Gareth Snell

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate and on his kind words about Noreen Oliver. I had the pleasure of meeting Noreen when I was first elected. The legacy she leaves in north Staffordshire is phenomenal. Noreen’s Recovery Lounge, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, is in Fenton Manor in my constituency. It is a wonderful place, which provides the opportunity for people in alcohol and drug addiction recovery to spend meaningful time with other people and acquire work experience and skills. That is something that we should all aspire to. I commend to the debate the recent report from Voluntary Action Stoke on Trent, the infrastructure organisation expertly led by Lisa Healings and her team, that brings together multiple parts of the charitable sector, offering the support and guidance they need. The report points out that there are 396 registered charities operating in Stoke-on-Trent, spending a collective amount of £144.7 million. That is a phenomenal amount of investment into my city, and its value is huge. That money is being spent to prevent much greater demands on other services. It closes the gaps in some communities, to give people the life chances and opportunities they would not otherwise have. That money cannot come from the public sector alone. Nicky Twemlow, the newly appointed chief executive of the YMCA, founded the Made in Stoke network, which brings together people who have a physical or social connection to Stoke-on-Trent, trying to ensure that they can use their philanthropic aims to fund small charities in Stoke. It is a matchmaking service that is having a real benefit. Although there are many wonderful things in Stoke that I could talk about, I just want to touch briefly on three changes that would help. One issue is the short-term cycle of funding; charities often tell me that they get funding for one or two years. By the time they have stood up a project, it is time to start shutting it down again. By the time they have recruited staff, they are worried about redundancy costs. Another concerns large contracts for commissioned services by the third sector from public sector bodies, but the value of the contract is so large that small charities are shut out. Unless they can offer huge swathes of different services, they are unable to get a look in. The big charities mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green get all the spoils, when a coalition of smaller charities could deliver a service more effectively and with more focus on a community but they cannot compete on the price point. My final point, which I want to raise briefly, is around the complex nature of the needs that too many of these charities are meeting. In Stoke we have lots of good charities, such as Chit Chat 4U, Birches Head Get Growing or Step-Up Stoke CIC. They are often trying to meet one need, but that is spread across multiple phases. If there were a way the Government could help with multiple needs assessments that allow charities to work collectively, it would be a massive boon for my city.