It's more complicated than that Marb.
The government are certainly trying to off load services onto the third sector to save money (it costs more in the long run) but a lot of these charities themselves are equally guilty of soliciting it.
What happens is you get the full timers in their well paid jobs in London based offices lobbying ministers and making frankly outrageous claims for their capacity to deliver. You also get generic groups like the CVS trying to build their own empires up. Combine this with politicians who have very limited experience as to how these things will pan out on the ground outside of any rose tinted policy briefings, and it's a receipe for chaos. It's how you end up with completely half baked ideas like 'the Big Society'
To politicians it can all look very attractive though, but as I say, they never see what it looks like on the sharp end. Even on a sanitised ministerial visit all the crap is concealed for the day, which is why Cameron fell hook line and sinker for Kids Company and became besotted with their CEO
My own experience is that the third sector is not only poor and incredibly unreliable, they're also much more prone to corruption than any other sector operating. You honestly have to watch them much more closely than you would any private sector company that recieves a grant or loan from public funds.
Your typical project is local in nature and run by 1 or 2 dominant individuals who possess a much greater wealth of knowledge of what is going on within the set up than any nominal body of trustees with oversight responsibility. It's a reciepe for disaster. Far from being gallant angels, a significant minority of these third sector projects are personal fiefdoms run on the margins of acceptable accountability and practise, and often depend on some dubious patronage from local politicians to sustain their continual award of grant, on which they become operationally dependent
