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Public Services (Social Enterprise and Social Value) Bill

My hon. Friend is encouraging me to trouble the House with more examples. In that case, I will choose an example on the other side of the argument. There are publicly funded organisations that, over a period of time, have shown themselves to be hostile in the extreme to small and local businesses. I say quite openly that I believe that Eaga is one such organisation. Eaga receives a large amount of money from the taxpayer to help provide insulation and subsidies so that people can increase the energy efficiency of their homes and the appliances within them. A lot of work has been done showing that its contractors—often firms that are subsidiaries of Eaga itself—provide services at a much higher cost than local contractors would, and less efficiently. I have had public arguments with Eaga about that and been told, ““Well, none of these small companies will be able to give us long-term guarantees that if anything goes wrong with their work, they will be able to put it right.””