Helen Goodman

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate, and I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley (Barbara Keeley), who gave a typically thoughtful and caring speech.

Before I was elected to this House, I worked in the voluntary sector. I want to focus on the respective roles of the voluntary and public sectors in tackling social exclusion. Of course, social solidarity and social justice are central to the Labour party’s tradition, our vision for the future and our mission. Our approach is significantly different from that of the Tories. Throughout the Tory years, they were obsessed with opportunities for opting out, but we are trying to build a society where everyone can join in. This is about more than tackling poverty, although I believe that resources are at the heart of the issue.

A social justice approach to tackling social exclusion means two things. It means building a culture and mainstream institutions in which everyone is accepted, where the notion that your face does not fit becomes irrelevant. That is why our equalities agenda is also significant to the work on social exclusion. It means creating mainstream institutions that do not allow people to slip through the net, which is why the work that the Department for Education and Skills is doing on children in care is important. Personalised public services are important, because everyone is different. In my view, mainstream culture should not be all about celebrity. I do not want to live in a world in which a woman’s status depends on being able to buy a handbag costing £350. I am sure that most other hon. Members, at least on the Labour Benches, agree with that. When we acknowledge and recognise the value of community activities that are not media-driven but are controlled locally by people, we are taking an inclusive approach, which is why in County Durham the Durham miners’ big meeting is so popular. It is a totally community-led festival.

Another aspect of tackling social exclusion is helping and supporting those who suffer from it. That is what this debate has focused on more. I do not need to repeat the manifestations of social exclusion—we have heard many excellent examples in the course of the afternoon—but one of the things that concerns me is that we should neither be alarmist nor engage in unnecessarily negative labelling. When we do that, we make it more, not less difficult to tackle the problems.

I simply do not recognise the picture presented by Tory Members. My constituency is in County Durham. It is the second poorest county in the country. We have several wards in the poorest 10 per cent. The people whom I meet who suffer from social exclusion often display significant human virtues. For example, people turn up to the surgery with mental health problems, which may be undiagnosed or unacknowledged. Of course their behaviour may be alarming sometimes to their neighbours, but essentially they are very vulnerable people.

To take a completely different example, we should build on the initiatives that local people take in developing their communities, whether it be negotiating with British Rail to reserve carriages for pigeons to be sent to the south of England so that they can take part in racing, or organising community festivals. Those are the kind of enterprising attitudes that we should build on.

The Government’s record in tackling social exclusion is excellent. The new plan “Reaching Out: An Action Plan on Social Exclusion” produced by the Cabinet Office and the review on children and young people, which was published only this week by the Treasury and the Department for Education and Skills, show that we are continuing to build on the excellent work that has been done up to now.

One thing that has become evident in the debate is that many people have complex and different needs. The public services have traditionally had difficulty in dealing with that. There has been a tendency to send people from pillar to post and for the public sector to operate in silos, with people feeling that their professionalism will be challenged if they have to tackle more than one problem. Professionals dealing with people suffering from social exclusion have tended to see the problem, not the person.

One of the great strengths of the voluntary sector in tackling social exclusion is that it is good at joined-upness. An example is the Dene valley community transport project in my constituency. Everybody told me, “You have to see it; it’s fantastic. They run five buses”, so I went along. When I arrived, I found that it was not just five buses; there was a breakfast club, a pensioners luncheon club, takeaways, deliveries, a computer course, an advice centre and signposting to other public services. That project is typical of how the voluntary sector picks up the problems and deals with them. Working with the public services, the voluntary sector can provide an effective gateway to the more highly skilled and qualified professionals who may be needed in some instances.

I want to take the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband), on a trip down memory lane and remind him of a visit we made to a Children’s Society project in Salford in 1999. It was an excellent project whose participative approach was essential to its success. There was a play scheme, benefits advice, a food co-op and a second-hand furniture shop. All the activities had been chosen by the local community. Voluntary sector workers provided the skills to enable as many local people as possible in that isolated community to participate in decision making.

We need to ensure that we give the voluntary sector a good framework, so that both it and the public services can each do the bits of the job that they are good at. We have to acknowledge that there is a tension in respect of the voluntary sector. When we are wearing our taxpayer hat, we ask how money is spent and what the outputs are, but as local citizens we want more flexibility to decide what goes on in our area. Unless we acknowledge that fact, we shall not set up structures that resolve tensions in the way that funds are channelled to local projects.

I emphasise the fact that it is the Labour Government who have set up the compact for the voluntary sector. They have committed to three-year funding, early decision making and covering overhead costs. I am proud to be on the Labour Benches and to support the work being done in the Cabinet Office at present.

Speech in the House of Commons, 11 January 2007