UK Parliament / Open data

Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

We have enjoyed an interesting debate so far, and one that has on several occasions skirted around the general issues of interaction between the state, private enterprises, so-called social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups. It is a fascinating subject that deserves far greater discussion than even we have afforded it under this new coalition Government. Given that we are having a general debate, and given the nature of the Bill, the figures outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White), and the number of people engaged in social enterprises and the voluntary sector throughout the country, it sad that the Chamber is only this full. Although the debate is a good one with the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) representing many Labour Members, I wonder, if the Bill had been supported in some measure by the Public and Commercial Services Union, how many Opposition Members would have been here, given that we are talking about similar numbers of people. Perhaps it is a good thing that they are not here. I am not sure that many of them would like their views on socialism to be represented by the right hon. Lady. Her views are probably more enlightened than those of many hon. Members who often sit with her. We have had a discussion on the general issues, but I wanted to speak in this debate to give a local case study to explain why elements of the Bill are so important. I have had several discussions with the Minister, whom I am delighted to see in his place. He has been most helpful with this local issue. This is not an egregious attempt to discuss various institutions in my constituency; I want to provide the House with an active case study of why the elements in the Bill are so important. I shall return to the elements with which I have difficulties, but some have much to commend them. It is an unfortunate fact that many voluntary organisations spring up at moments of crisis, or from a deep or yearning concern about deprivation or social problems. That is certainly the case with one organisation in my constituency. Ipswich Housing Action Group was founded in 1976 by a group of local business men who were worried about the homeless, so they created a charity to deal with homelessness in Ipswich. Many hon. Members may remember the horrendous serial murders in Ipswich in 2006. As a result of that, the community felt the need to deal immediately with the problems of prostitution and drug addiction in the town. That brought together not only local authorities, the police and other statutory bodies, but many social enterprises and charities locally. Prime among them was an extraordinary charity, the Iceni Project, which is a small micro-charity dealing with drug rehabilitation. It so happens that that charity is not just an extraordinary local charity; it is a very effective one. It has been delivering some of the very best drug rehabilitation programmes in the country. Indeed, it is regularly rated within the top three organisations in the country for providing drug rehabilitation. In 2008, it was awarded The Guardian prize for the best charity of the year for being so innovative yet so local. In 2006, the town came together to deal with the problems that had afflicted those young ladies who were killed, and many around them consequently received the help and care that they should have received before that. Crisis and disaster forced on the community an immediate imperative to provide that. In that process, the Iceni Project gained a particular place in the hearts of many people in Ipswich, which is why the events of the past few weeks and months have been of considerable concern to many people throughout my constituency. The reason for that concern lies in the tendering of drug projects that has come about under a tender process initiated by the previous Administration. Perhaps the House will not mind me running through the basics of how that has happened, so that hon. Members understand why that is directly pertinent to the Bill. The previous Administration spoke much about the third sector, especially towards the end of their tenure. Indeed, I believe that the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition was the Minister with responsibility for the third sector at one stage, and I know that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles did much to try to extend the role of the third sector in the delivery of services. But there is a problem in the way that much of that was structured, because the idea was effectively to outsource, and to get the third sector, whether charities, voluntary organisations or social enterprises, to take on the role of the state in various contracted terms. That is not what we should be striving for. We should not be trying not to replace one bureaucracy and one contractor with another, whether a state organisation run by a private enterprise or by a charity. We should encourage and fertilise the ecosystem of communities—small micro-organisations—and not over-engage with them, but allow them to provide the services and communities assets that we all depend on. There is a key distinction, and the case study provides an example of why things can go so badly wrong. Under the tender process set up by the previous Government and the Home Office—the right hon. Lady knows more than I do about the formulation of that policy—a quango, the drug and alcohol action team, was set up in every county and local authority to the contracts for drug rehabilitation, and it does so according to Home Office guidelines. The Suffolk DAAT, which consists of procurement officers from the primary care trust, the county council and others, decided that it would let the contract on the basis that those applying for the tender could offer a service throughout Suffolk. That immediately excluded the Iceni Project because, by design, it operates only in Ipswich. The issue is that the tender itself was following the guidelines laid down by the Home Office, and those guidelines were to look for best value on a purely monetary basis throughout the county. A second problem is that the people who sit on the DAAT are completely unaccountable to anyone else—county councillors, district councillors, Members of Parliament, and Parliament itself. They are a mixture of PCT procurement officials and county council procurement officials, but when the tender was going through the process, it became increasingly apparent that it was impossible to challenge not the decisions on the award of the tender, but the form it had taken.
Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
518 c1190-2 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Commons chamber
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