Labour conference: Party could reinvent public services - and itself - around social enterprise, says Byrne

Cabinet minister Liam Byrne has highlighted a range of areas where social enterprise can assert its influence - including on the Labour party itself.

Speaking at a conference fringe event run by the Social Enterprise Coalition and think-tank Demos, Byrne revealed that the Treasury would be publishing a pre-Budget report that will set out in detail public assets where there is 'opportunity to do things differently'.

Byrne said there were opportunities for social entrepreneurs both in terms of reaching the markets in deprived communities that conventional businesspeople miss, and in transforming public services.

He said a suggestion by HCT Group CEO Dai Powell of extending 'right to request' - a policy that allows health staff to request that they set up a social enterprise to run the services - to the entire public sector was a 'good suggestion and one that we should look at harder'.

Byrne said social enterprise should not be seen as an alternative to the public sector but as a partner that will transform state services.

'The difference between us and the Tories is we don't believe social enterprise should be left to get the job done on its own and I don't think social enterprises and the public sector are alternatives, I think they're a partnership to make public pound notes go much further,' he said.

'The exciting thing is thinking about how they can work together.'

Byrne also made a political prediction that the 'argument and ethos of the social enterprise sector will be the way the Labour party reinvents itself'.

He said it would be Labour's role to connect people who are angry and want to make positive change. He pointed to an experiment he was involved in called www.localactionnetwork.co.uk, which connects social entrepreneurs and community activists with labour activists and politicians who want to help them.

'There are so many people worried about what is going on in this country but don't know where to start,' Byrne said. 'If the Labour party is not the organisation that is bringing those people together then we are nothing.

'We have to go back to our roots. This is how the Labour party started over a century ago with people who were angry and wanted to do something about it.'