Social Enterprise

Nick Hurd supports calls for the Government to work with the high street banks to improve liquidity to the voluntary sector and social enterprises.

Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): Thank you, Mr. Bercow, for clarifying that. I do apologise to the hon. Member for Luton, South (Margaret Moran), for no discourtesy was intended; it was just ignorance of procedure. I certainly do not want to eat into the Minister’s time; I just wanted to congratulate the hon. Lady on her speech, to support her pressure on the Government and to place on the record the Conservative party’s strong support for social enterprise and the voluntary sector generally. There is a strong cross-party consensus about the need at the moment to strengthen and support them—the hugely valuable people who are helping us to cure and to tackle some of the most stubborn social problems in the country, while generating wealth that stays in the community. It is an enormously important section of society that we want to encourage, and in our green paper we have set out some ideas on exactly how to do so.

I wanted to support the hon. Lady in pressing the Minister on two matters. First, like most small businesses, the current primary concern of social enterprises is cash flow and liquidity, so will the Minister be explicit in responding to the hon. Lady and place on the record what the Government are doing in their conversations with the high street banks to encourage them to work with organisations such as the community development finance institutions and credit unions to extend liquidity to that sector?

Secondly, the hon. Lady was right to say that for social enterprises helping the Government get people back into work, payment by results, whereby “results” are defined as full-time employment opportunities, is now an extraordinarily difficult regime in which to work. Are the Government rethinking that definition to provide some scope for social enterprises to help people into situations where they may do some public good and benefit the community through voluntary opportunities; or, is their mind still closed on the definition of results?

5.26 pm

PREVIOUSLY IN THE SAME DEBATE

Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing an important debate at a very important time. She talked about the need for a social investment bank, and I also welcome the initiative to encourage banks to look at dormant bank accounts and transfer capital from them to the voluntary sector and social enterprises. However, does she share my understanding that that is going to be a voluntary initiative on the part of the banks and, if that is the case, does she also share my view that there should be regular reviews in this place of the effectiveness of those proceedings and the voluntary arrangement?

Margaret Moran: I certainly agree with that. However, my argument is rather stronger, in the sense that I think that the Government should be using their leverage in the current economic climate to ensure that the arrangement is more than voluntary and they should not allow themselves to be swayed by arguments to the contrary.