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Stephen Timms MPSEEDA Sustainable Business Awards 2002 |
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Thank you for your welcome. I am delighted to be here today and to congratulate all those whose achievements are being celebrated. I used to be the Leader of a local council in the East End of London, and when I was elected to that role one of the first things that happened was that I had a visit from the then also new chief executive of the biggest private firm in the area, Tate and Lyle. We had a very useful discussion that led on to some very fruitful collaboration, which last until the present time, twelve years later. But what became apparent from that discussion was there had previously been no serious conversation between the local authority and its biggest private sector employer for years. The relationship between the two had been set in concrete in the 1950s, when the Labour Party had been campaigning to nationalise the sugar industry, Tate and Lyle in the shape of Mr Cube had been campaigning for free enterprise. The two had been on opposite sides of an ideological war and the gulf had not been bridged in the intervening 40 years. When it was finally bridged after that conversation, the benefits were great all round. And so I have a particularly strong reason to be enthusiastic about this evening's event, when the public sector is marking outstanding achievement in the private sector, and when we are celebrating private sector contributions to goals largely articulated in the public sector. There are important partnerships at the root of this evening's celebration, public and private sectors not just talking together but working together, each recognising that it has a contribution to make to the success of the other. That is a strong model, and for the Government one with a great deal to commend it. Some companies will "win" an award tonight, but society as a whole is the real winner from this activity. And that is the reason I am so enthusiastic about congratulating everybody involved. Sustainable Development We can no longer afford to see economic success as being necessarily in conflict with social and environmental goals, and we don't need to. We have learnt, as Allan has been saying, that creating a fairer society and a dynamic economy go together, and that caring for the environment can create jobs. The policies we need for social justice and environmental improvement can go hand in hand with the policies needed to create a successful modern economy. And that is the essence of sustainable development. We recognise today that you cannot achieve long-term economic success if it based on despoiling the environment. Nor will it last if parts of society are excluded from the benefits. That investment in people is an economic necessity rather than a social cost to be borne. Business Case A business adopting sustainable approaches:
And the approach can bring clear benefits to business by reducing risk, enhancing brand value, opening doors and creating goodwill, and by improving staff moral and efficiency. As Tony Blair said when he spoke to business leaders in Johannesburg, Being competitive does not mean jettisoning environmental and social standards. On the contrary, for the future, the most competitive companies will be those that build environmental and social considerations into their core business. Those considerations are having an increasing impact on business performance and a shareholder value. Effective management of them – alongside traditional financial and economic risks – is becoming fundamental to business success. Sustainability strategies provide a framework for business sectors to identify and to manage all those risks in an integrated way. The character and the pace of development of those sustainability strategies needs to be determined not by Government but by business drivers. There isn't a single blueprint - each strategy needs to reflect the individual circumstances and priorities of that sector. Strategies need to be seen as a long-term process of continuous improvement. SEEDA SEEDA's commitment to sustainable development is plain in the Regional Economic Strategy, which underpins its principal aim to improve the economic performance of the region. This award give the region's businesses an opportunity to gain recognition for the excellent contribution they are making towards sustainable economic development, and also encourages others to follow models of best practice. This is an initiative I wholly support. The Awards Programme has region wide appeal, as we can see from the overall number of entries received and of course, the 21 finalists. The Awards The Awards themselves are divided into 2 categories – for smaller and larger companies. The smaller company category finalists are sourced from the seven Regional Sustainable Business Partnerships. These Regional Partnerships nominate local companies who have either won an award or have excelled in some other way. In the larger companies category, the companies apply direct to SEEDA. There is an overall winner and two runners up in each of the two categories. There are also category awards for Waste Minimisation, Energy Efficiency, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Innovation. Corporate Social Responsibility Part of my ministerial portfolio is Corporate Social Responsibility. It is a tough notion to define. If it is seen as about community programmes, that leaves out environmental issues. If about sustainability, that leaves out the dimension of a company's own employees. What we can say is that Corporate Social Responsibility 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. 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. Our published aim for CSR is that private and public sector organisations in the UK should take account of their economic, social and environmental impact, and should take complementary action to address the key challenges which arise from these impacts, based on their core competences – locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. It is not as though there is any shortage of business-led activity out there. Every day I see new examples. Let me just give you a couple:
What is so impressive to me and so valuable about all this is the imagination and innovation that characterise it. My Ministerial brief is for competitiveness and it may at first sight seam an unusual place to put corporate social responsibility within this portfolio. But it's not a mistake. There is growing evidence that grappling with the challenges of corporate responsibility stimulates exactly the kind of innovation that contributes so powerfully to mainstream business success. Many of the initiatives of sustainable business are valuable in themselves in boosting productivity and internal competitiveness. But the process of grappling with the challenges of sustainability is a very fruitful process for innovation and frequently leads to new business ideas with important commercial potential. And increasingly innovation is the lifeblood of our commercial success in a rapidly globalising economy. It is in my view no coincidence that the same companies often feature as winners of sustainability awards, as good places to work, and as delivering high returns. Seen in this light, CSR activities are not just peripheral activities, which are supported or tolerated only because they have little impact on overall financial performance. Rather, sustainability development is core to the way the business is managed. As an annual event, may I take the opportunity to encourage businesses to enter the 2003 Sustainable Business Awards and to follow the example of companies who are leading the region in sustainable development achievements. The SEEDA Sustainable Business Awards 2002 show great commitment on the part of all of the organisations involved. Congratulations to all of you, thank you for what you have been doing, and let's keep working together to bring about changes in our organisations and our communities that all of us want to see. Thank you. |
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Other speeches by Stephen Timms MP
(the following are available from the archive) |
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