This snapshot taken on 26/07/2008, shows web content selected for preservation by The National Archives. External links, forms and search boxes may not work in archived websites.
Stephen Timms MPProcurement - The Social Enterprise Solution |
 |
|
| (Click picture for biography) | |
Andrew, thank you and let me put on record my regard for your very important contribution to this sector. Arriving here today has been the shortest journey of my week as I've only come from the room next door where I've been presenting the Enterprising Solutions National Social Enterprise Award. But yesterday morning by this time I had already completed my second plane flight. But for the past week I have been travelling the land visiting social enterprises – 25 different enterprises across England and Wales from Cornwall and the Rhondda Valley to Newcastle and Hull turning over between them £100 million and employing 2000 people. I've enjoyed it immensely and it has been an object lesson for me in the potential of this sector. Everybody knows that the chance of acquiring wealth through entrepreneurship is a big motivator. But what I have seen for myself in the past week is the powerful motivation that comes from building human capital – in bringing people back into employment, in reviving communities and in improving the environment. The people I have met have been bursting with enthusiasm and with pride about what they do, and they are making a huge contribution to the strength both of our society and of our economy. And that is the power of social enterprise – harnessing the skills and the energy of the entrepreneurial private sector at its best to address the social challenges, which face us at their sharpest. And I have seen example after example of that being done successfully over the past week. And the organisations I have just presented those awards to, the top five social enterprises in this year's Enterprising Solutions Awards, illustrate that too. Now in its fourth year, the Enterprising Solutions Award continues to present us with the opportunity to recognise and promote excellent examples of people delivering social change through business solutions. For the first time, the Award is being co-sponsored by DTI along with NatWest and the Royal Bank of Scotland. By adding our support, we hope to help make social enterprise success stories more visible, make the idea of social enterprise much more familiar than it is today, and draw attention to models that can inspire others. None of this year's winners was included in my tour – but let me just tell you a little about each of them. The overall winner is Brighton and Hove Wood Recycling Project. They are a small project, but their approach could be replicated in many other places. They offer a comprehensive timber collection service, saving thousands of tonnes of wood per year from being landfilled. They are fusing entrepreneurship with concern for the environment and passion for social change, and it is a powerful cocktail. The same is true for the other four finalists in the awards. Create Liverpool is also addressing both environmental and social objectives, for example recycling and refurbishing second-user white goods that would otherwise go to landfill, to offering training and support to long-term unemployed people. The Ethical Property Company, based in Oxford but operating in a number of cities, deploys sophisticated private sector skills to buy, refurbish and let property specifically for use by organisations in the social enterprise and voluntary sectors. Jesmond Swimming Project in Newcastle upon Tyne is by contrast very firmly based in one location. It was set up by local residents to save the local swimming pool from closure. It provides swimming and other activities at an affordable price at the heart of the community. And it has ambitious plans to improve and develop its facilities further. The last of the finalists is Blackburne House in Liverpool, a women's technology and education centre which enables women who have not succeeded in traditional education to develop their abilities through high quality learning provision. Their success in bringing out the best in the women they train is illustrated by the many who go on to attractive careers in the competitive IT sector. So please join me in congratulating all those winners, representing as they do the promise of this whole sector. Let's give them a round of applause. I hope that winning the Enterprising Solutions Award will give the Brighton Project a boost in recognition and confidence, helping it to go on and follow the successes of previous finalists. But I am delighted to be speaking to you at the beginning of what I regard as a very significant conference. The focus is on public procurement - and here there is a great deal going on too. Social enterprises are winning Government contracts to deliver services and are successfully delivering those public service contracts across the country. They have competed for the contracts, and won them – often against private sector contractors – because they can deliver excellent value for money. They can provide the right service, at the right quality, at the right price. There is a great deal further potential for more public services to be delivered by social enterprises, and by organisations in the voluntary sector that might not think of themselves – or might not think of themselves yet – as social enterprises. I was talking yesterday in Leeds to a group who were concerned that this might just be a ruse on the part of the Government to save money. But that is not what the Government's policy is focused on. Our priority is not reducing the cost of public services, but improving them. We are increasing the investment in services, and the great challenge for us is ensuring that we deliver the improvements to match that additional investment. We have to make sure that the funding being provided delivers the best possible services to the public – and our view is that social enterprises can help. We need the commitment and the innovation, the imagination and creative approaches which are exemplified by the award winners and the enterprises I have been visiting in this sector. So one of our priorities for social enterprise is to equip them better to compete for and win public sector contracts. And we want local authorities and other public contracting agencies to use the flexibilities available in the tendering process so that our strategy for Social Enterprise, which Patricia Hewitt and I launched in July, to work with partners like the Office of Government Commerce and the Local Government Association, to make this happen. This conference features terrific examples of successful social enterprises delivering Government contracts. But how do they find out about the opportunities? What is it about the social enterprises that enable them to win and deliver these contracts? And what lessons can we learn to help others achieve the same? We all know that successful social enterprises are close to their customers. They know what their customers want and make sure they provide it. They are innovative, creative and flexible, which enables them to find new ways to deliver excellent services. Their combination of a clear focus on their social goals with strong business skills can be unbeatable. But, you've got to be in the race to win it. Lack of recognition of contracting opportunities that local authorities and public procurers may offer will hinder social enterprises' chances of success. Many social enterprises are small businesses and the Government, through the Small Business Service and the Office of Government Commerce, has already taken action to open up procurement. The publication "Tendering for Government Contracts" offers guidance on how to supply the public sector market as well as comprehensive contact details. The SBS and the Office of Government Commerce are developing an on-line system, which will make details of smaller public procurement contracts available to small businesses, including social enterprises. Of course, this is only the first challenge. Contracting with the public sector can pose particular difficulties and we want to help social enterprises. With often one or more social goals in addition to the usual financial bottom line, is it worthwhile for social enterprises to focus time and resources in winning public contracts? I think it is. It may not always feel like it, but public sector organisations are generally good customers. They have to be fair, honest and professional in the way they choose suppliers and in the way they deal with those suppliers. They are financially stable and they are usually better at paying their bills on time. But procurement procedures can be time consuming – bidders for contracts need to be prepared for that. Social enterprises need to develop the skills and expertise to participate effectively in those procedures. We want to help social enterprises access the support they need to compete effectively for contracts. We will be preparing for social enterprises and their advisers, a toolkit to help spread good practice for social enterprises in winning public sector business. We are working on it with people in the social enterprise sector at the moment. There is also another side to this story. There needs to be change on the part of the procurers too. If social enterprises are to be able to compete fairly with their mainstream competitors, we need to promote greater understanding of social enterprises among those responsible for public procurement at all levels, as well as those who audit and inspect their work. Many public sector bodies are already convinced of the benefits, but others aren't yet. We need to persuade them that there are significant benefits in opening up opportunities to social enterprises. The advantages may be because social enterprises are able to bridge gaps, offering services where others are unwilling to do so. For example, in home care services in rural areas where there is a limited labour market and high travelling costs. Or, they may be able to help deliver local authorities' broader aims and objectives, which include environmental and social concerns. The Government is actively promoting the value of public authority contractors working with small suppliers, such as social enterprises, again through the Small Business Service and the Office of Government Commerce. The recent publication, Small Supplier… Better Value?, offers guidance to procurement officials. One anecdote from my tour highlights the problem. One of the enterprises I visited had been a tenant in a rather poorly maintained local authority industrial estate. And it occurred to them that they could do a much better job of maintaining it than the authority was doing. So they rang up and suggested tendering the work so they could bid – and the local authority said "Great idea! Please send us a tender for maintaining our fifty industrial estates!" And that was the end of that. But I am pleased to see that the social enterprise is here today, and so is their local authority, and I commend them both. We need to bring both together. We plan to run an event next spring, specifically to bring together central government departments, other public bodies and local authorities with social enterprises, to promote the role of social enterprises in delivering local services. New resources are being allocated for voluntary and community organisations – including social enterprises – who deliver key public services for Government. A new investment fund, "futurebuilders", will provide a one off, three-year investment of £125 million to modernise the sector. It will be directed to organisations delivering key services in health and social care, crime and social cohesion, in education, and for children and young people. I cannot tell you yet about how the fund will operate, as those details are still being worked out. But we will be working with the sector to deliver the right design for the fund. Public procurement is a very important part of our three-year strategy for social enterprise, but it goes a good deal further. It involved use working right across Government, to ensure that departments understand the needs of social enterprises, and they take those needs fully into account in their areas of policy and delivery. Key partners are, of course, the Small Business Service and their Business Link operators. The strategy that SBS will be publishing shortly has social enterprise as a clear priority and this will mean that, in future, all Business Links Business Plans will have to say clearly what they intend to do to support social enterprises. We shall be able to monitor progress towards the strategy's stated aim to ensure that ALL Business Links offer appropriate services for social enterprise – and to more of them. And we are already starting to make progress on opening up mainstream SBS programmes to social enterprises. The Inside UK Enterprise programme will now involve social enterprises - as host organisations initially. This mainstreaming – offering social enterprises the chance to learn alongside traditional businesses – will be good for social enterprises and for mainstream SMEs, some of whom, I anticipate, will be surprised to find out just how entrepreneurial and innovative their socially driven colleagues can be. While we want Business Links to play a full part in delivering training, we know that there are specialist elements that are better offered by those immersed in social enterprise. That is why we are supporting the roll out of the highly rated Cat's Pyjamas practitioner-led training for social enterprises. Currently only available in Liverpool, it will soon be operating in four other parts of the country in a pilot programme which will establish the feasibility of a national training programme. On a more personal level, I hope it is clear from the way I have been spending the past week how important we in the DTI see social enterprise as being. It is for us an important strand in boosting the competitiveness of the UK economy as well as of strengthening our society. We need a larger and stronger social economy sector, and this conference is one step on the road to achieving that. I wish you a very fruitful day. Thank you. |
|
|
|
|
Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
|
