We must be at the heart of decision-making

Our Chief Officer, Sara Redmond addresses recent commentary on the relationship between Government and the Third Sector.

*This article first appeared in the April Edition (pre election) of Third Force News – a link to the magazine can be found at the bottom of this article.

With an election just around the corner, there’s not a single topic that hasn’t become a political football. Housing, climate change, AI, taxation, social security, you name it. Now it seems the integrity of the third sector in Scotland is in the firing line. 

Recent commentary has again picked at the relationship between government and the third sector giving grounds for opposition parties to state what they’d do if they were in office.  

The argument that charities across Scotland are in the pockets of politicians is a frustrating narrative that reduces complex funding relationships and a web of inter-relating policies into simplistic claims about influence, or maybe rather non-influencing.  

We could lay the conversation about blurred boundaries to rest with a clear and transparent framework in Scotland to bring us into lockstep with England, Wales, and (almost) Northern Ireland.  

Last year, the UK Government launched the Civil Society Covenant after a nationwide consultation of over 1,200 organisations. This formal framework sets out the intention to shift the transactional relationship between government and the third sector to more of a strategic partnership.  

Wales offers another example: the Welsh Third Sector Scheme. Introduced in 2014, it provides a framework to how the Welsh Government works with the third sector. Northern Ireland’s Partnership Agreement, launched last year, complements the UK wider Civil Society Covenant. 

Scotland, by contrast, currently has no formalised framework. Instead, it has a patchwork of arrangements that are neither consistent nor founded in a belief that the voluntary sector delivers essential services. Nor do they recognise that we bring lived experience to policy debates and advocate for change on behalf of people living lives that are different in every way from those creating the change. 

The ALLIANCE has long called for the third sector to have a seat at decision making tables and would welcome a clear commitment to ensure “civil society is valued as an expert strategic partner and independent advocate who can hold government to account and campaign for public benefit without fear of sanction.” (UK Covenant).

Allegations of funding buying silence – whether true or false – shouldn’t drive us into corners to defend our position. Instead, they should act as a springboard for action: forcing a constructive conversation about how we strengthen the relationship between civil society and government to protect independence and improve transparency. The people and communities we all serve deserve nothing less. 

As the foreword to the UK Covenant reads: “The government cannot shape a better future alone. It takes a nation. If we are serious about renewal, civil society must be heard, not just at the margins but at the heart of decision-making.”  

We’d sign up to that.

This article first appeared in the April edition of the TFN magazine.

You can read the ALLIANCE’s post-election statement here.

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