Last week the House of Lords held a debate on the role of the voluntary sector and social enterprise, introduced by Baroness Rosalind Scott, herself a patron of a number of charities.

I was very encouraged to hear widespread acknowledgement of the importance of the voluntary sector's role, both in service delivery and more broadly in society as a whole. I particularly liked Baroness Scott's succinct characterisation of the voluntary sector:  ‘What truly defines this sector is that it is full of people who have identified a need, and have set out to fill it.'