The Adebowale Commission Report Is Out — Now Watch the Government Ignore It

Adebowale-Commission Reclaiming-the-Future government social-investment

The Reclaiming the Future Commission published its final report this month. Lord Adebowale and his team have produced a comprehensive, evidence-based, and genuinely radical blueprint for reforming the social investment market. The headline recommendations:

  • A £400 million Frontiers Fund for early-stage and risky social ventures
  • A Social Enterprise Loan Guarantee Scheme to unlock mainstream lending
  • A £50 million Black-led social investment fund
  • Reform of Big Society Capital’s mandate and governance
  • A new Office for the Impact Economy
  • £794 million in total new funding

It’s an impressive piece of work. Thorough, well-argued, and politically astute. Lord Adebowale has done exactly what was asked of him — diagnosed the problems in the social investment market and proposed solutions that address them.

Now watch the government ignore it.

I’ve been doing this long enough to know how the cycle works. Commission. Report. Government response. Consultation. Another report. By the time anything actually happens, the original recommendations have been watered down, the funding has been cut, and the political momentum has dissipated. The Commission’s interim report was published in February 2021. The final report came out now, January 2022. By the time the Treasury gets around to responding, it’ll be 2023. And by then, the cost-of-living crisis will be the only thing on anyone’s mind.

I’m not saying the Commission’s work is wasted. It creates a framework that advocates can use, a set of demands that can be repeated until they stick. The specific recommendations — the Frontiers Fund, the Loan Guarantee Scheme, the Office for the Impact Economy — are worth fighting for.

But £794 million is a lot of money for a Treasury that’s just spent hundreds of billions on pandemic support. The realistic outcome is that some of the cheaper recommendations get implemented, the big-ticket items get deferred, and we end up with something that’s better than nothing but far short of what’s needed.

I hope I’m wrong. The Commission’s report deserves better than the standard Whitehall treatment. But the pattern is well established, and I’ve learned not to get my hopes up.

The report is published. The recommendations are on the table. The clock is ticking on whether anyone in power actually cares enough to act.

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