Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

I will try to address my hon. Friend's point, which I heard earlier and think is a good one, but let us be clear that this is not a doctrinaire or Stalinist interpretation—““Thou shalt do this””. Rather it would provide different measures that local authorities can take into account. There is a prevailing assumption that local authorities and others look only at least cost, but that partly works against what motivates Government Members, who want to promote entrepreneurship. It is not what we want to see. I will talk later about a couple of those things. I hope that he understands that this is not—I would not support such a thing—some fearful rolling forward of the state. It is a new and better way of providing social goods and services that will not rely on the state and is in part a rolling back of state bureaucracy. My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) made a point about social value and profit. It is worth recognising one of the severe, if not unintended, consequences of current procurement processes—the focus on lowest cost. We should always try to do better for less, but as the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles and others mentioned, that is not necessarily the same thing as the pursuit of lowest cost. As we know from our constituencies, local services matter to local people. It is quite hard always to motivate people on the issue of lowering their council tax, but we can motivate them if we decide to close a local service. There is a boundary here. If we are honest and true to our constituents, we should wish for something more than price-only considerations in the procurement of our local services. That matters, because if we pursue, as we have done, a low-cost approach, the surplus in local communities will get exported, and we will see the growth of national organisations that will take that surplus, which could go to a local small business or local social enterprise, and export it to national shareholders. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but we need to get back some balance, and the Bill would do a good job in providing that balance to local commissioners in the procurement of local services. The Bill is extremely timely. Many Members have mentioned some of the impacts of the reductions in public expenditure that are necessary in order to get it back in line with our ability to raise money. It is timely because there are a lot of good local services and local assets that could be transferred to social enterprises. All Members, on both sides of the House, have a vested interest in ensuring that we do that as rapidly as possible, and passage of the Bill today would assist in doing that.