Labour wants to increase number of public services provided by faith-based groups

The Government’s White Paper, Communities in Control, was published over the summer and the subject in part of Hazel Blears’ recent (and, er…, rather controversial) speech. As this extract shows, there’s plenty to chew over in the proposals, despite Hazel Blears’ diversion into swipes at a pair of bloggers:

Among the voluntary organisations we want to help in different ways to build stronger communities, there is a particular role for faith based groups. Britain has a strong tradition of faith-based organisations working to improve local communities. This reflects the importance placed on charitable acts, social action and civic duty in all religions practised in the UK. There are over 23,000 religious charities in the UK and many more faith-based organisations, involving tens of thousands of people motivated by their faith, working at a local and national level to provide support and services to communities. At times there has been reluctance on the part of local authorities and agencies to commission services from faith-based groups, in part because of some confusion about the propriety of doing so. Building on the Faithworks Charter, we intend to work with faith communities to clarify the issues and to remove the barriers to commissioning services from faith-based groups. [p.43]