Dear Mark Harper, I am a disabled constituent

I'm a disabled man, you are the Miinister of State for disabled people.

I'm fortunate in that my disability is minor in comparison with many who are suffering today. I claim no benefit.

I was in better health when I first approached you in 2006 as a newly established business in the Forest of Dean.  I sought your help with a problem. A company called Atos Origin had used their influence to remove my business,, a social enterprise, from a contract with DCMS. You were unable to assist.

All of my calls for your support have had something to do with getting into work and helping others to do so.

Our work at the time was focussed on Eastern Europe, drawing  particular attention to the needs of institutionalised children, who graduate onto the streets.. As you will know, these are the raw materials of traffickers. Many enter this country illegally and are exploited as unskilled labour at best, at worst enter into the vice trade.

You were supportive however when it came to the creation  of an NHS Pathfinder Social Enterprise Trust for the Forest of Dean. As we all know this collapsed without trading, having acquired considerable sums from the public purse, including a portion of our council tax,

The major beneficiary of this funding was a former Atos manager, Philip Chubb, operating as a consultant to the SET whic never traded. We have ot heard whether any of this funding, especially the council tax, will be paid back.

II will illustrate below, when social enterprise beomes a matter of supporting only friends and political allies, it's a lose-lose outcome. Iit may cost others their lives.   

In 2009, I was still in good health when with a proposal for Village SOS, I drew attention to the lack of local economic opportunity and the closure two years earlier of a Remploy factory in my own village.

"Parkend offers limited opportunity for local employment and since closure of the Remploy factory it formerly hosted, lesser opportunity for Forest of Dean residents with physical and learning disabilities."

Our approach as a people-centered business is to help people gain access to the  resources they need to resolve their own problems.and grow

In Ukraine, we'd discovered conditions in which many children perished through instittutional care and in 2010, seeking support for changes in international development strategy, I'd petitioned your leader, the newly elected PM David Cameron describing the impact already made on childcare reform, saying

As you know I'd called for your support again when the social enterprise development initiative I'd described in my petition was diplaced by an initiative run by the British Council who'd been introduced to our work directly.' The reply through you, from the British Council stated that partners were expected to make a financial contribution.

The expectation of payment to paritcipate in an international development project is not declared where the British Council solicits partners. As an organsation which is itself supported by public funds, it would also seem to be at odds with the Social Value Act introduced by your government.

In December 2008, I was informed by the FCO that they and the British Embassy in Ukraine were aware of our activities. As you know the FCO contrbutes part of British Council funding.

Thank you for your e-mail of 9 December. I am sorry that you have experienced difficulties in your previous contacts with the FCO. I can at least assure you that the Ukraine desk at the FCO, and our Embassy in Kyiv, are now aware about the activities of your organisation.

We'd also introduced our work direclty to USAID in 2008 and in their response they had claimed a lack of budget for these "retarted children"

As  our founder, whose life was lost in this exercise wrote:

" This is not a research activity where many, if any, other people dared to participate.  UNICEF was willfully blind to the matter because it was just too dangerous to bother to intercede  Powerful interests remained entrenched with enforcers to make it dangerous.  Jurists were correct, in my view.  It was more a mafia operation than anything else, aimed at misappropriation and laundering of large money.  That was perfectly congruent with how Ukraine operated before the revolution.  USAID wanted nothing to do with it, nor would they fund any organizations or activists who might try.  Some things could be done and some things could not be done.  Helping these children was something that could not be done.  So, I exposed it and made it the central focus and metric of Ukraine’s microeconomic development blueprint.  In that context, it was far more difficult to ignore, dismiss, or argue about.  For about six months, I really did not expect to survive"

To illustrate that point about poverful interests I refer you to a list of partners and donors where British organisations st alongside the foundations of Ukraine's oligarchs. It was one of these foundations who donated half a million dollars to Tony Blair's Faith Foundation. 

As you may read, from our work , we had argued for the transition of childen from institutions into loving family homes, such that costs to the state could be reduced and funding re-directed to further social benefit. By the time I petitioned David Camreron a 40% increase in fostering had been reported.

“There is no substitute for a loving family environment for growing children. Existing state care institutions do not and cannot possibly provide this – despite occasional, lingering claims that state care is the best care for children. This attitude is a holdover from Soviet times when the state was idealized as the best possible caretaker for all, including children. Stark reality does not support that notion.

While this section has strong focus on financial aspects for reforming childcare in Ukraine, these are just financial numbers to demonstrate that this can be done for an overall, long-term cost reduction to state budget. That is to say, simply, this reform program is at the least financially feasible. The barrier between old and new is the cost of the transitional phase."

As ever, there were those who saw the opportunity to profit from such innovation. Their champion is David Cameron who credits himself for an idea to be taken all over the world..

It beggars belief that a Prime Minister should be trying to build his own reputation on the work of disabled people for disabled people, which  was introduced to him gratis.

In 1996 it was our late founder who pioneered the call for capitalism to be applied for the common good. Today i't's a theme which all party leaders are trying to build their reputations on. Here's his prescient view of his own end as just another homeless and disabled person.

"The term “social enterprise” in the various but similar forms in which it is being used today — 2008 — refers to enterprises created specifically to help those people that traditional capitalism and for profit enterprise don’t address for the simple reason that poor or insufficiently affluent people haven’t enough money to be of concern or interest. Put another way, social enterprise aims specifically to help and assist people who fall through the cracks. Allowing that some people do not matter, as things are turning out, allows that other people do not matter and those cracks are widening to swallow up more and more people. Social enterprise is the first concerted effort in the Information Age to at least attempt to rectify that problem, if only because letting it get worse and worse threatens more and more of us. Growing numbers of people are coming to understand that “them” might equal “me.” Call it compassion, or call it enlightened and increasingly impassioned self-interest. Either way, we are all in this together, and we will each have to decide for ourselves what it means to ignore someone to death, or not."

"We are all in this together"?