Lord Stephen Greenhalgh is a Conservative life peer. He served as Communities Minister and Faith Minister jointly in the Home Office and in the Ministry for Housing, Communities, and Local Government (MHCLG) in Boris Johnson's government from 2020 to 2021, before serving as Minister for Building Safety and Fire jointly at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) and the Home Office between 2021 and 2022.

Tim Lamden (TL): PBE has done some research and found that in the last three months of 2020, you met with civil society organisations more than 300 times as Minister for Faith. That's more than any other minister in government, and three times more than the Civil Society Minister, over the same period. What was it that drove and motivated your significant level of engagement with the sector? I know that, obviously, you were having to engage with faith groups because of what was happening [with the pandemic]. But that is quite incredible commitment. I'd be interested to get your view on why you were so motivated to meet with so many of those organisations?

Stephen Greenhalgh (SG): Okay, well, the engagement happened as a result of Covid. If we remember, for the first time for many, many centuries, places of worship were closed in the first lockdown. And so there was a lot of engagement related to faith communities and civil society groups aligned with faith communities in that period. But what we rapidly discovered was that civil society and faith communities, which often have their own civil society arms, were very important partners in getting us out of the difficulties of Covid, particularly with the vaccination rollout. We were finding hard-to-reach groups. They were prepared to come forward and be vaccinated, potentially, in a place of worship, whereas they wouldn't necessarily walk into an NHS facility. When did the vaccines get rolled out? My memory plays tricks, but I think you'll find that the whole beginning of the vaccination, and returning to normality, happened if not the end of 2020, then certainly the beginning of 2021. And, so that was the reason for the level of engagement that we had.

TL: So it was their unique reach into the communities that they served which made engagement so important?

SG: Yeah, the NHS is kind of silo-driven. So we were discovering stuff was happening directly through the NHS, but we had very, very good links with faith groups, we had a small faith team in the department. And I was helped by the network of contacts of a faith adviser in government called Colin Bloom. And we started off, actually, by building relationships through the pandemic because government effectively went online. If you imagine, a meeting with a civil society group would be quite a torturous affair. They would have to come into the department, go through security, walk up several flights of stairs or take the lift, and then wait in a waiting room and then have 10 minutes with the minister. And we suddenly moved online didn't we, and we could have a Teams meeting, or a Zoom meeting, and we had them quite frequently. So we began to build a relationship, where we could actually engage all the way through on a relatively frequent basis, by having quite large Zoom meetings and Teams meetings.

So that's, I think, one thing that changed - government was more flexible about how you can meet, you didn't have to meet face-to-face, you couldn't meet face-to-face very often. But you could meet online, and we took full advantage of that. So, I think that's the first thing to say. And that doesn't mean that you then don't meet them all face-to-face at some point when you get out and about as a minister, and I did. In fact, I remember meeting some of them for the first time and being surprised because I imagined some of them as being 6ft 3in, and they're actually 5ft 2in! You can't really tell how tall someone is on a Zoom! Anyway, there you go. It was good to have that frequent relationship, even if it was largely based on some kind of online meeting platform.

TL: We've spoken about that three-month period at the end of 2020, when we think the vaccination rollout was gearing up, so I'm sure the engagement was frantic. Looking back across the whole period of the pandemic, what was your overall experience of engaging with the voluntary sector during that unprecedented period? And how effective did you find the sector's relationship with government during that time?

SG: They're good questions. I'd say, I didn't start from no experience. I'd spent 16 years in government working with the voluntary sector very actively, as a leader of a council for six years and as Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime in City Hall, working for Boris Johnson when he was Mayor. So, you know, I had a very positive experience. I know there are areas where the state just doesn't play well and doesn't necessarily provide the answers, and you're better off partnering with civil society, with the voluntary sector. So I was very keen to do that and build up the links as Communities Minister, and as Faith Minister, and I found that there were very impressive organisations that operated intra-faith, so within the faith, as well as inter-faith, bringing communities together between faith groups. So I was keen to meet all of them and support them, where possible.

It's fair to say that what we saw through the pandemic was that there is a degree of scepticism between government at all levels and civil society. I think Danny Kruger did a review in 2020 and it showed that a great deal of that negative perception went away as a result of engagement by government through Covid. I think 67% of local authorities reported an increase in partnership working with faith groups, for instance, and so on, and so on. So there was a very positive experience and that then led to the ability to come up with ideas about how we could work closer together on shared problems. One of the things that Danny talked about was a Faith New Deal. I felt that's an idea that we should pick up from his report and so much of 2021 was put to trying to launch a New Deal based on that togetherness that we'd seen in 2020.

"I know there are areas where the state just doesn't play well and doesn't necessarily provide the answers, and you're better off partnering with civil society, with the voluntary sector. So I was very keen to do that and build up the links as Communities Minister, and as Faith Minister..."

TL: Where do you think that suspicion and scepticism, across different levels of government, towards the sector comes from?

SG: Well, it's multi-pronged. One of them is that policymakers sometimes think these initiatives are, really, just a vehicle to proselytise. There's a worry about accountability and the structure required to manage public money, and a general lack of professionalism. There is also a lack of knowledge within government about civil society and particular faith groups. There is also worry about interfaith sectarianism, so you support one group within a faith group and then you, unwittingly, marginalise other groups. And also government tends to do things by commissioning and so, therefore, they specify what they want. And very often faith communities and civil society linked to faith communities are very clear about what they do and don't want to be shaped by commissioning. So there's kind of a natural antagonism. So, those are some of the reasons for the difficulties that, you know, I've seen both as a minister and as someone who's been in local government for some time.

TL: As part of the Law Family Commission on Civil Society, PBE called strongly for more collaboration between the three sectors - the state, business and voluntary sectors. During your two years in government, did you have any experience of successful collaborations between the three sectors? If not, how can we foster more? 

SG: Well, it's interesting. I've printed out some of the work that I did myself as a minister to think about how to bring about a Faith New Deal. And I had a slightly different view from Danny, who just wanted a compact, which is a statement of goodwill, if you like. Whereas I felt the state could work as a partner and we were looking at various funding models and you could come up with different ways of launching a New Deal. But the one that became the preferred model was something similar to what you just described. I felt that government could put in a chunk of money - the pilot, I think, was about a million pounds, which Robert [Jenrick] very quickly signed off, but it became quite hard to launch, it happened long after I was Faith Minister - philanthropy, or an extension of business, could put in a chunk and then local faith groups could put in a chunk.

So, effectively, three-way match-funding as a model, which would create some kind of bind and incentives at all levels, which would result in greater community capacity-building and would be open to all faith groups, which is important, not to sort of say, “You get this and you don't.” So, it would be a vehicle open to everybody. So that's what we looked at. I'm not sure how things transpired because it's always difficult to align those three things together in a coordinated way. But that was certainly the intention when I was a minister and I spoke to various philanthropists, who I got to meet, that had strong connections to particular faith communities to find out what it would take to do that. Because you find money drizzles in differently. The state does its thing, business and philanthropy does its thing, and the local people do their own thing. But if you could kind of coordinate that, you could probably achieve a lot more.

"...policymakers sometimes think these initiatives are, really, just a vehicle to proselytise. There's a worry about accountability and the structure required to manage public money, and a general lack of professionalism. There is also a lack of knowledge within government about civil society and particular faith groups."

TL: It's just very challenging, it's very hard graft to get it right. I know from speaking to Oliver Letwin, he described a similar kind of arrangement that they pursued back in the coalition years. He said it was hard work and he spent a lot of time developing social impact bonds.

SG: Well, that's one funding model. When we generated a kind of list of potential ways of funding a Faith New Deal, one was 'pump priming', which is a sort of Heseltine approach, where you put a lump of money in and then you attract money to a project by pump priming. Another was just commissioning, with some kind of outcomes-based commissioning approach, which is a local authority norm. Social impact bonds, which was something that Oliver oversaw in the Cameron years, they never really took off. I mean, I tried to get SIBs to work when I was a local authority leader. And another one was grant match-funding - so departments say, "You've got to match-fund this." - but we were trying to go for a three-way as an option. But, you know, there are different ways of being able to do these things. But they all have the same principle don't they, which is, you know, you want more than just the taxpayers' lump sum towards an initiative, you want to attract more funding in some way.

TL: You mentioned also the accountability required for commissioning and public funding. On that note, what was your assessment of the quality of evidence provided by the sector when it came to measuring their impact and making their case for support? 

SG: Ah, well, it's variable. You tend to get a report that sifts this all out and distils it. So, the people who kind of pour through all the different returns from civil society are your officials and then they present you a report and often you say, "Well, why is it taking so long?" And it's often because they're chasing up bits of paper that haven't been provided. The kind of stuff that is irritating for the group involved, but necessary for the official to be able to put their report through. I worry about people being too slick at it, because what you tend to then find is some people are very, very good at ticking boxes, and we used to call them 'grant farmers'. They are very, very good at paperwork and audit trail, but there's absolutely nothing that underpins that. So you've just got to be a bit careful, you've got to go to the frontline and see what these people do, not just what they return, if that makes sense. It is the Achilles heel of the sector, if I'm honest with you.

TL: It is difficult, though, to measure some of these things.

SG: Yeah, often they are asked stupid questions, which frustrates them, because they say, "Well, what is the point of this? This doesn't show anything." So I think government's got to get smarter at knowing what it wants and the sector's got to get smarter at knowing how to present itself if it wants to attract funding.

"So I think government's got to get smarter at knowing what it wants and the sector's got to get smarter at knowing how to present itself if it wants to attract funding."

TL: I think probably underpinning this problem and lots of problems in policymaking is a lack of data - that especially applies to the social sector. We've talked a lot in our research about the lack of data on the sector. It is spread across various accounts within the national accounts. So it's very difficult to actually get a clear picture of the size and scale of the whole of the sector in the UK, because, as I say, part of the sector is measured in a 'non-profit account' and then part of it is measured in 'tourism and leisure'. So from the national accounts, from the official repository of data, we don't get a full view of the sector and obviously ministers and policymakers don't have sight of reliable data on the sector. I know that during Covid that was a particular issue. Rishi Sunak, as Chancellor, had great real time data on businesses around the country and the scale of his interventions were proof of that; he was able to roll out quite considerable support because he had had that information at his fingertips. With that in mind, did you find a lack of data specifically on civil society groups, and on the sector generally, impeded decision-making during your time in government?

SG: To use a Rumsfeld phrase, you don't know what you don't know. And there were often huge initiatives that just fell below the radar, and they weren't necessarily looking for government funding, but it would be good to know that they were out there, wouldn't it? So there was one charity that Colin Bloom introduced me to that was doing an enormous amount of repurposing of food and goods that were reaching the end of their shelf life, and they had a massive facility to transport that, so that people were getting food, otherwise it would go to waste. They're called His Church and they are an evangelical group that do a massive amount of work, but no one had ever heard of them. And yet they have pallet loads upon pallet loads of goods that they are distributing from their warehouse all over the country, to people in need - repurposing clothes and so forth. It's quite extraordinary. But they're just not there, they're not on the radar. So you'll often find that kind of example. And, you know, that is a problem. As you get to know a faith community, you realise they are quite complicated ecosystems, but I would always start by asking, "Who are the big organisations that provide this kind of care? Or that kind of care?" You'd have to ask because there wasn't a report that set it out for you, if that makes sense.

"To use a Rumsfeld phrase, you don't know what you don't know. And there were often huge initiatives that just fell below the radar, and they weren't necessarily looking for government funding, but it would be good to know that they were out there, wouldn't it?"

TL: In the same way that there would be I guess for the world of business?

SG: Yeah. You know who the big players are in business, but you don't necessarily know in civil society, for various reasons.

TL: Can you give one example from your time in government that best illustrates what can be achieved when charities, community groups, civil society, faith groups, and policymakers work well together?

SG: Well, if I had to give one, it would be the vaccination rollout. We were the fastest major European nation by some distance at rolling this out and there's no doubt that we got to our hard-to-reach communities quicker and faster and more effectively than any other country. And I have to say, I think civil society, particularly faith communities, played a large part in persuading people to take their vaccination. You know, if the imam says, "Take your vaccination." The gurdwaras were hosting them, cathedrals were hosting them, synagogues. So, you know, it was a very effective way of ensuring that more people took the vaccination faster and sooner than they otherwise would have done. And they played a massive part in that.

TL: We're not going to get a better example than that. Civil society helping to save lives.

SG: It saved lives, no doubt about it.

TL: Can you think of an example from your ministerial career which exemplifies the challenges and obstacles that can get in the way of effective working between policymakers and civil society? And how can they be overcome in your view?

SG: Well, I think my example would be just trying to get new policy over the line. And I don't blame civil society, but it just took government a long time. Having kind of agreed and announced and press released the Faith New Deal idea and introduced some pilots, a modest amount of money, in early 2021, it then took until the summer of 2022 - I think it might have taken even longer, but it took a long time for it to be launched. The Faith New Deal was an example of government announcing something and then it just takes months. People put in their bids, there's a lot of effort, and then it just never gets announced because government holds it back. And you can't do that. You can't invest and get other people to invest huge amounts of time and then hold back. And that happens too often when government relates to civil society, they don't understand that you just can't park things for that length of time.

"People put in their bids, there's a lot of effort, and then it just never gets announced because government holds it back. And you can't do that. You can't invest and get other people to invest huge amounts of time and then hold back. And that happens too often when government relates to civil society, they don't understand that you just can't park things for that length of time."

TL: Do you think that's a problem with the machinery of Whitehall?

SG: I don't know. I think there's an element of it that the problem is the machinery of Whitehall. And I'm not sure if Whitehall is the best commissioning group. It would almost be better to take the money and pass it down through government, to regional and local government to take it on, as opposed to trying to manage everything centrally. That would be my instinct. 

TL: So you are for more devolution?

SG: Well, because I think there's more commissioning experience in local government than there is in Whitehall, that's my kind of view. It's second nature to local government to do this and to make stuff happen and to run with things. You can pilot things nationally, but, I think, the rollout should be localised would be my mantra.

TL: Sure, I've heard that many, many times. So, taking a wider view, looking back on your time in government, how would you summarise the approach and the attitude of Boris Johnson's government overall towards civil society, from your view inside of that administration?

SG: It's quite hard to characterise a whole government. I think within Boris's government, there were civil society enthusiasts who kind of got the potential of working with civil society. Danny Kruger is someone who set up his own organisation within civil society. So, you know, as an example, of someone who was a big voice and advocate. Diana Barran - I think she was the Civil Society Minister that you were looking at - was a chief executive of a charity before coming into government and has lots of experience. So there were big voices that spoke up for the sector. Boris was a big believer in civil society, he certainly was positive. I know that from when he was Mayor, of course. I think that influenced him in government as well. So I think, you know, it was a broadly positive attitude. I think if you asked the sector, they would be broadly positive. So yeah, I think that's what I would say in terms of attitude.

In terms of approach, I'm not sure there was a single approach. So I can't really speak for a single approach. Whereas, there was more of a defining approach wasn't there with Cameron, who went the Big Society - which is a Kruger idea - route. I don't think we had that. I mean, unfortunately, the Big Society got lampooned too much. So then it became kind of politically quite difficult to embrace its principles, because, you know, people were just taking the mickey out of the whole concept of the Big Society. It's a bit like Blair's Big Conversation. I remember Michael Howard, one of his finest moments was taking the mickey out of Tony Blair for his Big Conversation. Well, Big Society had the same treatment, I'm afraid. So it became quite difficult to reheat that. But still, I think some of the principles are very sensible, which is: how do you provide a framework to encourage more investments to back capabilities that are best found within civil society and not as an extension of the state? You very often find that the problems that present themselves earlier on, before things get really difficult, are best handled by civil society. So, mental health problems often occur because you don't step in and deal with loneliness, for instance. Family chaos becomes a troubled family that is in the last chance saloon. So, you need to intervene at a stage when you still can manage the chaos. Civil society is very well set up to deal with some of these issues in a way that the state isn't, where the resources go to the most needy, but the most chaotic.

"You very often find that the problems that present themselves earlier on, before things get really difficult, are best handled by civil society. So, mental health problems often occur because you don't step in and deal with loneliness, for instance. Family chaos becomes a troubled family that is in the last chance saloon. So, you need to intervene at a stage when you still can manage the chaos. Civil society is very well set up to deal with some of these issues in a way that the state isn't..."

TL: Stephen, last question, can you think, over the course of your time in government, of the most inspiring charity or civil society initiative you encountered and why?

SG: That's really hard and that's invidious.

TL: I mean, you met dozens and dozens and dozens throughout the pandemic. So I'm sure it's quite difficult, but I wonder if there was just one example that springs to mind?

SG: Well, I think there's a lot of great stuff that happens within faith communities. But one thing that struck me was through my friendship with Margaret Eaton, who's been leader of Bradford Council. She was a big proponent of the Near Neighbours scheme and it was interesting to see how an organisation that brought faith together could help a city that could potentially be very divided, with a very strong Muslim population and also a very strong Christian population. The Near Neighbours programme seemed to do a very good job at bringing communities together through, you know, their shared faith. So I was quite impressed with the Near Neighbours concept of interfaith collaboration. But that's not to say there's not hugely brilliant things that happen within individual faith groups as well. But that I was impressed with and wanted to support. I thought it was important and, within the city context, it had a poignancy for me as someone who had been in local government in the inner city - that you can bring communities together in that way through faith.

Pic credit: Creative Commons, : 2021-22: Lord Stephen Greenhalgh by luhcgovuk (https://flickr.com/photos/dluhc/51507548188/in/photolist-2mtxDzE)