Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on this interesting private Member's Bill, and it is an honour to follow the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) because she obviously knows such an enormous amount about this topic. I draw the House's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Financial Interests. For the last couple of years, I have had the privilege of sitting on the board of the Social Investment Business—a social enterprise itself—which has been a fascinating place from which to observe some of the issues and challenges in the social enterprise sector. The social enterprise sector is not widely known or acknowledged by the public. If we asked people in the street to define a social enterprise, I think that most people would look fairly blank, but the right hon. Lady gave us some excellent examples of social enterprises in her constituency, and most people will have heard of organisations such as Jamie Oliver's Fifteen. It is a restaurant that runs on a commercial basis, but it helps young people who are struggling to get into employment by training them as chefs. People have also heard of organisations such as Cafédirect and The Big Issue—the latter being a social enterprise in which the commercial magazine helps homeless people to earn an income. However, social enterprise still has some work to do in engendering public knowledge, understanding and acceptance of what it does. From the perch that I have occupied for the last couple of years, it has been fascinating to observe some of the issues and challenges for the social enterprise sector. In particular, I have chaired the investment committee, which has disbursed the money from the Futurebuilders fund, which was almost £200 million of Government funding that was designed to be used in loans to completely unbankable social enterprise organisations. If social enterprises were trying to win contracts from public sector organisations, the Futurebuilders money was designed to be the last resort. If organisations had already been to the banks, applied for grants and pursued all the other sources of potential funding, but still needed that last little bit of funding to make the project viable—the unbankable funds—the Futurebuilders fund could help. The fund has now been fully disbursed and, for the last five or six years, it has been a portfolio of loans. I wonder whether hon. Members wish to guess what the annual default rate has been—in this very tough financial period—on that series of unbankable loans to social enterprises.