Public Policy

Publication of the government's CSR review would have been a perfect time to respond to the Company Law Review and its call for a modest broadening of the scope of corporate reporting. Submitted a year ago last July, the DTI is apparently still studying it (slow reading is an acquired art in Whitehall). Meanwhile the call for mandatory reporting grows - as we went to press, a group of backbench MPs published a Corporate Responsibility Bill to do this and more. Pure kite-flying, of course, but the minister who will now have to respond is Steven Timms, the very man who as pensions minister brought in the new disclosure rule on pension funds' CSR policies. Could prove interesting.

As it is, five years into Gordon Brown's chancellorship, now is a good time to take stock of the government's understanding of the role of business in society. Think back to the months before the 1997 general election, and Labour's concern to show it was not antibusiness. Remember Tony Blair's all too- brief flirtation with the stakeholder economy. What's changed?

Most welcome is the continued encouragement to participate in community involvement, such as the new tax relief for in-kind donations of medicines and the payroll giving incentives. Also welcome is a new departure, the Community Investment Tax Credit which moves the focus from donations to investment in the economic drivers of community benefits.

Welcome too is the understanding that CSR applies to all bodies corporate, not just private companies - the public sector 'leading by example' as the CSR report puts it, on HR policies, sustainable development, volunteering and procurement. That said, public sector practice is still a long way short of the sort of organisation-wide management, measurement and reporting systems urged onto private companies.