Localism Bill

I am sorry for interrupting the Minister again but this is a very important point. I can cite two examples. Sunderland Home Care was set up by home care workers as a co-operative and, quite rightly, the employees of that local authority in Sunderland provided much better terms and conditions to contract with Sunderland Council. Greenwich Leisure started the whole movement of leisure trusts because Greenwich Council was going to close down its swimming pools— this was 10 or 12 years ago—due to something called rate-capping, which some of your Lordships may remember, and it was the employees who initiated the move to contract with the local authority to take over all the leisure services. Those examples both make a surplus—and quite right too—because that is how they reinvest back into their local communities, so that the charges in Greenwich for leisure services are now much lower proportionately than they were. They are also both able to support contracting in other areas, so that Sunderland Home Care now provides training for home care workers across the north-east. The point about this amendment is that by defining the legal form that community groups, or any group of employees, use to do the challenging, we actually safeguard the social purpose against private profit being made which then does not get put back into the community.