Human Resources Committee on March 10th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to meeting number 46 of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. We're continuing today with our study exploring the potential of social finance in Canada.

Here to provide testimony in our first hour, we are pleased to have with us Ms. Sandra Odendahl, director of corporate sustainability and social finance at the Royal Bank of Canada. Welcome. Joining us by video conference from Vancouver is Mr. Andy Broderick, vice-president of community investment, Vancity Community Investment. Welcome, sir. Finally, joining us by teleconference from Quebec City is Madam Colette Harvey, director of cooperative project support at the Caisse d'économie solidaire Desjardins.

Welcome to all our witnesses. We will begin with your presentations, for up to 10 minutes. If you go over the time, I will give you a signal, but you're welcome to have 10 minutes. Then we'll move on to questions by committee members.

Ms. Odendahl, would you like to begin, please?

[Sandra Odendahl, Director, Corporate Sustainability and Social Finance, Royal Bank of Canada]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to present to your committee.

I thought I would take a couple of minutes to tell you a little bit about the RBC social finance initiative to give you some context, and then jump into a description and explanation of how we see the different parts of the market and what our observations are regarding the role of government in helping to move forward this area of finance.

I'm going to start by clarifying the way that we define social finance. We understand social finance to be the use of private capital in financial markets for social good. The other thing that I think is an important context-setting piece is that we look at the social finance marketplace as having three distinct portions, similar to any financial marketplace. There's the supply of capital on one side, meaning the money that flows into social finance and social good. On the other side are the enterprises, the companies, and the organizations that demand and require the capital in order to deliver social good. In the middle, of course, you have intermediaries.

The supply can be, for example, high net-worth individuals, governments, banks, and angel investors, etc. On the demand side you can have for-profit companies that are delivering social good, non-profit companies, projects, and cooperatives, etc. Then in the intermediary bucket we would include things like financial institutions, funds, and any intermediary that facilitates the flow of capital between those who need it and those who have it.

With that context, the other piece that I also find very helpful, at least in our business, is looking at the range of social finance. The way that we understand social finance is that when you are taking private capital and using it for public the good, there are a number of different ways that those investors, those with the supply of capital, look at where to place their capital. It can range anywhere from traditional responsible investing, perhaps be screening publicly traded companies and picking the ones that are the least harmful in their sector, all the way through to what we would call “impact investing” or “venture philanthropy”, where you're actually looking at placing money for really deep social impact, and where you may not be as concerned with returns. It's important to see that there's a continuum in the types of investors and people who are looking to provide money in the social finance space.

In 2012 RBC launched our social finance initiative. Our intention with the initiative was to be in a position to catalyze social finance in Canada. We wanted to do it through four pillars.

The first pillar was that we were going to be investors in the marketplace. We set aside a small pool of capital, $10 million, specifically to invest in early-stage companies with a social or an environmental mission—but they had to be for-profit companies.

The second pillar was to demonstrate the power of foundations and endowments to participate in this space. We made a commitment to take at least $10 million of the RBC Foundation's endowment and invest it for the social good. In fact, we're currently at about $15 million of the endowment. It's invested more along the lines of responsible investing, but it is still something that is not that commonly done with endowment and institutional money.

The third piece of the initiative is the powerful piece for a large corporation like RBC, and that's to catalyze social finance by helping drive thought leadership and partnerships. This is a really key piece, helping to develop this side of the market and those who need the money into more investable enterprises. We call this “accelerate the accelerators”, which is providing some funding and partnership to start up accelerators that help cultivate better entrepreneurs and better social enterprises.

The last pillar was to look at the opportunities in RBC to incorporate social finance into our core business, which of course is capital markets, wealth management, asset management, etc.

Those are the four pillars of the initiative. Of course, the way that we're looking at success is, how are we catalyzing social finance? How much money have we invested for impact? How many social entrepreneurs have we helped?

We're also looking specifically at delivering social good in a number of sectors through our investments. We're looking at employment, specifically for youth and the hard-to-employ. We're looking at water, and we're looking at energy.

Of course, we're looking at how this looks to our businesses. There's a very deep amount of interest in this among our wealth management colleagues. Of course, we also want to make sure that, where appropriate, we are cultivating the relationships and positive views of RBC's leadership in the sector.

That being said, we have actually invested almost $4 million for impact. We've been putting money out the door for about 18 months. We have seven investments. We also have six strategic partnerships with start-up accelerators. We see that through our investments we have helped 80 hard-to-employ individuals get work just in 2014, etc. So we're tracking a number of different pieces of data.

The important thing about this, though, is what we've learned along the way, which, indeed, is the focus of this initiative.

I will sum up in a couple of points what we've learned.

The first thing we have learned is that the supply of funds for social finance in Canada is growing rapidly from a very small base. We've learned this through a couple of different research papers we did last year. There's about a trillion dollars in responsible investment assets under management in Canada, but only about $4 billion to $5 billion of that is the deep impact investing, the kind of investment money that drives deep social impact.

We've also seen that institutional investors, the foundations and endowments, are resistant to impact investing. In some cases there are reasons for it, which I'll talk about briefly in a minute.

We also found that in Canada almost 45% of high-net-worth people think that making a positive social impact is very or extremely important. Interestingly, 75% of the people under 40 think that. We think there's a wave coming of deep interest with private money and in putting that money into the social good.

We found that the top barriers to the growth of impact investing in Canada include a shortage of high-quality opportunities for investment money in this space. Very importantly, particularly in the context of government, is inadequate measurement and the inadequate data available on social and environmental impact and social and environmental status, so that you know whether you've made an impact.

What does this mean for the role of government?

I've picked my six favourite things.

I will start with the supply of money. In terms of the supply of capital for social finance, there are three things that government can do to play an important role, and in some cases has started.

First is is credit enhancement. In banking, this means guarantees. This is first-loss capital. It basically means backstopping investment money into a sector where you want to see investment. In particular, this is important for de-risking some of the riskier, early-stage-type investing that smaller retail investors, who can't afford to lose a lot of money but who might want to participate in social finance, might be more inclined to do it if it were somehow backstopped to some extent.

The second way government can play a role in supply development is a really important one. It's around clarifying the fiduciary duty of institutional investors. The way it stands right now is that trustees of pension funds and endowments in Canada, depending on the jurisdiction, are uncertain if they are breaching their fiduciary duty by investing for social impact rather than strictly for returns.

The third way is to make capital available to fund intermediaries. This is the model that Big Society Capital in the U.K. is using, making money available for funds and not necessarily putting government money directly into the enterprises.

It would also really help if government were to make accurate community-level social data widely available. For example, what is the social impact of investing in something? What is the dollar value of a particular social problem, and what is the return to society of solving it? For example, it returns $50,000—I'm making the numbers up—a year to keep one person out of prison. It returns x thousand dollars a year to keep a kid in school for another few years, etc.

In short, what is the social dollar value of the various social problems? Make that information available, make it easy for people to know when they've solved that problem and for the government to know how much impact that has on the taxpayer and on social costs.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Can you wrap it up?

[Sandra Odendahl]

Yes.

The last way is to help develop and fund capacity-building programs for social entrepreneurs, which we definitely see as an issue. They are investable social enterprises. There are a lot of great ideas out there. They need to be investable, and there's a lot that we all can do to make that happen.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much.

Now we move on to Mr. Broderick from Vancouver by video conference.

Please proceed, sir.

[Andy Broderick, Vice-President, Community Investment, Vancity Community Investment]

Welcome from foggy Vancouver.

Mr. Chairman and committee members, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to appear before the committee to discuss the use of private and institutional financing as part of a strategy to improve social outcomes and strengthen communities in Canada.

I provided a deck, I think a little bit late. Actually, I'm not going to speak to the deck, but if anybody has questions about it, I'd be happy to answer them during the question period.

I've served as vice-president of community investment at Vancity since September of 2010. Vancity, with over $19 billion in assets and a half million members, is based in British Columbia and is the largest credit union in Canada. We were founded 68 years ago to provide social financing, essentially providing financing for people who could not get mortgages from the commercial banks on the east side of Main Street in Vancouver. It turned out to be a very good business. It was both a good social investment and a good business proposition. Vancity as a cooperatively owned financial institution sees itself as a social enterprise and takes its community investment role very seriously, so seriously that we have a vice-president for community investment. That's me, and I have a staff of 30.

Our team works on many levels to increase access to capital for our members and their communities. In particular, we're focused on affordable housing, local and natural organic food, energy efficiency and renewable energy, and indigenous communities and social finance or social venture capital. We help our credit union put its balance sheet in the service of these members' communities. We're really sort of the business development side of things.

At Vancity, we track our commercial loan portfolio and our commercial investment portfolio for its impact, with a goal of converting as much of that as possible to areas we've defined. At this point about 40% of our portfolio of $2 billion is in social impact investment.

Four years ago, with the support of the Province of British Columbia and the Vancouver Foundation—speaking here to one of Sandra's points—we set up the Resilient Capital program, which was a credit-enhanced fund. We raised about $15 million from 24 different investors, including educational institutions, unions, the government, and private sources, including high net worth people, and put it in a fund to support social enterprises. We've made about 26 investments out of that fund.

We participate and help guide the multi-sectoral BC Partners for Social Impact, a province-wide social finance round table. We are playing a role in participating in the national advisory task force on the G7 on social finance, and we've been co-convening a national social finance investment table.

I personally have been working most closely on Resilient Capital with a new intermediary, New Market Funds, which is described in the handout I gave you, and I've been working closely with Community Forward Fund, which is a Canada-wide community loan fund.

Before joining Vancity, I served as CEO and president of Housing Vermont, which really affects the way I look at the work I do. It's a non-profit that owned the Green Mountain housing equity fund and Vermont Rural Ventures. Essentially, this is a non-profit investment and development company. We raised about $125 million in private capital and managed private investment portfolios, consisting of affordable housing and public facilities, of about $350 million in assets.

Funds were deployed by Housing Vermont to address housing, economic development, and social needs, in connection with the federal and state incentives that existed in the United States in the form of new market tax credits, low-income housing tax credits, and other state and federal programs, which supported the move of private capital into these areas of community need.

From my perspective, this is key to the success of any movement to social finance. It's the merging of the discipline and ability to execute that's found in private capital markets, with a purpose of community investment and non-profit and charitable purposes. What we created at Housing Vermont is what started 68 years ago at Vancity. Anything the government can do to help facilitate that union by creating an enabling environment for social finance will result in more private investment in positive social and community outcomes.

The field of social financing in Canada is really just beginning to get organized. As such, the agenda is not focused. There's a good deal of wheel spinning. I'm sure you've been hearing all sorts of interesting testimony. The first problem is that there's very limited capacity within the community. I think Sandra spoke to that in terms of helping prepare or make the investees more investable. I'd also point out that the non-profit sector is very primary in its understanding of capital and how to deploy it.

Community capacity has largely been responding to government funding, which has a different risk management profile than private capital, or has have been responding to philanthropy. Again, neither model really works for managing private capital.

There's a great deal of chatter going on about social impact bonds. My experience based here in B.C. and in the United States is that I remain skeptical about the enthusiasm for two reasons. First is a general lack of clarity about what a social impact bond is. From an investment point of view, we're talking about contracted payments or a pay-for-performance scheme. The second problem, which I think is probably more important at this early stage in social finance, is that in an environment where there's a focus on reducing government outlays, on saving government money, it's a tough environment in which to introduce social impact bonds. It could be used as a way to disrupt or reduce the provision of critical government services rather than improve their delivery or efficiency.

I would encourage only cautious investigation of such programs, but would strongly advocate that you work directly to support the development of a more robust community finance infrastructure in Canada.

This work begins, I believe, with the CRA and changing the regulatory regime that currently makes the merging of private investment and charitable goals exceedingly difficult, from such things as making it clear that charities, foundations, and institutional investors can invest in limited partnerships, to removing any direct or indirect prohibitions on non-profits' creating and holding net revenues.

Non-profits and the community sector in general need to build their balance sheets. If they're going to manage private funds successfully, as has been seen in the United States and in Great Britain, this work needs to begin with a strong focus on building that balance sheet. In both the United States and in Great Britain, there has been great latitude for non-profits and charities to engage their work with private capital as partners. That kind of environment has to be created, and that's front and centre of the primary steps that need to be addressed.

Another important enabling tool would be modestly modifying the reporting requirements for financial institutions, with apologies to Sandra. It should be required of all financial institutions and credit unions to report on their level of investment in community against a common standard. It's not critical that such investment be required; it's just critical that it be reported on. The market itself, as Sandra's pointing out, where so many people under 40 are really interested in making sure that their money is put to good use, will help the more formal financial markets figure out how to do that in the right environment. Creating a regulatory environment that encourages financial corporations to report on more than just a single bottom line is critical.

Finally, the federal government should do more to support the critical role played by intermediaries—which again goes to Sandra's point—such as Royal Bank, Vancity, and entities as small as new market funds in the Community Forward Fund.

As the federal regulations in regard to credit unions are being drafted, I would ask you to keep in mind—and I think this is before Parliament currently—that Canada does not really need more small banks. The requirements of Basel III were designed to overcome the failings of large banks in global finance and should not be the instrument that kills the difference that credit unions bring, namely their focus on building their members' communities.

These institutions and others will become critical to building the community capacity necessary to manage private capital and also necessary to creating the fund managers who can speak and be accountable to private investors.

In the United States and Great Britain, social finance has become robust markets raising and deploying enormous amounts of capital and service of multiple bottom lines. If the Government of Canada successfully creates such an enabling policy environment, it will have big returns.

I'm happy to respond to questions on my remarks around the deck I've provided.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you, Mr. Broderick.

Now we move to Madam Harvey by teleconference. Please proceed.

[Colette Harvey, Director, Cooperative Project Support, Caisse d'économie solidaire Desjardins]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank committee members for having invited us to participate in this meeting.

The Caisse d'économie solidaire Desjardins is a cooperative financial institution which is a member of the Mouvement Desjardins, the biggest cooperative financial group in Canada. With assets of $227 billion, the Mouvement Desjardins is considered the fourth safest financial institution in North America by the magazine Global Finance, and the second most solid in the world according to the Bloomberg financial information agency.

With assets of $737 million, the Caisse d'économie solidaire Desjardins has, for 44 years, played a major and preponderant role in Quebec when it comes to social finance. Its assets have more than doubled over the last 10 years and its loans to social businesses have increased by 122% over the same period.

The membership of the caisse is made up of 3,000 associative or cooperative companies from various sectors of activity and of 12,000 individuals. It serves as an intermediary between savings—that is to say supply—and funding for businesses from the social economy—that is to say, demand. Desjardins offers investments with social returns. Deposits are guaranteed by the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Quebec. In 2014, savings in our institutions amounted to $617 million and loans came to $622 million, including $477 million used to directly finance projects with a social impact.

The caisse offers borrowers a wide range of credit products, term loans and lines of credit. We generally underwrite these loans to support the activities and development of social projects.

The caisse is also a very active member of Cap finance, the Réseau de la finance solidaire et responsable, which recently appeared here. The caisse collaborates with its natural financial partners from the associative or union networks to obtain the non-guaranteed portion of the financial package, that is to say, patient or venture capital.

The caisse is the biggest institution in Quebec's social economy financing network. It makes up more than 40% of the total volume of social financing. In Quebec, according to the latest statistics, the social finance sector represented $1.4 billion. In Canada, according to the Responsible Investment Association, the social finance sector amounted to $4.3 billion.

I would like to give you some examples in this regard.

The caisse plays an important role in the development of collective housing. It provides financing for nearly 10,000 units of social housing in Quebec. In 2014, this sector represented more than 50% of the loan portfolio, a value of $262 million.

The caisse has long been a financial partner of the Fédération des coopératives du Nouveau-Québec. Its funding to this institution amounts to $30 million. We have also set up financial services counters for the Inuit population in various villages. This is a project that is currently being carried out with the Mouvement Desjardins. The social impact of this is access to a bank account for an isolated population spread over a vast area.

The caisse is a solid and viable financial institution. Ever since its foundation, it has aimed to use finance to create a more just economy. In an economy at the service of people, finance becomes a means and not an end in itself. What distinguishes the caisse from a philanthropic organisation is that it seeks to remain profitable. This is necessary to the survival of the projects it funds.

The surpluses gained through its credit intermediation activities are in part capitalized to ensure that it is financially sound. From the very beginning, members agreed to have the part of the surpluses they could receive individually returned to the community as collective dividends. For a number of years, this has meant nearly $1 million per year provided as donations. Through these donations, the Caisse has been able to co-found an innovative services exchange network in Quebec for people living in poverty. This Quebec initiative, called l'Accorderie, has spread to France and Morocco.

Housing, access to financial services, reintegration into the workforce, literacy, health services, homelessness, food security and the environment are some examples of issues that businesses funded by the Caisse have addressed in order to find solutions.

Social finance exists because there is another economy, that is, the social economy. The Caisse sees social finance as an alternative to traditional finance. Social finance belongs in a mixed economy, along with the private and public economy, to support the development of entrepreneurial initiatives driven by the wish to meet the needs of people and communities, and not only first and foremost by a striving for profit and personal enrichment.

This social economy and the social finance that supports it deserve to be recognized and encouraged. We welcome this committee's initiative and hope that social finance and the social economy will be acknowledged and supported by the federal government through programs such as start-up programs, envelopes for research and development for social economy businesses, training programs for both administrators and managers in cooperatives and associations, and finally, research programs to document the impacts of social businesses and their innovations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much.

Now we'll move to our first round of questioning. Committee members, all rounds today will be five minutes.

Madam Sims.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Thank you very much.

I want to thank all three presenters for coming here before us and putting forward your perspectives. I can see that all three of you have a passion for social finance. You're the best people to be here to educate us and give us more information.

My first question is going to be for Andy Broderick. Andy, I come from B.C., I'm living in the Lower Mainland and am familiar with the work being done by the Vancity Credit Union. Having once been the president of the B.C. Teachers Federation, I know that many of our members are your members. We do appreciate as a community all the community building that you do as well.

I was at a community event the other day where they were thinking about organizing something, and the first name that came up was Vancity. They'll be in touch with you shortly.

I could see your passion and everything. One of the projects you did was partnering with the Vancouver Foundation in 2012 to create the Resilient Capital investment program. In our briefing notes we read that the program aims to bridge the gap that social enterprises sometimes experience between government and other grants and access to conventional lending. Can you talk about this gap a little more? Why is there a gap? Isn't it more, or at least in part, a government choice whether such a gap exists at all, or are there other things we should be aware of?

[Andy Broderick]

I'll give you my best on that. As much as I'd like to think of my comments as being definitive, they rarely are.

The gap comes largely, I think, from a failure sometimes of financial institutions and capital markets to understand risk in relation to community-based organizations and how to understand it and quantify it. The first issue I would flag is that it's not necessarily riskier, and doesn't probably actually need credit enhancements in terms of most of the loans and investments we're making, but we need to bring financial institutions and traditional credit analysis along. That's why I think these credit enhancements are, as Sandra pointed out, important.

So the gap exists largely because the borrower does not present as traditional for-profit borrowers present. They have different assets. They have volunteer boards. They have deep historical experience within the community. They're addressing a central need that you can rely on...on municipalities and provincial government and federal government to stand close to, even if they're not at the lead with this non-profit.

I think the goal of Resilient Capital is really to demonstrate the creditworthiness of most of the loans and investments we make, which is ironic, because the most difficult element of it was probably raising the $2 million in first-loss money.

Does that help?

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

It does. Thank you.

You'll be surprised to know, Sandra, but I did actually read your “2015 Canadian Responsible Investment Trends Report”. In it are listed some challenges and deterrents. Some of the deterrents listed are things like risk concerns, performance concerns, lack of qualified advice and expertise, mistrust, concerns about greenwashing, and the idea that non-market-based investing isn't viable or sustainable.

As you are such a passionate advocate for social finance, how do you respond to these concerns when you are pressed for answers?

[Sandra Odendahl]

Thanks. That's a great question.

The Responsible Investment Association report that you're referring to just came out a few weeks ago. It was done by the RIA with support from RBC corporate and RBC's global asset management group, the people who develop mutual funds and products for investors.

Yes, we see that there is a little bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario going on. There are not a lot of investable financial products out there for investors who are looking for a certain risk profile, but on the other hand, those financial products will never be developed if people don't start to put some money into them. The way we're trying to address it, frankly, is through things like the report we did with the RIA and other reports—I have a handout that's an excerpt from a report we did, “Financing Social Good”—to mainstream some of the concepts around social finance, presenting them in a language that is the same language that the traditional finance and investment community uses.

Certainly that was the first thing that struck me when I entered this space. It was like all those people doing social good were speaking a completely different language. I thought, “My goodness, we need a translator here.” We're trying to serve as a translator to make sure that the community sector and the finance and investment sector speak the same language, or, if not, can at least translate. We're doing that through some of the partnerships and some of the research pieces.

I think data and hard facts are the only way to break down some of the misconceptions, misunderstandings, and maybe trepidation about getting into this space.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Armstrong, you have five minutes, sir.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our witnesses for being here today on what I think is a very important study for the future of social finance in Canada.

Mrs. Odendahl, in your discussion you were able to talk briefly about the role that the federal government can have in promoting social finance across the country. You were able to talk about the supply of capital being the number one aspect of that role of government. You were cut off before you got the chance to talk about the other two steps.

I'm wondering if you would just fill us in on your position. What are the other two main roles government can put in place to try to support social finance implementation?

[Sandra Odendahl]

Sure. I probably didn't bucket them very well as I was wrapping up, but the other two things that I think are important for government fall into the intermediary and the demand-for-capital sides.

In the intermediary space, it's definitely making available the provision or collection of data—information about the cost, the value of solving social problems. There's a great U.K. online database called the unit cost database. I don't know if any of your other witnesses talked about it. They put out there what the cost is of health and social services. So an enterprising social business can say “wow, if I solve this, this is worth $100,000 a person” or whatever. It's very important motivationally and also in terms of knowing when we've actually been successful or not.

On the last piece on demand development, definitely—and Andy touched on this as well—we see the need for better investable social businesses that can attract traditional capital, investment capital, and go beyond just good ideas and the desire to help.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Broderick, my next question is for you. You talked about CRA implications and making some changes in the regulatory system we've set up to try to support social finance. Can you elaborate on that a bit? What changes would you like to see in the regulatory environment to support the implementation of a program in Canada?

[Andy Broderick]

There would be a lot, but I would mention two. With the CRA there has been a real sort of hardline distinction between charitable status and engagement with private capital, which again is understandable in terms of understanding the purpose of philanthropy, but it is not particularly useful when you're trying to create partnerships between private capital and philanthropic goals. Basically, the main work that should be done at CRA is figuring out how to both ensure that philanthropic goals and integrity are maintained, and allow innovative partnerships and co-investment work to go forward. Specifically, that is one. Charities are not allowed to invest in limited partnerships, which is the main structure under which most of these private funds that are doing social impact investing would raise money. So they have to set up a trust structure—I wouldn't say to get around it, but to be able to comply with the regulations.

Secondly, I did raise—

Sorry, go ahead.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Well, if you want to go on, you can, but I was going to ask you another question about that.

So you think there's a regulatory hurdle there that people have to overcome that restricts their opportunity to invest.

[Andy Broderick]

Yes, there is, and it's actually outlined fairly well in the G-7 report that was done for Canada.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Thank you.

[Andy Broderick]

I'm happy to provide it to the committee.

[Scott Armstrong, Conservative, Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, NS]

Okay.

I have another question, Mr. Broderick. You talked about your skepticism of social impact bonds. Do you want to elaborate on that for a moment?

[Andy Broderick]

Well, I'm glad there wasn't much talk about it. I testified last year on social impact bonds before another parliamentary committee. There's just so much primary work that needs to be done to lay a strong foundation, and I agree here with the testimony of my other colleagues. Before picking up social impact bonds as a really useful tool, you need to recognize that they essentially attract a lot of consultants and a lot of brain damage without your having a foundation on which to be able to judge them and set up a robust social finance environment in which they'd be successful.

[The Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

You have 10 seconds. So if you want to....