By Ollie Stone-Lee BBC News Online politics staff

Beauty therapy helped Mactaggart in her hour of need

Now the charities minister at the Home Office, Ms Mactaggart has a chance to make the government learn the lessons of that helping hand.

She was diagnosed with cancer last year and says she was not ready for the treatment when the hospital asked her in for a serious operation two weeks earlier than planned.

Even when she reached the hospital she was still "whirly, whirly, whirly" and dictating letters, she told BBC News Online.

Gift

When a woman came up and grabbed her hand, the Slough MP demanded to know what she was doing.

"I'm going to give you a manicure," the woman replied, explaining amid a barrage of questions that she was a volunteer who, on her own initiative, was now using her skills as a beautician on the women's surgery ward every Wednesday.

Ms Mactaggart says: "Actually it was the most important piece of therapy I had.

"Because by her sitting me down, holding my hand I couldn't carry on dictating letters and flouncing around. I just had to sit and think and her doing that enabled me to prepare for an operation of which I was really, really scared.

Mactaggart says the "myth" of compensation culture must be countered

"And because it was a gift, because she was a volunteer, I had to accept it gracefully."

But three other hospitals had shunned the woman's offer of help, suggesting she could perhaps help out on the flower-arranging rota.

Ms Mactaggart says the experience made her think that organisations using volunteers had to employ them properly and recognise they wanted something out of their work.

That is part of the message she is promoting during Volunteers Week: that there should be greater emphasis on the rewards for volunteers - social links, new skills, something for their CVs.

"We shouldn't be ashamed that there's a two-way benefit in volunteering. It's what you do that matters, it's not your motives."

Numbers boost

Tony Blair pledged at the time of the last election to raise the number of volunteers by one million.

Ms Mactaggart says the Home Office's citizenship survey shows that target has already been met, with 1.3m extra volunteers recruited between 2001 and 2003.

Work abroad is popular with Gap year students

She acknowledges there is a risk of a potential crisis in volunteering because the volunteer numbers slowly dwindle from generation to generation.

But she points to the Russell Commission, appointed this spring to investigate producing a national youth volunteering strategy.

And she cites schemes established after the Bradford riots involving youngsters from all the different communities as an example of good practice.

Compensation fears

Trials where students take paid GAP years have not gone as well as Ms Mactaggart had hoped, with problems about how the scheme links up with the benefits system.

The minister insists the government can and will learn from such problems.

Concerns that "compensation culture" frightens people away from voluntary work have prompted MP Julian Brazier to table a private members' bill.

They really want to discharge their statutory responsibilities on the cheap Robert Whelan Civitas

Ms Mactaggart instead points to last week's Better Regulation Task Force report suggesting "compensation culture" was an urban myth.

Mr Brazier's law proposals could prove counterproductive, she says.

"We don't need legislation that allows volunteers to be negligent with your children."

The important thing is to ensure volunteers have the right support to ensure they can provide the professionalism expected of everybody else.

Control fears

Ms Mactaggart argues the biggest obstacles to voluntary work are people feeling they do not have time or are never asked.

As part of its drive to counter such problems, the government is promising to spend �2m over the next two years on encouraging groups of friends, or clubs, to volunteer together.

Robert Whelan, deputy director of Civitas, is arguing that state funding of the voluntary sector, with the government controls it can bring, can be damaging.

He told BBC News Online: "Politicians' interest in the voluntary sector is entirely malign. They really want to discharge their statutory responsibilities on the cheap."

Role expansion?

Unsurprisingly, the minister is interested in what the voluntary sector can do for Britain's public services.

She agrees with former Health Secretary Alan Milburn's call for voluntary groups to become as integral a part of public services as the public and private sectors.

"When the state provides services there's a real risk it's going to be like Henry Ford's car - you can have any colour so long as it's black because the state has got to make sure the standard of service, that's it's universal and that everyone gets it."

By contrast, the voluntary sector can invent new ways of solving seemingly intractable problems, she says, highlighting how the Foyer movement linked housing for young people directly to employment and training.

She rejects Mr Whelan's arguments, arguing that the outcome is what matters, and voluntary groups can be given the space to fill the gaps in innovative ways.

And as for that manicure, Ms Mactaggart says the state cannot fund such activities but it is the kind of helping hand individual volunteers can offer.