Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

I think that the right hon. Lady will find that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions heartily agrees with her. In a speech that he gave a few years ago, he warned precisely against the takeover by mega-charities of certain functions of the state. He is a man who does not change his opinions or his direction with great ease, and I would find it very surprising if he were to go back on that. The county council procurement officers, working within the management structure, effectively deal with the money and procurement advice provided to the primary care trust. I should say that the primary care trust has shown itself to be perennially oblivious to the needs, aspirations and concerns of local people. Frankly, it was concerned only with its own upkeep and ingratiating itself with senior officials in the strategic health authority, but that is by the by. Those people coming together have now awarded a contract to two large outside charities, both of which I am sure provide good services in their area, but the result is that funding for drug rehabilitation work will now be taken for three years, or possibly five if the break clause in the contract is not invoked, from the Iceni project and from three other micro-charities in Suffolk. All those micro-charities spring from local ground and are supported by local people, yet they will disappear or experience considerable cuts as a result of this. What does that tell local people who have invested their time, effort and passion in such organisations? The message that they hear is, ““ We don't care about you any more. We're going to give a contract to an outside organisation, and all the work that you have put in no longer matters. You might as well give up and go away.”” The answer from the Suffolk DAAT was, ““Don't worry, we'll be TUPE-ing the staff across.”” As it happens, however, many of the staff do not want to work for anyone else. They came on board, following the tragic events that I described a few moments ago, because they loved the organisation and admired its leadership. What could the Bill do to ensure that that did not happen again? I particularly like its proposal to place a compulsion on local authorities and public bodies to consider localism when letting contracts. If we are going to encourage the big society, we must ensure that the organisations are there to deliver the services. If we cut off every tendering period every three or five years, the small organisations that do not have the funds to enable them to tender will simply not be there, and we shall not see the growth of social entrepreneurism necessary to challenge the big providers. We shall not see the natural efflorescence that we see in the private economy, where new entrants to the market find new ways of doing things and continually improve their product offer. That is what I particularly like about the Bill, but I have a few issues with it as well. I wonder whether, at some point, they might be addressed, although I am not sure who would address them in the circumstances. I would be interested to know whether the Minister has any views on them. I have a particular problem with strategies, and I wonder whether they provide the freedom that my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington is seeking to achieve. I agree with the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles that there needs to be integration, but my experience is that integration between services happens as a result of the willing participation of providers—as happened, funnily enough, in Ipswich in 2006. Integration is not achieved by the state coming in and saying, ““ You will do it like this”” or ““We suggest this format of working.”” All too often, procurement officials faced with a strategy will follow it to the letter, rather than looking at the spirit of it and what it wants to achieve. I would hope that any strategy introduced under the terms of the Bill would involve a general motivation to encourage localism and to ensure that local providers are considered in the tendering process, rather than adopting the more prescriptive strategies that we have seen recently in the equalities legislation introduced by the previous Administration. My second issue concerns the definition of a social enterprise. Clause 2(3) states that a person or body is engaged in social enterprise if"““(a) the person or body is carrying on a business;""(b) the business's activities are being carried on primarily for a purpose that promotes or improves the social or environmental well-being of the United Kingdom, whether the purpose is pursued in relation to all or any part of the United Kingdom or all or any of the persons resident or present in it;""(c) the greater part of any profits for distribution is applied for such a purpose.””" I am sure that Members on both sides of the House would agree that that definition could equally apply to private enterprises that pay dividends to shareholders. I am not sure how this nails down the intention of the Bill towards social enterprises per se, and I wonder whether we need to elaborate on it, or whether we simply need to substitute the word ““charity”” for the words ““social enterprise”” and leave it at that. I hope that I have made it clear through my case study why public tenderers need to start looking at the local impact of their decisions, and why the Bill is an important one. I do not want to get mixed up in the general philosophical discussions that we have been having, but Burke's little platoons have to exist, and if we march over them with large brigades or regiments, they will not be there to take up the standard and advance on behalf of their communities. I hope that that is the intention behind the Bill and, notwithstanding the qualifications that I have outlined, I very much support my hon. Friend's aims.