Labour's Charities spokesperson addresses CORE
Roberta Blackman-Woods MP, Shadow Cabinet Officer Minister, addressed NAVCA’s Chief officers Residential Event (CORE) in Nottingham on 17 June and offered a critique of Big Society and an insight into the Labour policy on the ‘good society’ and local voluntary action.’ She argued that there is a gap between the language of the government - in empowering communities and civil society - and the reality of their decisions on the ground. Roberta told CORE, “Perhaps most importantly, the Government has been wholly lacking in giving anything like sufficient recognition to the fact that communities do not start from a level playing field, and the Government needs to do more to recognise that some of the cuts have fallen disproportionately on the poorest communities, which therefore need additional support. “This is a fundamental point that the Government has simply not addressed yet: there must be the infrastructure in place which recognises that not all communities start from the same level of local capacity.” Read Roberta’s speech
