Earlier this month, the government made a series of announcements including a £500m Better Futures Fund, the launch of Diagnosis Connect and the Civil Society Covenant. Our Chief Executive, Martin Brookes, attended the launch event by Prime Minister Kier Starmer, Rt Hon Lisa Nandy MP and other key government ministers. Read his opinion piece here on what it means for the North East VCSE sector.
Members will have heard about the new Civil Society Covenant launched by national government in London recently. They are probably wondering what this might mean for them. We simply don't know. The covenant promises a "local partnerships programme", but there are no details as yet. In itself, the covenant is welcome as an attempt to establish better relations between government and the sector. But given that the sector was blithely ignored when it pointed out the very real costs of higher employer National Insurance Contributions, and how the government's own analysis of these changes ignored how it would affect VCSE organisations, being hopeful but not yet optimistic seems best.
Accompanying the programme was the launch of a new service connecting NHS patients to specialist charities, Diagnosis Connect. At the launch, Secretary of State for Health, Wes Streeting, said that, for practical reasons, national charities would likely be included first. While understandable, this risks repeating mistakes made with volunteering during the pandemic, when vital local approaches were sometimes frustrated by the NHS Volunteers scheme.
Also announced in the week of the Covenant's launch was a new £500m Better Futures Fund. This promises to provide £500m of funding to buy outcomes in the sector, with the ambition to lever in a further £500m of money from local authorities, regional government, businesses and philanthropists. Once again, details are scant. The promise of more money for the sector is encouraging. Outcomes funds have often been extremely complicated and expensive, but they can bring in additional needed funding to the region. VONNE will keep a close watch on how this thinking evolves so we can ensure that the VCSE sector in the North East is best positioned to benefit. We will also encourage and support regional government and local authorities on this, working with partners in the sector.
I want us to reflect further and listen to members on all these topics. The covenant is a welcome step but we heard many misgivings locally when we ran our consultation events. It is not clear that the final covenant addresses these. The event in London was welcome, but it felt like the sector being talked to.
Our promise has to be to help you do the talking to the powers that be. Less talking to, more listening. Over the summer and beyond, we will work on ways to do this.