Pm David Cameron promised 'every penny' of dormant bank accounts to the Big Society Bank in a speech today
The prime minister today announced that ‘every penny’ of dormant bank accounts in England would be allocated to the Big Society Bank.
In David Cameron’s official launch of the Big Society plan, which he called his ‘passion’, he promised investment in social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups to help them run public services.
He did not give a figure in his speech, made this morning in Liverpool, but said it would amount to ‘hundreds of millions of pounds’ along with private investment.
A spokesman for Number 10, however, said that the industry estimation of the amount available in England by the time the bank is up and running in April 2011 would be 'up to' £100m. He added that the estimate for the whole of the UK was £400m.
Andrew Selous, former shadow work and pensions minister and now parliamentary private secretary to DWP secretary Iain Duncan Smith, said earlier this year that the Big Society Bank would have around £200m to invest and Labour promised £75m for its Social Investment Wholesale Bank. This was condemned by social entrepreneurs as nowhere near enough to fund the innovation needed to radicalise public services.
In his speech, Cameron said providing finance through the Big Society Bank was one of three ‘techniques’ to deliver the Big Society vision, the others being decentralisation of power to local authorities and communities, and transparency. The bank was integral to the coalition government’s plans to pay by results to fund innovation, Cameron said.
‘But the potential problem is that you can lock smaller organisations out, because they don’t have access to start-up capital,’ he said.
‘So government has a crucial role to play in bridging the gap and, indeed, more widely, in connecting private capital to investment in social projects. We have already said we will create a Big Society Bank to help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups through intermediaries and I can announce today that it will be established using every penny of dormant bank and building society account money allocated to England.
‘These unclaimed assets, alongside the private sector investment that we will leverage, will mean that the Big Society Bank will, over time, make available hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance to some of our most dynamic social organisations.’
His speech also promoted the Big Society’s four ‘vanguard communities’ – Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead, Sutton and Liverpool. These Big Society pilots aim to demonstrate the success of communities running their own local transport, introducing anaerobic digestion, building their own affordable housing and running pubs, among other community-level ideas.
Wrapping up this morning’s event, Cameron added that there were still people, including some of his own ministers, using the ‘banned’ phrase ‘third sector’, ‘when of course you’re the first sector’.
Cameron’s full speech can be found at www.number10.gov.uk
...as Susan Boyle might have sung. On SocialEnterpriselive.com this week:
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Comments
A long time coming
It was November 2008 when presidential candidate Obama announced plans for a social innovation fund and department of social entreprenership. A fund of 3.5 billion dollarx he said, which would be paid for by closing tax loopholes and ending the war in Iraq.
What they ended up with was whittled down a bit when it became reality this year.
Oddly, a UK based social enterprise had much the same idea, with 1.5 billion dollars, the amount spent in Iraq each week invested over 5 years in social enterprise.
For advocates of Big Society the call should sound familiar:
"An inherent assumption about capitalism is that profit is defined only in terms of monetary gain. This assumption is virtually unquestioned in most of the world. However, it is not a valid assumption. Business enterprise, capitalism, must be measured in terms of monetary profit. That rule is not arguable. A business enterprise must make monetary profit, or it will merely cease to exist. That is an absolute requirement. But it does not follow that this must necessarily be the final bottom line and the sole aim of the enterprise. How this profit is used is another question. It is commonly assumed that profit will enrich enterprise owners and investors, which in turn gives them incentive to participate financially in the enterprise to start with.
"That, however, is not the only possible outcome for use of profits. Profits can be directly applied to help resolve a broad range of social problems: poverty relief, improving childcare, seeding scientific research for nationwide economic advancement, improving communications infrastructure and accessibility, for examples – the target objectives of this particular project plan. The same financial discipline required of any conventional for-profit business can be applied to projects with the primary aim of improving socioeconomic conditions. Profitability provides money needed to be self-sustaining for the purpose of achieving social and economic objectives such as benefit of a nation’s poorest, neediest people. In which case, the enterprise is a social enterprise."
http://en.for-ua.com/analytics/2007/08/09/110003.html
A war on two fronts for us, as we lend our support to a local investigation of dishonesty in funding a social enterprise.
http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=152211
It's the same adversary essentially, home and abroad.
Jeff Mowatt
People-Centered Economic Development
p-ced.com
people-centered.net