Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Turner, especially as some of my earliest co-operative meetings took place in what is now Kingston upon Hull East, your constituency. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) for securing this important debate.
One of the first visits that I undertook as a Member of Parliament was to 28 Long Causeway in Peterborough, home of my local Nationwide building society branch. It has been there since 1974 but it started its life in the city in 1954, a few doors down from its current location, as the Co-operative Permanent Building Society—at a time when Winston Churchill was the Prime Minister and the world was very different.
For a post-war generation, building societies and co-operatives were part of the new social contract—if they worked hard, they could get on in life, get a home and make a future for their children. The co-operative and mutual ideal has always been strong in the UK, but the idea of a purpose-driven economy feels even greater in today’s world. Against a backdrop of division, short-termism and populism, mutuals offer purpose and social value to our economy and communities. The co-operative and mutual sector is a vital part of the inclusive growth agenda of this Government, worth £93 billion in gross value added and £180 billion in turnover. Building societies have more than 27 million members.
Despite moves to demutualise the building societies in the UK—an act of economic vandalism by a previous Government—we still have more than 40 building societies holding nearly one third of UK mortgages. Nationwide, still standing strong in my city and many others, is the biggest lender to first-time buyers in the UK.
My constituency is home to the English Mustard Growers co-operative, which I often talk about. My constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) supply the seed that goes into Colman’s mustard—many people will know the brand. I am pleased we have an agricultural co-op in Peterborough and our surrounding fenlands. It is an illustration that the mutual drive covers a wide range of industries, not just retail, as many will know.
More widely we see the return of co-operative ambition after a generation of consolidation. It is good to see that happening, with the Co-op Bank coming back into the mutual fold and merging with the Coventry Building Society; with Nationwide expanding with the takeover of Virgin Money; and with the Co-operative Group adding more members year on year. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton in paying tribute to my good friend Joe Fortune and also Shirine Khoury-Haq, chief executive of the Co-operative Group, for their sterling work on behalf of the movement.
We should all remember that the movement started many years ago from co-operative principles. A few months ago I attended the Co-op congress in Rochdale town hall with my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh). Rochdale was the birthplace of a movement, with the power of 28 pioneers organising against the odds and today still a living force for social and economic justice in all of our communities. The Rochdale principles still stand tall in the world.
I am proud to be part of a Government with ambition for the co-operative sector: a clear commitment to double the size of the co-operative and mutual sector and to support social enterprises, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) said. Such ambition has not been seen by Whitehall before. With ambition will come challenges. It is not the role of Government to build co-operatives, but it is the role of Government to ensure there is not a block to growth. Co-operative activity, as we have heard, spans many sectors and many Government Departments. With that ambition, we also know it will bring the challenges of how cross-Government working supports it. We know that sectors, which often work across Government Departments, struggle to find effective cross-Government working and effective time. So I welcome the announcement of a co-operative development unit as part of the Government’s pride in place plans.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel), who is no longer in his place, I am an old lag of the movement who spent many years working in co-op housing and co-op development, so I welcome the fact that we now have something that will look at co-op development in housing and local government. But I say to the Minister that the unit needs to work with the Treasury, the Financial Conduct Authority and other Government Departments to deliver the reforms we need to support it.
Co-operation is living proof that our collective endeavour can be greater than our individual efforts. There is no stronger message for co-operation than the world we stand in today. We need to make sure that that message rings true in Whitehall, where all of these initiatives add up to something greater than their individual aims. These developments have happened as a result of the Government’s new focus, but it is up to all of us to ensure they deliver on those.
Finally, why does this matter? It matters because it is about ambition for our communities and also the kind of world and economy we want to live in. If this is the co-operative moment, as I believe it is, we also need co-operative ambition. We need to create the conditions in which mutuals can flourish and succeed, where communities can come together and start up their own ventures, and where destiny for our families and communities is not determined by shareholders or Government alone, but by the people themselves. This truly is a co-operative moment.