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Assistance to Communities

I agree. The starting point is a determination that the role of the Government should be to make things simpler. The report shows how complex the environment is, and how difficult it is for that relationship to work. It is a relationship between two people trying to do something simple and sensible—one person wishing to buy a service and the other wishing to sell or deliver a service. Both of them should be united in their purpose, as it is all about trying to deliver a better outcome to those we are trying to help. The environment in which this simple human transaction is taking place is unbelievably complex. The problem is that the environment is about to change for the worse. We all know about the state of public finances in our constituencies, and that the funding market for local authorities has been difficult for the past four or five years, but it is about to get even harder, as the authorities know. My local authority of Hillingdon has been very effective in squeezing out efficiencies for the past three or four years—it was recently ranked as the most efficient council in London—but it is now in an environment in which it will have to do the same again. It has reached the point of saying that it cannot necessarily go on as before. It has squeezed the lemon. It almost has to start with a blank sheet of paper and think about what it has to deliver and to open its mind to doing things differently. If that is happening elsewhere, it will present a tremendous opportunity for the third sector, but also a risk and a challenge.