Public Services (Social Value) Bill

I shall be brief, because I had the opportunity to make my comments at length during the debate on the new clauses. I just want to put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White) for using the precious opportunity to introduce a private Member's Bill to introduce this Bill about social enterprise and social value. It is also part of a journey, as the Minister said, to transform the way in which we commission and provide essential services in this country and to unleash the innovation that the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) has just talked about. There has been a great deal of consensus on these issues. I hope that that consensus will continue and when we get the Health and Social Care Bill back in this House, Government Members will support us in trying to move forward with a definition of ““social enterprise”” in the health context. If the NHS is to be the biggest social enterprise in the world, we certainly need more clarity and reassurance about what that organisation should look like, what its legal responsibilities are and whether it will have an asset lock on the spin-outs in employment. I hope that the consensus will continue. Having said that, there are differences between the parties, even on this agenda, as the speech made by the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) illustrated. So I have no doubt that we will continue to have a lively debate about the role of social value. I am very keen to see it extended into the private and corporate sector, and I think that there is a genuine move among businesses to want to be bigger players in this area than they have perhaps been in the past. Again, I am looking to the Government to think about what incentives can be put into the system to encourage corporate bodies to shepherd social enterprises and to use them in their supply chain. Big construction companies such as Wates Construction are beginning to get that argument but, again, the Government can send messages to push the system along to ensure that we do not have to wait 10 years for that kind of development to take place. The Bill is an important step on that journey and helps to reinforce the idea that the economic situation gives us a huge impetus to try to get more value out of the taxpayers' money that we spend. The innovation of this sector can help us to do so much more. If, in the process of doing that, we can persuade people in business that making a contribution to the community is not just a good thing in itself, but that it helps them to augment and enhance their company, we will have made an excellent contribution. I am delighted to have been a part of this Bill from the very beginning, and it is lovely to see it through to the end. I am not that used to private Members' business, but I have certainly learned a lot on this journey and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington for his courage. I will do everything I can to ensure that the Bill gets a swift passage in the other place so that we see it on the statute book.