Sector stuck in Big Spin

I wake with a jolt as Sonny & Cher’s ‘I got you babe’ blurts from my radio alarm. A BBC news presenter comes on to say that David Cameron is launching his plans for the Big Society…

Yes, it’s Groundhog Day on 19 July, 2010. Or is that 31 March, or 18 May? For, on each of these days, and possibly others, Cameron has appeared on the news to announce his plans for the Big Society. Like the film Groundhog Day, featuring a weather man who wakes up to Sonny & Cher on the same morning for days on end, we’ve been here before.

In between the Big Society launches, we’ve had a budget saying there’ll be no money and no more waste. Presumably it doesn’t count if you’re the government announcing the same thing several times.

Now don’t be churlish, I hear you say. We knew there had to be cuts and there are significant opportunities in the Big Society agenda that fit the skills, experience, business and mission objectives of social businesses. I agree. And it’s not helpful to take the stance of, for example, Unite union, that describes Big Society as an ‘intellectually flawed pipe dream’ – although the union’s warning that quality could be compromised for cheapness highlights a very real danger.

For social entrepreneurs, the Big Society could be exciting and there is a sense of energy and anticipation around moving it forward. The present danger, however, is one of confusion and stagnation. Umbrella groups, funding bodies and social enterprises themselves report that their initiatives are being held up while they wait to see if there is cash to support them.

It’s also incredibly challenging to understand the potential scale of change. Last week, announcing a fundamental shift in healthcare policy, health secretary Andrew Lansley made an equally radical claim about the definition of social enterprise being too narrow. ‘Oh yes!’ said one section of the social enterprise arena. ‘Oh no!’ said another. (‘Oh, not that one again,’ said others.)

Social enterprise in this country has grown up over a decade learning how to play a particular game and bend the rules to its advantage. A new government comes along and it’s as if premiership football has been replaced by community- led polo: could be fantastic but nobody quite knows how to play it, or if they’re really allowed to. Who do we need on the team, what skills should we have, will the horses be subsidised?

Cameron spoke of ‘communities with oomph’, social action and public service reform. Four ‘vanguard’ communities will help create ‘beta’ versions of the Big Society. There are some great phrases here that at the moment have no substance. ‘Vanguard’ is the forward element of an advancing military formation (presumably ‘pilot’ is too New Labour) but nobody’s told us how to join the army. ‘Beta’ is the testing phase for a website – so how can more than the four communities get involved in the development phase of Big Society?

We can’t wait around for our future to be handed to us. We must take the initiative and engage positively in time for the Spending Review on 20 October. But the next announcement must not mark another Groundhog Day.

To get the most out of social enterprise, the government must move from clever words to spell out Big Society in terms of budgets, programmes and clear policies.