Nicholas Soames: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what recent assessment he has made of barriers to volunteering. [38838]

Nick Hurd MP; Minister for Civil Society: In 2008-09 the Governments Citizenship Survey showed that the main barriers to volunteering were, work commitments (cited by 55% of those that did not volunteer), family responsibilities (30%), lack of spare time (26%) and not hearing about opportunities to help (20%).

Encouraging social action, including volunteering is one of the three aims of the Governments vision for a big society. To support this aim, in December 2010 the Government published the Giving Green paper. The Green Paper sought to start a debate on how we can make social action a norm and encourage more people to give their time, including removing barriers to volunteering.

The Government are also committed to reducing bureaucracy for charities, social enterprises and community organisations. To achieve this the Cabinet Office and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) have set up a joint taskforce to investigate how to reduce the bureaucratic burdens on civil society organisations, particularly small organisations. The taskforce is chaired by Lord Hodgson and will report to Ministers in spring 2011.

Chris Ruane: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what research his Department has (a) commissioned and (b) evaluated on the effect of volunteering on the (i) well-being and (ii) employability of (A) newly unemployed and (B) long-term unemployed people. [41039]