WHILE Labour has worked hard to woo the voluntary sector, the Conservatives have barely been able to stifle their yawns, bothering to release a sector manifesto only one week before the last general election.

So Iain Duncan Smith’s withering attack on large charities at a Third Sector magazine awards event this month took everybody by surprise.

Big charities, the former Tory leader said, were dull, over-bureaucratic and had been tenderly led by the nose to accept government contracts that had turned them into clones of their Whitehall paymasters.

He accused Scope, the disability charity, of “mission creep” by switching its focus away from providing services to “running campaigns of questionable value”. Children’s charities should focus on strengthening marriage if they wanted to improve the welfare of young people, he says.

Duncan Smith’s interest in the voluntary sector has flowered since he set up the Centre for Social Justice last year. The centre is forming a commission with the Centre for Policy Studies, a right-wing think-tank, to investigate financing of the voluntary sector.

Some charity leaders, unused to criticism, are aghast at Duncan Smith’s intrusion into their lives. But malcontents who share his unease about voluntary organisations becoming too close to politicians may rally to his bugle.

It seems a battle for the soul of the sector is under way. “We are at the crossroads,” Duncan Smith says. “Some of the big charities have allowed themselves to be sucked up into a very close relationship with Government, that I think is unhealthy.”

The Government contributes 37 per cent of the voluntary sector’s income, more than any other single source. But Duncan Smith claims that once charities accept the Whitehall shilling, “they become an agent of Government even if they don’t want to”.

He blames politicians for reeling charities in but has little affection for the multimillion-pound super-charities that public-voluntary sector couplings have spawned. “There is too much money wasted on programmes that don’t have the best interests of people at heart,” he says.

He believes that the public is wearying of endless campaigns, including Make Poverty History. “My concern is that if everybody comes together for one movement you get only one concept prevailing and it locks out alternative thinking,” he says.

He doesn’t regret singling out Scope for criticism, and also questions the direction of the NSPCC and Christian Aid.

“In contrast to the many smaller charities I meet, there appears to be a striking uniformity of world-view in big charity,” he says. Donors, he argues, should shun large agencies if community groups exist whose “thinking and practice is often more closely in touch with public opinion”.

Does he like any big charities? Step forward the Samaritans and the hospice movement: “They show it’s possible to become a national body but at the same time be incredibly functional at a local level.”

Duncan Smith also urges trusts and foundations to look at a charity’s ideology before awarding grants. In America, right-wing foundations have shaped public opinion by funding projects that adhere to their political beliefs.

“People should know that a particular charity supports a particular argument and they may not agree with it,” he says.With well-established ties between the voluntary and public sectors, it may not be an easy debate for Michael Howard’s predecessor to win. But after years of having the not-for-profit policy landscape to itself, Labour may at last have some competition.

Iain Duncan Smith CV

Born: April 9, 1954, Edinburgh.

Education: HMS Conway, a naval training school on Anglesea; RMA, Sandhurst; language course at Universita per Stranieri

Career: Director of property company; ADC in the Royal Scots Guards. Backbench MP from 1992-97; Shadow Secretary for Social Security 1997-99; Shadow Defence Secretary 1999-2001; Leader of the Conservatives 2001-03. Chairman of the Centre for Social Justice since 2003.

He says: “My fear is that large sections of society are breaking down.”

Little-known fact: Enjoys painting landscapes in the style of Turner: “I love all his work . . . all that form and light.”

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