Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Nick Hurd

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

Absolutely not. The hon. Gentleman has been around enough to know that the size of the deficit means that the sector, which receives almost £13 billion a year of taxpayers’ money, cannot be immune from the reduction in public spending, and that it would not have been immune, as the Opposition have admitted, under the ghastly scenario of a Labour Government. We have to be realistic about that. We are trying to minimise the short-term damage through initiatives such as the transition fund, and to create the building blocks for a better future for the sector, not least through more incentives for giving and more opportunities for it to deliver public services.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

5. When he expects the first payments from the big society bank to be made.

Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Nick Hurd

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

It is a little early in my speech to give way.

Once the right hon. Lady had recovered sufficiently, she expressed her admiration for the quiet determination shown by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington. She knows a great deal about determination, quiet or otherwise, and she was entirely right in what she said. I wish to add my sincere congratulations to him, not just on his good fortune at the ballot box but on his subsequent tenacity in building a coalition and the way in which he presented his case today. It is a considerable demonstration of his commitment to improving public services and trying to get a better deal for taxpayers.

I also wish to confirm from the start that the Government are happy for the Bill to go into Committee, if that is the will of the House. We will seek to amend it, in ways that I will explain, but we support the core proposition of the Bill that we should place a firmer requirement on commissioners—those who do the very difficult job of shaping and purchasing public services on our behalf—to consider the potential to maximise the social, environmental and economic impact of every pound they spend on behalf of the taxpayer. In doing so, the Bill builds on the principle of the best value duty, as my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) said.

The Bill is also consistent with what the Government are trying to achieve with the big society agenda. I genuinely hope that that issue becomes less partisan over time, not least because—as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington and the right hon. Lady, the former Secretary of State, said—the message builds on the aspirations of, and actions taken by, former Governments. Given the problems and challenges that we face as a country, it must be right to challenge all of us to think about our obligations and personal responsibilities beyond just paying taxes and obeying the law. It must be right to work together to try to find better ways to do things and, in that process, to try to tap into the skills, talents, ideas, experience and entrepreneurial energy that exists in our communities, but which too often feels shut out from the system. It must be right to encourage and support people to come together to try to solve problems and improve life for themselves and their communities.

I am lucky in the job that I do—and the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) will find this, too, as he now shadows me—to visit every week communities and community organisations in which people are coming together to try to make a contribution and to do some good to improve life in their area. It is genuinely inspiring and gives me great confidence that we have a firm foundation on which to build this bigger and stronger society, if we can do more to encourage and support it.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend makes precisely the point about which the shadow Minister was confused. The procurement officers will not be compelled to do something from the top down, but will have the same choices before them as they have always had. Rather, they will be asked to look imaginatively at those choices. We are talking about benevolent libertarianism and a nudge forward—not what the shadow Minister was confused about.

[Mr Hurd]

I do not think that the Opposition were confused in any way: I think that they knew exactly what they were trying to do. However, my hon. Friend is right. This is not a heavy-handed approach: it is a requirement to consider, where relevant and proportionate. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) suggested that it was a catalyst—a good word—to try to open more minds to a better and more intelligent way to commission, which considers the opportunity to achieve multiple outcomes through the transaction.

The big society agenda is not a Government programme, but the Government have an enormously important role to play. The Prime Minister has been clear about the three strands of action that people can expect from the Government, one of which—a very important one—is public service reform. Early in the new year we will publish a White Paper on public service reform that will make it clear what we are trying to achieve and how we intend to achieve it. Our desire is that public services will be built on stronger relationships with the communities and citizens they serve, and that they will be, in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, more local, more personalised and more responsive. We want to devolve power to people on the front line who know how things can be done better, including extending the right to provide that was initiated by the previous Administration. We want to try to encourage and unlock that energy that sits inside the public services, which we feel has been constrained and stifled by a regime of overly oppressive targets and bureaucracy.