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Public Services (Social Value) Bill

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Bill represents a huge missed opportunity for the Government to embrace the other elements of the Bill. This is a Government who made much of their commitment to the big society, yet here is, arguably, a big society Bill that they have—as my right hon. Friend rightly says—gutted. The absence today of Conservative Members who might have been present to defend and advocate this big society Bill is, I fear, further testimony to the lack of support for it in practice. Let me now deal with some of the issues relating to access to money that might constitute part of a national strategy.