Concern about voluntary organisations’ independence from government in the age of the welfare state was flagged up by Lord Beveridge in 1948. ‘The independence of Voluntary Action does not mean lack of co-operation between it and public action,’ he wrote. ‘Co-operation between public and voluntary agencies … is one of the special features of British public life. But the term Voluntary Action does imply that the agency undertaking it has a will and a life of its own.’

As examined earlier in this book, restrictions on charity campaigning and the growth of public service delivery by the voluntary sector over more than half a century since Beveridge's remarks have contributed to a growing, if sometimes fluctuating, threat to that ‘will and a life of its own’. In 2011 the Baring Foundation, a charitable grant-maker set up by Barings Bank years before it collapsed in the 1990s, funded a panel to monitor the independence of the sector, and its four annual reports made uncomfortable reading. The final report, in 2015, concluded that things had got worse year by year.

In 2007, research by the Charity Commission had also concluded that the independence of charities involved in public services was compromised. Its report Stand and Deliver found that only 26% of charities that delivered public services agreed that they were free to make decisions without pressure to conform to the wishes of funders.