Charity concerns

Charities are suddenly under fire. Any misdemeanour (and there clearly have been a number, charity workers being as human as the rest of us with less altruistic occupations) is now leapt upon with the pharisaic zeal which seems to be the mark of this age. However I wonder whether charity workers are any more prone to sexual exploitation than, say, businessmen. Are the media up in indignant arms over people at a sales’ conference in the developing world using and abusing local women and minors? I suspect it happens.

I understand that there is a peculiar dissonance between the altruistic aims of an aid charity and such behaviour. Yet is there an element of foreign-aid bashing in the obsessive focus on a systemic failure in Oxfam? Is it a coincidence that it comes within weeks of the Oxfam report released at Davos, which pointed out “Eighty two percent of the wealth generated last year went to the richest one percent of the global population, while the 3.7 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world saw no increase in their wealth, according to a new Oxfam report released today”? Discrediting charities which speak uncomfortable truth to power would allow some very rich and powerful people to sleep more easily at night. It would also suit right-wing newspapers which campaign to reduce our country’s overseas aid budget of a mere 0.7% GDP. And of course politicians of an insular persuasion will use it as fuel to divert money from the ethical, and self-interested by the way, relief of our fellow human beings.

I trust that the overwhelming good performed by such charities will not be obscured by the fallibility of their human employees. We create enough misery throughout the world in one way or another. It would be an even bleaker place were charities such as Oxfam and Save the Children not to exist or were starved of support. It's tragic that 7000 donors have cancelled their subscriptions to Oxfam. Who will suffer? Not the donors.

Nevertheless, even before the Oxfam news, I had been thinking about the role of charities, maybe because I’d been reading Bob Holman’s biography of Keir Hardie (http://www.lionhudson.com/page/detail/?K=9780745953540). He famously had a contretemps with Lord Overtoun, the Scottish industrialist whose much lauded philanthropy did not extend to his own employees.

I wrote to a theologian I know:

“Do you think churches setting up things like food-banks, homelessness shelters and street pastors is a good thing? 
“What I’m wondering is this. Were they not there, the true effects of government cuts in the name of financial responsibility would be acutely obvious and politically intolerable. As it is, the churches’ benevolence mitigates the effects of cuts in benefits and cuts to policing, and the vulnerable suffer, so that the well-off can remain comfortable. ‘Let them make do with sticking plasters.’
“It suddenly occurred to me.”

He sagely replied, “There is a danger in providing permanent sticking plasters instead of sorting the problem; but I don't see how Christians can pass by on the other side when the man is lying there mugged. But if it becomes an excuse for not pushing on the political structural fronts, eg working for proper policing on the Jerusalem-Jericho road or a health service that is meeting the needs, then we are at fault.... And that easily happens with conservatives.”

As far as I know, this theologian is not a socialist. Keir Hardie (1856-1915) who shared his Christian faith certainly was. He was, as Professor Holman suggests, possibly Labour’s greatest hero. Hardie rightly wrote, “Poverty can never be remedied by charity, but only by justice.” That was his political motivation. “The Labour Party stands for something which no other party does. Its aim is the abolition of poverty.” What a great aim! Oxfam's vision is "We won't live with poverty". Little wonder some people would like to undermine it.

MND matters

Quite a full seven days to do with MND inter al for us. 

We drove to London on 16^th under a red sun and a livid sky. It was weirdly beautiful. That evening we shared a great mixed meze at Galata Pera (http://www.galatapera.co.uk/), a Turkish restaurant by the river in Brentford, with a long-standing friend. It was the best meal I’ve enjoyed in London (except the one cooked for me by my then girl-friend many years ago!). The next morning we made our way to the QEII Centre in Westminster where there was to be an APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) and MNDA (Motor Neurone Disease Association) Reception. But before that we shared a drink with the admirable Vicky Beeching (https://vickybeeching.com/). She is one of the bravest women I have ever met – and I have met many of them. She is gentle and strong, and full of integrity. The abuse and trolling when she came out was without understanding, compassion or excuse.

With Vicky Beeching at the QEII Centre

Then it was upstairs to the Parliamentary Reception, which was a very moving experience. The sandwiches were nice, but the meat of the event were the keynote speeches and the conversations with MPs. The speeches were given by Chris Evans MP who is an officer of the APPG on MND, Rob Owen who is living with MND, TV Presenter and MND Association Patron Charlotte Hawkins, and Penny Mordaunt MP, Minister for Disabled People, Work and Health. Undoubtedly the most impressive were those given by Rob Owen and Charlotte Hawkins.

Rob Owen talked about his experience of applying for PIP (Personal Independence Payment), the benefit granted to people with extra financial demands from ill-health and disability. In brief he was first assessed by a health professional who understood his needs. Later he was called for reassessment, which was carried out this time by a non-professional – and his monthly payment was reduced. Nonsensical since MND is an untreatable degenerative disease. When he queried it, he was again treated to an amateur tick-box assessment and had his payment removed entirely. It was only by formally appealing to a panel including a magistrate and a medic that he was given the maximum amount of PIP – backdated to the beginning. What a waste of nervous energy and taxpayers’ money!

With Charlotte Hawkins

Charlotte Hawkins talked from the point of view of family, and painted a vivid picture of watching someone you love die from MND; as she put it, seeing the person you love disappear before your eyes. Her father died in 2015. She moved us all and opened MPs’ eyes to the reality of the disease. (You can hear the speeches here: MNDA Parliamentary Reception).

With Robert Courts MP

Sadly only one of the six Oxfordshire MPs came to the reception. Indeed although I had sent a personal invitation to my local MP, I did not receive so much as an apology – simply a proforma bit of party-political spiel about how much the government cares about conditions like MND… a week after the event. You might tell I’m not overly impressed! However, at least, new MP, Robert Courts, from Witney was there, and listened and was concerned.

The focus of the reception was to inform parliamentarians both about the disease and its costs – and how important it is that people who have it receive the support they need WHEN they need it, which in the vast majority of cases is very quickly as the disease so rapidly removes your independence. And of course how unnecessary reassessment is with a progressive degenerative disease, assuming it’s been correctly carried out in the first place.

And so back home – and this week. On Tuesday Jane forewent her usual gym class so that we could attend my fourth and final meeting of the Oxford MND Care Centre Steering Group. I’ve been the patient representative. I’ve said often how excellent the Centre here is. We have two top-rate consultants (who happen also to be professors), a specialist nurse (who coordinates the show), an OT (who is the country’s expert on wheelchairs for neurological patients) plus access to specialist physios and respiratory nurses. The local MNDA branch also supplies volunteers who welcome you and make sure you know what’s going on and who to see when. Part of the meeting was devoted to an audit which, I think, the Centre has to do in order to continue to be recognised (and supported) by the MNDA. There’s a danger, it seems to me, of extending the already pervasive evil culture of performance indicators. The Oxford Centre is always working at improving and being responsive to patients’ needs. It doesn’t need to waste its health professionals’ time in filling out tick boxes and sending out questionnaires.

The Association faces the understandable dilemma of not wanting to fund what should be statutory provisions, such as nurses or dieticians, and yet there are charities which successfully augment the NHS – such as Macmillan Care, Marie Curie and many others. The MNDA is comparatively well supported with an income of £17,391,000 in the 11 months up to December last year. The staff (189 of them) cost £6,268,000, for whom private medical insurance (!) was £43,000. I wonder if they could fund some hospice beds or nursing home rooms – or even adapted holiday places. Don’t get me wrong; the MNDA is a very effective charity and does a great deal of good for us, particularly at the local level. I wonder if it just might be a tad top-heavy.

"Vested interests"

According to The Independent George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, "was also fiercely critical of churches and charities which have opposed the Government's welfare cuts, describing them as simply 'vested interests' reacting with 'depressingly predictable outrage' to necessary change", in a speech staged a Morrison's distribution depot in Kent yesterday. The board in front of his lectern read, "For hardworking (sic) people". I'm sure his English teacher at Barnes Boys' Secondary Modern would have taught him that composite adjectives should be hyphenated, not to mention Gradgrind Gove or Bruiser Boris. However, far more importantly, he'd surely have heard in his youth the words of the prophet: 

"Woe to those who decree iniquitous decrees,
    and the writers who keep writing oppression,
 to turn aside the needy from justice
    and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be their spoil,
    and that they may make the fatherless their prey!" (Isaiah)

That sort of "outrage" is the stuff of true religion. "Predictable", maybe; "depressing", indeed. But it's what church and synagogue leaders should be saying. 

What is very curious, to my mind, is his description of churches and charities as "vested interests". After all, if the welfare state is as inflated as he seems to believe, the charity sector should have less to do rather than more. Trimming the welfare state does not create more income for the charity sector. It simply creates more demand for the sector whose resources are squeezed as a result of cut-backs. Charities were predictably among the first candidates for central and local government "economies", on the specious grounds that they were "non-essential". That might have been so in a minority of cases, such as the Great Snoring Lace Making and Limbo Dancing Club, but the majority serve real needs.

So, what exactly did the millionaire Irishman mean by describing churches and charities in that loaded fashion? Primarily one would guess that his faceless speech-writer was fishing for an emotive phrase to dismiss the considered and evidence-based criticisms of those who are nearest to the casualties of government policies. There's no doubt that the nationwide networks of churches and charities are far nearer to the ground than Whitehall speech-writers and politicians. It seems to be lazy pejorative rhetoric. However it's worse than that, because it's actually nonsense. What the Chancellor is not gracious enough to admit is that he will be relying on those very "vested interests" to be the first responders, paramedics and emergency wards for meeting the needs of the casualties of his "necessary change". That's why those "vested interests" have been setting up so many food banks and why homelessness charities are busier than they have ever been, with less funding. It's why medical charities are ever more called on to give the support previously provided by the NHS. It seems the only vested interest that churches and charities have is as providers. 

It's true enough that's what they are there for. But that is not what Mr Osborne was saying. Otherwise he would no doubt have been thanking them - and even resourcing them. The truth is equally that they are there to speak for the needy, the poor, the widows and the fatherless. They are there to speak against oppression and to campaign for justice. 

I'm not here writing about the rights and wrongs of government economic and welfare policy. I don't pretend to have a clue about politicians' true motivations and intentions. But to rubbish those who are raising legitimate concerns as having "depressingly predictable outrage" is to descend to schoolboy debating of a debased level. If we learned anything from the last century, it might be summed up in Pastor Niemöller's famous dictum: 

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the socialists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.

Speaking out is how civilised societies are preserved. Meanwhile, one wonders what "vested interests" George Osborne and his colleagues might like to declare....