News

Sector needs specifics not rhetoric from government, demands peer

Finance | Daniel Phelan | 1 Jul 2010

Liberal Democrat peer Lord Newby has called for specific measures from the government to support charities, co-operatives and social enterprises.

Chairing a meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Committee on social enterprise last night, Lord Newby said: “Saying you’re going to support these organisations is a very easy thing. Actually doing it is much more difficult. Parliamentarians can be long on rhetoric and short on practicalities.”

Rohan Silva, a senior policy adviser to David Cameron, was reassuring: “Civil society is at the heart of the government’s agenda.” He continued by emphasising the government’s commitment to the localisation agenda, to designing contracts to remove bureaucracy and to “tackling market failures in providing finance to social enterprises and to the establishment of a Big Society bank”.

Peter Kinsella, director of P3, was wary of the scale of the task, asking: “Are we all appreciating the scale of the offer? Can we respond? How much capacity do we have? This bank has to have some real money – big money for a big challenge.”

Other social entrepreneurs in the audience pointed to different issues. Craig Dearden-Phillips was concerned that “large global outsourcing companies will offer 25 per cent savings with tried and trusted methods and local authorities may be tempted by quick and easy wins.”

Frank Villeneuve-Smith, communications director at HCT Group, added that “Ninety per cent of the local authority contracts we see have innovation and cost savings designed out of them.” He went on to ask: “How can you bridge the gap between the role of central government and the passion of social enterprises?”

Social Enterprise Coalition chief executive Peter Holbrook replied: “There is a window of opportunity to really influence this agenda while the spending review is underway, probably until September. We need to supply the government with the information it needs.”

Geoff Walker, chief executive of Sandwell Community Caring Trust, added that, in his opinion, “scaling up isn’t a problem, the workers are already there, they just need a different way of looking at things”.

Referring to huge reductions in sick leave, staff turnover and management costs that can be achieved by removing services from the public sector and re-energising staff members to re-connect with their jobs, Walker maintained: “SCCT has managed to keep pace with all the positive changes in local authority staff benefits since 1997, including pension rights, while delivering a better quality service at half the price.”

Silva concluded: “Everyone in the Cabinet visits social enterprises and comes back agog at what they see and convinced that we can scale up.”

Tweet