The civil society covenant needs to be a “cross-party endeavour”, the chief executive of a legacy funder has urged.

Speaking at an event in London yesterday hosted by the think tank Pro Bono Economics, Ruth Hollis, chief executive of the London Olympics legacy funder Spirit of 2012, said the covenant must be a “cross-party endeavour” to ensure longevity.

She said the covenant, which will set out how the government will work with charities and is expected to be published in the next few weeks, is “all about building relationships, building understanding and listening”, particularly in the long term.

“Civil society often gets buffeted with changes of administration and changes of policy. If we can smooth that out and have a covenant that works cross-sector for a long time, that would be a really great step forward,” she said. 

When asked whether the Conservatives would retain the covenant if re-elected, Louie French, the shadow minister for sport, gambling and civil society, said it was “too early to say”.

He said: “Having a covenant and making a lot of noise about the covenant is one thing, doing damaging policies like the National Insurance rise is another.

“Often politics goes for the soundbite or the headline, but actually how do you get into the weeds? We need to see what it looks like and how it works. We won’t oppose for the sake of opposing, we want to be constructive, but we need to see the detail.”

Hannah Pearce, director of campaigns, policy and research at the Royal British Legion, urged the Conservative Party to build more avenues for charities to build formal relationships with it, saying the party can feel “impenetrable”.

She said that while there are formal and informal ways to build a relationship between civil society and the Conservatives, there were fewer regular opportunities to feed into policy development than with other parties.

“So if you’re a charity that doesn’t have any informal links, the Conservative Party can feel really impenetrable,” she said.

“There’s a lot of overlap between the charity sector and civil society on the Labour side. That doesn’t happen as much with Conservatives,” she said. 

While Pearce said she had had success seeking out those informal links, it was a “bit down to luck”, adding: “If the Conservative Party can provide more formal opportunities for the sector to engage with them, that’s got to be a good thing.”

Earlier at the event, shadow culture secretary Stuart Andrew said the Conservatives had started setting up roundtables to boost engagement with different sectors, including with civil society.

Pearce said there are certain cause areas that are easier to engage with the party on, urging the Conservatives to do more work with charities working in areas it may not naturally have an affinity with.

Duro Oye, chief executive and founder of the black and racially underrepresented youth charity 20/20 Levels, agreed, saying: “The onus should be on the Conservative Party to reach out to those grassroots organisations and find out what’s happening on the ground.”

Oye said: “You can’t just pledge allegiance to organisations you already knew of. You need to broaden the scope and widen the net, because there are issues that won’t be on the radar of the serving government or opposition until they become a major problem.”

French responded by saying the party had started to engage with causes that it had not previously engaged with, such as work around issues facing inner-city areas that do not have a Conservative footprint.