I am delighted to be here tonight and to extend my congratulations to
all those being honoured. I want also to pay tribute to Julia and for
the work of Business in the Community, really in releasing an immense
source of commitment and creativity, being applied now up and down the
country to tackling the big social and environmental challenges that we
face. I have just taken on responsibility for energy at the Department
of Trade and Industry and so am particularly focusing on issues of
sustainability and looking forward to working with companies like
Scottish Power, our sponsor for this evening, and other here in
delivering the vision set out in the Energy White Paper in February of
reducing carbon emissions by 60% by 2050.
But corporate social responsibility is making a huge contribution
across the spectrum of the Government’s priorities, as I’ve seen
over 20 years as an elected representative in the East End. They are
improving the environment certainly but also in key areas like raising
standards of education, helping people back into employment, improving
the environment and tackling poverty in Africa. All of them are huge
challenges exercising Government. We will all be better off as
businesses and as individuals if we can make progress in addressing them
and members of Business in the Community are among the best allies we
have in bringing about the changes that we need.
As CSR Minister, it’s been my job in the past year to assess how
Government can best provide support. Some have urged that we should
introduce legislation to require people to do the kinds of things being
celebrated this evening. What we need to avoid at all costs, however, in
my view, is turning CSR into something that companies have to do as part
of their regulatory compliance. There is in the UK CSR, a great
generosity of imagination and creativity, which are among its most
valuable qualities. It would be a terrible retrograde step if, instead,
it became just another Government form to fill in.
In their report last year on Corporate Social Innovation, Demos
proposed the idea of a CSR Academy to promote the very best CSR ideas
and help scale up their adoption. We have also in the Department been
interested in what we might do to promote the wider development of the
skills needed for successful CSR. So picking up all of that thinking, I
asked Sue Slipman to lead a Working Group looking at the issues of CSR
skills and competencies. The Working Group Report, “Changing Manager
Mindsets” was in my view an extremely helpful contribution to our
thinking, my thanks to Sue who is here this evening for all of her work
with her Group and we have been consulting on the proposals she made
including the recommendation that we set up a new CSR Academy.
Given the response to the report I want now to make progress with the
report’s recommendations. So I am setting up a steering group to
advise us over the next few months on how we should translate the
recommendations to make a lasting and significant contribution to the
widespread practice of CSR, what Sue described in the report as the ”leap
forward”. The Steering Group will be representative of the range of
interests and will draw on all the support potentially available to us
to ensure that we can make a success of setting up an Academy, with a
view to it being in place by the Spring or early Summer of next year.
Some have pointed out that there might be a danger of creating a notion
of CSR as a separate profession. I agree that that would be precisely
the wrong direction to move in, and the steering group will advise us on
how we can ensure that the initiative contributes to the mainstreaming
of CSR concerns on the part of company managements, small companies as
well as big ones, and so helps us to make progress. The steering group
will also want to take account of the work of John Spence of Lloyds TSB
on behalf of Business in the Community, and of others as it carries out
its work.
I am delighted to be able to announce this evening that Clive Mather,
the Chairman of Shell UK, has agreed to chair the steering group. I
shall be appointing other members in the next few weeks.
I look forward, very much, to working with Clive and with others here
this evening over the next few months. Business in the Community is
already making a huge contribution. I want us to be working together,
for the competitiveness of our economy and for the fairness of our
society, to make the most of the opportunities that this fantastic
modern movement of Corporate Social Responsibility presents to us.
Thank you.
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