My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, on having secured this debate, which is both timely and potentially wide-ranging. The subject is potentially so wide-ranging that I did not know before the debate what angle the noble Lord might approach it from. In the event, it was even more wide-ranging than I had suspected. Like other noble Lords, I was expecting a debate on NGOs, but instead we got quangos. Never mind. At its widest, the debate potentially raises issues about the boundary between the state and civil society, which is something that would be good to have a debate about some time or other. That boundary is increasingly under pressure with changes in pension provision, student funding and healthcare provision, and now we are imminently expecting a Green Paper on social care, which will test the boundary still further. I was proceeding from the assumption that the state was in the process of shrinking in relation to the individual, but the noble Lord has put a valuable extra slant on that by indicating that there are respects in which it is at the same time encroaching on civil society. These issues have theoretical ramifications that are too wide to be traversed in six minutes, so I shall stick to more mundane and practical matters.

A year ago, the Public Administration Select Committee launched an inquiry into commissioning public services from the third sector. It has taken evidence from a wide range of individuals and organisations and we eagerly await the final report. While it is true that since 1997 the Government have increasingly emphasised the role of the third sector in developing and delivering better public services, it is unclear how far this process has actually gone. In all likelihood the volume of work undertaken by the third sector is much smaller than the rhetoric would lead us to believe. Does this matter? Do we want to see significantly more public services being delivered by voluntary and community groups? The answer to this question is complex and dependent on a whole range of additional questions to which the Select Committee is seeking answers. For example, have services taken over by third sector organisations shown improvements in quality? Are they more popular with those who use them? Is there a loss of accountability with contractual arrangements replacing direct political accountability? Is there evidence that the third sector is more likely to innovate in its delivery of public services?

There are no easy answers and often the evidence base is thin, but a number of distinctive roles can be identified where the third or voluntary sector is uniquely qualified to make a contribution. NGOs have a unique store of knowledge that enables them to identify and speak with authority about the problems of those with whom they work. They also often have unique insight into the solutions. A clear example is training for employment. In the field of visual impairment—noble Lords will understand my drawing examples from the field I know best, and I declare my interest up front as chairman of RNIB—state agencies have traditionally shown their lack of understanding both of blind people's abilities and how to realise them. One can predict that the same might very well turn out to be the case with the generic private sector organisations to which these responsibilities are beginning to be subcontracted.

Other examples might include technology and how to make the street environment safer. The state should purchase this expertise through central and local government and the utilities rather than, at best, persisting with dead-hand solutions that do not work. Where NGOs have demonstrated that they have the answers they should be funded by the state to deliver them. When I say "funded", like other noble Lords I mean funded in full. Contracting to the third sector should not mean service on the cheap. Quality services need to be paid for. In some fields solutions are either unknown as yet or only very partially understood. Research is needed to find what works. This is a major raison d'être of the voluntary sector.

For the rest of my time I should like to focus on innovation—new ways of tackling old problems. Traditionally the third sector has been able to innovate by using unrestricted charitable funds, trying new approaches and, where they can be shown to work, seeking to roll them out more widely. An example of this is the integrated low vision service covering Camden and Islington which the RNIB has developed together with the two social services departments and the local primary care trust. This provides a high-quality person-centred service to people with sight loss. It is truly innovative. However, despite the evidence of success, it has proved extremely difficult to get this model adopted in other parts of the country. The third sector can be innovative, but narrow and restrictive public sector commissioning policies can easily stifle this creativity. That is why the recent contribution to this debate from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Andy Burnham MP, is so welcome. He appeals to the commissioners of local services to innovate and break traditional patterns of local spending, to be more entrepreneurial and move money around if traditional areas of spending are not producing the goods, to be open-minded about who might be best placed to provide services and trust the voluntary sector as a partner, and to trust people to know what services best suit their needs.

Another way in which the third sector can make an innovative contribution to public services is in the development of policy and strategy. This does not have to be undertaken largely or exclusively by government through the traditional report/Green Paper/White Paper/legislation route. As the recent development of a UK vision strategy shows, the process could be much more inclusive. The draft strategy, led by the RNIB on behalf of the Vision 2020 UK coalition, with the support of Guide Dogs, Action for Blind People and the National Association of Local Societies for Visually Impaired People, was developed between April and November 2007, with input from national and local voluntary organisations, professional groups and central and local government. Consultation on the draft took place through to January 2008 and included a series of regional and country-based consultation events. We held a most successful event here at the House of Lords last week to celebrate what a success the whole thing had been. The comments from that process are currently being collated and reviewed, and the final strategy will be launched in April 2008. That is surely a far better way to develop strategy.

NGOs are not just service providers, research centres and think tanks. They have a crucial role to play in giving a voice to less visible sections of our society that typically lack a voice.