Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) on the way in which he introduced the Bill. I strongly agree with the spirit of his remarks. It is only on the margin that I find myself disagreeing either with my hon. Friends or with the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), who is no longer in the Chamber. Where I am ambivalent is on a few philosophical points. Although I realise that philosophy may not be as fashionable in this place as it once was, I hope that Members will forgive me if I dwell on some of the philosophical aspects for a few moments. As I said in an intervention earlier, it is my view that all enterprise is social. I believe that society is co-operation, and that in a society based on the division of labour, we necessarily cannot have a gift economy. We cannot have a planned economy. It is necessary for unhampered market prices to fall for us to discover people's revealed preferences. We talked about values earlier. Values are so important, and so unique to the individual. They are about more than money, and yet people reveal the intrinsic, inherent values that they hold in their minds only when they disperse their own money. I do not just mean when they buy fripperies for themselves; I mean when they give to charity, and when they buy gifts for others. There is nothing dishonourable about spending one's own money in line with one's own values. For a long time Labour Members have been appealing to reason. They have believed that if only the state had enough power, or the right power, or this, that and the other—if only it had a national or local framework—and if only enough power were exercised in society, things would be rational and reasonable and stable and static, and they would become better. I put it to the House, however, that the experience of the last 100 years has been that that has not happened. I am rather reminded of the scene in ““The Lord of the Rings”” in which Boromir, I believe, turns to Frodo and begs to be given the Ring of Power because he would use it for good. I am afraid that the limits to the use of this Ring of Power—state power—are highly circumscribed. They are circumscribed, because society is a dynamic process of information discovery. It is simply not possible for the state to obtain the information that it needs in order to co-ordinate society by decree, or indeed to intervene powerfully in society to produce good outcomes. It is impossible because the information that is necessary is dispersed in the minds of millions, indeed billions, of people; it is impossible because the information is tacit, it is practical, and it could not be transmitted even if it were accessible; it is impossible because society is a dynamic process, and information is therefore discovered through the changing process of social interaction; and it is impossible because the very act of the state's intervening to fulfil the whims of politicians and officials prevents information from being discovered. Some people listening might recognise these as arguments advanced in the past under the heading of ““The Fatal Conceit””. I fear that in our benevolent intent, with our good will, and given all those great things that we have heard today about building a better society, we are in danger of holding on to that fatal conceit: the conceit that the state, if only it could obtain enough information, could co-ordinate society. The right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles pointed out that the state is often in the way of the very social entrepreneurs whom she wishes to see succeed, and that she wishes to see the system change in order to get it out of people's way and get it behind them. But I ask the House how much longer we are to continue in the fallacious belief that if only, if only we could change the way in which the state coercively determines what people are to do with their own lives, things would become better. The right hon. Lady mentioned charities and mutuals, and we could also discuss co-operatives and friendly societies. I would not disagree at all with her intent in respect of such organisations. I think that they are healthy, I think that they are honourable, and I think it is a great pity that the labour movement was key in stamping them out. We are bearing the cost of its follies in that regard. I have no objection whatever to mutuals or co-ops or, indeed, trade unions. What I have an objection to is the use of coercive power to organise society. Provided that those traditionally leftist labour movements are organised to sustain themselves by making a surplus, and provided that they are not bailed out with taxpayer's money—we might well mention the banks, but perhaps that is for another day—I will support them. I will gladly support mutuality, co-operatives and, of course, charities. However, we have talked about the public ownership of capital goods. Labour Members have worried that capital goods might be—heaven forbid—privatised, but what is privatisation? Could it be that a mutual owning its own capital goods is private in some sense? Perhaps we need a new word, because to me ““public”” does not necessarily mean ““state””, and ““society”” does not necessarily mean ““state””. I should be very happy indeed if assets—capital goods—currently owned by the state were put into the genuine ownership of mutuals. The question is not whether those assets should be put into genuine ownership outside the state; it is how ownership can be transferred in such a manner that justice is done. There is no doubt in my mind that many of those assets have been acquired by the state unjustly, but far be it from us to double the injustice by selling them in an inappropriate way, and then dispersing the capital gains by spending to live today. In short, what concerns me is that we are lapsing into something which might best be described as communitarianism. It sounds so laudable. Oh, it does: it sounds so laudable—as did socialism, back when socialism meant Marxism. It always sounds so laudable. But the fact is, whether Labour Members like it or not—and I am afraid that the same applies even to some of my hon. Friends—in the end, when we come up with a national plan, a national social strategy, and local authority strategies for social enterprise, inevitably we must use the coercive power of the state in an attempt to direct society—a task that is impossible through the very nature of society itself.