Since the call was first issued on March 24th over 700,000 people have put themselves forward to volunteer for the NHS. This level of response and the groundswell of new mutual aid groups across the UK may have prompted Boris Johnson’s wry comment that ‘there is such a thing as society.’

In truth, our failure to see the extent to which voluntary labour was already propping up public services has blunted our immediate response to the coronavirus epidemic. In the midst of the growing support for NHS staff and carers across the UK, what might have been lost is that in normal times over twice this number volunteer within health and social care settings every year. 

For NHS staff, the volunteers’ presence is often felt in their ability to offer a friendly face. Their role is to improve patient satisfaction and put a positive veneer on creaking trusts facing years of underfunding. Meet and greet or befriending services that many volunteers take part in may not be missed in times of crisis but the absence of voluntary support as social isolation is increasingly practiced could be felt in a range of other areas, both now and further down the line.

When writing on the NHS’ future plans for volunteers, their director of Experience, Participation and Equalities highlighted the vital role recycling volunteers played in an NHS trust. Their contribution? Cleaning and repairing instruments for re-use to deliver efficiency savings of £100,000 per year. The NHS’ recent Long Term Plan contained proposals to scale up such programmes in order to double the number of volunteers within the next three years. 

A system obsessed with efficiency, rather than building capacity and resilience, was increasingly forced to rely on volunteers in order to meet its targets, leaving it wholly unprepared for the current crisis. In the realm of social care, councils on the verge of bankruptcy were already warning that “families and neighbourhood voluntary groups would have to take increasing responsibility” for vulnerable adults who may no longer qualify for services. 

Though issued as a warning by struggling local authorities, the same message was a call to arms when Cameron announced his plans in July 2010, promising to enable ‘some of the most dynamic’ charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups to take over the running of public services.

In reality, much of the dynamism Cameron sought to unleash was swallowed by the bureaucracy needed to demonstrate key outcomes and social return on investment as part of tendering processes. At the same time public donations were increasingly being drawn towards charities aiming to place a salve on some of the wounds inflicted by thousands of cuts enacted by successive Tory governments.

Before Cameron came to office, there were just 56 Trussell Trust foodbanks in the UK. Within a decade the total number of foodbanks has jumped to over two thousand (a rate of growth outstripping food chains like Greggs and McDonalds). But at a time when they are most needed, many are being forced to close as a large number of the volunteers they rely on are elderly people with underlying health conditions.

What the coronavirus crisis has shown us is that the Big Society tasked with supporting communities in the face of austerity has in fact been primarily made up of those who are most vulnerable to the virus. As we find out that 1.5 million people have already had to spend a day without food during this crisis, it’s clear that the basic needs of many people reliant on voluntary services are simply not being met.

There was justifiable outrage when the Centre for Social Justice mooted the idea last summer that the pension-age be raised to 75 in order to utilise the ‘untapped potential’ of the economically inactive elderly. But across hundreds of communities, it is often retired individuals stepping in to fill the gaping holes in the state’s safety net with estimates putting the value of such work as high as £15 billion annually.

Respublica, the think tank associated with Big Society architect Phillip Blond, published a report in 2011 calling older people the ‘bedrock of the Big Society’ and looking at how their participation in volunteering could be increased. Changes in the division of voluntary labour as a result of welfare reform and increasing precarity have since placed even greater pressure on this bedrock. Over the course of the coalition years the participation rate in voluntary work of the over 65s increased while it remained static for working-age adults.

Steady changes to the structure of the labour market have meant that those concentrated at both its poles are less able to carry out unpaid labour, in either their homes or their communities.

Increasing levels of overwork and unpaid overtime have been steadily creeping up for those in full-time employment. At the other end, the proliferation of zero-hour contracts, and bogus self-employment requiring ever-increasing flexibility on the part of the worker leaves the schedules of many at the behest of their employer with little scope for actively engaging with their community. 

The punitive nature of the benefits system has also precluded working-age adults from being able to carry out voluntary work through formal channels in the third sector. Many people with long-term mental health conditions claiming out of work disability benefits remain fearful of taking up any form of volunteering.

Of course, one reason for this is that it could trigger a reassessment of their benefits. For those seeking work, there have been reported cases of people being told they will be sanctioned if they continue to volunteer or having to scale back existing community involvement and unpaid work in order to fulfill onerous weekly job-search requirements.  

Successive Tory governments have relied on encouraging but undervaluing voluntary labour in order to grease the wheels of the economy during austerity, with the burden falling increasingly on older citizens. Boris Johnson’s recent intervention gives an insight into how this strategy will be framed in the weeks to come, drawing on the Churchillian spirit to craft a ‘war effort’ message.

At the start of this crisis, the NHS was promised whatever it needs to tackle the scale of the pandemic. Boris Johnson’s volunteer ‘army’ won’t be enough. Public support is important – but what our public services really need isn’t more volunteers, it’s proper funding.