EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement

Lord Wei Excerpts

Friday 8th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Wharton of Yarm on an excellent maiden and declare my interests in the register. In view of the time, I will focus on what we now need to do given that the PM has kept his promise to leave and has agreed a deal.

Brexit and many other cataclysmic events in recent times, including Covid, have highlighted several things. First, the biggest challenge we face in the world today, even with Covid causing untold havoc, is how to share power peacefully, whether you are a President, the head of an institution or an organisation, or a citizen or voter.

Secondly, the internet, for all its faults, is a gift to help us mobilise beyond government or any given establishment to gather the wisdom of people and to enable them to shape their lives if we share with them the tools to do so, to work with us to create a country that is more resilient and in which freedom, especially to think and express ourselves how we want to while honouring those we disagree with, is respected. Indeed, any time that freedom is curtailed or misunderstood, here and abroad, we will see trouble. The referendum and the subsequent turmoil and schisms illustrates that, as does the rise of the uglier end of populism when we fail to understand how frustrated people feel in an age of superfast smartphones yet in which institutions, particularly but not limited to larger ones, such as government, feel ponderous and bureaucratic.

Let us use this freedom that Brexit now provides to make a better, more affordable, less stifled, more levelled-up life for our people, but let them have a say and a hand in it. To do this, we need to create looser, more agile, more relatable institutions, using technology and ancient wisdom to bring power and decision-making closer to homes, cities and regions, in health and education, in rural and coastal affairs and in many other areas, so that we can better weather future pandemics and future shocks, and so that we can heal.

In this sense, Brexit is not over. The time to rebuild Britain and to address Brexit’s causes resiliently has only just begun. I am curious to know what the Minister has to say on this matter.

EU: Future Relationship

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I want to say thanks to many of those who have contributed to this debate. I declare my interest as in the register.

There have been many speakers already, so I hope I do not have to take up all my time. I definitely do not want to repeat many of the excellent statements and comments that have been made so far. I am probably in a minority in this debate by wanting to actually congratulate the Government on the negotiations in a very tough situation, not least with Covid, the lockdown and all that is going on in the world, especially given all the activity of the last few years and the difficulties that we have had.

Ultimately, as other speakers and my noble friend the Minister have said, we have to negotiate from a position of safeguarding Britain’s sovereignty. That is the reason we are leaving the European Union. There has been a perception and perhaps a reality—sometimes it is both—that we have not always had full sovereignty over our own affairs. If you look at it through that lens rather than just requiring stability at all costs as we move into the next year, whether politically in terms of Northern Ireland or for economic reasons for our businesses and so on, we can see that there are many people in this country who voted to leave and who are willing to accept whatever pain may take place as we exit. That is because the issue of sovereignty is important.

I wish that I did not have to say this, but having listened to some of the remarks from other Peers, I thought that as a Parliament, we have made a vow to the Queen and to this country. I am therefore disappointed, quite frankly. Sometimes I feel like we are listening to opinions that sound so pro-European that they ought to be coming from the other side of the negotiating table rather than thinking about what we as a country really need. I accept that we need to have positive relations with Europe, but I feel that the Government have been doing their best against a very belligerent negotiating partner who, in my view, has not always played fairly.

Some have argued, and I would not disagree with them, that we have grounds to say that the withdrawal agreement has been violated even because of the way that we have sequenced the negotiations in Europe’s favour over the past few years. The discussion about fisheries has been made more important than other matters that are critical to the future of our relations with Europe. Again, in my view, that shows a high degree of bad faith, so I do not agree that the Government are necessarily the villain here. I do not think that that is generally the case because there is much to say about Europe’s behaviour.

On that note, I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister whether, when it comes to the negotiations, we are looking at other alternatives to just hoping that we are going to get a reasonable agreement or no deal. As we look forward to the future relationship with Europe, is it better, as other Ministers have mentioned, to work on other agreements, even in an Australian scenario such as the CPTPP, the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, so that at some point we can come back to these negotiations as a more equal partner with a sizeable bloc to negotiate with rather than being treated like a minor counterpart?

I have another question, having observed the behaviour of the European negotiators. Do we need to build an economy that is more resilient because there is no guarantee that, at a future date, Europe might not seek to place demands on us that might affect our sovereignty again? For example, as a country we are strong in areas such as intellectual property, licensing and so on. These are things that are less impacted by tariffs and perhaps by certain regulations. If we can build a set of industries in the future that are all about spreading our knowledge with partners in other countries, maybe we will be less impacted by the rising protectionism that we are seeing both in Europe and around the world. Even our exporting expertise has value across the world in terms of raising the knowledge base in other countries. Could Britain be not just global but also a source of knowledge by building an even greater knowledge economy in the future?

Finally, I want to ask the Minister about what we are doing in terms of taking this opportunity. Sometimes, when you are up against a wall, whether in terms of these negotiations and we could say the same about the Covid situation, that can drive innovation. You can say, “We have these limitations.” Northern Ireland is the classic example. We have to try to fit the regulations of multiple jurisdictions.

We have talked before about the power of technology, and blockchain especially, to rewire our supply chains, so that with free ports and more generally in our relationships—not only with Europe but with multiple FTA partners—we can find ways in which to actually thrive in this world and benefit from being able to sit between different jurisdictions, rather than being dictated to, whether by the US, China or Europe, in what we do. It is about trying to find a way to work with multiple systems, to be what we have always been: a trading nation that has a powerful and seemingly neutral legal and regulatory framework that allows us to work with the best of those who want to work with us around the world.

What thinking has been done on this? From what I can see, as much as I and others would hope that we can get a deal—and the chances of going into an Australian WTO situation are high—what are we going to do as we come out of that? Negotiation with Europe will not stop there: we still have this set of partners that we have to work with. If they continue to show bad faith, even in that situation, do we need to build a set of negotiating positions—in our economy, our regulations and our technology—in such a way that we can be in a strong position to be an equal partner in future negotiations?

Finance Bill

Lord Wei Excerpts

2nd reading & Committee negatived & 3rd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 17th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I refer Members to my interests, as well as to an article I wrote recently in “ConservativeHome” which expands in greater detail on some of the topics I want to cover today.

I welcome the Bill and the measures that the Government have taken over the last months to deal with this unprecedented crisis. There is much to applaud within policies such as furloughing and tax breaks—ensuring that cash can get to as many of those affected as possible so they can survive the coming months.

Of course, we are now starting to turn and look up a little further out to the coming months and rebooting our economy—bouncing back, as it has been called. I am a bit concerned that, with all the talk of bouncing back in a greener way, which is important, and levelling up, which remains rightly a priority across the country, there is an assumption in so much of our thinking at the moment, and certainly in the Bill, around normal returning. If I am wrong and what I am about to say will not happen, what a relief. However, I fear that we are entering a phase in our nation’s and the world’s history of much greater volatility. Some of that is climate driven and is obviously geopolitical. Again, with this issue of viruses, it is now cheap and becoming cheaper to manufacture viruses. I am fearful that this may not be the only one. Perhaps we will deal with this one, and perhaps there will be a lockdown in winter, or not.

My question—which I mentioned in my article—is: do we need now to have another lens, which is to look at resilience? We have had our Dunkirk and we scraped through. Millions were affected and there were huge losses, personally, in human terms, and financially. However, what will we do to make sure that this never happens again? Even if there are lockdowns in future, why will we still allow millions of people to be reliant only on work that can be done physically? I therefore welcome, for example, the Government’s policies around boosting apprenticeships; how can that be done in a way to give people resilience? How can we have less centralised healthcare so that the huge machines in hospitals can be shrunk down with better technology so that they can be closer to people’s homes or even in their homes? There is also education, supply chains and agriculture—I do not have time to go through them all. There is an opportunity potentially for this nation to become a leader in redesigning our systems so that they can work even in volatile emergency situations like this. In fact, the internet was invented to deal with emergencies like this.

How can we move our entire country forward in a way that makes something of an opportunity to help other countries deal with future crises like this? Perhaps in so doing, we may not quite end up with some of the tax issues, the debt burden and some of the productivity issues. Instead, we can become a leader in being a resilient country to ensure that those who have fewer resources than us will be better able to weather the next pandemic or crisis that hits us.

Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, for taking a lead and introducing this debate. I congratulate the noble Lords, Lord Goddard and Lord Scriven, and the noble Baroness, Lady Janke, and on their fine maiden speeches. I declare an interest as a non-executive director of the Manchester-China Forum.

In the limited time we all have, I want to echo other speakers today in setting out and agreeing with the historic case for city regions to have greater leadership and responsibility in running their own economic affairs. Indeed, in my view, Britain became great largely because of the rise of its modern industrial towns and cities and their ability to project and trade in and with the world. After a century or more of centralisation, events at home and abroad are giving rise to the rebirth of the city cluster as the premier organising force and source of growth in the world today.

I have witnessed this at home in and around Shoreditch, one of the fastest growing and most creative places now in the world. I have witnessed this first hand in my travels to places like China, which have been built on strong cities with a degree of fiscal devolution and talented city governance. I have also witnessed this over the last few years in the Greater Manchester area, where I produced a report on the potential of the city region, and others like it, to do more together to attract and support two-way trade and engage with international investors. There is no doubt in my mind, in light of the success of the model built in Manchester, London, and elsewhere, that providing greater autonomy to city regions to oversee their own economic development and inward investment can enable us as a country to engage more with the world and grow our economy overall.

Of course, there is always more we can do to spread this model of strong, internationally engaged cities and to encourage co-operation between our many metros to attract firms and investment. We could do a lot more to harness local diasporas, which could provide great connectivity with the world, including many international students who now study in most of our great cities and should be encouraged to help us connect even more with other cities around the world to help our businesses find new markets and create local jobs.

Beyond this direct model of enabling economic autonomy within city regions for trade, and other ideas such as granting tax-raising powers—already mentioned by others in this debate—there would be a positive impact on the social economy as well from greater fiscal and political devolution to city leaders, which would spur enhanced levels of social innovation and ultimately social venturing.

In our media-dominated age, it has become increasingly difficult to get new, big ideas birthed at the centre—I know that, having been involved in one or two—and then tested and piloted from within the Whitehall industrial complex. City regions, which by necessity will have to do more with less, need to innovate and pool their own resources, and try out new ideas and solutions that fit local needs and have the potential to improve the state of the nation as a whole. In this light, I welcome the use of city deals, most notably that recently agreed with Greater Manchester, which seek to reward a city region’s ability to deliver matched investment, growth and efficiency through joined-up and innovative approaches, such as the earn-back scheme.

In the model of cities competing and at times collaborating to develop new social economy solutions to thorny social problems, Whitehall ideally ceases to be the monopoly provider and commissioner of policy and practice. Instead, it will curate and learn, highlight and spread best practice, rather than seek to dictate its practices dogmatically. It should focus more on foreign policy, more nuanced immigration control, defence and the reduction of monopolies and oligarchies so that consumers and workers alike can get a better deal.

Devolving greater powers to cities economically is not a total panacea and there will be risks. Over the years, voters have shown a wariness of local kingpins who might go AWOL if given too much power, so the centre and others will need to play a role in fostering broad-based local leadership and utilising emergency powers if corruption or incompetence threaten to undermine a city region—as we have seen perhaps in Tower Hamlets. An independent process that would trigger such interventions will be needed to avoid undue central interference.

Alongside this there is a risk that having different tax levels and other policies across the country might make doing business more complex and costly, although both the Americans and Chinese seem to have found ways of coping with this. These risks, though, are worth running, because unless we do something, the current unsustainable economic inequalities and the political instability that they engender will continue. It is time to incentivise city regions to have greater powers. Finally, I would be interested to learn from the Minister what the centre is thinking of doing and how it will reshape itself as more powers are transferred to city regions over the years.

Soft Power and Conflict Prevention

Lord Wei Excerpts

Friday 5th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei (Con)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the most reverend Primate for tabling this debate and commend him and the Church of England worldwide for the strenuous efforts it makes to advance reconciliation between conflicting groups, both here in the UK and abroad. I declare my various interests as laid out in the Lords register.

When I first reflected on the notion of soft power after coming into this House, it led me to a curious starting place: trade. We often think of soft power in terms of non-profit, diplomatic and associational activity alongside the marketplace—many of which were expertly set out in the excellent report by the Select Committee chaired ably by the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford. However, I have been intrigued these last few years by the power of dreams—specifically, commercial dreams that have criss-crossed the world over the centuries as a means of enabling countries and cultures to communicate and connect across language and other barriers.

For example, the European or continental dream emanating from the courts of kings and nobles in France, Italy and beyond, find their expression still today in the luxury wares and fashions that fill high streets around the world. Our own British dream, developed quite consciously and wisely as a means to make our own Royal Family and leadership more accessible in dangerous times, finds resonance today in the goods and products so sought after around the world. The American dream followed, and many others are being built.

Each dream identifies iconic products or artefacts in areas that have universal appeal, allowing them to say something of their host culture that words alone cannot convey, and often specifically in four areas: food and drink, housing, clothing or fashion, and communications, which covers both transportation and now IT. So whether you are drinking a Coca-Cola or Earl Grey tea, driving a Mini or a Cadillac, wearing Armani or Savile Row, and so on, millions are able to partake in both high-end and everyday products and services that enable them to have a taste of another culture from somewhere around the world.

What, one might ask, has this got to do with conflict prevention? Actually, a great deal. American products after the world wars were provided to starving populations once fighting ceased, and created a warmth towards America that persists today in many parts of the world. The role of entertainment—specifically sport, which, I would argue, is a part of the British dream—exported around the world, created a valuable means ultimately of enabling friendly competition between nations, as a way of building relations and avoiding conflicts which might otherwise get out of hand.

Most importantly, each of the dreams in its purest and admittedly stereotypical form, certainly at the outset and at its best, encodes a set of values that belies the simple functionality of the products that make them up. So with the old European dream one can pick up consciously or subconsciously an understanding of quality and craftsmanship, of honour and tradition. With the British dream there is civility, good humour, fair play and, increasingly today, modernity, social responsibility and community. With the American dream there is freedom, prosperity and aspiration.

The Chinese dream is currently under development. I would love to see one emerging in the coming years that builds on the idea of a strong, increasingly prosperous nation rising again on the world stage—important as this concept is—to incorporate through its entrepreneurial and commercial products the values of care for, and harmony with, nature, of family and of respect for others, which I think expresses the best of historic Chinese civilisation’s values over the millennia.

In their best form these values—carried as they are within the dreams and the artefacts that represent them—can, when well executed, deliver more understanding and help prevent conflict more than a hundred conferences or acts of diplomacy, vital as these are. This is because, by facilitating everyday the subconscious admiration of another nation or group’s culture, we create a safe space for dialogue and for focusing on the positive, and step away from division.

Of course, the transmission of values, whether via commercial products or in a more general way through discourse, dialogue, and diplomacy, can be a powerful form of soft power in and of itself, which is why so much energy is poured into related think tanks, education, global broadcasting, national councils, cultural initiatives and so on. However, we have to evaluate whether value transmission is always in its rawest and least-nuanced fashion beneficial to the cause of preventing or reducing conflict, whether armed or not.

I will take democracy as one example. In most circles, and not least in this, the Mother of Parliaments, democracy is our most cherished export, a part of the British dream—and quite rightly so. At times, however, the value that democracy represents when universalised and imposed on other countries prematurely can sometimes do more harm than good, not least to the long-term peaceful cause and development of democracy in such countries themselves. We need to remember how long it took for our own democracy to develop, and remember that stable ones are not built overnight.

Indeed, there are values embedded in each of the dreams I have mentioned which work against peace and understanding and which can undermine the health and well-being of the consumers who partake of them—from the colonialist mindset that parts of the old British dream can convey, to the materialism and literal overconsumption that the American dream now often evokes, or the unequal decadence and faded grandeur of the European dream, and so on.

The key to whether values carried by such dreams or transmitted directly have a positive or negative impact ultimately comes down, of course, to people. And here is the rub: our soft power and that of other cultures derive not just from our products and cultural artefacts, and not even just from our values, but from the behaviour and mindset of the people who promote these values and artefacts to the world.

You may be a politician looking to secure votes here, who seeks to champion values overseas—whether those of democracy or freedom from bureaucracy—but in your heart you care more about how this might play with your own voters than with the countries that you are talking about and the people in them. Your words for a domestic audience can end up increasing conflict and have adverse consequences overseas, especially in an age of social media. Conversely, you might be a journalist or editor who rightly decides to not over-report the executions that are happening in the Middle East to help save lives by not escalating the cycle of violence in the region. In each case, it is the person who determines through their actions and words whether the values they champion end up causing conflict or preventing it.

It is all about people in the end, and their motivations. Here there is a particular poignancy because, noting that Christmas is just round the corner, there is a person, in Jesus Christ, whose soft power, if you like, has persisted to this day and shaped nations, not least our own; and whose example, if followed—perhaps with a bit of help from above—gives us a guide to how to prevent unnecessary conflict and how to be the kind of people who promote peace, not violence. While war is sometimes unfortunately necessary when the cause is just, the harder battles are always in winning and establishing peace and avoiding the conditions which will lead to wars in future.

As has been mentioned, Jesus took a successful system based on war and conquest, that of the Roman Empire—and specifically a form of governance the Romans used called ekklesia, from which we derive our word church or assembly—and encouraged his followers to represent him by helping to peacefully bring his values of love and blessing to the world, using the trade routes that were the Roman internet of the day to shape history to the then ends of the earth. He did this not by confining himself and his message of salvation to one country, city, or even building, but by positively influencing the very people who shape culture and values, and who oversee how these are transmitted locally and globally, and who through trade and commerce shape the narratives—the dreams to which people aspire.

Some might argue that faith, whether Christian or other faiths, is a historical source of conflict, and should be kept out of any debate about soft power. I would argue that again we need to understand the nuance. The kind of faith that underpinned Jesus’s notion of ekklesia, of his church throughout a city making peace and caring for the needs of its citizens—young, old, masters or employers—is the kind that brings peace, and which can help steer the right values and the right artefacts in the right direction. The kind of faith that seeks to make conflict itself a goal, and specifically violence, is attractive when people of peace, the ekklesia and others who share similar values to it, are absent or have been ignored, and represents a kind of last resort for the desperate as law and order breaks down, dreams are shattered and opportunists looking for short-term gain rise up and start to wage both a narrative and physical war.

Today we live in a world of conflict—not just the kind of conflict expressed through physical war but of many kinds, increasingly afflicting our world. Much of it is viral—spreading quickly, fuelled by perceived inequality and injustice. We need people who can follow Christ’s lead and take a stand for winning the peace, not just the war, whose values are positive and who can help prevent conflict, and whose everyday lives, products and narratives, instead of sowing division, promote understanding, restraint and tolerance.

English Premier League Football

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I join my fellow Peers in congratulating my noble friend Lord Bates on securing this debate. Amid a summer of sporting success, it is only right that we turn to football, a sport whose Premier League has become truly world class over the past two decades, even though as a nation we still eagerly look forward to a World Cup breakthrough to add to our recent tally. I shall focus on how we balance the interests of increasingly international club shareholders and owners in the Premier League with those of the nation at large and the communities and economies that they are linked with locally, and why it is of benefit to us all to do so.

We cannot ignore other aspects. Investors and new club owners, combined with the boost from commercial television and advertising income in these past decades, have presided over the professionalisation and increased global prominence of clubs that we could only have dreamed of when the sport was invented, making the experience whether on or off the pitch, at home or in the pub, that much richer. At the same time, footballing history reminds us that clubs initially were formed to provide a social function enabling local communities to enjoy leisure and fitness, and to build character. They acted as a linchpin of local society and local economy.

Today, there is huge potential for global football brands to further benefit the UK economically. I declare here an interest as a Manchester United supporter and as a non-executive director of the Manchester-China Forum. When conducting a survey for A Report on Growing East, which I recently co-authored, we identified how in China, Manchester is most closely associated with football, and that opportunities for promoting the city among Chinese investors and companies abound when the clubs and local promotion agencies can work together and co-ordinate their efforts. The very international nature of football today is able to not only bring investment but create relationships of a global nature that enable and fuel growth in our cities to help them develop trade, tourism, retail and infrastructure, thereby creating jobs.

At the same time, that very international nature brought about by foreign ownership and involvement is a huge benefit to the culture of many of our cities and towns, making them more diverse and interesting both on and off the pitch. Racism, which has historically been a scourge in football, has moved on significantly as a result of having players and supporters represented in our Premier League teams from all over the world and joining forces through campaigns such as that run by Kick It Out. Some would say that this has brought disadvantages in that local British players do not get as much opportunity to play in season. I have to disagree, because we cannot protect our British players from global competition since ultimately it will make them more competitive. However, we could do even more at the national level to identify and nurture a truly great set of national teams.

At this point, the debate over the national interest and the ownership of major football clubs in the UK can sometimes reach fever pitch. If we look at other sports where we have seen successes recently, they have come overwhelmingly from taking an increasingly scientific approach to developing individuals and teams, with lots of resources being put into growing a strong pipeline of competitive athletes. The onus is on the country or the national team to develop this, not always on the local club or association.

Similarly, in the UK we need to borrow from international influences and follow Germany’s example by vigorously bringing the youth development of players back into the centre rather than relying solely on our Premier League clubs. We could add a British free-market twist and charge clubs if they want to buy some of those players, developed in a national pool, for their squads. That would help pay back the nation for investing in them. Indeed, the young people themselves could be invited to agree to pay back from some of their future earnings, should they enter the Premier League and earn above a certain threshold. That could assuage concerns about the high salaries that footballers receive. Germany has 1,000 part-time scouts and qualified coaches looking everywhere for the talent it needs for the future. We ought to invest to a similar degree now that St George’s Park is in place and not rely primarily on clubs to do all the work, except to provide the market mechanisms to help make this endeavour sustainable.

I want to look at how this balance between foreign ownership and local needs plays out through an aspect that unfortunately is sometimes overlooked, but which is of the utmost importance: the role of fans. In recent years, there has been much talk and a few examples of exploring how fans could theoretically come together and buy out their clubs, in part or in full, to create structures more akin to that of Barcelona in the UK. I am very much in favour of such arrangements but we need to be realistic and perhaps opt for more partnership arrangements, in which fans could come together via a trust that would take a significant stake with voting rights—as with the John Lewis Partnership. This would still allow new investment to come in, yet give fans more of a voice. Ultimately, it seems to me that the Premier League model should complete a shift away from live spectator fees being the main driver of income for clubs to what is already starting to happen: having advertising and satellite viewing fees, combined with diverse merchandising income from all around the world. Fans who have a stake in their club financially would have a greater incentive to help generate followers and fans both in the UK and globally, creating a virtuous and, hopefully, less debt-fuelled circle.

In this regard, can the Minister say what plans there are in this area and whether any legal incentives could be put forward to make it easier to put such fan-led shareholder arrangements into place? With such ownership we could start to see a more holistic set of activities which many of the best Premier League clubs already engage in, but which can be hard to maintain, given financial and commercial pressures, and thus develop the social and cultural fabric of the local community. I will not go into the countless ways that clubs already get involved in helping local causes. My personal favourite involves clubs agreeing to host mental health and job clubs for men who traditionally find it hard to admit that they have challenges in these areas but will turn up to an activity at a football ground. Given that clubs are not used that much for games on weekdays, there is huge scope for them to be leveraged further for public and social benefit, such as through the successful aforementioned Premier Skills initiative.

Given these and many other examples, it strikes me that we ought to be looking at mechanisms whereby we can harness global football grounds for local benefit on the investment front. Where we do that already, we help to improve citizen well-being and save public money, and club money as well. Could we one day see impact bonds that would create, in partnership with clubs, their fans and stakeholders, ways to help save money locally while creating jobs and fostering well-being in citizens? Promoting cities for trade through clubs, a football investment bank, incentives and support for fans to jointly own their clubs and more partnerships to leverage football brands for social and public benefits are brief examples that demonstrate how, with a little creativity and leadership, foreign ownership of clubs and the local and national benefits from the Premier League’s international nature do not have to amount to a zero-sum game. Get the balance right, and we all win.

Public Services (Social Value) Bill

Lord Wei Excerpts

Friday 27th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Newby for sponsoring this Bill, and thank the Government for their generous support for it, which is most welcome. I speak as one with a passionate interest in the content of and context behind this Bill, which I wholeheartedly support, not least because of my prior and ongoing work in fostering scalable social enterprise, in which I declare an interest, as well as more specifically being an adviser to the Community Foundation Network, a movement that seeks to enable giving at the local level, often alongside local and national commissioners.

I welcome the intention behind the Bill to promote engagement with and support for social enterprise, and want to focus my remarks on the suggested amendments to the process of commissioning public services in it to ensure that social value is taken more into account.

Some might question, wrongly in my view, why this Bill is necessary, given that, as has already been mentioned, the law already technically provides the flexibility for the public commissioning of services on a holistic basis. Indeed, many public bodies and commissioners recognise that the value of work tendered out has to be about more than saving money in the short term or satisfying minimum statutory requirements, and must take into account the other forms of value without which society fragments and costs for all become greater.

Such smart commissioners recognise, particularly in light of what we have witnessed dramatically throughout the financial and social crises that have marked recent years, that we need to try to cultivate and live in at least three kinds of economy, each with their own kind of value. First, there is the global economy, based on financial transactions, which encompasses everything from tax and spending to trade and investment, and so on. Secondly, there is the reciprocal economy, or what Avner Offer, paraphrasing Adam Smith, calls the economy of regard—that sense of community, however configured, in which we derive mutual support based on principles of reciprocity. Thirdly, there is the gift economy, driven by who we are, what we believe is right and wrong, and what we feel our call and passion is that compels us to help others with no expectation of reward or even recognition.

If we exist only in one of these economies, we become vulnerable when hard times or sudden changes come along, like a wrecked ship with only one section in its hull. If we cultivate all three, we become resilient, like a ship whose hull has multiple sections, able to draw upon funded support from the state, jobs or savings, on the support of our community, and on the support of friends, partners and fellow believers in our hour of need.

Smart commissioners intuitively try to minimise the damage to each of these economies in the way they tender, while promoting their autonomy, sustainability, and the innovation that comes when such economies or spheres overlap and work together rather than apart. Smart commissioners recognise that value includes but extends beyond that which is purely financial today. However, despite the flexibility already enshrined in law to enable smart commissioning, and despite the best efforts of smart commissioners, there remain too many people, I am afraid, who tender out contracts that conform to a more narrow definition of value—a definition that is, to put it crudely, too often about who can apparently deliver the most output for the least money and/or who has the best financial backing, irrespective of their ethos or approach, or who has the best track record of supplying to the public sector.

This is a definition that too often unfairly favours the supplier most adept at writing loss-leading bids, which may be subsequently renegotiated after they have been awarded over those that provide good honest value; the supplier who often has the best private sector backing over those such as charities or mutuals, which have limited reserves financially, even though they have ample reserves from the community of time, networks and skill; or the supplier who is the incumbent over the new market entrant on the basis that one is easier to manage than the other.

This is a definition that may seem to save money in the short term, and that apparently lowers risk, but that costs us more in the longer term, financially and otherwise, and potentially increases long-term systemic risk, as witnessed in major public sector procurement scandals that have arisen from time to time, when risk aversion or fear creates itself over time risk and moral hazard on a large scale—for example when suppliers become to big to fail, to negotiate better prices with, or just to lose.

In many such cases, the answer is to not use commissioning at all but to co-produce solutions or foster citizen-led services without using any or much money, just its power to convene through, for example, matched grants; or to embark on joint ventures where other partners can share the risk of managing new, small, and local suppliers—John Lewis partnership style. However, when commissioning remains the best way forward, this Bill will provide a much welcome nudge to get commissioners to consult properly and to consider the social benefits or otherwise of services that they are about to procure, not generally then to ignore them, which would be unwise, or even automatically to favour the non-monetary over the monetary forms of value, which is equally unwise, given our urgent need to reduce the national deficit, but to try to seek out where possible the solution that is best value over the short and long term financially, and that also can bring benefits of a non-financial nature—the win win rather than the either/or.

There are many areas of commissioning in which this opportunity for consideration would be of benefit. Central government procurement is a key area in health, work and pensions, and transport, to name but a few, where reductionism is rife and long-term value is not always taken into account. In an era of local authority spending restraint and de-ring-fencing, this Bill and its focus on the smart commissioner has heightened importance. Had it been in place earlier, perhaps we would have seen fewer or at least smarter reductions than those that have occurred in some local authorities, which have disproportionately targeted charities and social enterprises, as well as local sustainable businesses, and indeed much loved and valued local public services.

As an advocate of the big society, I have welcomed this Bill from the moment I first set eyes on it, and I am glad to see that it enjoys healthy cross-party support in both Houses. The direction of travel that the Bill exemplifies represents another example of the kind of shift that we need to see, putting more control into the hands of the community and those who are community minded and not just of vested interests, who have monopolised power for too long. It represents a crucial first step in making commissioning more citizen-orientated and less risk-minimisation orientated. I look forward to seeing other concrete future measures beyond this one, such as the power for citizens to recall suppliers in extreme cases, more commissioning that encourages collaborative work between suppliers and not just competition, and measures to make more joint commissioning the norm rather than the exception not just across the public sector but alongside the private and voluntary sectors. But for now, I can only recommend that we pass this Bill speedily.

Sometimes Conservatives are perceived unfairly not to care much about society, given our convictions about the importance of sound finances and their impact, good or otherwise, on future generations and our sustainability. But my honourable friend in the other place, Chris White, has shown how on the contrary Conservatives are actually on the whole socially responsible, caring, and innovative in thinking about how we use the scarce resources that we now have to maximise social value for the benefit of us all. For that, Chris deserves our thanks.

Social Enterprise

Lord Wei Excerpts

Thursday 6th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, for tabling this excellent debate, and declare an interest as an adviser to the Community Foundation Network. Given the limited time we have in this debate, I will not dwell on definitions, even though the term “social enterprise” does differ, depending on whether one uses the more narrow legal definition based on percentage of income earned, or the broader sense of the word, which comprises more a sense of solving social problems in an entrepreneurial way. I prefer to use generally the term “social venture”, which explicitly encompasses both definitions.

There is much about government policy on promoting social enterprise that should be welcomed. Here I must declare an interest in having had a hand in developing some of it. It is particularly pleasing to note that while traditional volunteering and giving may be on the wane, social enterprises have been starting up at an explosive rate since the election. I believe these two trends are actually two sides of the same coin; as we age and as technology changes our lifestyles, it is not surprising that traditional attitudes to giving and volunteering, in which money and work may have tended to be handed over to professionals, are on the wane, and more and more people, old and young, want to give of their time and money in a more hands-on, technologically enabled—that is to say, convenient and, indeed, entrepreneurial—manner. Social enterprises or ventures will be the likely beneficiaries of such a shift.

Social enterprises facilitate all three parts of the Government's programme of sharing greater responsibility for tackling social problems with citizens, otherwise known as the big society. Social action, community empowerment and public service reform are all made possible through social ventures, and the Government have recognised this, for example through their national citizen service programme, which seeks to engage young people from widely different backgrounds in serving their communities, often through social action-orientated social ventures, or their programme of training community organisers who can help citizens locally develop social enterprises as a means of addressing neighbourhood issues, or through the big society capital wholesale fund, designed in large part to help social enterprises to achieve the scale needed to help compete for and then deliver devolved public services.

However, despite this great start, more could be done in each domain to encourage social enterprises to thrive. In the area of social action, for example, there needs to be more follow-through on implementing the recommendations on barriers faced by social organisations, including social enterprises or ventures in the report from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, Unshackling Good Neighbours, such as redrafting guidance from government departments that can be written in too risk-averse a manner, causing many smaller organisations to be overly fearful of liability and causing them to incur unnecessary costs that they can little afford.

In the area of community empowerment the Government need to encourage a more consistent treatment of social enterprises by local authorities and front-line officials, which in my view have a very wide range of attitudes to the role of such enterprises locally across the country. In some places, social enterprises are seen as a valued part of the local ecosystem and supported well, whereas in others they are seen too often as a quick way for the local state to offload assets. One low-cost way of achieving this better understanding of social enterprises in the public sector that I have come across is encouraging leaders from the public sector to work in the offices of social enterprise leaders, and vice versa, for parts of their week, which can often help to increase understanding of the challenges and strengths of each others' models and ways of operating, which can then lead to more nuanced policy and co-operation at a local level.

In the domain of public service reform, there remains a real need to create more of a level playing field in commissioning based on social value, as articulated in Chris White’s Private Member’s Bill, which was also mentioned earlier. Officials should desist from trying to water down provisions in the Bill for fear that they might complicate tendering processes or lead to economically inefficient decisions. On the whole, seeking social value does not, in my view, have to complicate or render commissioning decisions uneconomical. Rather, good commissioning should always seek to balance complexity and simplicity in the short and long term. Sadly, too much commissioning today seeks to go for the overly reductionist and short-term answer, which too often in turn leads to a lack of the originally desired outcomes and longer-term costs because best value principles were not followed. It is disappointing, for example, to see organisations such as Surrey Community Health not winning tenders and to see the lack of successful bids, so far, from employees in the NHS to form mutuals, which has a lot to do with the way in which commissioning is currently configured.

I believe that the Government have made a good start in supporting social enterprise and ventures in what are financially difficult inherited circumstances, but the pace has definitely slowed. The Government now need to show how they, too, can be socially entrepreneurial and implement further reforms to build on that strong start—not succumb to timidity or be stymied by bureaucratic roadblocks. To achieve this, they could well do more to work with the likes of community foundations, which are experts in facilitating the start-up, scaling and, increasingly, the turnaround of social enterprises up and down the country. Indeed, the community foundation movement covers about 97 per cent of the country.

I know from personal experience that there are parts that government ultimately cannot reach and I encourage social entrepreneurs, public servants and commissioners to work with their local community foundations to overcome the barriers that they face in helping to support the social enterprise sector, so that the many promising existing and newly started social ventures can continue to thrive, expand and collaborate, forming together a full part of the ecosystem of players needed, now more than ever, to strengthen our society.

The Big Society

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for tabling today’s excellent debate. There are in my view many measures that government can undertake to encourage participation in the big society, so that people can feel more in control over their lives and solve problems they care about closer to home.

First, government can create and signal opportunities for citizens to act. There are many ways to do this, from opening up public services to more flexible and citizen-centric providers, providing rights for citizens to take control over services locally, and making it easier to publicise opportunities to give time, money, and other resources. There is in fact a huge amount of information out there, but it is not always in a form that is tailored to the lives of busy citizens where they live. Technology here can help, as I have been documenting on my blog, and elsewhere.

Secondly, government can remove barriers that get in the way. Sometimes the barriers are simply ones of inertia and a lack of incentives. More can be done, I am sure, to honour and reward citizens, particularly the young and those who are getting involved for the first time, to encourage enduring participation. I also welcome the imminent report from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on the bureaucratic barriers that prevent citizens and the voluntary sector from getting involved, many of which need paring back to more reasonable levels.

Thirdly, government can also build the underutilised capacity of individuals and organisations to get involved, which it will do through, for example, the big society bank, the growing social investment sector, community organisers, and the Community First endowment scheme. But we cannot assume people will get involved just because government encourages them to do so. Indeed, there is evidence that the more politicised a topic like this becomes, the less people may want to engage with it. With this, I must urge the Opposition in particular to be more responsible. Just as Labour's love of spin-doctoring has eroded at times public trust in politics, the danger of bashing the big society may be that people end up wanting to get involved less, and focus on themselves and not on helping others around them just at the time when as a country we need to pull together. Does the Minister agree that the Opposition at times risk undermining their own ideals for participation in society, whether good or big or blue, and are in reality advocating a selfish society to protect special interests rather than those of the country at large for the longer term?

Social Policy

Lord Wei Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wei]

My Lords, I stand before you today a relative youth with much still to learn. Yet I have been humbled by the extraordinary welcome that I have been given by your Lordships: by my sponsors, the noble Lords, Lord Strathclyde and Lord Bates; by my mentor, the noble Baroness, Lady Seccombe; and by many other noble Lords, with their kind words. I also thank the dedicated staff who serve this House so admirably, for which I am extremely grateful, and without whom I would be literally lost every day. Not once has my youth been held against me: rather, I have been treated as a peer. I have been kindly and undeservedly given the experience and wisdom that graces this noble Chamber and its surroundings.

This contrast between my relative youth and the privilege of being able to be surrounded by others of much greater wisdom and experience than I reminds me of a time in my early childhood that shaped the man you see before you today. Unlike perhaps many second-generation Chinese born in this country, I had the joy and fortune not only to grow up in the company of others who emigrated from Hong Kong where my parents originated and from other parts of Asia but to enjoy the friendship of many wonderful English men and women of much experience who served at the Christian mission at which my father worked, and even to stay frequently with an English babysitter and her family. This early and subsequent exposure to people from different walks of life, ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds has helped me time and again. It has given me what I know today is called social capital, particularly the bridging kind, and has allowed me to explore different worlds. It gave me an early understanding of civil society and its ability to transform your outlook and even your life.

After spending my formative years in London, my family moved to a part of Milton Keynes which I only recently discovered was mainly inhabited by another sort of émigré, people who had left the slums of east London in search of a better life in the 1960s and 1970s. Attending the local comprehensive school, I was exposed early to the kinds of social problems that come with having a low income and witnessed behaviour and the use of narcotics that I now still come across in east London where my family and I live today. I learnt above all that while income was an important factor in poverty, escaping it required much more than just financial capital; it required social capital. I was fortunate to have access to teachers and mentors who lent me theirs, who were supportive and who knew how to help me get into a great university.

At that university I learnt many things, but one experience stood out; I took part in a business competition run by a computer simulation in which different teams competed to make rounds of decisions in the hope of successfully producing virtually the best products and the greatest profit. My team won against the odds, which was most shocking because none of us had any business or higher mathematical training and many other teams were better qualified than ours. All we did was organise ourselves so that we could make any kind of useful decision faster and reasonably well. It taught me that ordinary people can, against the odds, out-perform expectations when they work together in groups. Over the years since that victory, I have been able to observe the same phenomenon in business, in education, in social enterprise, and now in civil society. To quote Margaret Mead’s timeless phrase:

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has”.

This brings me on to the topic of today’s debate, which I am thankful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester for having initiated and which is very much close to my heart. I have enjoyed the speeches so far and I look forward to those to follow. The debate is indeed incredibly well timed. The role of partnerships between government and civil society in shaping social policy is at the forefront of many minds in this country. There is much discussion in the nation at large about the associated phrase “the big society” and what it really means. As a regular citizen who has the privilege to speak today on this topic, I would like briefly not only to hazard an informed guess but to acknowledge a number of challenges that will need to be overcome to make such a vision—such effective partnerships—work, and then to close by highlighting the powerful role this House can and does play in facilitating such partnerships.

The big society, it would appear, operates at three levels. On one, it is a question that civil society is now, more than ever, being asked about what role it wants to play in shaping our collective social future, in driving long-term change and solving entrenched problems. The answer to the question can vary depending on one’s political inclinations, geography and past experiences, but the first step is to ask the question. There will be many different answers, many big societies, but the exciting development is that the topic of the debate in this House is also a topic of debate in many houses across this land, often for the first time in generations.

On another level, the big society describes a set of policies to give more powers to people closer to where they live, to help increase the capacity and resources of civil society to take up such powers, and to encourage a sense of collective progress and momentum since it can be hard to “bowl alone”. I shall defer to noble Lords speaking after me to further elaborate on these policies, but it would seem to me that this Government clearly wish to affirm that partnerships between government and civil society in shaping social policy are to be welcomed.

The third level at which the big society seems to operate beyond asking the question and setting out policies is that of nurturing an ecosystem. I describe this as the big society coral reef, because at the heart of this debate, in my humble opinion, is not just what civil society thinks social policy should be or even what government pronounces, but a collective and very British constitutional negotiation of a partnership for the 21st century that values and combines not just the seabed, the bedrock of our public services—to protect the vulnerable—but the coral represented by the many current and future providers of those services that add variety and innovation and humanity to their delivery. Last but not least it is the very fish that feed in these waters, the local citizen groups that can extend, vivify and shape this landscape in ambitious as well as humble ways. No single part of this ecosystem can or should dominate, but by working well together each comes to form a whole that is often more than the sum of its parts.

There will be challenges in realising such a partnership, as many attempts to forge it before have shown both here and abroad. I list a few of the possible risks: unclear goals leading to a dissipation of effort; a lack of even a moderate amount of resource to empower scalable citizen responses; institutional resistance to the change this approach entails; the capture of new powers by vested interests that are so off-putting to the apolitical citizen; and apathy or a lack of critical mass. Neither civil society or government, nor we in this House, should be under any illusion that the journey to achieving this 21st century partnership will not be long, arduous and filled with setbacks. But the state of our politics, the resourcefulness now required of our economy, and the multi-faceted and complex nature of the social policy challenges we face appear to me to invite us to travel down this path as far as it can take us over the coming years until a new, healthier, more vibrant balance can be found for the benefit of this nation: one that is built upon ancient values and traditions as well as the latest technology and ways of working.

This House can and does play a pivotal role in the success or failure of this journey, this partnership, this big society. It does so in three ways: in the tireless and passionate championing of charitable, social enterprise and other socially beneficial causes, whether with or without government support, which so many of your Lordships undertake; in the holding to account of government through debate and questioning; and in the recognition of whether particular laws government seeks to pass will strengthen or weaken civil society and the ability of local groups to thrive and flourish.

This House role models, defends and forges the very partnerships we are debating today. My hope is that as long as I am privileged to be a Member of it, and indeed at least until I can one day speak with the same experience and wisdom that your Lordships possess—which no doubt will not be for a very long time—this House will continue to be a source of inspiration for partnerships between government and civil society in houses up and down the land—houses which, like ours, are motivated by Gandhi’s timeless entreaty to,

“be the change you wish to see in the world”.