My Lords, I regret that due to professional commitments I was unable to contribute as much as I would have liked to earlier stages of the Bill. However, I added my name to two amendments on Report, both of which focused on the importance of recognising social value in the development of the national procurement policy statement. I am grateful to the noble Lords who led on those amendments with such success—the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Worthington, and the noble Lords, Lord Coaker, Lord Fox and Lord Lansley—a truly cross-party team.
The recognition of social value now returns for our consideration with Amendments 4A and 4B. I am again grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, for taking the lead and so succinctly gathering in one place the essential priorities and principles to which regard should be given. Chief among them from my perspective is public benefit through the achievement of social value.
I should at this stage disclose my membership of the APPG for Social Enterprise and explain that I was privileged to chair its inquiry into the performance of social enterprise during the dark days of the pandemic. The conclusions of that report were compelling, revealing
without doubt that social enterprises—that is, enterprises committed to the delivery of social value alongside more commercial ambitions—performed considerably better during the pandemic than their competitors, be they charities or strictly commercial enterprises. Social enterprises were more resilient, lighter on their feet and more diverse in their employment and service delivery. They delivered a lot more of the smaller contracts—which, as the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, identified, would not be covered by Clause 12—and they performed better economically.
Where they performed much worse than their competition was in their ability to secure support and funding from local and central government through public procurement. We noted that this was a particular issue in England, as compared with Wales and Scotland, because in those jurisdictions social enterprises and social value are identified as priorities within their public procurement strategies. With this amendment we will achieve the same and ensure that the delivery of social value is a priority for government. I urge that it is supported.
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