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Stephen Timms MPCorporate Social Responsibility Event with Sir John Egan |
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A week ago yesterday, a large new Tesco Store opened in Beckton in my constituency and among its employees are over 100 local residents who were formerly unemployed. They include a man who told me he had been unemployed for 13 years following an injury at work, another who had been jobless for eight years and a number of Asian housewives who have never worked before – never had the confidence to consider working – but who have for the past week been in jobs in that store. The reason for that store making such a significant contribution to regeneration in our community is a partnership between the company, the local Council, the Employment Service, the local College and others. The Employment Service identified unemployed people who might benefit, an impressive training package was put together for delivery by Newham College and others and over three months this group of just over 100 people were intensively trained in using computers, dealing with customers, first aid and other topics. What was unique about it was that everybody getting through to the end of the training was guaranteed a job at the store when it opened last week. I was talking to a local journalist about this and she said: "Typical. With all these high powered jobs coming into East London, the only thing on offer to local people is jobs in a supermarket". But actually, that was not the response of the people who went through that training. The enthusiasm of those people on their training was remarkable – I visited a group of them at Newham College while it was under way. A young Asian man whom I did not know came in to see me at my surgery recently and asked for my help in securing a visa for his fiancée to come to the UK from India for their wedding. That was an unusual request – what usually happens is that the wedding takes place in India and an application is then made for the spouse to come to the UK. So I asked him why he wasn't getting married in India. He explained to me that was out of the question because he was on the Tesco training! At the end of last month I presented certificates to those who had come through the training and it was a very impressive occasion. They were proud of what they had achieved, and rightly, because by far the best way out of poverty is through employment. They were also very appreciative of the effort that had been invested in them. Now in my view that is how responsible development in disadvantaged communities like mine should be carried out, with serious effort to make sure that the employment opportunities being created are taken up by people in the area. That is 100 people straight off the unemployment register and directly into work. We are seeing this kind of approach being adopted quite widely today and I am certain that is one of the reasons why – despite everything that is happening in the world economy at the moment – unemployment fell again last month to the lowest level for 27 years. But that isn't why Tesco did it – Tesco set up that partnership because its a good way to recruit staff for stores which then prove to be successful in pretty unprepossessing parts of the country. In the case of Beckton, the store is on the hugely polluted site of what was once the world's biggest gas works and it backs on to North London's principal sewage works. It is a huge site and the only thing it has been used for in the past 20 years is making Vietnam war films – Full Metal Jacket was made there because it looked so convincingly bombed out. But what Tesco has found is that the people it recruits through this approach are more committed, more enthusiastic, they respond to the trouble which has been taken to give them a chance through a real commitment to their work, which customers enjoy and which means they will stay working in the store a good deal longer than staff recruited by other more conventional routes. And I think that illustrates very well the kinds of opportunities we need to be looking for in this field of Corporate Social Responsibility. It is an approach that gets away from the old idea that economic, social and environmental goals are always in conflict. What we need to work out is how progress on any one of those fronts can support progress on the others. The approach on that store has led to gains on all three fronts, economic, social and environmental. We want to see business, the voluntary sector, and public bodies all working together, not doing so grudgingly, but because each sees it as advancing its own key interests to do so, as well as the interests of others. The key for corporates is that this activity is seen not as PR, - as Sir John said not as philanthropy, but as mainstream to the business – justified not just by altruism but on sound business grounds. Otherwise it will not survive. And in Government we want it to survive and flourish, because it can have such an immensely positive impact in addressing big challenges which are among the toughest we face. The question in my job is what can Government do to encourage those partnerships to form and to deliver because we don't want to rest on our laurels. I don't believe the answer is to pass laws to make it compulsory. Of course, there is a place for regulation. There are standards set down in law for environmental protection, health and safety, minimum wage and so on and every organisation is rightly compelled to comply with them. But what we are discussing today is organisations voluntarily going beyond those regulatory requirements, developing ideas which build on their own particular strengths and interests, and contributing as a result to social and environmental gains as well as to their own proper economic self interest. Again, in this voluntary sphere, I am not saying that there is no place for regulation. When I was the pensions minister in 1999 I introduced the requirement that pension funds should state whether or not they had a policy on socially responsible investment and if so what it was. That has been an effective, light touch intervention which has stimulated a great deal of work around the social and environmental consequences of investment. In the current consultation on company law reform we are looking at measures to improve corporate reporting on social and environmental matters. So we take the view well framed regulation can play a helpful role. But what we have to avoid at all costs is moving corporate social responsibility into the realm of regulatory red tape, because that would merely stifle the creativity and innovation which are the most valuable feature of CSR today. So beyond light touch regulation, what can Government do on promotion? I am just going to make some tentative suggestions this evening and I will be interested in observations people might want to make about them – there is certainly is no commitment at this stage on our part to proceed with any of them but they are ideas we are reflecting on. I think the key will be in helping with spreading the best ideas so that they can be developed as widely as possible across the country. We already support a variety of awards for effective corporate social responsibility and that is a good way to get the message across. Perhaps we should be looking at more regional awards to take advantage of the growing strength of the regional networks being gathered together through the Regional Development Agencies. There might be other things we should do on a regional level too, such as promoting networks or clusters of businesses which have made CSR work, and are willing to spread the message. There might be a place for some form of CSR Academy which would promote good ideas, link up the people working on them and perhaps contribute also to the professional development of people working in CSR. It would need to be a dynamic and perhaps a virtual institution different from a conventional educational establishment but I think there might be a role for such a thing. We could also look at CSR's place on the courses of business schools. The Governor of the Bank of England has expressed interest in the idea of hosting a gathering in London for representatives of cities around the country where there is interest in forming these partnerships between public, private and voluntary sector organisations to address social and environmental challenges – so that civic, corporate and community leaders could meet to compare notes and exchange ideas about what is working well in each of their areas. Heart of the City I know would be very interested in supporting such an exchange and helping other cities to gain from the experience it has developed. A number of corporate organisations have made the point to me that they are suffering from questionnaire fatigue – that there is a huge variety of different organisations asking them questions about what they are doing on social and environmental matters, all of them asking slightly different questions and posing them from a slightly different standpoint, and it would be very helpful for them if there was some kind of convergence to rationalise the amount of work they are being asked to do – and that might be an exercise in Government we could assist with. So those are a number of the ideas we are reflecting on at the moment in the Department of Trade and Industry. There is a great surge of interest in this area at the moment and it is for us in Government a resource which we need to tap into if we are to succeed as we are determined to in addressing the big social and environmental and economic challenges which face us in the months ahead. This is an area we are enthusiastic about working on with others to achieve our shared objectives. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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