Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am proud to be able to stand here this morning and put this Bill before the House. Becoming the Member of Parliament for Warwick and Leamington has been a deeply humbling experience, and this Bill has brought home to me once again the responsibility that we in this Chamber all carry. I am honoured to be part of this process, and it is something that will stay with me for, I hope, a few years yet.

I take this opportunity to thank all the voluntary organisations, charities, social enterprises, representative bodies, officials and individuals who have helped me in the drafting of the Bill. I single out the Social Enterprise Coalition for its help and especially for its powerful advocacy for the legislation. I also thank the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) for her encouragement and support.

It would be best to start by setting out the rationale behind the Bill. At this year’s general election, I, like many others, even on the other side of the House, ran on bringing positive change to our country and our society. The big society is an idea that I believe in, not only because it offers an optimistic vision for the future, but because it is common sense. It is one of the strongest ideals of recent times: every political party has attempted to embrace its principles and it has been espoused by many former Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition. We should bear in mind, though, that the big society is nothing new in itself.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron), although a most passionate and effective advocate, did not create the concept of the big society. Let us not forget that before my right hon. Friend, a former Member for Sedgefield, Tony Blair, told his party conference in 1999 that Labour needed to revive civic society, based on fairness, equality and responsibility.

“We are citizens proud to say there is such a thing as society”

he said, but even before him, there was Baroness Thatcher, who in 1986 said that the

“responsible society is one in which people do not leave it to the person next door to do the job. It is one in which people help each other. Where parents put their children first. Friends look out for the neighbours, families for their elderly members. That is the starting point for care and support—the unsung efforts of millions of individuals, the selfless work of thousands upon thousands of volunteers. It is their spirit that helps to bind our society…. Caring isn't measured by what you say: it's expressed by what you do.”

That sounds remarkably familiar. In the 1950s and ’60s, Jo Grimond, leader of the Liberal party, articulated the vision of the big society when he talked about the need to revive the spirit of association that had once bound our nation together. The idea of a big society, a responsible society, or a civic society, is timeless. It has inspired politicians from all political parties for centuries. I believe that it encapsulates the idea that people can truly flourish only if they feel part of an organic, evolving and strong society. It recognises that we are not merely economic units to be put into certain boxes and cut off from others, but human beings who wish to belong and to feel actively involved in a wider society.

That is a powerful philosophy, and it has been the strong motivation behind my Bill. However, although it is easy merely to say what one believes, it is much more difficult to put forward concrete proposals that can help to realise those beliefs. This Bill is my attempt to do such a thing. In order to realise a stronger society and to build on those bonds within communities, we need to empower and champion civil society. We need to create the conditions for civil society to flourish. We need to create the opportunity for voluntary organisations, social enterprise, charities and socially responsible businesses to thrive. That will not happen by itself.

Although it is easy to look back on the past, perhaps even to the Victorian era, when many organisations sprang up with little Government intervention and philanthropy was fashionable, we are not in the same position today. Unfortunately, many years of centralisation from Governments of all colours have stifled the natural creativity of our communities and, given the difficult economic times we now face, it will be a challenge to stimulate the kind of movement necessary to realise the big society. Of course, Government cannot, and should not, see it as a duty forcibly to create this society—that would defeat the point and merely see one centralising structure replace another. Forcing communities to depend on the direction of central Government would undermine a stronger society and would not lead to any change to the status quo. That said, the Government do have a role to play in being the catalyst for the development of civil society and giving organisations and individuals who wish to reach out and build stronger social networks the chance to do so.

The elephant in the room, however, is money. Organisations across the country agree that civil society should be able to do more to provide services, and that there is fantastic potential for innovation and improvement in getting civil society more involved, but they ask the very valid question how they are going to be able to do all this. Civil society cannot function in a financial vacuum. Obviously, a great deal of work that civil society does is based on people volunteering time and money, but it would be foolish to pretend that that, in itself, will be enough. Capacity has to be built. People need to be trained—professionals who understand that many of the complex technical, legal and administrative issues that organisations face need to be paid for. Rents and equipment are not free, either. The financial pinch is already affecting civil society, and if we do not act, the development of the big society could be smothered by our economic problems before it has had an opportunity to flourish.

We must therefore be very careful that, in our zeal, we do not try to support these vital sectors of our economy on the cheap. We have a moral, as well as a political, obligation to ensure that we support this section of our economy during this difficult time. We simply cannot allow these organisations to fail. If we do not take the opportunity with which we have been presented to put into practice the principles and ideals that many of us campaigned on, it will be extremely difficult to do so in future. It will demoralise VCSEs—voluntary, community and social enterprises—and politicians will further lose public confidence. That is not acceptable.

The window that we have in which to catalyse this change within our society is not large—perhaps a few years at most. So how can we achieve this? The Bill marks a way in which it could be done. The UK taxpayer spends nearly £200 billion a year on procuring and commissioning goods and services, and while that funding will fall over the next four years, it will remain a significant amount. I believe that we should be using this funding, which we need in order to provide the services that people want, to leverage and galvanise VSCEs. If we want long-term growth and a general strengthening of civil society, we will need some stability in the funding that it receives. We cannot merely allow Government to throw funds at these organisations when they are flavour of the month, only to cut them when the newspaper headlines diminish. We need a situation whereby they can plan for the future, craft niches and roles for themselves, and know that what they are providing is good and that, as long as they serve their communities well, and innovate and create, they can survive and grow.

To quote a recent think-tank report, the UK is a “service hungry nation”. This is not going to change over the coming four years. If the past few hundred years have taught us anything, it is that people have an insatiable appetite for services, and we can never predict what they will be demanding in future. However, we can see that there is a definite trend towards services that are more local, more personalised, and more responsive to our community needs. Civil society has a great opportunity to provide these services if it is given the chance to do so, and, once that has happened, to build on them.

Let me take the example of Sandwell Community Caring Trust, which started by taking over adult social care homes in the black country. It took over the failing homes, reformed the institutional structures, remotivated staff and reinvested in buildings and equipment. It has driven down the cost of adult social care and kept people in the local community in work, and it has now won a contract to provide NHS and social services in Torbay. It is an excellent employer that is well supported by the communities it serves. In short, it is a fantastic example of what this sector can achieve, and it throws down a gauntlet to the rest of the country, even areas close to home, to follow its example.

A report in 2003 by the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations called “Replacing the State?” made it clear that there are also powerful reasons of quality for this approach, highlighting five reasons why civil society is better placed to provide services than traditional providers. First, such organisations are more local and have a stronger focus on users than on providers. As every Member here will be aware, those who set them up are, more often than not, motivated by a sense of concern for their communities rather than a passion for profit. Secondly, civil society is far more co-ordinated than is usually the case in the public sector. Because of the natural interdependence that exists between these groups and the community-wide focus that they have, they can provide a far more holistic approach to delivering services, which is exactly what we need at this time.

Thirdly, at a time when the public are ever more distrustful of politicians, in particular, these bodies have a high level of public trust. It is not surprising that people are more willing to trust services provided by neighbours and well-meaning public-spirited individuals and organisations than by traditional top-down public bodies.

Fourthly, as I have mentioned previously in the House, civil society is one of the most innovative parts of our economy, and it has often radically changed the delivery of services for the better. Civil society organisations can engage where others cannot. They can reach out to communities and localities where traditional public service providers cannot. As they are formed from communities, they are better at engaging with them, and we should recognise and utilise that.

The Bill is not just about trying to help one set of providers at the expense of others, but also about getting higher quality provision, which I am sure all Members would support. It will not replace or undermine the concept of value for money, and I know that we must focus on that concept now more than ever. It is intended to make commissioners more enlightened in their approach, and to send a strong message to all areas of the public sector that what is currently seen as good practice should become normal practice.

We should not allow voluntary and civil sector enterprises to become dependent on the state for funding. That would not only damage civil society but completely undermine the empowerment of communities, which I am sure hon. Members of all parties are trying to achieve. However, I do not believe that that will be the case. Organisations across the country have consistently shown that far from wishing to become dependent on the state, they want to be able to compete on their own terms. They want to use such contracts as a base on which they can innovate and expand their activities, using their funding to further build their capacity and strengthen their community base. It is important to stress that we are not just trying to create new services and contracts in order to support civil sector organisations, but trying to open up existing contracts so that they can access them.

That flows into another matter about which my party often spoke in opposition and has continued to do so in government: the need for diverse providers of public services. There is already a growing public services industry in this country based on contracts from the Government. It is made up of a diverse range of organisations both large and small, from the private and VCSE sectors. It had a turnover of some £79 billion in 2007-08 and generated some £45 billion in value added. That rises to more than £88 billion if indirect impacts are included. It keeps 1.2 million people employed, rising to 2.3 million including indirect impacts. It is already a significant part of our economy—bigger than our communications and utilities industries—so the question is not whether we wish to create an industry for public services but what kind of industry can be created.

Of course, if we allow things to continue as they are, there is potential for a “supermarketisation” of our public services. Already, large private sector organisations are beginning to dominate the industry, and they are crowding out smaller and local competitors. I refuse to believe that that is the only option available to us. What I believe in is a future in which our public services are run by communities and the organisations close to them that have a sense of social responsibility and put people ahead of profit. We need a future in which public services see greater mutualisation, empowering clinicians, teachers and other public servants to take over the running of their services and deliver high quality and good value for money. We need to do more to get micro-businesses and small businesses working together to deliver better goods and services and build more sustainable supply chains.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

My hon. Friend will be aware, as a number of us are, of the concerns of the Federation of Small Businesses about his Bill—not about its avowed intentions, but about the possibility that it will have effects that are unintended but very damaging to the ability of small businesses to compete.

[Chris White]

I am glad that my hon. Friend brings up the FSB, which wrote to us only this week to state that it supports the Bill in principle. I hope that we can pass an exact copy of the letter to his office to ensure that we can discuss the matter come Committee stage—I hope—and that any input the FSB has can be put into the mix.

[Mr Chope]

May I assure my hon. Friend that only this morning I was talking to the deputy policy director of the FSB, who expressed her concern on behalf of the federation that he had not yet answered a lot of its concerns?

[Chris White]

I do not know whether the deputy policy director has had the opportunity to discuss the Bill with the rest of her organisation, but all I can say is that we have had a clear statement of intent from the FSB that it supports the Bill in principle.

The Bill is intended to create the right future for our public services. Across Government, Ministers are talking about engaging VCSEs in delivering public services. They want to mutualise and localise. I welcome that, as I am sure many Members do, but it will not be achieved through mere rhetoric. Those providers have been bidding for contracts for years, yet many still fail to break into public service delivery. Why is that? It is partly a question of cost. The cost of bidding for public services contracts in this country is far higher than that of bidding for contracts in the private sector. A report by the think-tank ResPublica highlighted the fact that the average cost of bidding for a public sector contract was double that of bidding for a private sector contract. The cost puts civil society organisations off, and if we want them to be more involved in delivery, we have to reduce that cost.

The failure to break into public service delivery is also partly due to the complicated nature of bidding. Many organisations simply do not know how to bid for contracts, and even if they do, they often feel that they lack the necessary expertise to bid successfully. Given the prohibitively high average costs, they are worried about failure. The Bill does not address those points directly, although I hope they will be considered in good time. However, it is important that they be raised, and I believe that we need to do much more to remove those barriers.

What would be best is a widening of the concept of value. At present, “value” is a word that is often purely associated with financial cost. If one buys a box of eggs from one supermarket for 20p less than the price at a competitor supermarket, one is deemed to have got value for money. It has often worked that way in public service delivery. Sadly, the means of delivery and the potential benefits to communities are all too often ignored when it comes to considering the word “value”. I know that many colleagues feel that that is as it should be; after all, if it is cheaper to use one provider than another, why should the taxpayer pay for something that, on the face of it, appears more expensive? However, by focusing purely on short-term cost, we ignore the potential long-term benefits that other organisations could deliver, particularly VCSEs.

Let us take the example of a local authority seeking to hire an organisation to renovate some social housing. There are two bidders. One will simply renovate the social housing, but another will not only do that but take on long-term unemployed people and teach them skills in the construction sector. It will go out to local schools and provide hands-on training so that children learn about the sector. Yet provided that it costs less, the first bidder will often get the contract. That is simply narrow-minded. If we take people who are long-term unemployed off benefits and put them into work so that they can learn valuable skills, and if we teach young people how the sector works, and maybe inspire some to develop related trades, we will bring not only environmental but economic benefits to the wider community. Surely that is better value for the community and better value for money.

In the long term, that is far more valuable than merely paying to renovate a few houses, it is more cost-effective for the taxpayer and it is more beneficial to our communities. In short, it is a better deal, but to get that better deal, we must be willing to consider all the aspects of value, not merely a narrow few. Of course, some bodies and organisations have noticed that. It would be unfair to mention merely one or two at the expense of others, but forward-thinking commissioners across local authorities and the public sector have been considering the wider social, economic and environmental benefits that such contracting attitudes and approaches can generate, which is a big step forward in realising truly intelligent commissioning.

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[Chris White]

I hope that the Bill will give us the opportunity to discuss these issues in a wider forum. We have a real opportunity to put some of these issues on the table. If the Bill passes through this stage, we will, I hope, be able to discuss further in Committee some of the issues that my hon. Friend raises.

Hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken about how we need to generate more for less. By using social value, we can help to achieve the holy grail of generating more for less. By using the £150 billion the taxpayer already spends on services, by maximising what we get for those pounds and by using community groups, mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises to deliver services, we can achieve far better value and a far better deal for our communities. During these difficult economic times, we should not put blinkers on and adopt a mindset that says that reductions in public funding must necessarily lead to reductions in the quality and quantity of our services. We should think bigger, and civil society is key to that.

Now that I have had the opportunity to lay the groundwork for the Bill and to give an outline of why it is important for hon. Members to look at these proposals, I want to focus on the Bill’s specifics. The Bill can be divided into three parts, and I have already described the rationale behind the third part, which is the most important and concerns social value in public sector contracting. The first two parts deal with strategies concerning social enterprises, which are a rapidly growing part of our economy. The work of the Social Enterprise Coalition, the social enterprise mark and the various regional social enterprise organisations are playing an ever-increasing part in our economic and social development.

In recognition of the sector’s potential, various Departments, from the Cabinet Office to the Department for Communities and Local Government, have created their own strategies and come up with ideas about how to help the VCSE sector. The Bill asks the appropriate Secretary of State to create one national strategy to look at the promotion of social enterprise. I hope that that would lead to the consolidation of all strategies across the Government into one clear, joined-up piece of work, so that we do not have a hotch-potch of strategies, which ultimately confuses and frustrates many in the sector.

I recognise that strategies and the like often cause many Members a nervous twitch, so I have done my best to find an estimate of how much such a strategy might cost in terms of manpower and consultation. According to the figures that I have been given, it is estimated that it would cost about £41,000. That is about £63 per constituency, under the current boundaries, or one tenth of a penny per elector.

[Mr Chope]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris White]

I would like to make some progress.

I recognise that we face difficult challenges, but the proposals are something for which we can and should pay. A clearer set of proposals from central Government and a more strategic outlook will do a lot to help this emerging sector.

In the second part of the Bill, I have tried to ensure that when locally generated sustainable community strategies are created, they consider social enterprises in their area. It is important that communities are given the chance to engage in the creation of sustainable community strategies, but there is a role for organisations such as social enterprises, which often emerge as responses to sustainability issues in communities. By considering such strategies and promoting engagement with them, we can help to generate more community-led and community-based solutions, empowering communities by promoting the vehicles that they can use to deliver solutions.

I hope that that is within the spirit of the legislation proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (Mr Hurd), who is now Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office and whom I am pleased to see on the Government Benches today. I hope that organisations set up with the purpose of helping communities across the country will take part in such strategies and engage better with their communities. That said, we should consider the proposals within the framework of the present burdens on local authorities and be prepared to amend them accordingly should they be proved unnecessary or too costly a burden.

I hope that I have justified at some length the third and final part of the Bill, which relates to social value. The Bill asks all organisations that are currently publicly contracting authorities under the Public Contract Regulations 2006 to consider how they might promote wider economic, social and environmental well-being in a contract and how they commission such contracts accordingly. Although considering that wider social value during the contracting process is only a small technical change, it would bring significant benefits for our public services in terms of the quality of contracting. It would also benefit communities, social enterprises, voluntary groups and small businesses, which generate considerable social value.

I am honoured to be able to present the Bill on behalf of a large coalition of supporters from VCSEs, local authorities and small and socially responsible private businesses. The Bill comes at a time when people are seriously asking questions about the future of our public services and about how we deliver a stronger economy in a way that reflects the values of people and the communities in which we live.

Although rhetoric is important so that we can inspire people to join in the project and articulate a vision for the country that all can share, we must also be conscious of the need to take a definite course. I believe that the Bill is a practical step forward, which I hope representatives from across the political spectrum can support. By working together constructively, we can achieve a stronger future for our communities and a stronger financial footing for our VCSEs. The onus is on us to think radically and, more important, to act boldly. I hope that the Bill can make a small contribution to a wider effort to boost our civil society, sustain the civil economy and make our public services better than ever. I therefore urge my colleagues to support the Bill.

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[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I agree that we want the opportunity to discuss these issues in Committee.

Where will the Bill lead? The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles—I apologise for referring to her again—talked about this being a relatively modest-sounding Bill that could have significant consequences. From my short time looking at politics, that often seems to be the way. The Conservative Government in the 1980s, when they started with their approach to privatisation, were probably not aware of what a significant wave of change they were unleashing and that it would be a model around the world. In a different way, this Bill and the additional measures that I hope the Government will introduce, building on the work of previous Governments, could have the same significant impact.

To make that happen, however, we need a couple of additional efforts. First, we need to recognise that many social enterprises and charities are institutionally small and consist of few people—perhaps 10 or 20—a lot of whom might be volunteers. They might have a lot of spirit, but the procurement process will be quite complicated for them, so we need to enable them to come together to procure efficiently and compete effectively with the very efficient and knowledgeable for-profit procurement companies. I hope that the Minister will, either today or in the months ahead, come forward with suggestions for how that can be better enabled, so that the window opened by the Bill can be taken advantage of by these social enterprises.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is equally, if not more important that small for-profit businesses run by local entrepreneurs should be able to compete for these contracts? At the moment, only 16% of public contracts are taken by small businesses. Should we not be concentrating on that as well?

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One of the consequences of the Bill would be that local and national Government would have to start thinking more locally about where they procure services. I, for one, believe that a local business making a local profit that is retained in its local community is of enormous social value to its local community. At the moment, as I was saying earlier, some of that profit is being exported. The very fact of passing the Bill would assist social enterprise, but would also help local businesses that do so much in their local community. That is why I welcome it so much.

The Bill would also have an impact on the financing of our social enterprises. Many right hon. and hon. Members will be familiar with the social finance work and the initiative in Cambridge with the St Giles Trust looking at ways of constructing the support for financing social services and social goods in a way that is more oriented to successful outcomes and takes away from taxpayers the one-way, pay-it-whatever-the-outcome approach to social services and social goods. That is another step that we need to take. This Bill is an enabler down the path of providing a comprehensive and different way for each of us as individuals, with our motivations and our sense of fairness, to be able to rely on a different institutional form—the social enterprise—to achieve what we all believe would be in the best interests of our country and our people. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and the Bill.

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[Jon Trickett]

I am not going to take interventions straight away, but I may in due course.

It has frequently been said that the Conservatives, historically, knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is therefore interesting to hear so many Conservative Members talking about judging tenders not merely on price but on what has been described in the Bill as social value, whereby one should not necessarily go for the lowest tender. That is at variance with my own experience as a leader of local government in the years when Baroness Thatcher was Prime Minister and simply wanted the lowest possible tenders. Nicholas Ridley said that local authorities should meet once a year in a tent to let contracts and then go away again.

[Mr Chope]

indicated assent.

[Jon Trickett]

I see that at least one hon. Gentleman remembers that as well as I do, and with approval by the look of it.

Several Members made strong references to local experiences in their constituencies. That reminds us of how important it is that Members of Parliament have a constituency base. Whatever form of electoral system we use, it is important to retain the constituency link. The hon. Members for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin), for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) and others referred to local experiences, as well as to experiences that they had prior to coming to the House.

There was some tension, though, between the various tendencies that were expressed, which was most striking in the hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who gave the impression that he was a libertarian, but he actually said—he may be horrified when he reads it in Hansard—that he quite liked compulsion in relation to local authorities. The power of the state compelling local authorities was an extraordinary vision for him to evince. On the other hand, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) gave us a disquisition on liberty, saying that every action of the state is an infringement of liberty and is coercive. That was an interesting philosophical diversion.

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[Jon Trickett]

Of course it does, and I take the point, but the truth is that the Conservative party—the so-called champion of liberty against the state—is now taking the state’s powers through legislation to do something that is happening in any case. How does it help to have legislation when the key point is to ensure that public procurement officers in local and central Government are sensitive to the needs of local companies, whether social enterprises or not?

[Mr Chope]

Surely the logic of what the hon. Gentleman has just said is that he should vote against the Bill, thereby ensuring that the statute book is not littered with more unnecessary legislation.

[Jon Trickett]

I have said that the Bill raises interesting questions and deserves a Second Reading, enabling some of those matters to be debated further in Committee, which will perhaps further expose the differences on the coalition Benches.

What discussion of clause 2 has the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington held with the Local Government Association about amending the requirements for local authorities’ sustainable community strategies? A briefing by the Conservative-led and dominated LGA states that there is

“no need for a piece of legislation which will create a top-down imposition on councils to promote such enterprises.”

There speaks the genuine voice of localism, of the Conservative party locally. Why do the Government believe that it is necessary to impose legislation on local authorities that do not want it? Local authorities are happy to proceed with such matters on their own.

The LGA continues:

“The thrust of this Bill is also fundamentally at odds with the Government’s expressed desire to remove centrally-imposed burdens and top-down targets for local government.”

It feels as if the world has turned slightly upside down. Labour in government proceeded happily with enabling the sector to develop without the necessity for new legislation. My right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) has returned to the Chamber, and I more than congratulate her on her work. How can the Bill become a reality if local government, dominated by the Tories, so strongly opposes it?

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[Mr Hurd]

I hear the right hon. Lady’s concern. She makes a valid point, and she used a very important word—“stewardship”. I totally agree that there is a duty of good stewardship. That contains two elements: a requirement to make sure that public assets are used most productively for the public, and a requirement to make sure that they are not misused in any way. In some ways that is a contracting issue. The right hon. Lady will know that social enterprises take many different organisational forms, and that there is a bespoke legal form for social enterprise called the community interest company, which specifically provides for an asset lock. However, that falls outside the immediate scope of the Bill.

I was talking about why we think the Bill is consistent with our ambitions and aspirations for public service reform. One of our aims is to encourage greater diversity of supply and provision. Here there may be some theological differences between us and the Opposition. We have a strong desire to try to incentivise and encourage much greater flexibility at a local level, such as providing opportunities to pool budgets and integrate services. She may be aware of some pilots that we are encouraging through the Cabinet Office on local integrated services, where the onus is much more on getting out there to find out what the community wants. All those aspirations will be backed up by action that will be reflected in the White Paper.

In the context of encouraging greater diversity of supply, on which the Bill touches, we have an explicit commitment in the programme for Government and the coalition agreement to support the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises, and enable those groups to have a much greater involvement in running public services.

[Mr Chope]

Clause 1 calls on the Secretary of State to prepare a national social enterprise strategy. We do not need to legislate for that if, as my hon. Friend is saying, the Government are already going to do it of their own free will. Are they going to do it and, if so, when?

[Mr Hurd]

I will come to clause 1, and I think that my remarks will give my hon. Friend some reassurance.

We are determined to try to open up the public services markets to a broader diversity of suppliers, and we have been specific about wanting to encourage social enterprises, charities and the voluntary sector to have a bigger role. Why? Most constituency MPs have a sense of the reason. Faced with some of the really stubborn and expensive social problems that this country faces—expensive in terms not only of money but of human cost—there is overwhelming evidence in certain cases, such as the hard job of getting people back into work or keeping people out of jail, that a social enterprise or community-based solution is often most effective in doing the really difficult work. We have to respond practically to the challenge—the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles, as a former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, knows that it is a challenge—of opening up those public services markets to try to create more space for these organisations to participate and add value. It is not about trying to do things on the cheap, but about trying to deliver better solutions and to “do more with less”, to use the cliché of the moment. That requires a radical reform of commissioning and how the state buys, because, as the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles said, there is a strong feeling out there, represented by the Social Enterprise Coalition and others, that the system is obstructive and gets in the way.

That is why I and the Office for Civil Society are determined to get this right and are on the point of issuing a consultation document setting out what we need to change in state commissioning to fulfil the coalition Government commitment to create more space for social enterprises, charities, co-operatives and mutuals. The consultation document will ask the following main questions: in which public service areas could the Government create new opportunities for civil society organisations to deliver, and why? How can the Government make existing public service markets more accessible? How can commissioners use assessments of full social, environmental and economic value to inform their commissioning decisions? How can civil society organisations support greater citizen and community involvement in all stages of commissioning? And how we can reduce the amount of bureaucracy, form-filling and regulation that gets in the way of and infuriates and frustrates civil society organisations? The whole business of applying for and reporting public money is a bureaucratic nightmare for too many organisations and is often totally disproportionate to the sums of money involved. We are determined to do something about it.

In that context, the Bill’s core proposition—a requirement to consider social and environmental value where it is relevant and proportionate—is a useful complement to our own work of reform and commitment to making it easier for voluntary and community organisations and social enterprises to deliver public services. The Bill has the scope to ensure that commissioners consider the full effect of services on the people whom they serve and enable them to maximise the social, environmental and economic value of every penny they spend.

The Bill reinforces our commitment to value for money. In these tight economic times, it is particularly important that we achieve maximum value in our spend, but our observation is that currently some commissioners miss the opportunity to secure the best price and meet the wider social, economic and environmental needs of the community. Under procurement law, a contract must be awarded on the basis of the tender that is most economically advantaged or offers the lowest price. The Bill does not undermine or circumvent this requirement or otherwise undermine the Government’s value-for-money agenda and efficiency reform. On the contrary, it is anticipated that by taking full economic, social and environmental value into account, the quality and efficiency of public contracts can be improved.

I think that most hon. Members will see the potential for that just from their observations and visits. In my constituency, Hillingdon borough contracts a good proportion of public landscaping work with a company called Blue Sky. It is the only company in the country where someone has to have a criminal record to work. It does a brilliant job in offering employment opportunities to people coming out of jail—a critical milestone in proving to a future employer that they can be trusted. The people of Hillingdon are delighted with the service and the council are very satisfied with the price, and through this process we are making a huge impact on helping people to turn their lives around. I have spoken to some of the people working there. Some of them travel the length of the Central line every day to be on the course, because they see it as their way out.

That is intelligent commissioning at its best, and we want to encourage more of it. I remember visiting a social firm called Clarity that makes soap and liquids for cleaning hands. What differentiates this business is that, as I walked around the floor, I noticed that every single employee was disabled in some way—often in major ways. Again, this is an opportunity for them to build their own sense of worth and confidence, and to carve a different path that otherwise would have been shut to them. That is another opportunity for intelligent commissioning.

There are lots of other examples. In 2006, the London borough of Camden renewed its schools catering contract. At that point, there had been significant dissatisfaction with the quality and performance under the contract. There was a best-value service review prior to retendering, involving extensive consultation with parents, teachers, pupils and local social enterprise and voluntary and community stakeholders. The remit included consideration of wider social environmental and economic factors, and the new contract was shaped around the results of the review. As a result, the uptake of meals by children in primary and special schools rose by 10%, and teachers reported indirect benefits from the new contract. It has improved service and food quality without an increase in contractors’ margins. Again, that is intelligent commissioning.

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[Mr Hurd]

I certainly will, and it is important to do so. This is largely about freeing people who work in the public sector to express themselves more and to explore their own ideas of how things can be done better. I remember vividly a visit to Merton, where one person working in the mental health field had recognised that the system was failing some people with multiple chaotic problems in their lives. He had shown leadership and pulled people round a table and said, “What we are delivering isn’t good enough.” Together, they produced a new system of support, and the people receiving that support came into the room to talk to me about it. Two of them burst into tears of gratitude. It is very rare for the public to weep with gratitude for the public services that they receive, and this was a direct consequence of one person’s ability to think differently. We want to encourage more of that, but it requires action to create the space and to send the message that, yes, it is okay to think differently and show innovation inside the public services. We need to unlock the potential to do things better.

[Mr Chope]

Before my hon. Friend moves from clause 3, will he explain why it is mandatory on local authorities? I thought that the Government believed in localism and would trust local authorities to make these judgments themselves without Government interference.

[Mr Hurd]

It is a requirement to consider, where “relevant” and “proportionate”, and it does not compromise local authority autonomy in responding to the requirement. It is simply a requirement to consider. I do not see it as heavy-handed; it is simply designed to be a catalyst to encourage more people to think more intelligently about commissioning.

The need to support commissioners in this process was raised earlier. It is not just about sending a stronger signal on the requirement to consider, as there are also issues about how to measure social value and how to support commissioners. That is why the Cabinet Office has supported the measuring social value project to try to create a methodology and tools to make measures that are realistically capable of implementation. There is a clear need to advance and bring together some more standard and consistent methodologies in this area.

Furthermore, through the national programme for commissioning, we have trained well in excess of 2,000 commissioners across England and across a range of public service areas. All the commissioners have had the opportunity to receive specialist training in measuring wider social, environmental and economic value. I am delighted to say, following the comprehensive spending review, that we are going to continue this training beyond March 2011. I sat in on a session in Birmingham and it struck me that there are many commissioners out there who would like the chance to do things differently and to do more with the voluntary community sector and with social enterprises, but need some help—busting a few myths and getting some practical support. The process of engagement through the partnership improvement programme for commissioning is, I think, valuable. I am delighted that we can continue with it.

We feel that these policy interventions are important in supporting the objectives stated in our coalition programme, but we also feel that they will be insufficient without some legislative intervention to achieve the goals. That is why we support clause 3. Returning to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch, we believe that these provisions are consistent with the Government’s wider localism agenda in three main ways.

First, the Bill will support the Government’s commitment to community empowerment as a fundamental element of localism. The Bill includes a requirement on commissioners to consider whether to consult the intended beneficiaries of the service in considering how to take account of wider social, environmental and economic value. Although that does not require commissioners to engage with their communities, it sends out a strong message about the importance placed by the Government on involving local citizens and communities in shaping the services they receive. This will inevitably improve community involvement in commissioning and help to ensure that it responds to the full range of communities’ priorities.

Secondly, while empowering communities, the Bill also respects the need to ensure the autonomy and flexibility of commissioners in responding to local needs. Commissioners retain the discretion to determine how social, environmental and economic value is taken into account. The Bill does not stipulate the methodology that should be adopted by commissioners, and it is right not to do so. Local autonomy is maintained.

Thirdly, the Bill does not impose an additional burden on contracting authorities. The specification that contracting authorities are required to take wider value into account only where it is relevant and proportionate means that authorities can use their common sense and avoid excessive costs or bureaucracy. It also allows them to use and draw on existing infrastructure and opportunities to consult their beneficiaries and make sensible decisions in the interests of the people they serve. For example, it is highly likely to be “relevant” and “proportionate” to consider the wider social impact of a service and to consult citizens when contracting for a citizen-facing service such as social care as opposed to a contract by councils for use by an authority’s employees. The Bill therefore requires a common-sense approach, with the authorities having appropriate discretion.

I have explained where we support the Bill and I would now like to spend a few minutes explaining what conditions we attach to our support. Although we support all the objectives, a number of conditions are attached. If the Bill goes into Committee, with the will of the House, we intend to table amendments. These will include the removal of clauses 1 and 2, which refer to a “national social enterprise strategy” and “local authority strategies”.

I am not theological about strategies. Having been in business for 18 years before entering Government, I think that on the whole it is probably a good thing to have a strategy. However, I believe that, particularly in this context, strategies should be governed by the need of the moment, and should be driven by conviction rather than by a requirement to comply with some bureaucratic process. I do not want the process of drawing up strategies to be bureaucratic. I do not want it to be simply an exercise in producing more glossy brochures that fill up the bookshelves in our offices, which are not read and which do not have real traction. Strategies must be driven by need and by conviction at the time.

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[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

I am very grateful to the Minister for the compliments he paid me earlier—I took them as compliments anyway. I congratulate him on having looked at this Bill in some detail, and on having reached not dissimilar conclusions to those that a number of my hon. Friends had already reached, and which were articulated earlier in the debate. There is no need for me to go over those concerns again as I presume that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White)—whom I congratulate on having introduced the Bill—will be happy to accept the conditions laid down by the Minister. If my hon. Friend does not accept them, his Bill is obviously unlikely to make much more progress.

If my hon. Friend does accept the conditions, we will have a Bill that is far removed from the long title it had when it was first presented to the House on 30 June this year. It will effectively be a Bill about procurement for local authorities and public bodies. That covers a specific area, and what pleases me is that clause 3(2) states:

“The authority must consider how it might promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of the relevant area by means of such a contract.”

That is different from the definition of a social enterprise in clauses 1 and 2, which confine it to being one

“that promotes or improves the social or environmental well-being”.

Economic well-being is vital to our communities up and down the land, and that is why I am pleased by the distinction drawn by clauses 1 and 2 on the one hand and clause 3 on the other. I understand why my hon. Friend the Minister is more enthusiastic about clause 3, because of the insertion of that element.

Earlier, I mentioned the exchanges that I have had with the Federation of Small Businesses, which I am sure will be equally pleased by the development, which will be surprising to some, in my hon. Friend’s announcement. The FSB is keen to point out that there are 4.6 million micro-businesses in this country, but only 16% of the value of public sector contracts currently goes to small and micro-businesses. The federation was worried that such businesses would be squeezed out by social enterprises.

[Mr Hurd]

Perhaps my hon. Friend will be reassured if I draw to his attention the Cabinet Office announcement in November of a series of measures designed to make it easier for small firms and organisations to do business with Government. They include measures to progress the Government’s aspiration to award 25% of Government contracts to small and medium-sized enterprises.

[Mr Chope]

I am sure that that will be greeted with great enthusiasm by small businesses throughout the country. To achieve that, we do not need legislation; all that is required is positive will on the part of the Government. There are many examples across the public sector of small-scale enterprises being squeezed out by larger organisations in the procurement process.

[Richard Fuller]

One of the objectives we hope to achieve through the Bill will result from its focus on local social enterprises. By its very nature, that will weaken the default position whereby contracts go to large, national organisations, with their inbuilt advantages in procurement. Does my hon. Friend agree with that point?

[Mr Chope]

I do. One of the amendments to clause 2 that I would have suggested is that social enterprises should be defined as small businesses with those objectives, because of the danger of ending up with some very large social enterprises that are, in many respects, not dissimilar from large public limited companies.

[Ben Gummer]

Often, the problem for procurement officials is that the lowest-risk option for them is to choose a large, established organisation, because that protects their position. One can understand why they would do that. The Bill would empower procurement officials to consider the whole range of possibilities and to take a slightly more risky approach sometimes, which would be to the benefit of local communities.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. He is right to emphasise the riskier approach, because sometimes there is a risk. For example, in my constituency, the local council decided to let the contract for the running of the local leisure centre to a charitable trust based in Poole. It became apparent that the trust was not delivering on what was set out in the contract, and after several years the contract had to be taken back in-house. Subsequently, a couple of other projects that the trust was running were found to be financially unsustainable, and that was the end of that, I think. We must not get into a frame of mind in which we think that anything that calls itself a social enterprise is, by definition, a good thing. Such bodies have to be run along business lines.

To take another example, people in Verwood—a town that is no longer in my constituency, sadly, but was until the time of the last general election—have set up a community enterprise called the Verwood Hub, which is a community centre. Unfortunately, it is becoming clear that they have not been applying business principles to the running of that centre, so they are having to go back to the local authority and say, “Please give us some more money.” The local authority is making it clear that it can go only so far in doing that, because there is a limit to how much it can be expected to use local taxpayers’ money to make up for the deficiencies in the business plan of what might otherwise be described as a laudable community enterprise.

[Fiona Bruce]

We must not let the example of one or two less successful projects restrict the opportunity for the public sector to enter into entrepreneurial projects with local groups. The spirit of enterprise does, of necessity, involve risk. We have seen that spirit in this nation over many decades, if not centuries, and it is the seed of the fruit of phenomenally successful community and commercial organisations. We can look back in the history of this nation at some tremendous businesses that have done social good, so it would be dangerous for us almost to sanitise public procurement, as we have done to a large extent,. It can never be risk-free. Without an element of risk, we will reduce the opportunity for those great potential benefits that have flourished in this nation in years gone by.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who made a powerful speech on the same theme.

People going into public procurement often say, “We’ve got to do it for the long term, with a five-year, a seven-year, or an even longer contract period.” If a relatively small and untested organisation is bidding, it will be a very big risk for it to sign up to a seven-year contract. Procuring on the basis of a one-year contract gives new organisations on the block much more of an opportunity to show their worth, and if they make a Horlicks of it after a year, they will not expect to be invited to re-tender. Some long contracts have been particularly damaging to the interests of small and social enterprises. Minimising risk for the procurer has made it much more difficult for new entrants to take on such contracts.

I hope that the FSB will be encouraged by the attitude of the Government. We are all proud when we have businesses in our local communities that flourish, no more so than those which start up with only half a dozen people, or even one or two, and then become national enterprises, perhaps ultimately getting a listing on the stock exchange.

I was worried that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington suggested that businesses that are in it for profit are at odds with those that are in it to produce good for society. In my constituency, some of the businesses that have been the most successful in the marketplace have made profits that they have been able to use to help to support local activities in the community. For example, one of the most successful companies in this country, Tesco, puts a lot of money back into the community every year by enabling people to get vouchers that are then used to buy IT equipment, and other equipment, for schools. Every year for the past 10 years, I have had the privilege of presenting some of that equipment to the schools in my constituency because parents, teachers and supporters of those schools have been able to get those vouchers and then convert them into important and useful goods.

[Richard Fuller]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I have shared his experience of Tesco at one of the two branches in my constituency. He mentioned profit, which is often put in the same vein as people being rich. Actually, profit is what people reinvest in their business so that they can provide better services in their community. For social enterprises and charities, the ability to earn a surplus is important. Often, they find that they do not have enough of an earnings margin from local contracts to be able to reinvest in local projects, so that they can continue to provide services for five or seven years. Does he recognise that we need to go beyond the crass definitions of profit being bad and social enterprise good, and instead concentrate on the services that local businesses and social enterprises provide?

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely, and that is very much the theme behind the submission from the Federation of Small Businesses on the Bill, which a number of hon. Members will have received. It makes the point:

“The Bill describes social enterprises as businesses ‘carried on primarily for a purpose that promotes or improves social or environmental well-being’. While such organisations are undeniably valuable, micro businesses also serve such a function. What sets them apart from social enterprises however is that their primary purpose will be to make a profit and remain in business.”

That is the important part—remaining in business. They cannot do that unless they make a profit, as they are often unable to raise capital. That was the problem with the charitable trust that I mentioned earlier. It was not able to reinvest in the leisure centre, which as a result became rather dowdy and did not meet the needs of the customers.

[Fiona Bruce]

Staying in business may be the immediate aim of a micro-business, but there is often a greater end to that. The aspiration is that in time, it will be able to become an established small business and make a difference to its community and environment. We have to support and nurture micro-businesses in order for them to make that difference.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we all have examples from our constituencies of businesses that started very small and have become quite large. One such business in my constituency makes organic baby food, and now supplies it to major national retailers. It was based on the idea of an entrepreneur who asked, “Why are we not ensuring that people can guarantee that their children are being fed wholesome baby food at the most nutritionally important time of their life?” That enterprise struck a chord with the consumer, hence its great success. There are a lot of other examples that I will not trouble the House with at the moment.

[Ben Gummer]

Oh, go on.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is encouraging me to trouble the House with more examples. In that case, I will choose an example on the other side of the argument. There are publicly funded organisations that, over a period of time, have shown themselves to be hostile in the extreme to small and local businesses. I say quite openly that I believe that Eaga is one such organisation.

Eaga receives a large amount of money from the taxpayer to help provide insulation and subsidies so that people can increase the energy efficiency of their homes and the appliances within them. A lot of work has been done showing that its contractors—often firms that are subsidiaries of Eaga itself—provide services at a much higher cost than local contractors would, and less efficiently. I have had public arguments with Eaga about that and been told, “Well, none of these small companies will be able to give us long-term guarantees that if anything goes wrong with their work, they will be able to put it right.”

[Ben Gummer]

How ridiculous.

[Mr Chope]

As my hon. Friend says, that is ridiculous. The previous Government were too obsessed with the fact that this organisation was based in the north-east of England and had grown significantly as a result of all the money that it had received from the public purse. I hope that the new coalition Government will introduce a bit more sanity and proportion into the way in which that money is spent so that we can ensure that relatively small local contractors can participate.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that what he suggests is a good way of moving towards the localism agenda? If something is local, it can be smaller and involve smaller, more community-sized businesses much more easily than it can if it takes a central, Big Brother, top-down approach.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Given time, I am sure that he would develop his argument in relation to north Somerset, as he has so ably on previous Fridays.

Localism is of great importance. When we talk about its importance, we should not be too fussed about whether we are talking about a local small business, a local social enterprise or a local charity. We must not create artificial distinctions.

[Fiona Bruce]

We must also not differentiate between a business being local and being big. It would be dangerous if we equated local with small. As a member of the all-party group on small business, I was a guest yesterday evening at an event at which one of the “Dragons”, Theo Paphitis, spoke powerfully about the impact of his chain of shops, Ryman. He took the group on when there were about 80 shops, and there are now about 260. He encourages local staff at each store to raise money for local community projects and he then matches it. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be dangerous if we started defining too narrowly the scope of even the businesses with which we want to engage? Local does not necessarily mean small, although as someone who has run a small local business, I fully emphasise the importance of what small businesses bring to local community life.

[Mr Chope]

I agree absolutely. There are so many examples. The local community may be dependent on the local post office, but the Post Office is a national organisation with a national network. None the less, it is ever so important that the local branch of that national network in a particular village is maintained and viable. The same is true of the local pub. It does not have to be owned as a freehold by somebody local; it may be part of a national pub chain. That makes no difference to the important role that it will play in helping to maintain the local community. We could go on with lots of other examples.

I turn now to the “residue” of the Bill, and I should tell my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington that I do not mean that disparagingly—perhaps “a distillation of the Bill” would be a better expression. When we get to clause 3, we are left with a duty on local authorities not to do anything, but to consider something. My hon. Friend said that that does not offend against the principles of localism and that it is legitimate for the Government to require local authorities, and thereby councillors, to consider particular things.

[Mr Hurd]

Just to clarify, my hon. Friend is narrowing his remarks down to the local authorities, but clause 3 actually applies to public authorities that are contracting authorities as defined by the Public Contracts Regulations 2006. That is, the clause applies to bodies that are already subject to procurement law, which include Government Departments, local authorities and many other bodies.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that correction and I am sorry that I was concentrating just on the local authority side. Local authorities are independently accountable through their councillors to their electors for what they think and do, and that is localism, but I can understand that there is a stronger case for saying that unelected public authorities, such as hospital trusts or ambulance trusts, must consider something before they do it because there is a democratic deficit between the people and those organisations.

I only wish that the South Western Ambulance Service NHS Trust had given some consideration to how it might have improved

“the economic, social or environmental well-being”

of my constituency before deciding on the procurement process for the hospital car service. If ever there was an activity that is best kept local, where it is most flexible and offers the best value for money, it is the hospital car service. It was run by the ambulance trust, which stopped doing that. However, instead of being given to a range of local providers, it was given to one particular taxi firm, thereby squeezing out organisations with volunteer drivers and imposing significant extra costs on many of the people being taken to and from hospital. That is only one example. If that particular organisation had thought a bit more, perhaps in accordance with clause 3, things would have been different.

[Mr Gyimah]

Does my hon. Friend think that the new version of the Bill should cover the qualifications to do with contracting? It is all well and good having a strategy that states that small businesses and social enterprises need to be considered, but the lengthy forms that they have to fill in and the qualification criteria are just as difficult a hurdle for them as being recognised in the first place.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. When Members make interventions, could they please face the Chair because it is sometimes difficult for me to hear what is being said? It is not a private conversation between two Members; it needs to be recorded for Hansard.

[Mr Chope]

I am sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. As a result of where some hon. Members are sitting, it may sometimes seem as though we are a cosy cabal, but we are not. We are trying to address our remarks to the wider world, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) made an excellent point, which he also raised in his speech.

Under clause 3,

“The authority must consider how it might promote or improve the economic, social or environmental well-being of the relevant area”.

I am glad that that will not be defined because it should be left to the individual procurers. I am not so sure about the requirement in subsection (4):

“The authority must consider whether to consult the persons (if any) for whom the authority is making provision in the exercise of that function.”

Again, there is no requirement that authorities should consult—they only have to consider whether to do that. However, that could be important.

[Ben Gummer]

One matter that has not been drawn out in this debate—my hon. Friend is an expert on this and may wish to comment—is the interaction between the Bill and European tendering legislation. Such legislation is often thrown up like chaff by procurement officials, especially when they have got something wrong. They say, “Oh, it’s all because of European rules,” when most of the time it is nothing of the sort. Officials must consider a range of variables when making buying decisions, but that is completely in accordance with current European tendering legislation.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Anyone who mentions the European Union in the House immediately assures that more attention will be paid to what they have said.

I hesitate to give credit to the previous Government, who left our national finances in such a dire mess, but they were quite helpful in setting out clear advice to local authorities on what they could do under the public procurement requirements laid down in EU legislation. Contrary to what some suppose, that legislation allowed local authorities and other public procurement bodies to take into account social considerations—both in pre-procurement, to which my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey referred, and in the specification, selection and award stages—provided that the economic advantages for the contracting authority were linked to the product or service that was the subject of the contract.

That was quite helpfully set out in detailed advice by the previous Government, and it will be replicated and slightly amended in the forthcoming White Paper that the Minister has promised. I was involved in procurement as a local councillor. One of the most frustrating things is to be told by the solicitor or officer responsible, “You can’t do this because it’s not allowed.” Councillors, who often have a strong feeling for common sense, reply by asking, “Why can’t we do it?” As my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) said, when we look at the small print, we find that applying wider common-sense considerations to procurement is not prohibited by EU directives.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), who spoke for the Opposition, criticised Government Members on the basis that a large number of their speeches and interventions were slightly at odds with each other, but we should be congratulated on that, because it shows that we are engaged in a healthy political debate. In a brilliant intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) undermined the case for the Bill very effectively, and underlined the importance of keeping the state out of social enterprise as much as possible and trusting people to come up with the right results.

I hesitated to say anything at that time, but I know of a good example of the state getting it all wrong. We were assured by the previous Government that, as a result of changes in European law, only 16,000 new migrants from the newly admitted eastern European countries would come to participate in our buoyant UK economy. I forget whether that estimate was out by 100% or 1,000%, but why was it so significantly wrong? It was wrong because no Government can second-guess what ordinary individuals will do in a given set of circumstances. My hon. Friend therefore told the House an important cautionary tale.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington makes his winding-up speech, which I hope will be shortly, he can rest on his laurels having brought to the House an important topic for discussion. Indeed, he put so much work into the drafting of his Bill that it could only be provided three days ago. For historians, it will be interesting to look back and compare the final version of his Bill—if it gets to Third Reading—with what was set out in the helpful research paper from the Library. It set out in 11 pages what it was thought the Bill would contain. Although it is now a much shorter and more focused Bill—and there is a case for saying that the title of the Bill should now be changed—it will be an important first for my hon. Friend if he gets it on to the statute book. Some of us have been in the House for more than 20 years and have never been successful in the private Members’ ballot. Even if I had been successful, I am not sure that I would ever have been able to emulate the success that my hon. Friend will soon enjoy of steering a Bill through to a successful Second Reading.