Citizenship Foundation Voices

At last the government is being told to teach people how to speak effectively. Without that skill, the integrity of civic society is undermined by a noisy minority.

In his report published today, Sir Jim Rose has called for a stronger focus on “formal language, including standard spoken English in the primary curriculum”. This is to be welcomed, and is long overdue.

As viewers of BBC Two’s The Speaker might have noted in recent weeks, the gains that come with being able to speak competently and confidently in public - and in a range of contexts - go far beyond “word poverty”. Participants came out with higher self-esteem, and able to engage more effectively both in the community and as consumers; both of which will make them more employable.

But these skills also enable the more effective use of important social devices: advocacy, negotiation, leadership.

Time and again, speaking in public comes close to the top of public fear surveys - right up there with concerns about health and well-being, family stability and financial security. How many people won’t take a lead in their residents’ association because they’re terrified of speaking in public? How many great engineers do not, for the same reason, rise to the leadership of their companies? How often does the “quiet” student go unnoticed in class because of a nervousness in “speaking out”? How many people are treated badly as consumers because they’re afraid to voice their complaints?

And, crucially, how many people would be more involved in civic and political life if they weren’t afraid of speaking in public?

People who readily voice their opinions are the ones who get heard. The more of us that feel able to speak up, the more that public spaces - be they classrooms or council chambers - are likely to be reclaimed from the noisy few.

The Citizenship Foundation, SpeakersBank and Speakers Trust are among those organisations currently working together to build support for a broader campaign on this issue: a National Campaign for Public Speaking.

Whatever our view of the result, both in the build-up to this month’s Budget and in the initial reactions, it seems to me that two themes (expressed pretty unanimously across both the centre-left and the centre-right) are dominant.

Frst, that public spending will need to be reigned in at some point in the not too distant future - even if this might not be the time for slash and burn and even if some of the immediate or eventual consequences are dire.

Second, that while there are various arguments for altering the distribution of the tax burden across socio-economic groups - as the furore over Darling’s 50p call on top-end earners confirms - increasing the net tax-take significantly beyond current levels is a risky political and economic option.

For me, though, there is a broader point: how do we manage our own ever-raising aspirations about what public services can reasonably deliver - when reducing public spending is an economic imperative and when further raising taxes is politically risky - even in areas where the broad cross-party consensus is that the state should invest on our behalf: in health, in education, in maintaining a viable and sustainable transport infrastructure, in child protection, in policing and so on - especially when these aspirations come, in large part, not from an engaged, participative citizenry but from an apparently politically disengaged mass of complainant consumers? “I want it all. I want it now!”

This was a question that I raised from the floor at a pre-Budget breakfast seminar just before the budget, staged by the emergent and increasingly name-checked centre-right think tank Reform at the UK headquarters of PA Consulting in Victoria. Vince Cable was the star speaker, alongside Reform Director Andrew Haldenby and Colm Reilly who heads-up the Government Practice at PA.

For me, Reilly had it right when he spoke about Budgets not just being financial instruments concerned with economic decision-making but statements of policy and priority with strong human, social and ethical dimensions and consequences.

Perhaps in this kind of analysis - the kind of ‘citizen-economics’ that we have been trying to get our heads around at the Citizenship Foundation - we might begin to understand that while we can’t have it all “right here, right now”, we might be able to begin to build a different kind of society, based on a different type of economics: just a little bit greener, engaged and sustainable; just a little bit less wasteful, costly and materialistic; more “get something, give something back” than “buy one, get one free”; shopping when we need to do so, not “until we drop”; as much about shared responsibilities as individual rights.

I could buy into this change of emphasis - even if higher taxes are a part of the deal - and I suspect others, across the political spectrum, could do so too.

Having survived my trial by early-morning TV this week, I thought it would be interesting to take a moment to reflect on the experience, and on the survey I was there to talk about.

The headline findings of this survey (commissioned to support our new guide to money for young people My Money, My Rights) showed that students are concerned about the costs and benefits of Higher Education, that 70% of young people would like to learn more about money management at school, and that 4 out of 5 teenagers are worried about the impact of the recession when they leave full time education. Since talking about these findings I’ve witnessed first hand how the same statistics can be picked up and marshalled to support a wide number of causes. For example, one statistic has been presented as proof of the need to introduce financial education as a new statutory subject, another as a damning indictment of tuition fees in University.

So, what do I think these statistics show? Firstly, I think they show young people taking a really responsible attitude to their futures; they are crying out to learn more about money in order to make informed choices about their lives - shouldn’t we be recognising and responding to this? Secondly, that young people are concerned about the current economic crisis (2/3 of young people in our survey told us they worry about money), so we should be making sure that they are engaged in discussions about rebuilding our economic system in the future - after all, they are the ones who will live with the consequences of our decisions.

Yesterday, listening to Radio 4 while I got ready to go to work, I was struck by an exchange between the Cabinet Minister, Liam Byrne MP, and Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies. Liam Byrne was announcing a new Government funded research scheme to ‘identify and promote innovative ways for the third sector to act as a strong voice specifically for the most disadvantaged people in society’. In other words, the fund has been established to help charities strengthen their campaigning capabilities.

Jill Kirby is not a fan. She is of the opinion that charities should be service providers, not campaigners. She was particularly scathing about children’s charities, such as Barnardo’s, who have been pressurising the Government to live up to their promise to ‘end child poverty’, when they could be using their resources to help children on the ground. Kirby sums up her position in a comment piece in the Times, saying: ‘I don’t want to pay for another billboard or opinion poll. But to fund a place of safety for a child being beaten or abused - that’s a cause worth supporting any day’.

Of course it’s up to Kirby to decide where she donates her money, but I think she’s presenting a false choice here. For a small to medium sized, or newly established, charity, having a strong, well-researched campaigning message that can be taken to decision-makers for action and, yes, put on billboards can, in the best cases, achieve two things. Firstly, a campaign that gets good publicity can bring more in more donations to the charity from ‘ordinary’ people, which in turn can fund more safe places for children (for instance). Secondly, it could achieve the political change it asks for, addressing the roots of whatever problem the charity has been set up to address. Here I’m thinking about the Government’s commitment to ending child poverty. It’s quite clear to me why Barnardo’s would have an interest in holding the Government to account on this.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how this new fund takes shape. It’s not being administered by the Cabinet Office, but by Capacity Builders, and not many details are available just yet.

I came across this story on Paul Evan’s blog this morning about whether prisoners should be able to vote and I was particularly struck by the comment in the video about voting prisoners in the states that ‘you should loose certain privileges when you go to prison and voting is one of them’

I have to declare that I am one of those ‘liberal’ people that thinks that prison is about rehabilitation not punishment but equally I see the rights that we have as citizens as inalienable to us as human being, in the way that human rights are inalienable to us. No one gets to remove my citizenship rights because I failed to live up to my responsibilities and I see voting as one of those rights that are inalienable to us as citizens, wherever we are and however old we are!!