Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Debate between Jon Trickett and Sam Gyimah

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett]

I, too, have a very strong ideological vision, and in no way should the hon. Gentleman apologise for having an ideology. It is the contents of his ideology that give me some concern.

The contradictions and intellectual fissures that have been exemplified this morning go right to the heart of the Bill. That explains the rumour—I wonder whether the Minister could confirm it—of a fundamental disagreement over the Bill between the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Minister for the Cabinet Office.

Throughout the debate we have heard many examples of the positive impact that social enterprises can have on our neighbourhoods, communities, towns and villages. I recently visited Cream Catering in my constituency, which is doing innovative work. It is a social enterprise that employs people who have been out of the labour market for many years, and it provides high-quality catering in a variety of institutional contexts. It is an exciting enterprise, and it was created through the intervention of the then Government, who identified a procurement problem and an instrument that might deal with it. I am sure that is the kind of thing that the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington would like to see if the Bill became law.

In fact, there are 55,000 social enterprises across the country. It is said that they add £8 billion a year to our gross domestic product, but their true value cannot be measured purely in numbers. They enable the hardest to reach and often most socially excluded people to return to economic activity. They contribute to improving the environment, both physical and social, and they enhance prosperity and deliver social justice in equal measure.

The values encompassed in the work of social enterprises are vital ingredients in the creation of a good society. If we are to succeed in the future, both as a sustainable economy and as a society with strong bonds of mutuality and reciprocity, we need to accept that markets needs morals. Labour has no problem in accepting that, and in government it led us to invest in social enterprises. We invested unprecedented resources in encouraging social enterprises, which contributed to the significant expansion of the sector and brought us to the position that we are in today. That provides a background to the Bill.

Many of the Bill’s intentions will build on the progress that we made in the past 10 years, and, to be fair, the progress that was made under previous Administrations as well. Back in 2002, we launched the first Government strategy for social enterprise. In 2006, we produced a social enterprise action plan, and in 2009 we held a social enterprise summit. We also created new instruments called community interest companies, of which there are 4,000 across the country. Labour gave £125 million to the Futurebuilders fund, which the hon. Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) mentioned, to build third sector capacity. We also ensured that thousands of public sector procurement officers were trained in how best to engage with the third sector. We can therefore conclude that initiatives and plans—even those that are put into statutory form—are only one side of the equation.

The other side of the equation is that there must be appropriate investment. It is therefore a concern that the Government’s spending cuts might put at risk the activity of social enterprises. How can it help to scrap the future jobs fund, which was partly designed to help social enterprises create up to 15,000 jobs? Mention has been made of the New Philanthropy Capital think-tank, which has said that the cuts look like removing between £3 billion and £5 billion a year from social enterprises and the third sector generally.

Clause 1 would result in a national social enterprise strategy that allowed Departments to promote engagement in social enterprise across England. That proposal is almost identical in some ways to the social enterprise action plan that Labour introduced four years ago. It is difficult to see how this national strategy, which would be created in law, differs from the action plan that we introduced without the need for a statutory framework. A case must be made to explain why a new Bill is required given that Labour was able to do things without new statutory powers. Why do the Conservatives, and the coalition more generally, find it necessary to create a new piece of legislation, which the hon. Member for East Surrey no doubt thinks is coercive.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Gentleman is describing every pet project that Labour came up with in its 13 years in power as some sort of social enterprise, but that is not what the Bill is about. We are trying to enable non-profit organisations to deliver public services that the state would otherwise deliver. That is not the same as expanding the state, which is what the hon. Gentleman’s policies would lead to.

[Jon Trickett]

I am sorry I gave way to the hon. Gentleman, because he clearly has not listened to much of what I have said. Without such legislation, the previous Government helped to create the environment in which 55,000 social enterprises came into existence. A case has to be made to explain why all the Government Members present are prepared to introduce new legislation, more red tape and more intervention in the market, when Labour showed that we could build the so-called big society—the good society—with no such statist intervention. [Interruption.] I see that at least one Government Member—the hon. Member for Wycombe—feels really quite embarrassed that these proposals come from the Government Benches. It is absolutely unnecessary to bring this legislation into being.