House of Commons
Wednesday 25 February 2009
The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock
Prayers
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
Duchy of Lancaster
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was asked—
Charities
1. Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD): What representations he has received from charities affected by the collapse of Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander. [257848]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Brennan): On behalf of the Labour Front Bench, I offer our sincere condolences to the Leader of the Opposition and his family on the tragic loss overnight of their son, Ivan. The House will have an opportunity to offer its thoughts and prayers after this Question Time.
I have received correspondence from affected charities and met representatives of the Save Our Savings group of charities on 27 January.
Mark Hunter: I think it would be appropriate, on behalf of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches, to extend our sincere condolences to the Leader of the Opposition.
The Parliamentary Secretary knows that, in addition to the thousands of individuals who stand to lose considerable sums of money in Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander, 27 charities collectively stand to lose some £50 million of investment. Does he agree that such a loss to those charities will be a considerable financial burden and have a significant impact on them? Will he therefore agree to redouble his efforts to ensure that the charities, as well as individual investors, have their funds returned in full?
Kevin Brennan: The hon. Gentleman knows that a process of administration is taking place and that a compensation scheme is available for smaller organisations that count as retail depositors. I have agreed to meet a delegation of Members of Parliament to discuss the matter further, and I will be happy to have him along if he wishes to be included in that delegation.
Mrs. Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con): I join colleagues in sending condolences to the Leader of the Opposition and his family at this sad time.
Only four months ago, the Government said publicly to residents in Hampshire that Naomi House children’s hospice in our area would continue to receive support at a difficult time, when it had lost money through the collapse in the Icelandic banking system. Why has that promise of help now been withdrawn?
Kevin Brennan: I do not accept that the Government made a promise of financial help to Naomi House in particular, but efforts are being made. I have had discussions with the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Phil Hope) about Naomi House to try to broker a local solution with the strategic health authority. Discussions are continuing in relation to Naomi House.
Jenny Willott (Cardiff, Central) (LD): I know that many hon. Members are deeply saddened by today’s news about the Leader of the Opposition.
The Parliamentary Secretary has already mentioned the process of administration that is taking place with Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander. Many of the depositors with savings above the £50,000 financial services compensation scheme limit have had their deposits returned to them in full. In addition, the Government are fully covering deposits through the online Edge accounts. Why are those depositors being treated so generously when the 27 charities stand to lose every penny of their £50 million of savings? Will the Parliamentary Secretary add my concerns to those of other hon. Members when he meets Treasury colleagues—hopefully—to take up the issue on behalf of those who have raised anxieties?
Kevin Brennan: It is important that we do not get into too much scaremongering and talk about charities losing every penny. A process of administration is taking place and, although it takes time, it is not the case at this stage that those charities have lost the sums of money that were invested in the bank.
I draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the words of the head of lending at Charity Bank. He said:
“Any charity that has funds stuck with Icelandic Banks, and is watching its cash flow slowly drying up, is unlikely to be an attractive proposition to a commercial bank in current market conditions. We are part of the banking sector but as a charity we also want to be part of the solution.”
I therefore encourage charities to look elsewhere also for opportunities to cover any shortfalls while the administration process is under way.
Mr. Nick Hurd (Ruislip-Northwood) (Con): On behalf of the Conservative party, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary and other hon. Members who have expressed sadness at the death of Ivan Cameron. His was a tragically short span of life, but one filled with a great deal of love. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) will draw strength from the House’s condolences.
Until now, the Treasury has done nothing for a significant number of charities, which have lost money in the Icelandic bank failure, so charities such as Naomi House face having to cut back their good work just
when it is most needed. Let me make the Parliamentary Secretary an offer. We support the principle of a short-term Treasury loan fund to help sound charities, which face genuine hardships as a result of lost bank deposits. Will he work with us to develop cross-party consensus on a measure that will have minimal cash-flow impact on the Treasury and deliver real help to a vital sector of society?
Kevin Brennan: I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s interest in the matter, but we need to separate the budget from the issue of help in the short term. I have already made it clear that there are attempts in the case of Naomi House to look at brokering a local solution. Those discussions are ongoing and we will be carefully monitoring the situation of charities more generally.
Volunteering
2. Derek Wyatt (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab): What steps he is taking to encourage volunteering as a means to personal and professional development. [257849]
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Kevin Brennan): The Government recognise the role that volunteering can play in personal and professional development. Earlier this month, the Government announced a programme to provide access to around 40,000 work-focused volunteering opportunities, which is in addition to the Government’s £925 million Train to Gain scheme, which is available to build the skills of staff and volunteers.
Derek Wyatt: I thank my hon. Friend for that. Given that we will need between 80,000 and 100,000 volunteers for the Olympics and 70,000 for the Commonwealth games, as well as more volunteers if we get the rugby and the football, is it possible to develop, through a national vocational qualification or the diplomas, a more professional volunteering system for people at school?
Kevin Brennan: There are already a number of volunteering initiatives in schools, which have been highly successful. My hon. Friend will be aware that the Government have invested a great deal in volunteering for young people through the v programme. His suggestion about qualifications is an interesting one that we should explore further.
Mr. David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con): Volunteers are the backbone of our society. Some organisations, such as the Scouts and the Guides, are experiencing great difficulties in getting people to commit to help. What more can the Government do to support efforts to establish regular volunteering as a social norm?
Kevin Brennan: The Government are doing a great deal to encourage volunteering, including through our investment in the v programme for young people and the up to £10 million that was announced in the recession action plan to support volunteering for people who might become unemployed during the recession. I feel quite strongly that volunteering is a positive thing, not least because there were not many jobs in south Wales when I left university in 1982, in the depths of a different recession. For me, volunteering was a way to gain new skills and an opportunity to get into employment.
Mr. Robert Flello (Stoke-on-Trent, South) (Lab): My right hon. and hon. Friends will be aware not only of the high levels of deprivation in Stoke-on-Trent, but of the fantastic work that the voluntary and third sector does and the extremely committed people who are part of it. However, a lot of the professionals, as well as the helpful and keen amateurs who are part of the voluntary and third sector, have been telling me recently that they are facing difficulties not only in identifying what funding is available, but when it is available, as they often discover that it has already gone because it was not advertised very well. What reassurances can my hon. Friends on the Front Bench give me that the funds that are made available, which are fantastic, will be advertised in a much more robust way?
Kevin Brennan: We are in the process of developing a brand new portal of information about the funding that is available to voluntary organisations, the details of which we hope to announce in the near future. In my hon. Friend’s area of Stoke-on-Trent, the grass-roots grants programme—the innovative £130 million Government programme to get grants to small organisations—is investing more than £700,000. I recently announced some changes to the rules to make it easier for organisations to apply, including through matching funding backdated to the beginning of the financial year.
Mr. Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP): On behalf of my colleagues and myself, may I join those who expressed condolences earlier to the Leader of the Opposition?
Does the Minister agree that probably the most significant opportunity to promote volunteering in a generation will occur in the run-up to the Olympics? A crucial element of ensuring that volunteers come forward is that they should do so from across the nation—so that volunteers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland come forward to show that the Olympics are here for all the people of the United Kingdom.
Kevin Brennan: I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. He will not be surprised by that, as just last week he attended, with me, the British-Irish Council in Cardiff, at which we discussed the voluntary sector and its importance to the whole of the UK, including Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland and England. He is absolutely right: the Olympics are a one-off opportunity and we should ensure, as we are doing, that we spread that opportunity widely around the United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland.
Mr. Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich, West) (Lab/Co-op): I acknowledge the Department’s support for organisations in my local authority area such as vflex, which is working on developing volunteering opportunities, but I would like to emphasise that in the current economic situation young people could well find it even more difficult to find suitable employment. It is therefore much more important than it might have been in the past to ensure that volunteering opportunities exist, so that those young people can maintain their social skills and business discipline. Will the Minister therefore make an assessment of the impact of the economic downturn on young people, and develop policies that will enable volunteering to help to meet those problems?
Kevin Brennan: I can do better than that. I can tell my hon. Friend that we have announced in the recession action plan in the past couple of weeks investment of up to £10 million, in collaboration with the Department for Work and Pensions, to provide access to 40,000 work-focused volunteering opportunities, in particular for young people who find themselves out of work during the recession. Of course, we will monitor closely how that is working, and the impact that it is having on young people and on volunteering.
Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): All of us are now seeing hundreds of people every week in our constituencies losing their jobs, in pretty well every sector of the economy. These are people who never, even in their wildest nightmares, expected to be out of work. They want to remain active, and to continue to be challenged intellectually, and one way of doing that is through volunteering. Will the Minister have a conversation with his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that, if people can clearly demonstrate that they are looking for work, and accessing websites in an attempt to find work, the number of hours’ volunteering that they can do each week will not be restricted by artificial constraints? It can lead to enormous frustration for people who have lost their jobs and who want to volunteer when they are told by Jobcentre Plus that they cannot do so.
Kevin Brennan: As I said earlier, I recognise strongly and personally how important volunteering can be at a time of economic downturn. We are working closely with the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that there are no restrictive rules to stand in the way of people who want to volunteer as a way of gaining confidence and skills and of making good use of their time if they happen to fall out of work. In addition, our recession action plan is offering a brokerage service to create 40,000 additional volunteering opportunities for people who become unemployed.
Social Entrepreneurs
3. Barry Gardiner (Brent, North) (Lab): What steps he is taking to increase the number of social entrepreneurs. [257850]
4. Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab): What steps he is taking to increase the number of social entrepreneurs. [257851]
The Minister for the Cabinet Office (Mr. Liam Byrne): I associate myself strongly with the words of the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Kevin Brennan), who has spoken for all of us.
The social enterprise sector goes into 2009 with unprecedented strength, but we believe that it could be stronger still. That is why we are ensuring that social enterprises have access to the help that my noble Friend Lord Mandelson is providing for the business community, and why social enterprises will benefit from the help for the third sector that was announced by the Prime Minister a week or two ago. It is also why I have set an objective for our policy of growing the social enterprise work force by 25,000 over the next couple of years.
Barry Gardiner: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that response. I certainly agree that small businesses that are social enterprises are one way of using the skills of those who are being made redundant in the work force, and of getting them back in order to lead the recovery. Will he tell the House what funds the Government are putting in to meet the targets that he has identified?
[Official Report, 3 March 2009, Vol. 488, c. 5MC.]Mr. Byrne: I thank my hon. Friend for the work that he does to champion this agenda. The number of those in the social enterprise work force has grown by some 25 per cent. over the past 10 years, and that has not happened by accident. It has happened because we have doubled the public income going into the third sector—into social enterprises, voluntary groups and charities—up to £11 billion over the past 10 or 11 years.
If we want to grow the social enterprise work force still further over the years to come, however, we shall have to back that commitment with investment, rather than cuts. That is why we are providing £250 million-worth of investment through Futurebuilders, and why the Department of Health will provide £100 million-worth of investment funding through its social enterprise fund. It is also why the Department for Children, Schools and Families will route money through social enterprises into organisations working with young people, and why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has announced her intention to set up an organisation to champion the social enterprise agenda. We believe that social enterprises can grow, but not on their own. The Government must do their bit to help.
Mr. Kidney: When I talk to people about setting up new social enterprises, I also ask them about the use of a community interest company as a suitable legal vehicle for their business. I am surprised by how few people still are aware of their existence and suitability. I know that company law is another Department’s responsibility, but will my right hon. Friend commit to ensuring that advice is available on the existence of community interest companies, and on how to set them up?
Mr. Byrne: My hon. Friend is absolutely right that community interest companies are a very effective way of getting social enterprise work up and running in communities up and down the country. They are quick and easy to set up and inexpensive, because standard memorandums are available. The legislation that underpins community interest companies was brought into effect in 2005. Already there are about 2,500 of them up and down the country. Three years into the policy, it is a good time to see whether we can make it easier still to set up such companies, so my noble Friend Lord Mandelson will shortly commence a review of the regulations to consider whether the caps on equity and dividends are right. We can then guarantee that we are making it as easy as possible to get these companies set up. We will do everything that we can to promote them.
Mr. Gary Streeter (South-West Devon) (Con): We all support social entrepreneurs, and I commend the Government for the extra resources that they are putting in at this difficult time, but has the Minister noticed, as I have in my area, that there can be a lack of co-ordination and collaboration between different organisations in the third sector, sometimes leading to duplication and waste? Does he ever challenge social entrepreneurs on this issue, and if he does, does he think that they are getting any better?
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