Transcript for Conservative party conference podcast
Nicola Jones (NJ): The Social Investment Business teamed up with health and social care
charity Turning Point to host a private roundtable at the Conservative party conference on
payment by results. This roundtable spoke to experts from government and civil society
organisations about their opinion on the subject.
Crispin Blunt (CB): I’m Crispin Blunt I’m the Minister for Prisons.
Jenny Edwards (JE): I’m Jenny Edwards, I’m Chief Executive of Homeless Link. Homeless
Link is a membership organisation for 512 homeless charities, from very large international
names to small and very valuable services in different parts of the country including rural
areas. Many of these accommodate people and many provide days centres and training and
so on.
Chris Cummings (CC): Hello, I’m Chris Cummings and I’m the Chief Executive of
TheCityUK. TheCityUK is the organisation that was set up to champion the financial and
professional sector here in the UK. As a sector we employ over 2 million people, the majority
of those are outside London, and we contribute towards Britain’s export drive.
NJ: Chris Cummings shared his thoughts on the financial sector and it’s involvement in
social investment
CC: We’ve been working with The Social Investment business to do a study on this
particular part of the market. It’s a study we’re very excited in. It’s an opportunity not only for
banks but investment companies, insurance companies, companies across the sector to
actually look at how they can be supporting payment by results throughout the whole of the
UK. One of the things that that concerned me though; with CRD 4 coming through the new
capital requirements directive, if we don’t have the regulation suitable for this part of the
market, it would actually dampen the markets growth and development. Actually through the
law of unintended consequences it could actually strangle it while it’s still merely a sapling as
opposed to a substantial part of the forest that we’d like to see it turn into. Social impact
investing is an emerging market, it’s something that the UK is taking a lead on and I think it’s
something that we should see develop across the whole of the UK.
NJ: Jenny Edwards talked about how payment by results is progressing in different areas
JE: Many organisations have contracts with local government for accommodation and
support and are delivering outcomes already, but payment by results in criminal justice and
the work area are comparatively new and not a large proportion of the sector at the moment
are engaged with it. There certainly are some anxieties, there are risks involved and for
asset poor voluntary organisations that’s something that charity trustees quite rightly can’t
take on too much. People are also anxious about putting a lot of investment into something
new because there have been very many new schemes and not all of them last so you can
see that that line of thought and building of relationships sometimes doesn’t deliver the right
thing that you want for the people you are concerned with. There hasn’t been a lot of
productive work in our area as yet but I think there is potential for there to be a lot more. I
think that definitely the opening up of opportunities is a positive thing for the sector and that
people are working in a way that they know delivers positive change in people’s lives but
perhaps on such a small scale that it has been below the radar. Some people will have been
ablt to scale that up to an economically satisfactory level.
NJ: And finally Crispin Blunt highlights where the opportunities lie.
CB: Well whoever holds the responsibility for delivering the results and therefore receiving
payment is going to have to find a way particularly in the justice area of raising their game
and our country’s game at rehabilitating offenders. The only place to go in society for that is
the tens of thousands of people and the thousands of organisations who exist in civil society
who think it is the right thing to do to help the state to rehabilitate our fellow citizens. That’s
where the value for money sits, that’s where any sensible payment by results provider will be
looking to increase their capacity in a value for money way that will drive a return for them
and help increase our capacity as a country to more effectively rehabilitate our offenders. As
we are now piloting a whole variety of different ways of making this work whether it’s through
a justice reinvestment model which is the Ministry of Justice talking to local authorities and
the police, or whether it’s with social investors or the private sector as we’re doing with Serco
around Doncaster prison, or whether it’s with public sector prisons and holding individual
public sector prisons responsible for the reoffending behaviour of offenders going through
their prisons. So it is of course a collaboration and its about getting the best of the public
sector, private sector and the voluntary sector operating together to raise our game as a
country in order to more effectively rehabilitate people. The only place to go in the end in the
voluntary sector is where the capacity sits to get face to face with offenders and get more
effective delivery of all the things we know dissuade people from crime.
NJ: So that’s it from the Conservative party conference. Check out our website for more
payment by results podcasts.