Like many people I awaited the publication of the levelling-up white paper with interest. I think that there is good sense in it and an important recognition that we need to invest not just in our physical infrastructure, but our social infrastructure and public services. But I also felt incredibly frustrated by it.
The government has been given a lot of stick for writing about Ancient Rome and Medici Florence. Whilst I’m all for learning from the past, and from the rest of the world, why is our government ignoring what is happening on our own doorstep?
I chair Social Enterprise UK which represents 100,000 businesses that trade to make society better and protect our planet. These businesses contribute £60 billion to the UK economy and employ 2 million people.
At an event the week before the white paper was published, I was at an event with Business Minister Greg Hands. I told him that social enterprises had grown nine times faster than the rest of the economy and doubled the number of staff they employ over the past decade.
A higher proportion are now exporting overseas than other forms of business and they were set up in record numbers during the pandemic. At the same time, one in five are working in the most deprived communities in the country and nearly half are run by women.
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Four out of 10 social enterprises employ someone with a disability and they are three times more likely to have invested in energy saving measures over the past year to combat climate change.
Growing, exporting, working in our poorest areas and giving opportunities to those that need it. If that isn’t levelling up, I don’t know what is. You don’t need to look in a textbook to find them or step in a time machine, you can find work with them right here, right now.
My worry is that social enterprises don’t fall neatly into the ideologies of politicians. Conservatives like the enterprise bit, but they mistrust the idea that people can be motivated by more than just profit. Labour like the social bit but is suspicious about whether businesses can really put people and planet ahead of profit.
All I can say is that levelling up is going to be hard enough, we don’t need to make it harder by cutting ourselves off from potential solutions because they don’t fit our preconceived ideas.
The good news is that I believe that Michael Gove and his team are open to good ideas. And I have even better news for him.
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Over the past two years, I have been chairing a Commission on social investment to look at how we can unlock more investment to grow these businesses.
Our work has found that by expanding flexible, patient finance to these businesses we can support 5,000 social enterprises, create 180,000 jobs and add £3 billion to the UK economy.
We are not going to level up with business as usual. We need to look at what is working and back it with everything we’ve got. We are not starting from a blank sheet of paper. Social enterprises are levelling up the country right now, we’ve just not been paying attention. If we are serious about changing our country, we need to start backing them.
Lord Adebowale is a crossbench peer and chairman of Social Enterprise UK and the NHS Confederation