Policy for Growth

Chris White Excerpts

Thursday 11th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris White (Warwick and Leamington) (Con)]

I wish to approach this debate from a slightly different angle. According to the National Council for Voluntary Organisation’s “Almanac 2010”, the UK is home to around 900,000 civil society organisations with a total income of £157 billion, accounting for around 10% of our GDP and holding £244 billion worth of assets. More than 1.5 million people are employed by civil society organisations. So when we are talking about growth and plans for growth, we need to ensure that we include civil society within that and do not merely focus on the traditional divisions of private sector and public sector.

Whether we wish to recognise it or not, civil society has an important role to play in the growth of our economy. First, these organisations are at the forefront of the reskilling and upskilling of our economy. Organisations such as the Smallpiece Trust in my constituency are in the vanguard of providing courses and raising the profile of science, technology, engineering and maths. It is the Smallpiece Trust, and entities like it, that will help to provide the skills base that our country will need if we are to see a boom in the green economy, manufacturing and other sectors that will generate the growth and create the jobs that we need for the future. We all know that we face a skills challenge in the years ahead, and if we are to meet that challenge, we really need to galvanise voluntary organisations, educational charities and social enterprises.

Secondly, the UK is a very service-hungry nation and, although we are facing a difficult economic time ahead, that is unlikely to change. The public sector already spends nearly £200 billion a year on procuring services and demand is likely to rise. As a recent report by the think-tank ResPublica stated, there is a growing “customisation culture” where people want individualised services specifically created to meet their needs. Given this and given the advantages that civil society has in delivering the services that people need in a way that is individualised and customised with high quality, there is great potential for growth in this sector if the Government are willing to engage with civil society and look to the voluntary, third and social enterprise models to provide, rather than just continuing with the traditional monolithic state model of the past.

Moreover, civil society organisations use the service contracts and income they receive from private and public sources as a base for other activities. In doing so, they reduce the demand for services from the state, saving the country countless billions of pounds every year. If we engage civil society more in helping to provide the services that people want, we can free up funding, which can be used to stimulate other areas of our economy, while—more importantly—meeting people’s expectations. This is something I hope to put forward in my private Member’s Bill, which hon. Members might like to join me for next Friday.

Thirdly, we should recognise the potential for exporting civil society around the world. Countless UK civil society organisations are truly worldclass. These bodies not only provide help across the world to those who need it, but bring in highly skilled jobs and income. As the world continues to develop rapidly in the decades ahead, the work of civil society globally is likely to increase, and countries across the world will be looking towards countries such as ours to make progress. They are likely to want to work with our civil society, and will want to learn the skills and access the institutional knowledge stored in our organisations. The UK has a clear comparative advantage in that area, and we should not be ashamed to make the most of that.

There is no good reason why the skills and capacity generated by UK civil society cannot be exported across the world, and why organisations from this country cannot gain access to funding and generate employment at home while helping others. We have an excellent opportunity not only to help to produce a better global future, but to generate employment at home in a way that is also socially rewarding.