The Reverse Shawshank Conundrum: Chipping away at Social Value

​Last month I attended the national Social Value Leaders’ Summit. Read my review of the day and thoughts about the conflicting emotions on display.

​The event was expertly facilitated by Social Enterprise UK (SEUK) and held at the Strand Palace Hotel in London with a number of luminary speakers and panellists. SEUK published a report of the event here.

Leaders from across the social enterprise, public, private and voluntary sector came together to discuss, debate and dissect progress (or lack thereof) of The Procurement Act and all things social value. Politics, practicalities and passion were all evident.
 
First up was Josh Babarinde OBE – a Liberal Democrat MP. He used to run a social enterprise called ‘Cracked It’ which employed ex-offenders to fix broken phones and gadgets. He spoke with clarity and conviction. “Be the best business in the market” was the mantra for his firm. He suggested that social enterprise can still sometimes be perceived as lower quality than private sector – something my experience in Plymouth bears out. He argued for more targets and more support for smaller social enterprises which are often disadvantaged in the procurement world: “The system is designed for big organizations” he said.
 
Lamenting the lack of social enterprise infrastructure support he highlighted why spending more with social enterprises was a good thing: “Every pound spent with VCSE organizations sticks locally and solves more problems in local areas”. His comment “It’s like the reverse Shawshank Redemption – only we’re chipping away at the prison of procurement” made me chuckle. That begs the question: if procurement is actually a prison why are we so keen to pursue it? Set against that is that just 10% of the £400 billion spent by government on procuring services is nearly double what all grant funders give out every year.
 
Next to speak was economist and academic superstar Professor Mariana Mazzucato CBE who was dazzling: coruscating, witty and far reaching - with a book to sell of course. Her anecdotes ranged from NASA to Aristotle to the Pope and she wowed the room with her manifesto for creating a common good economy. A key takeaway for me was her opinion that the Labour government’s missions have, seemingly, been ‘left behind’ – something I’ve heard from several people in different settings - which is a shame I believe as they contain some sense of purpose, vision and aspiration. She also said that ‘growth’ should be seen as a result rather than a mission; that contract managers should be more like mission stewards; and that we need to invest more in the ability to govern the wicked challenges that confront us.
 
There were panel sessions including Dame Patricia Hewitt, former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry; Claire Dove CBE the Crown Representative for the VCSE sector; Peter Holbrook CBE, CEO of SEUK. Ideas emerged. One, that every government department should adopt a target to engage/spend with the social enterprise sector; two, that we should procure for a ‘wellness service’ not an ‘illness service’ especially with regards to the NHS. This reads a bit like ‘prevention, prevention, prevention’. Something that seems incredibly easy to say but obdurately difficult to actually do; and three, we need to invest in resilience and security in our communities and social enterprises are well placed to achieve this.
 
We’ve argued for an economy based on health for a long time. Healthy people = healthy businesses. Good health = good economy. This a missing component of many economic strategies. Full of sectoral analysis, clever ideas for high productivity and growth and endless pipelines of projects; too many economic policies barely mention the health and wellbeing needed to underpin these grand plans. Small improvements in sickness absence, minor reductions in presenteeism, attempts to tackle wellbeing at work more strategically and purposefully – as an economic strategy – could go a long way towards ameliorating the UK’s productivity crisis.
 
The London Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy, Mete Coban MBE, rounded the day off with a heartfelt plea for more diversity, involvement of young people in politics and a very personal story of hope and aspiration.
 
In the middle of all this, I hosted a round table about social value in practice. The feedback was clear: Social Value is a great concept but it is too easily gamed. We need:

• To ringfence foundational contracts for social enterprises and remove the profit motive from basic state procured services like childcare, transport and care.
• To invest in the skills of commissioners, procurement officers and contract managers – our newly minted mission stewards – to better understand and implement social value.
• More concrete examples of social value in action.
• Radical transparency – publish not only who wins publicly funded contracts but also what the contracted social value elements are.
• More political champions for social value in national and local government.
• Smaller, bespoke procurements – lots and packages that social enterprises can access more easily.
• A rewrite/simplification of the TOMS framework – seen by many as a useful tool that is patchily implemented.
• 20, 30, 40% for social value!
• Increased word counts to help us explain social value ideas more lucidly.

 
It was an illuminating event. With contexts such as the new Office for the Impact Economy trying to grow social impact and The National Procurement Policy Statement instruction to public bodies to maximise spend with the VCSE sector there was a palpable sense of conflicted emotion in the room. The conundrum of hope and dissatisfaction. Optimism for the better world social value could help bring about but also frustration at the gamified reality and slow progress in communities.
 
Keep chipping away folks.