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Thank you David. Good wishes to Ian on taking over the chair of
Comm.unity whose work I strongly support.
I spent sixteen very happy years in the IT industry before my
election to the House of Commons in 1994, and one of the things which
always impressed me about it was the commitment of the people within it
to use the products and services of this industry for social as well as
for economic benefit.
We have seen some great examples of that over the last few years. I
note at every weekly surgery in my East End constituency that even my
lowest income constituents today gain from the use of a modern mobile
phone. And broadband is helping raise standards in schools and in the
Health Service.
But many people in the industry want to be contributing more. I'm
often told that young people in particular want their skills to be used
in tackling the big challenges that our society faces, as well as
developing a successful career. And Comm.unity represents for me a
tangible expression of the desire in the industry to be doing more on
digital inclusion - and so to be helping to tackle poverty, to be
helping people back into the workforce, raising standards in schools, to
be improving the support for disabled people to be full participants in
our society - all of them aims to which technology can contribute a
great deal. And in the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva
in December, we shall be looking at the potential contribution in Africa
and the developing world.
The question in my job is: what can Government do to help to
encourage and to promote the adoption of corporate social
responsibility. We are looking at the moment, with the assistance of
Business in the Community and others, at the idea of a CSR Academy,
helping to stimulate provision of CSR skills training around the UK and
to spread adoption of some of the great ideas being explored through
CSR.
I don't believe we are going to help by trying to pass laws making
CSR compulsory. Any such effort would in my view be doomed to fail, and
almost certainly be counter productive. The last thing I want is for
this wonderful ferment of creativity and enthusiasm which characterises
corporate social responsibility in Britain today to be replaced by a
bureaucratic dead hand, relegated to the regulatory compliance
department and being done simply because Government requires it.
The benefit we get from the voluntary character of CSR is not just
the scale of it. We also benefit from a lot of commitment leading to
innovation - and some of the best new ideas for tackling the big social
challenges we face in Britain are emerging from the CSR movement. For
example, one of the biggest and most intractable problems is the
rehabilitation of offenders, and we have tried long and hard to develop
imaginative programmes of education - to address for example the
extraordinarily high rates of illiteracy among people detained in
prison.
Looking, quite independently of all of that, for a new source of
recruits to maintain the nation's gas distribution infrastructure,
Transco came up with the idea of training people currently detained in
prison for a career in gas pipeline maintenance. It successfully met
their recruitment objectives, but it has also proved to have a dramatic
impact on cutting re-offending rates among the participants to a
fraction of the norm. With Government financial support that is being
rolled out on a larger scale, potentially with very significant social
benefits.
That is a very good example of an important new public policy idea
emerging from CSR. It also illustrates very well the kinds of
partnership we need to be looking for - different kinds of organisation,
probably with no experience of working together in the past, but coming
together now, not grudgingly but enthusiastically, because each can see
its own key interests being advanced as well as the interests of others.
Committed and able people working together to tackle an unfamiliar
challenge is a highly creative activity, with benefits for the business
as well as for the other partners.
Businesses accept the need for responsible behaviour as a matter of
principle, but they also report that it can help build brand value,
foster customer loyalty, motivate their staff and contribute to a good
reputation among a wide range of stakeholders. So its good for the
business too - and that is very important from my point of view because
that way businesses will carry on doing it - and we want them to,
because it does have so much to offer in contributing to changes for the
better which in Government we are trying to bring about.
We can help by providing a framework for action. We can bring
together partners on a range of initiatives - as with the work we are
taking forward with industry to promote take up of home computing
initiatives. And those partners are indicating they want to do something
more joined up in response to the challenge of digital inclusion, to
build on the work and leadership which comm.unity is already offering.
There could be a lot to gain.
It is now my great pleasure to introduce the Head of the Civil
Service, Sir Andrew Turnbull, to place the Government's target for
Internet access within the broader programme of public sector reform.
Thank you.
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