The Economy

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 28th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this debate. Building a stronger economy depends on many hundreds of thousands of local economies up and down the country and the small and large businesses and communities within which they are set. The success of our economy does not sit in isolation from everything else. The younger generation know this, as they live out their lives on the internet and are increasingly suspicious of large businesses and their motives. But what does this mean in practice, and what are the disconnects as the systems and processes within and outside government control prevent us joining the dots in an increasingly integrated world in which people are demanding joined-up thinking?

HMG have to recognise the increasingly detrimental effect on our economy of continued silo thinking and practice in government systems in a world increasingly lived on the internet—an online environment that is the defining principle of our age. Over the years I have engaged with a number of different Governments, who have tried and failed to move the siloed processes of government on. Yet I suggest that one reason the young are increasingly disenchanted with representative democracy is precisely because they can see that Governments of differing complexions—no matter what US Presidents say—seem incapable of delivering the integrated and joined-up world they want to live in.

Prime Ministers have dabbled in notions of the third way and the big society but they have failed to create any coherent sense of what this all means in practice and, more importantly, what it means for entrepreneurs and businesses which are capable of delivering this joined-up innovation if only the Government and the Civil Service would stop preventing them. This inertia is now having a profound effect on our economy. At a local level, people are attempting to innovate and do joined-up thinking despite—certainly not because of—government and its labyrinthine systems. Would it not be great if we could get behind these innovators and support the people who live out their lives on computers, which are joined-up environments?

Let us look at one government silo: the health service, which spends many millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on procurement services. We all know that the Chancellor is seeking savings in the NHS but there does not seem to be any correlation between the actions of the health service and, for example, the rise in the consumption of alcohol across the country and the cost this is placing on the public purse.

I heard last week that in one of our great cities a tension has appeared between health and well-being, and the growth of the local economy. In one room in a council building the health and well-being board was looking at the impact of alcohol consumption on its expenditure, as the increase in admissions to the local hospital for alcohol-related conditions had rocketed. This part of the public sector is spending £68 million on new in-patient facilities to deal with this problem. The irony was that while the health and well-being board sat in one room, discussing this state of affairs, the economic growth board sat literally next door, with the connecting door firmly shut—you could not make this up—looking at how it could use alcohol to stimulate the night-time economy and regenerate a rundown area in this famous city. Do not tell me that health has nothing to do with the economy: they are fundamentally connected.

The increase in alcohol expenditure has profound implications for how much we spend on health services. The economy is about more than simply money: healthy communities are essential. If people do not have jobs or personal and social connections, they lose purpose and hope. They become isolated and often turn to drink to self-medicate, numbing the pain of the hopelessness of their situation. Cramped housing conditions, poor aspirations and dependency cultures in our inner cities have major impacts on our economy. They force us to lose and waste the very talent our business community needs.

The possible closure of traditional industries such as Tata Steel will have major social and economic impacts if it happens. What will replace it? In these situations people turn to alcohol, which becomes the way to connect with other human beings—a way to being a community with each other. Go to the Wetherspoon’s in our cities up and down this land at 9 am and see what many customers are drinking: cheap alcohol. There is even a business to be made out of this disconnected state of affairs. Health is an economic issue, and economics is about not just numbers but human life.

The history of our economy is that of the connections between trade, people, healthy local communities and aspiration. How do you bring the different pieces of the jigsaw together so that we create a healthy community and a thriving economy? I am working in a town on the outskirts of one of our major cities in the north of England, where a local developer is building a new town centre in what was formerly a steelworks, and in a community that has all the vestiges of a bygone age and the attendant memory of unemployment and loss of jobs. Here, I must declare an interest as the chairman of Well North, a programme attempting to create 10 public health innovations in challenging communities in the north of England. In this community Tata Steel, with its special processes steel works, is hanging on in there—on the edge of that new town centre site—by the skin of its teeth.

A dynamic, local, successful family business is about to create 750 new jobs there. Because it is an intelligent business and understands that a healthy community is all part and parcel of building a successful economy, it is very keen to put a new health centre hub in the middle of the town centre site and connect it to the wider determinants of health in the surrounding community. When my colleagues and I visited this local community last week, we found that one former employee of John Lewis and her friends had bravely taken control of the local swimming pool, which the council had wanted to close because it said it was uneconomic. Stepping up to that challenge, this group of local people have now set up a charity, taken responsibility for this very large building, created a growing customer base and are running the facility at less than half of what it cost the council, with all its middle-management expense. This group of local people recognise that a swimming pool is a health project, as well as a social and economic asset.

A group down the road, led by a local businessman, have taken responsibility for a suite of community buildings. They now run a nursery and a range of community facilities and activities that bring people together and generate an entrepreneurial culture and a sustainable income. However, the group of GPs across the road, who know that consideration of the public’s health demands that they join in with this local entrepreneurial activity, feel unable to do so for the most part because they are ground down by the NHS and its endless systems and processes, which sap the will to live. The GPs can see that the health of their patients is about more than biology; it is about those 750 new jobs and the aspirations of a local community, whose former lives were defined by the steelworks. But with the red tape, siloed thinking and lack of imagination in NHS systems, who can blame them for being cynical and giving up hope of being able to change anything? If I were them, I, like many other GPs, would retire as soon as possible and get out of all that unhealthy treacle which is the modern health service. When I walked into the waiting room last week, a sign on a very large board read: “Friends and Family Test—Please fill out a form for NHS England”. That says it all.

Here, we have a local business entrepreneur who wants to work with public health services and the community to create a new thriving town centre, with jobs and healthy lifestyles. He wants to connect the new health hub to the new cycle shop, because cycling locally is a health project for overweight and lonely people. He wants to explore the relationship between health and diet in the new Italian family restaurant, with its quality foods and strong family and community traditions. There are potential win-wins for everyone here, as together they build a new and thriving economy. But how hard those NHS government-siloed systems are to navigate, how hard they are to work with in relation to community benefit and how costly they are to an emerging new local economy. This is one community and one government department. Imagine what all this siloed behaviour is doing to local economies and communities across this country, let alone to the lives of thousands of employees in the health service ground down by these outdated public sector cultures. Let us ask the Chancellor to put some numbers on all of this.

The siloed thinking in Whitehall still dominates and is keeping local communities poor and reducing their economic performance. The metaphor of the two rooms demands that we open things up, that government changes its role of being a blocker to an unblocker, that it gets real about the connecting door, that it brings the conversations together and that it encourages joined-up entrepreneurial behaviour and innovation in real and tangible ways. Health is about the whole of life, not some biomedical silo. It is not about more legislation: it is about helping join the dots at a local level and knocking heads together in our public sector systems.

In east London, JP Morgan has now joined with us at the Bromley by Bow Centre, where we have built a model of integrated healthcare precisely because we discovered many years ago that 50% of the patients we were seeing did not have a biomedical problem. As a large business, it has recognised that business is not just about large-scale transactions, important as those are. In east London, it is recognising that small-scale investments in businesses and enterprises are significant in a city as large and complex as London, precisely because the wider economic and social value delivered by such enterprises goes beyond pure economics into building civil society and coherent communities. If the Government encouraged this joined-up behaviour in systems they control, we might truly build our economy, use our resources more effectively and have a rather more interesting conversation with a new generation who are living out their lives on the internet and long to see social purpose in all that we do.

What is the real cost to our changing economy of the siloed systems of government that still so resist the logic of the modern, integrated world? Can the Minister help us put a number on that?

Queen’s Speech

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Monday 13th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, the first words of the gracious Speech tell us that the Government will continue to focus on building a stronger economy so that the United Kingdom can compete and succeed in the world. That is exactly right.

At a recent meeting with a large construction company that is playing a major role in rebuilding some of our public infrastructure, I was told how the company longed to build developments that were more “joined up”. The present silo approach to regeneration did not make business or social sense with the limited funds now available. In recent years, there has been much talk and some action from successive Governments in seeking to join up public sector budgets because they get more bang for their buck, but the living examples of success are still rare. The silos that exist between education, health, housing and business funding remain stubbornly in place, and successful partnerships between the business, public and voluntary sectors are still hard to do because our procurement systems are broken. When times get hard, the tendency is for us all to retreat back into our familiar silos precisely at the time when the financial squeeze presents us with a real opportunity to address this enduring impasse. I fear that this is happening now, and without clear leadership centrally it will get worse.

When you have worked in a local community for 30 years, you gain the long-term view. You have seen government programmes come and go, and you have gained some measure of what works and what does not. There has been a whole host of attempts in recent years by successive Governments to join up local delivery. Everyone—particularly the business community—knows that that is really important and that it is the only way to make smaller budgets stretch further. As a result, there has been a whole host of initiatives. To name just a few, there have been local integrated services, Total Place, small area budgets, participatory budgeting, Total Neighbourhoods and the Neighbourhood Community Budgets programme. These government programmes had one thing in common: they were short-term initiatives promoted by one Minister. What seems to have happened is that as some have encountered the difficulty of making change happen, interest towards them has waned and the pilots have not been sustained or the Minister has changed. Another Minister has then decided that they want to tackle the problem and so they start again.

These initiatives seem to fall into two types. There are the Total Place-type initiatives, which are about bringing together local public services—for example, health and social care—and then there are the small area budgets and Neighbourhood Community Budgets programme, which seem increasingly to have taken the direction of consulting local people about local service delivery. However, it is far from clear why the process of consulting local people necessarily has an impact on the quality of local services or enables services to be delivered in a more joined-up way. Again, in our experience the private sector was excluded.

It may be helpful at this point to share with noble Lords some recent practical experience. This is not a criticism of government but it illustrates what can happen to those of us in local communities who are serious about this agenda. On the Department for Communities and Local Government website we are told that in October 2011 the Communities Secretary announced details of how areas can bid to trial two local approaches to integrated services: Whole Place Community Budgets and Neighbourhood Community Budgets. The website describes this dramatic new shift as,

“an opportunity to change the future of the way public services are funded and be the thumping heart of your community”.

We are told that 24 areas out of 45 had been shortlisted to put their name forward to work with Whitehall and develop neighbourhood-level community budgets to explore how different public sector funding streams could be brought together to both save money and create more integrated public services. The website says that the applications demonstrated a drive across the country to explore new ways to give local people more control over services.

Our partners in Tower Hamlets working in education, housing and health thought that this was a very good idea and timely, because we had been developing integrated services together for many years with some success and often against the odds. Here was an opportunity seriously to extend our work and create more joined-up solutions that focus on the individual and the family.

As partners, we applied for and won pathfinder status, and here I must declare an interest. I was asked to speak at a meeting of civil servants new to this field of work and to share our experience early in the process. I was also invited, with an excellent local authority CEO, to meet 15 directors-general from across government, who said that they were all keen to co-operate and learn from our experience of what works on the ground. We were encouraged by the offer of support and involvement from government. Although we did not want government to hold our hand, we did want understanding of the practical issues involved and a little oil in the wheels.

In Tower Hamlets we began to get practical, bringing local people and partners together. We developed a pilot programme and explored how we could bring budgets together and thus use the limited moneys that were available in health, education and housing more efficiently. Crucially, we wanted to involve local people in the delivery process and not in talking shops, thus creating buy-in, new skills and community ownership. We began to talk to major business partners to bring them on board; there was some interest.

There is real concern from politicians across the House about a lack of engagement with local communities, particularly at a time when people feel increasingly disengaged from the political process. We have had a taste of this in recent weeks. In my experience, people do not want to be just the recipients of the state and its services or to be consulted to death about what the state is going to do to them. No—our experience over many years is that many local people also desire to be involved and practically engaged in the delivery of services. New jobs and skills and innovation can come through this process, as we have discovered, and very poor people’s lives and those of their families have been changed for ever as a result.

After some consultation and research, our team decided to focus its efforts during the first year on the diabetes epidemic that is rife in Tower Hamlets. This epidemic needs to be tackled through a joined-up approach in the local community. The lead consultant at the local hospital told me that his caseload was overwhelming him. He agreed that the solution lay in people’s lifestyles and diet, and that it could be tackled only through a joined-up programme run in the community connecting health, education and lifestyle. We created a business plan and began to commit individual budgets as a sign of good faith and to build the project around well established work we had already been doing in this area.

What we then experienced from government was what one of our very experienced CEOs described as a “journey in retreat”. Promises were made to work with us to “enable” the process, but when we asked the Minister to write two letters to the chairman of a supermarket chain and the chairman of the local hospital—both of whom were coming towards the project anyway—to help to oil the wheels, we were told that the officials advised against it. The more we sought to create integrated solutions, bring funding together, innovate and to take seriously what the Secretary of State had said about empowering communities, the more we experienced a process which encouraged consultation and talking shops and not delivery.

Given the health crisis we faced, this about-turn was serious. We were being pushed back into thinking we had explored 20 years earlier and had moved on from precisely because in our experience it delivered little change in practice and often led to increased apathy among local people, along with more talk and reports. My colleagues and I began to ask: is government under the leadership of any party capable of being a learning organisation? Very little, as far as we could see, was being learnt. I never saw the directors-general again and, as far as we can tell, we will now have to move forward on our own with, we suspect, little learning taking place at the centre. This we will of course do; we do not want wet-nursing by central government but we worry about the cost of this process and another wasted opportunity.

I suspect that this experience is not unique and that it has something to do with why the electorate, many of whom have become involved in this project, are increasingly sceptical about the ability of any Government to follow through and deliver. This is one policy initiative that was actually a very good idea: it could have led to deeper community engagement, joined-up innovation and a streamlining of public funding. We had created a project that we could all together learn from by acting both centrally and locally, but, as far as we can tell to date, there has been little follow-through.

So how do we move integrated working forward and deepen practical partnerships between the various sectors? First, we need to recognise the importance of long-term leadership. In my experience, real change happens in a community where there is clear, committed leadership that remains involved for the long term. Secondly, we need to resolve the confusion between democracy and delivery. The reason local services are not joined up is not that local people are not consulted. While it is good to understand the priorities and concerns of local people, joining up delivery is hard work and, if at every turn the partners feel they need to check via some amorphous consultation process, it is likely to run into the sand. Instead, we need to enable and encourage local organisations to deliver services together, and to use the Government’s procurement muscle to deepen partnership working between the sectors. Business is now up for this but it needs encouragement and not signals that point to a retreat.

Thirdly, what is the role of government? Everyone knows that we have to make this work. One of the reasons why there is such a loss of trust in the political process is the frequent failure of successive Governments to deliver on all their many promises. My colleagues and I suggest that the Government identify a figure who everyone respects and who will take long-term responsibility for this process in government. Then they should find an organisation outside central government to run the programme and agree a sensible budget with a 10-year contract.

To be frank, if the will or desire to do this is not there, my advice is to stop wasting everyone’s time with talk of joined-up thinking and action. The electorate know spin when they hear it. If the present Government want to distinguish themselves from previous Governments and distance themselves from broken political promises, I suggest our politicians focus on three words: delivery, delivery, delivery. My colleagues and I have found that trust is created and local people participate when you deliver in practice on what you say.

Is not an integrated, in-the-round community what politicians past and present are struggling to define when they use phrases such as the third way, big society and one nation? This is how you put flesh on the bones of what these terms might mean in practice and make them come alive for people.

I have an awful feeling that I could be making this same speech in response to many future gracious Speeches: I just hope that someone will prove me wrong. We can hope. I certainly will continue to worry about this issue like a dog with a bone because I know what a difference integrated working can make when you get it right and, of course, what moneys can be saved if you do it.

Financial Services Bill

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, I will focus my remarks in this Second Reading debate on the opportunities for growth and investment in the East End of London, particularly in the Lower Lea Valley, where there is a real investment opportunity. When I first arrived in the East End, nearly 30 years ago, the Isle of Dogs was a wasteland. The local joke was that there were two buses a day to the island. At that time the financial centre at Canary Wharf did not exist. The culture of the public and voluntary sectors was anti-business, a dependency culture was rife, and it is fair to say that the councils running the surrounding London boroughs of Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney were mostly basket cases.

Over the past 30 years, major changes have taken place and east London has been transformed. Because of the focused leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and others, a phoenix is rising from the ashes. East London is once again becoming a global destination and a centre of enterprise, innovation, finance and business. It is increasingly recognised as a powerful engine of the British economy, as it was for several hundred years previously, before the demise of the docks. Many years ago, after the closure of the docks, the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, began what many of us working on the ground have come to understand as a 50-year regeneration journey. As we prepare for the Olympics in six weeks’ time, we are half way through that journey. The opportunity to present the scale of business investment in the valley to the world, through this global event, is great.

However, do central and London government truly understand the importance and scale of this wider investment narrative around the Olympic site? Recent meetings that I have had with the key people responsible for articulating this story to more than 20,000 journalists, who are soon to arrive, have not filled me with confidence. They are not familiar with east London or its history and are struggling to develop a clear and concise story. We get one shot at selling east London to the world and we must not miss this investment opportunity. This matter is urgent.

Nearly 16 years ago, three of us met just a few hundred yards from the Olympic stadium. We began to dream about the Olympics coming to east London and to explore its potential added value. The instigator of the meeting was the indefatigable champion of a London Olympics bid, Richard Sumray. At that first meeting, we realised that if the Olympics were ever to come to London, the only place with enough land was the Lower Lea Valley—a forgotten corner of the city on our doorstep. Historically, this was the home of some of the country’s greatest innovators and entrepreneurs. Michael Faraday carried out his electrical experiments at Trinity Buoy Wharf, opposite the Dome. Isambard Brunel built his ship SS “Great Britain” there. The world’s first biotechnology process was developed at the Clock Mill in Bromley-by-Bow.

The Games provided us with a fantastic opportunity to give the world a new perspective on the Lower Lea Valley—a story of business, investment and the growth of an enterprise culture. The Olympics would be a catalyst that allowed us to reach out to investors across the world. They would connect the financial centre then emerging at Canary Wharf with other key development nodes in Greenwich, Canning Town and Stratford in the north. At that time, I reminded my colleagues that the late Reg Ward, who was the life force behind the Canary Wharf development, had always described east London as a water city. Fly into City Airport, look down, and you will see exactly what he meant. East London is surrounded by many miles of docks and waterways. We reminded ourselves that water had driven the economy in east London for 200 years. If the Olympics ever arrived, we needed a vision with integrity that we could communicate. We needed a simple story to draw in potential investment partners from across the world.

After this initial meeting, two of us went to see the noble Lord, Lord Rogers of Riverside, just to check that we were not coming off our trolleys. Within minutes, he agreed that water was the key to both the Games and future investment in the valley. Together, we wrote what must be one of the first documents to position the site for the Games at the heart of the valley and link it to the investment and development nodes that we saw emerging there. This document shows an emerging city in east London, growing around the waterways, ripe for investment and growth, and with the necessary infrastructure coming into place. It also champions new ways of growing enterprising communities with local residents by connecting them to this emerging business and enterprise culture. I still have the booklet today and the present buildings on the Olympic park are not far from what we imagined then.

We sit here 16 years on and we have seen a variety of people and organisations join the Olympic bandwagon. My colleagues and I do not claim all the credit for starting it moving, but we played an important small role as a catalyst beginning to connect the financial service industry at Canary Wharf to the growth potential that now surrounds it.

As chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Urban Regeneration, Sport and Culture, it has been a privilege in recent years to take many colleagues from your Lordships’ House and the other place by boat up the waterways of the Lower Lea Valley so that they might see the bigger picture around the Olympic site. The Olympics, although important, is not the biggest show in town in east London but it is a fantastic catalyst that can drive investment in the area and join the dots of development. Development nodes are well advanced in Greenwich around the O₂, at the expanding City Airport, the growing international conference centre at ExCel, the global business district at Canary Wharf, the £3.7 billion of investment taking place in Canning Town and the £1 billion housing and regeneration scheme further north in Poplar that my colleagues and I are involved with. Here, I must declare an interest.

At the new Westfield shopping centre across the River Lea, we witnessed 1 million shoppers in the first week of opening and a new international station waiting for Eurostar to stop at its prepared platform. Today, with UCL relocating to Stratford, a life sciences-focused enterprise zone in the Royal Docks, the European Medicines Agency at Canary Wharf, and the Tech City concept at Old Street, the area is rapidly developing as a UK science and technology hub. As well as that, right there, there is also the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park that will hold five new villages and a commercial district. Here, I must declare another interest as a director of what is now called the London Legacy Development Corporation.

Noble Lords are probably asking what all this has to do with the Financial Services Bill. I am no expert on the intricacies of financial regulation. I will judge the legislation by effect. But I know that all the above would not have been possible without individual entrepreneurs being able to take a calculated risk and back a promising idea. It was risk that made the docks the trading capital that they once were and that turned around the fortunes of the Lower Lea Valley once more. While not encouraging bankers to raise their heads recklessly above the parapets, I would remind them that the financial story of our nation would have been somewhat different if the Faradays, Brunels and Heseltines had not dared to take appropriate risk. We did not build significant trading links across the world from east London by battening down the hatches and lowering the anchor.

While a stable, better regulated financial sector is an obvious benefit for all those involved in business and enterprise, my concern is whether an excessive focus on financial stability will prohibit banks and others taking calculated risks and backing potential growth. Over the coming years, in east London and across our country, I look forward to seeing small and large businesses being able to raise the capital that they need, local families taking out mortgages that they can repay, and entrepreneurs opening bank accounts with ease. At the moment, the bureaucracy surrounding these processes makes me think that it is easier to return to keeping the money under the bed.

It seems to me that the new Financial Policy Committee will set the tone for the financial sector. Although the FPC has a financial stability objective, the Bill prohibits it from doing anything to seriously prevent growth. But in the interests of long-term, sustainable growth, should there not be a strengthening of this provision? I believe that a secondary objective for the FPC should be created so that it can support the Government’s economic objectives and support growth positively.

Secondly, where is the human dimension to this legislation? My experience in other fields causes me to worry that the macro financial deals made in the lofty towers of Canary Wharf and the City may not be well connected with the micro realities on the ground at the foot of the towers or with the small businesses and practical day-to-day realities of earning a crust. I would remind the House that the City, whose wealth came through the docks in east London, started with coffee houses where people met each other and did deals. This world was about relationships and integrity—“my word is my bond”. You can create endless regulation and legislation but if people do not act with integrity and relate to each other it will not work.

Much has been done to encourage Canary Wharf and the City to deepen their ties with local and surrounding businesses. The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the companies based at Canary Wharf are beginning to realise the long-term advantages of deepening relationships with local business and enterprise. While large organisations cannot be expected to connect with individual entrepreneurs, it is important for them to find a middle ground and to support successful businesses and enterprises which, in turn, will positively impact upon and attract individual entrepreneurs.

My experience is that being in a strong relationship with the world around you, rather than being isolated in ivory towers, is what keeps you safe and honest. If banks had focused on maintaining closer working relationships with their communities, many of our current difficulties could have been prevented. With this in mind, might it not be sensible to have a fifth external member join the FPC who positively engages with small business and has hands-on practical experience in the field? The micro and the macro need to be connected to generate success.

The questions we have to ask today are: will this legislation add to the isolation of the financial services industry or will it help further relationships with enterprise and business? The Bank of England needs to be concerned with more than financial stability. It needs to be concerned with issues central to business and enterprise growth, to have practical and pragmatic objectives, and to have a desire to provide assistance where needed. Theory is one thing but practice is quite another.

Economy: Growth

Lord Mawson Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mawson]

My Lords, the sector that is always neglected when politicians and civil servants look at growth strategies is the faith community. On 22 February last year, I led a debate in your Lordships' House that explored the future use of nearly 50,000 church buildings standing in the middle of virtually every community in the United Kingdom. Building on this debate, on 25 March last week I hosted a national conference at Gorton Monastery in Manchester where the noble Lord, Lord Wei, spoke about the big society. Here, I must declare an interest as a director of the social enterprise, One Church, 100 Uses, which organised the event.

There are many church assets and resources in communities across this country that do not receive the recognition they deserve. At Trinity United Reformed Church in Gosforth, Newcastle, the congregation is leading a business improvement district bid built on the back of the work that has been done during the past decade reconfiguring three church buildings and establishing an enterprise hub which is now redefining the centre of the town. Today, this church is a major local employer.

Gorton Monastery, the conference venue, is today run as an enterprise specialising in banqueting, conferences, weddings and business bookings. Yet a decade ago, this was a cathedral-like building that stood derelict and desecrated. Following a £6.5 million restoration scheme, led by the social entrepreneur Elaine Griffiths and her team, the Monastery Trust, this formerly unused asset now sits alongside the Taj Mahal and the ancient ruins of Pompeii in having being listed among the 100 most endangered heritage sites in the world.

Another national example is the Bromley by Bow Centre in east London, which I founded—I must therefore declare an interest. It grew out of a local church congregation of 12 elderly people. It now has 31 established businesses and has an active business partnership with the multinational company G4S and other leading corporates. Together, they create innovative solutions, based on business principles, for some of our most challenging social issues. Is not the big society about businesses and social entrepreneurs working together?

However, while I am delighted that many churches are embracing the idea of the big society, there are significant problems that will hinder their existence. We all know that the macro growth of the British economy depends on the success of thousands of small businesses like those I mentioned. These entrepreneurial cultures take time to build. To undermine them when they are starting to fly is not wise in the long term. The present financial cuts, made irrespective of local context, are threatening the additional unpublicised services that are deeply embedded in thriving entrepreneurial centres.

In East London, at the Bromley by Bow Centre, the CEO, a businessman by background with considerable financial skill, is struggling to shave more than £1 million from his budget because of the scale of the cuts that the organisation faces. He is losing vital services. Despite the rhetoric from the Government, social enterprises are often being disproportionately disadvantaged by the cuts when resources are allocated from central pots and from local authorities.

I suggest that the big society depends on micro businesses as exemplars to lead the way. I therefore request that the Minister actively explores practical ways to identify, promote and foster economic growth within this emerging entrepreneurial sector across the UK. Much of it is based in some of our most challenging communities. The social sector is formed from many shoots and distinctions need to be drawn to protect these young entrepreneurial flowers. Will the Minister please inform the House how the Government plan to empower social enterprises in some of our most challenged communities?