Baroness Sater (Con)

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for securing this debate today and I congratulate my noble friend Lady Porter on her excellent speech. I am fortunate enough to be on a fellowship programme with the Industry and Parliament Trust, focusing on corporate social responsibility and looking at how companies and organisations are delivering their employee workplace volunteering programmes. Today, I will talk about the contribution that businesses and their employees can make to charities, voluntary organisations and communities, and how society and the economy are benefiting from their work. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Dartington Trust and vice-chair of the Specialised Healthcare Alliance. Volunteers provide a vital resource to charities and volunteering organisations across the UK, many of which work to support the most vulnerable members of society. In turn, volunteers benefit hugely in personal satisfaction from knowing the value their contribution makes and from the skills that they can acquire. The Time Well Spent report from the NCVO—the National Council for Voluntary Organisations—backs this up, with 74% of volunteers feeling more confident and 71% feeling that their skills have improved. I recently visited the impressive Felix Project charity in Poplar and was overwhelmed by the contribution that volunteers were making daily to help deliver meals to local communities. A survey of some 200 corporate volunteers visiting one of its farms this year reported that 92% said it improved their relationship with their colleagues and made them more aware of the issues around food waste. Analysis conducted earlier this year by Pro Bono Economics—PBE—highlighted that workplace volunteering benefits individual employees and their employer by improving well-being and delivering improved skills. This combination drives productivity and means that £1 spent by employers on good-quality workplace volunteering schemes can generate between £1.50 and £3.60 in benefits. The Business in the Community 2024 State of the Nation report surveyed CEOs from some of the largest companies and found that 78% believe that progress on addressing societal and environmental issues can also help with business growth. BITC is a responsible business network that works with charities, voluntary organisations and local authorities. More than 20% of the UK workforce, some 7 million employees, are its network, which shows the potential scale of what can be achieved. These behaviours, values and cultures are becoming increasingly important to young people. When they are looking for a job, they will sometimes be the reason that they will choose one company over another. A KPMG study last year revealed that nearly half of UK office workers considered a company’s ESG credentials important, with this sentiment most pronounced among young groups. This potential new group of volunteers in business can help communities continue to make a difference in tackling social injustices and improving our environment with much needed additional capacity at a crucial time, with six out of 10 charities struggling with volunteer recruitment, as reported by the VCSE Data and Insights National Observatory at Nottingham Trent University in May this year. However, charities, voluntary organisations and business should not be burdened with these responsibilities alone. Government also has a role to play. The PBE report in April cited some £1.6 billion to £2.8 billion of net productivity benefits to the economy from rolling out more workplace volunteering. Companies and organisations are required to report on many things and need no more burdensome obligations, but I wonder whether there may be a benefit in voluntary reporting of employee hours spent volunteering, both in business and perhaps across the Civil Service. With PBE reporting that 17 million to 23 million employees do not have the opportunity to access workplace volunteering, that tells us we have a long way to go, but the potential is huge.