Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone
Main Page: Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone (Conservative - Life peer)
Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone
My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble Lord on introducing this debate. I became a Conservative when working for the Child Poverty Action Group, influenced by a distinguished Jewish politician who had a profound influence on Margaret Thatcher, the late Lord Keith Joseph. I had written a wonderful paper about family benefit, or child benefit, and how critical it was. He read my paper when I was aged 23 or 24, and he said, “Virginia, you only have to understand one thing; it is much easier to divide the cake up than it is to bake it in the first place”.
Wealth creation matters. If we want schools, hospitals, roads and infrastructure, and if we want to do good and change the world, wealth creation is a critical element. I am pleased that the recent UN millennium development goals particularly emphasise the need for a much greater role for business in any new global framework. Only recently the Economist—of which I am a trustee—wrote an article about the number of people coming out of poverty. They are coming out of poverty because of wealth creation.
Of course there have been examples of the unacceptable face of capitalism, but there has been much more of a profound move to corporate social responsibility, of which one of the greatest champions and pioneers has been the Prince of Wales. His work with the Prince’s Trust, Business in the Community and International Business Leaders Forum has all been about recreating the principles that I suppose surrounded the 19th century businesses of the Cadburys and many others, of serving your community. By serving and strengthening your community you also strengthen your business at the same time.
Business now also informs much of the philanthropic sector and the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was beginning to touch on this. I am fascinated by the work of social impact bonds, Big Society Capital, social incubators and social enterprises. We used to have different rules of engagement for the philanthropic side than for the commercial side. Now there are far more people saying, “No, philanthropic organisations should use their money wisely and well”.
The gap has been universities. Universities are a catalyst between business and society. With great pride, I am chancellor of the University of Hull—which is an area of high unemployment. The university makes a profound difference working with industry and enterprise to create the conditions where external business wants to invest and wants to create employment. A recent example is the Humber port project, leading to the investment of Siemens, and there are many other examples where the local workforce is being trained to be fit for purpose and global businesses are being encouraged to invest in a needy but thrilling part of the country—Kingston upon Hull.