Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I welcome the Government’s proposals in the gracious Speech to bring forward legislation to promote local economic development and to create greater opportunities for community and individual involvement in local decision-making. The theme of handing power back to people—this was articulated in the Government’s report, Preparing Britain for the Future, which recognises that: "““People want to work with and direct Government to do things for them, not just have their Government do things to them””—" is correct. I welcome the emphasis in this report and its desire to empower individuals by involving them in the design and delivery of local public services and in other measures that are designed to promote local democracy and larger numbers of active citizens. This is all correct. New Labour has done much to move the debate on in this whole area, and should be thanked for it. However, the devil, as always, is in the detail, and a lot of my work over the past 25 years as a social entrepreneur has been precisely about demonstrating what some of these aspirations might mean in practice in some of the poorest communities in Britain. The present recession, of course, may bring with it many difficulties for all of us—business, the public and voluntary sectors—but it also brings with it new opportunities that entrepreneurs such as me are keen to grasp: opportunities to spend hard pressed taxpayers’ money more efficiently and in new ways through social enterprise, to grow and deepen the practical relationships between business, the public and the social enterprise sectors, and to find new ways of delivering services so that we all get more bang for our buck. To do this, the Civil Service has to move further than it has done to date to create the kinds of environments in which these new relationships can flower and flourish. There are still too many silos in government. Despite many years of rhetoric about joined-up thinking and joined-up action, I still see all over this country, in some of our poorest communities, example after example of these kinds of relationships not happening or being prevented, at great cost to the public purse. Partnership is all about personal relationships and not just about structures, systems and processes. Two words—democracy and delivery—have been at the heart of new Labour’s policies. The intention is to deliver public services more efficiently and in a more joined-up way, while at the same time involving people more effectively in the decision-making process so that it feels real to them. The trick is to get the right balance between talking and doing. There is a danger that if community empowerment is about creating yet more committees in local communities across the country, we will miss a great deal of the creative input from people who actually do things rather than just talk. The Bromley by Bow Centre and Poplar HARCA, the £300 million housing company—both of which I helped to found, so I must declare an interest—have taken this thinking very seriously over the years and have struggled, with some success, to marry the structures imposed on us by the Housing Corporation while encouraging the active participation of residents. The key is to help residents on housing estates to develop practical citizenship rather than stay at home watching television or spend their lives at endless meetings creating mini versions of the local authority. Power and trust are key. Rather than simply consulting and involving people in how the state delivers services, social entrepreneurs with the desire—and, with support, the capacity—to deliver those services should be encouraged and enabled to do so. I would go further and say that in regeneration areas where local people can demonstrate a viable quality plan to run a public service—be it a school, a housing maintenance programme, or services for disabled people or the elderly—the presumption should be that the public body should contract out that service. Yes, this will make the local situation messy, but communities and families are equally messy, and unless local services connect with that fact, they will not deliver effectively. By enabling far more provision of local services by local organisations, with all the appropriate safeguards and a real focus on quality, state funds stay in communities and local people feel far more empowered. This is the approach that we have adopted at Bromley by Bow. We call it communities in business. We sat down with the local authority and negotiated a range of services that we could deliver in a more appropriate and connected way. However, this approach is not generally welcomed by civil servants at a national, regional or local level. It unsettles them and worries them because there is a genuine transfer of control into the community, which brings us back to the paradox of this Government saying that they want to involve local people, but are actually very keen on control. If you are serious about community engagement, ultimately, you have to trust local people, let go and not micro-manage. The social enterprise movement in Britain is starting to challenge some highly cherished principles about equity, risk management and democratic accountability; namely, principles that are strongly defended by many politicians and public sector officials, often in the face of evidence that they simply do not deliver for the poorest communities in this country. In particular, social entrepreneurs suggest that power and decision-making in disadvantaged neighbourhoods might be more productively vested in those who can deliver, rather than in representative elected committees and boards. Starting with people before structures, we challenge the prevailing notion of what constitutes democratic legitimacy. Social enterprise is rather more honest about the failure of existing representative structures of local government to involve, or even interest, the great majority of the population. The early vision of our previous Prime Minister was a great one; rhetoric suggested a radical entrepreneurial approach but, in practice, programmes such as Sure Start were more focused on management than enterprise, more on formal representation than direct practical involvement and, yet again, more on short-term than long-term vision. New Labour seemed set on creating what colleagues of mine have called ““communities in committee””, which have so often been stifled by the institutional forms on which they rely. Instead, I believe that hard times provide us with an opportunity to take a hard look at alternatives to this approach, which delivers public services, practical action and the participation of our citizens. We call this approach ““communities in business”” and we have started to have some success with this new way of working in the East End of London, where our family of social enterprises, in partnership with business and the public sector, is now putting together a £1 billion regeneration project. We offer this hard won practical experience to Ministers and are willing to share with them the detail as they take their Bill through Parliament. There are examples of local authorities coming to similar conclusions. The London Borough of Newham is a good example and I would encourage Ministers to look at what it is doing. It has important lessons to teach us all. Across the country, people are growing weary of traditional community consultation and community governance, which has failed to engage their interest or commitment, or make any real changes to their lives. Compare these processes to Jamie Oliver's school meals campaign and you begin to get an idea of the difference between a traditional public sector approach to community involvement and that of a social entrepreneur. Places like the Bromley by Bow Centre have grown up out of this frustration, engaging large sections of our community in their own regeneration, but our approach cannot be drawn up as a Cabinet Office blue print and then standardised across the country. Communities need to be given the space and the freedom to develop in a way that works best for them. To be successful you have to take account of the local environment. Nevertheless, lessons can definitely be learnt from these examples of good practice and worthwhile guidelines can be drawn up. I believe that you really become a citizen of this country by what you do, not just by what you talk about. Creating a country of active participants could refresh our democracy in new and interesting ways, but it is about more than drawing everyone into endless committees and meetings. Let us leave committees and meetings to places such as your Lordships’ House. Let our people be active citizens.