Contribution
I could not agree more. Since entering Parliament in 2024, my hon. Friend has been a leading voice for the role that co-operatives and mutuals can play in the broader ecosystem of UK financial services. He will know well that the Government are committed to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector. Financial services should play a big role in helping to deliver that agenda.
I started my career supporting the development of credit unions and community development financial institutions, which have many similar economic and social objectives to building societies, co-ops and mutuals. My conviction is as strong as it was 15 years ago that they have an important role, not to replace or be a substitute for mainstream high street banks but to be part of the integrated financial ecosystem described by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes). The UK has a lot to learn from other countries, such as Germany, Canada and Australia, about how best to do that in a sustainable way.
The Government can already be proud of a strong record, from last November’s financial inclusion strategy to the commitment to roll out 350 banking hubs across the UK. My constituents in Buckingham and the surrounding rural communities greatly value the hub that opened just before I was elected in 2024, and the expansion of the reach of the Help to Save scheme to more than 3 million people through universal credit.
Specifically on the financial inclusion strategy, although it is no doubt thoughtful and well considered, I encourage the Government to go even further and prepare clear, measurable performance indicators against all six of its pillars, so that we can see in a year or five years how far it has advanced the UK in being financially more inclusive or otherwise. Government, industry, regulators and civil society can then best identify where the barriers to inclusion continue to lie.
I am conscious that I have spoken for almost 20 minutes, so my final point is about skills. Skills gaps in the financial services sector, if left unaddressed, not only threaten the sector’s productivity and future global competitiveness but, most importantly, its collective ability to innovate, grow and best serve our constituents, who are ultimately the customers of those companies. I commend the financial services skills compact, which according to my latest research is now signed up to by more than 20 firms, covering more than 250,000 employees.
Although such industry-led initiatives are crucial and valuable, the Government also have an essential role to play. Two things would strengthen that essential private-public partnership. First, Government can be much more ambitious in using the flexibility of the growth and skills levy to fund dedicated conversion pathways into financial services for adults outside London, perhaps matched by employer-funded boot camps in regional clusters, be that in Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Leeds or Belfast. The talent pipeline should grow where the jobs already exist and are growing.
Secondly, Government and industry, through the Financial Services Skills Commission, should build a shared live map of regional skills gaps, which would allow apprenticeship places, training, investment and further educational funding to target the specific shortages that each region faces, rather than rely on a slightly arbitrary national formula that takes no account of where the sector actually needs people.
Those are just a few of my summer observations on the future of UK financial services. The underlying drive and rationale are ultimately the same, starting from a familiar place. The UK already has a lot of the ingredients that allow it to be a global leader in so many parts of financial services. However, if we are to stay ahead of the other great global financial centres, be that New York, Frankfurt, Singapore or Hong Kong, we need the Government and Parliament to work together with industry to provide the right regulatory framework, the spirit of innovation and the commitment to making our constituents’ money work better for them so that the financial services sector itself can further strengthen the UK’s economic, energy, industrial and national security and sovereignty. I look forward to the contributions from Members across the House this afternoon and I would be happy to meet the Economic Secretary later this autumn to discuss any of the points I have raised if that would be helpful.