Opinion: Finding a name to sum up the sector

By Nick Seddon, Third Sector, 20 August 2008

The Local Government Association recently announced that it had listed the phrase 'third sector' at 92 in a list of 100 'non-words', and was urging councils to stop using it. Councils should instead, it said, use the words 'charities and voluntary organisations'. But - let's be honest - this doesn't resolve much.

For a start, the phrase has strong provenance. It was not coined by New Labour, as Sir Simon Milton, chair of the association and a Tory, might suppose. Rather, it was coined by economist Friedrich Hayek, who said that "it is most important for a healthy society that we preserve...