Fiona Mactaggart MP - Home Office minister

Question: You are promoting the Queen's Award for Voluntary Service but given its cost to the taxpayer has it actually delivered any tangible benefits?

Fiona Mactaggart: What it has delivered is recognition for volunteering. What we know about volunteering is that most volunteers don't do it for any kind of tangible reward, they get involved because they want to contribute, they want to make a difference, but I think because there isn't a financial reward you need to find other ways of rewarding and recognising their contribution.

This is actually the only award that focuses on groups of volunteers rather than the individual hero. It gives the organisation the opportunity to have their work celebrated through the recognition that the award brings.

I went to a reception at Lancaster House for this year's award winners and it was very exciting for many of them to come up to London to meet the Queen to see other people who had won awards and get the recognition for their contribution.

We've got a very good record in this area and the prime minister set a target of increasing the number of volunteers by a million and that's already been exceeded.

The figures show a very significant increase in the number of volunteers and this kind of project is helping to increase that number.

Volunteers contribute very valuable things to the community and to the economy. It's estimated that the value of their contribution is about £42.5 billion, which has got to be worth encouraging.

Question: Is it really the role of government to encourage civic involvement and is there a danger of volunteering becoming nationalised, losing the quality that makes it so unique and worthwhile?

Fiona Mactaggart: That is exactly why things like the awards, rather than a fixed particularly shaped volunteering scheme, are so important.

The Queen's Award stemmed from the Jubilee and recognises groups on their own terms who volunteer in any form.

Government does not decide the kind of volunteering that counts, the judgement of it is done by regional panels so it really is just an opportunity to celebrate not in any way seek to nationalise it.

Mactaggart on Milburn

Question: The Russell Commission will soon recommend ways of revitalising volunteering calling for volunteers to be more involved in the delivery of essential public services. Alan Milburn is a leading advocate of that approach, with him being more closely involved in the election strategy do you think that more of those kind of ideas will appear in the Labour manifesto?

Fiona Mactaggart: The contribution of volunteering to essential public services is not really conceived as a substitute for what happens at the moment. It is actually conceived as a way of extending and developing services in a way that can't happen through standard provision. For example about 18 months ago I went into hospital for a very serious operation for what turned out to be cancer.

I'd been called in two weeks early because there had been a cancellation and so I had no time to prepare. I was whirling round the ward, completely wound up, still at work and not stopping and thinking that tomorrow I was going to have a very serious operation.

A woman came up to me and grabbed my hand and said she was going to give me a manicure. She said she was a volunteer beauty therapist and that once a week she came along to the hospital and gave manicures to women on the women's ward.

I can't tell you how wonderful what she did for me was. Of course it wasn't formal healthcare but it helped me to calm down to face a very difficult situation and it changed the quality of the healthcare that I got.

Often that's the kind of thing that a volunteer can do, because she was giving it to me free it helped me face up to things. They don't improve the basics of public services but the quality of that service.

Maybe there is a communications issue to get that across but one of the best ways of doing that is by recognising and highlighting the groups that do this kind of thing. For many areas it's voluntary groups that have pioneered new approaches.

As well as adding to the quality of public service volunteers often invents new forms of service that hugely improve public provision. They can do that with really hard end provision like, for example, providing therapy for paedophiles in ways that have prevented them reoffending and it's very important to spread their pioneering work. It's very probable that kind of work couldn't have happened except through the risk taking and imagination of a voluntary body.

Question: You have said of Labour’s second term that "the sandstone of power had rubbed off the sharp corners of policy innovation." Do you still hold that view and how will you sharpen up for a third term?

Fiona Mactaggart: That was something I wrote in 2001 and it was very much about the way in which the election campaign ran and our preparation for it. I think that the appointment of Alan Milburn is a sign that we can't tolerate that risk again.

We have actually done a number of very innovative things since 2001 so although I felt that we hadn't offered enough in that election in fact we've done a lot.

Things like the way in which we've tackled anti-social behaviour much more effectively, the way in which we've created wardens of different kinds to help the police in terms of making neighbourhoods safer and we've supported and increased volunteering.

All of those are things that we have done that weren’t completely obvious in the manifesto and one of the very exciting things about Alan Milburn is that he is a thinker and is that he recognises that voluntary action often can be the source of innovation.

Alan Milburn can create the kind of pressure that can stop government's slipping into the same old ways which is always the default position. I actually feel quite optimistic his role will raise the game in advance of the general election. He will ensure that not only does what we deliver innovate and improve public service but what we offer people during the election campaign will reflect that more than I think we did sometimes in 2001.

Question: You are considered to be very "New Labour" - would you prefer to see Gordon Brown or Tony Blair fighting the next election on your behalf?

Fiona Mactaggart: I could deconstruct every bit of that question. I'm very happy with the way the party's running at the moment.

Mactaggart on being a minister

Question: As a backbencher you expressed frustration that you were pretty powerless to make real change. Is it very different being a minister in a presidential style government?

Fiona Mactaggart: Yes. I work with a team of colleagues in the Home Office where we have really made a difference to some of the real problems that are facing this country and to people's lives.

If you think about something like the Russell Commission it's not the action of a tired government that depends on one person to do everything and isn't innovating. It's actually looking at how you can capture the resourcefulness of young people to extend their opportunities and make more of society.

I don't feel in anyway constrained in my capacity to do that. I am out here visiting voluntary community organisations many of which have been able to do profoundly innovative things, reaching the kinds of people that didn't have voice.

The fact that I can make a difference to those kinds of things is what makes me get up in the morning and makes politics worthwhile and makes me confident that we are not stuck in a community which is excluding vulnerable people but we are making a society that creates opportunities and more security for them.

Mactaggart on the Civil Contingencies Bill

Question: A lot of voluntary organisations are very unhappy that they haven’t been included in the Civil Contingencies Bill arrangements. Why are they absent when many of them are essential for keeping the country going in an emergency?

Fiona Mactaggart: The point about the bill is that it is a paving bill that puts in place some, but not all, of the things that have to happen when we face a civil emergency.

There are some general mandated requirements like a business continuity requirement that's embedded in the bill.

There are some powers so that local authorities can direct people to do certain things but most of it is on the basis of creating partnerships in orderto solve problems.

If you look at emergency planning in almost any area it usually involves voluntary organisations. There's a large group of voluntary organisations who want to be involved and others who want to be in a framework based on choice. They can opt in and we know that the civil contingency planning arrangements will be based on the embedded networks that already exist which in many areas hugely involve the voluntary sector. You don't have to have a legislative mandate to make that work in every case.

Question: A lot of people have complained that the Gift Aid tax relief system for charities is very complex and bureaucratic. Is there anything you can do to address that?

Fiona Mactaggart: It's been enormously simplified. Frankly it is now absolutely comparable to the American system which is recognised as one of the best in the world so we are very satisfied with that.