Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for producing this excellent Bill and allowing the issues it deals with to be discussed. I am delighted to see so many Members here on a Friday to support the measure. I hope in two weeks’ time to see as many Members supporting my own private Member’s Bill on daylight saving, although I have to confess that there are one or two familiar Friday faces who I hope will stay at home on that occasion.

The Bill has the potential to do a lot of good for communities across the country by strengthening the social fabric. In my constituency there are many public, community and social enterprises that could benefit enormously from the measure, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office knows, having visited Castle Point and met the local Association of Voluntary Services. Implementation of the proposals in the Bill is very necessary in these difficult economic times—it cannot happen soon enough, one might say. I do not share the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) that the Bill contains measures that are necessarily anti-competitive or anti-business. In fact, it is quite the reverse. As my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington said, the Bill will not discriminate against private businesses in bidding—indeed, it will help the more socially conscious firms.

I have an excellent example in my constituency: Thames Ambulance Service. A substantial local employer, it already delivers significant contracts with the NHS, providing ambulance services and training to Government Departments on health and patient care. It is also a company with a strong social conscience: it does a lot of work in the community on road safety training for young people, particularly motorcyclists, and in schools on first aid; it also takes on young people who are finding it difficult to get into employment or training. The Bill offers the opportunity to encourage those sorts of firms, which we want to see a lot more of in these difficult times.

At the same time, the Bill will help us to ensure that we get maximum value for money in the public sector. Its provisions do not run against the grain of the search for value for money; rather, they strengthen the principle. If we take a more holistic view of commissioning and aim to promote social as well as economic good, we can help to drive down demands on our public services, squeeze every possible benefit from public spending and improve standards in our public services. That can be seen in my local firm, Thames Ambulance Service, which offers an excellent service to the public but at a lower cost than is currently offered in the NHS. I believe that in some parts of the country that is already part of the commissioning process. However, with the very great strains on public finances, we now need to spread it across all our public services as quickly as possible, so that that best practice starts to become the norm. To get more intelligent commissioning, the wider social and environmental effects and people’s well-being must be at the heart of the process and integrated into the structure at a very early stage. That is why the Bill is so welcome.

I am confident that these proposals are practical and have the potential to do a great deal of good, and I am very pleased to support them. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington will also be in the Chamber on 3 December.