Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to page 59 of the Government's Civil Society Strategy published in August 2018, what measures have been considered by his Department to unlock and boost social impact investment.

We are fully committed to the Civil Society Strategy: it is the beginning of an ambitious, evolving work programme to help build a strong society. As part of this, government is continuing its work to consider additional measures to boost social impact investment. For example, an additional £125m of dormant assets has been, and will be, allocated to Big Society Capital in the period 2017-2020, and an additional £10m has been allocated to Access - The Foundation for Social Investment. This is in addition to the £60m government grant to Access, of which £3.9 million will be provided in 2019 and £5.0m in 2020. A £3.2million social investment fund has recently been launched by DCMS: the Northern Cultural Regeneration Social Investment Fund will start extending loans to cultural and creative organisations in the North of England from April 2019.

In 2018, the Prime Minister asked Elizabeth Corley to lead the Taskforce on Impact Investment and DCMS ministers and officials are supporting the work of this taskforce. DCMS ministers and officials also continue to work with departments to identify other opportunities for social investment to support the government’s priorities. The Social Housing Green Paper, published in August 2018, described social investment as an opportunity to increase the quality and quantity of social housing, and the government’s Rough Sleeping Strategy commits to the use of Social Impact Bonds to meet the government’s targets to reduce rough sleeping.