back to work. There are many examples of companies in my constituency that give a strong lead on volunteering and supporting the third sector. I apologise to them for not being able to mention them all. However, as I said before, there are difficulties, and I want to raise the case of a charity that collapsed recently through the local council's lack of support—I am sorry to say that, because I know that the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) will be cross to hear it. There was a good local youth service called Youth Information Swindon, which closed in September this year despite almost universal praise for its work with disaffected and hard-to-reach young people. I give hon. Members my word of honour that I raised the matter in private with the leader and chief executive of the local council as recently as about four weeks ago. YIS provided support and training for young people aged 14 to 25, many of whom faced social exclusion, and many of whom were not in education, employment or training. Funding initially came from the borough council, as the council felt that it was important to have information and support services for young people in the centre of the town—and good on them for thinking that. However, in March this year, the council decided not to renew the service level agreement. Without the council's support, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the charity to secure enough funding from other bodies to remain sustainable. The charity collapsed in August. I reflect on the sudden pulling of funding, and I welcome the three-year pledge in the report. I hope that the Minister will press councils to take that up as well. As well as having a drop-in centre in the town, YIS carried out a wide range of outreach work. It ran anger management and ““Get Confident”” courses for young people that have been praised not just in Swindon, but elsewhere. YIS also ran various workshops that engaged those difficult to reach young people. The young people involved often faced a complex range of social disadvantage and they were given the opportunity to engage in activities in a supportive environment. YIS received many referrals from the probation service, the youth offending team, the youth service and schools and colleges. Smaller groups like YIS often do not have the funds to employ fundraisers. It is almost impossible to deliver the work of the organisation and secure enough funds to remain sustainable. Greater financial support is desperately needed for community based organisations so that they can continue with their important work. The collapse of YIS leaves us poorer as a community. Now that the people who ran YIS are dispersed throughout the community, it will not be possible to rejuvenate it. I know that time is pressing, but I want to mention briefly another issue in my town: asylum seekers. We have the Harbour project, which nestles in the shelter of a church in the centre of Swindon. It truly provides a safe harbour for the many people whom it helps. It has been in existence for seven years and an almost incredible number of visits are made to the drop-in centre—3,800 in the year to April 2007, compared with 829 in the same period to April 2003. Those visits are made by people from more than 60 countries across the world, representing many languages and faith groups. There is virtually nothing else for asylum seekers between Reading and Bristol. That is a difficult group to help and reach. It is not a fashionable group. There is some opposition to such work, and I thought long and hard about whether to give publicity to that work today. The difficulty for the drop-in centre is that one of its major funders had just dropped out. Seeking new funding is always an arduous process for small organisations, and the outcome of applications is far from predictable. In addition, there seems to be less money available and more competition to obtain it. That leaves the Harbour project with the prospect of having to cut activities and abandon new developments. I hope that the 10-year plan will help Harbour remain the strong organisation that it is today, and I challenge Swindon borough council to continue to support that important project. The charities that I have mentioned will be extremely pleased with the announcements in the report, including the expectation that when Government Departments and their agencies receive their 2008 to 2011 budgets, they will pass on that three-year funding to the third sector organisations that they fund as the norm, not the exception. I shall finish with some information from Voluntary Action Swindon, which welcomes the £10 million of new investment in community anchor organisations and community asset and enterprise development, but wants the term ““community anchor”” to be clarified. We need some of the supporting money in Swindon to help us understand how we can use community anchors. I was interested in that aspect of the report, and I hope that we will get some help in that respect. National Compact week is coming up from 1 to 8 November. All local public bodies, including Swindon borough council, and 44 community and voluntary organisations have signed up to the Swindon compact. The working relationship between the public sector and the third sector has been improved since the launch of the compact in 2005, but it is important to have sufficient resources to implement it and its five codes of practice. Voluntary Action Swindon has asked me to say that it should be a statutory duty for local authorities to support and fund the local Compact. Both the Big Lottery Fund and Capacitybuilders are keen on funding sub-regional, regional or national organisations' infrastructure or front line. Voluntary Action Swindon is concerned that local infrastructure organisations will lose out in getting funding in that way. At a meeting with me in early September, its representatives pointed out that a balance must be struck to ensure that local groups get sufficient support from local and regional infrastructure. A number of national and regional organisations that are not based in Swindon have scooped up contracts and tenders to deliver services in different areas under the regime of commissioning and public service delivery. Voluntary Action Swindon is concerned that that process will continue, which will drive out small, local charities and not-for-profit organisations. This Labour Government are working in partnership with the voluntary sector. They have backed up their policies with proper funding from the state to enable the voluntary sector to flourish, and I commend them for that. Businesses in Swindon are also working in partnership with the voluntary sector, and I want to praise them for doing that and to encourage the local council to do more. My call is for the council to do more, for the Government to encourage payroll giving, which is a success story in Swindon and up and down the country, and for Ministers to join the payroll giving scheme.