2 June 2008
Harriett Baldwin will today join David Cameron, the Leader of the Opposition and Greg Clark MP, Shadow Minister for the Third Sector at the launch of the Conservative Party's policy report on the voluntary sector.

She has been invited for two reasons. Firstly, the policy report draws on the recommendations of a report she helped to write on Social Enterprise Zones, published last summer. Secondly, she is about to take up a new appointment as Chair of the Investment Committee and Deputy Chair of Futurebuilders, a £215mm investment fund set up to help growing charities and social enterprises contract with the public sector.

Charities would be allowed to make "substantial" profits from running public services under Conservative plans to boost their role being unveiled by party leader David Cameron.

Mr Cameron will accuse Labour of holding back the potential of the voluntary sector with red tape and centrally-set targets and promise to set it free.

Recent research showed that only 12% of charities were paid enough to cover the costs of helping deliver public services and that innovation was being stifled by government rules.

Under Conservative proposals, the voluntary sector would compete to provide services on an equal footing with private firms and would be given freedom on how they were delivered. They would benefit from longer-term contracts and charitable giving rules would be simplified to help stimulate flagging levels of donations from the public. A new network of Social Enterprise Zones would encourage investment in deprived areas.

Mr Cameron, who will launch the proposals at a Kent community organisation, will say: "Every day we see new evidence of things going seriously wrong in our society. The social challenges we face today are every bit as serious as the economic challenges Britain faced in 1979.

"And now, just as then, the scale of the challenge demands radical Conservative reform. The big difference in British politics today is about the role of the state: Gordon Brown believes in top-down state control; we believe in bottom-up social responsibility.

"Labour believe that only the state can organise and deliver collective provision: we have a vision of non-state collective provision. The modern Conservative Party stands for a simple principle when it comes to social reform and the role of the state: that there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same thing as the state."So we want to see a transformation in the role of community groups, social enterprises and the voluntary sector in helping to build a stronger society for all of us."

Harriett Baldwin added, "I am excited to see some of the proposals I worked on being taken forward. In West Worcestershire, the voluntary sector is so important in providing a range of services in the community. It is vital that we are able to help the sector grow and liberate it from constraints that prevent that growth."

A full copy of the report on Social Enterprise can be downloaded here.