Co-operatives and Mutuals

Stephen Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Stephen Williams)]

I do not think that any of us expected this debate to be taking place at 5.35 pm. Earlier today, I was told several times via the Whips Office that the House might sit late tonight, and my officials were told the same. I am sure that the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) asked many questions while I was not only listening to his speech but reading my own for the first time. I must confess that I was “Boxless”—I do not know whether there is such a word in the English language—and, although I do not think that I am technically Boxless any more, it is probably best for me to deal with some of the hon. Gentleman’s questions by writing to him. However, they will all be in Hansard and on the record.

[Mr Thomas]

I entirely accept that the Minister will want to mull over some of my questions, but perhaps I can throw him another one to mull over. It concerns the future of the industrial and provident society legislation, which is, I understand, a Treasury responsibility. When the Minister writes to me, will he also check whether the Treasury has any plans to modernise that legislation further?

[Stephen Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which is now on the record and will be added to the already fairly long list of items about which I shall have to write back to him.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate, and thank him for his constructive speech. I also thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his comments about the situation in his constituency, and for the intervention from my namesake the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty).

The Government are committed to opening up and transforming public services and giving communities an opportunity to take control of the places in which they live and which they may well love. Localism is fundamental to that, and the powers and opportunities that we have introduced to support it are already demonstrating their value. When I entered my Department and discovered the range of responsibilities that I would be taking on, I was, as a Liberal, genuinely excited by the whole localism agenda. This morning I visited Poplar—in the constituency of the hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—to announce the next stage of the Our Place! programme, a community empowerment programme that is one of the many suites of powers introduced under the coalition’s Localism Act 2011.

Of course, this Government did not invent community action. As the hon. Gentleman rightly acknowledged, the co-operative movement has a long history in this country. He mentioned pioneers in Rochdale, but given his first name and surname I think that he must have some Welsh antecedents, and in that context I should mention Robert Owen. All those pioneers, whether they were in Montgomeryshire or in Rochdale, would have had in their hearts a vision in which they were made stronger by working together, and could achieve more together than they could individually. Together, they could raise their own aspirations and those of their communities. Let me put that into 21st-century language that may sound familiar to some people: it is not just about building a stronger economy, but about building a fairer society and enabling every person to get on in life.

The community rights introduced in the Localism Act—along with all the other rights that we introduced in that legislation—give new opportunities to co-operatives and mutuals. Let me mention a few that are relevant to the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman.

In London—in the constituency of the deputy leader of the Labour party, I think—the Ivy House Community Pub Ltd is now a co-operative. Using a right under the 2011 Act, the community got together to save the Ivy House pub from being sold and turned into flats. It has now purchased the pub, using the right to bid introduced under that Act. That is the first co-operative pub in London. If we are feeling the Christmas spirit, as we have plenty of time we did not know we would have this evening and it is not too far away, we should perhaps consider going for a drink there later on.

We are now seeing real growth in co-operative pubs. The overall number is 22 now, and half of them opened their doors this year. My Department is helping to fund the co-operative pubs advice line, launched at the start of April. Over 100 communities have contacted this service—which shows there is a thirst for accessing it.

There are also currently 318 community shops open and trading across the UK, all using a co-operative model. They are extremely resilient, as 96% of those that have ever opened are still open, so it is a much more successful and sustainable business model than, sadly, many other small enterprises.

My Department is supporting communities across England to take on assets and make them work for local people through our community ownership and management of assets programme. This is providing expertise, support and grants to groups to buy or manage a range of assets. Many community pubs and shops have successfully used community share offers to raise funds. Community shares is a sustainable social investment model that gives communities an opportunity to purchase a stake in their local community enterprise. Hastings pier is an example I am familiar with. People throughout the country are using these new rights to preserve things that are important in their community.

Another example of where community shares are helping industrial and provident societies to save assets is the first co-operative football club, FC United of Manchester. I am not a football expert, but I must confess that that is not a club I have heard of. Community shares have been used, too, to set up several renewable power generation projects. The hon. Member for Harrow West referred to the Brixton Energy company and schemes in Cumbria. There are also schemes in my constituency in Bristol, such as in Easton, that do similar things. The great thing about these community energy schemes is that they preserve money in the local community. That can be a very localist way of dealing with fuel poverty, which is something we are all concerned about.

There are also several community-led housing schemes that have taken advantage of the £25 million the Government have set aside for them in the affordable homes programme. One example is the Bomarsund Co-op, which started a scheme this year in Sedgehill in Northumberland. It will provide 12 two-bedroom apartments. Another is the community land trust in Queen Camel in Somerset—they have some splendid names—which is funding the development of 20 affordable homes.

The chair of the Confederation of Co-operative Housing, Mr Nic Bliss, has recently set out his experience of working with the coalition Government. He said that

“we are pleased that the Coalition Government has worked with our sector to demonstrate its ongoing support for community-led housing.”

The Government have also been public about our commitment to the creation and expansion of mutuals, especially by empowering public sector workers to become their own boss and help them deliver better public services.

[Mr Thomas]

I genuinely do not want to chastise the Minister, because he is making a helpful and interesting speech, but will he take back to his Department my request for the Homes and Communities Agency to do more to encourage local authorities and housing associations to support housing co-operative initiatives? There are good examples of housing co-ops in the UK, but the number of people who are able to take advantage of them is dramatically lower than in some European countries.

[Stephen Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that helpful suggestion. I will certainly take it back to the Department and discuss it with the Housing Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins).

We genuinely want innovative models of delivery for housing provision on the ground, where we can work with social enterprises and charities and bring people together to achieve real regeneration in their area. A couple of weeks ago, as the Minister responsible for the empty homes programme, I handed over the keys to a house in Peckham. The number of people involved in that project was quite staggering: not only the formal delivery partners—the Government, Southwark council and the two housing associations—but 300 volunteers. Some had painted a bedroom, others had done the carpeting, and so on. The Government are genuinely open to innovative solutions that involve as many people as possible in shaping their own communities, and I certainly think that the co-operative model for providing new housing is something that ought to be explored a little bit further.

Returning to the question of employees who take over their own area of the public sector, our latest data show that absenteeism and staff turnover fall by 20% and 16% respectively after an organisation has spun out. Both are really impressive statistics that are surely reflective of staff having a greater sense of control and ownership. I could give the House further examples.

[Stella Creasy]

The Minister is making a powerful case for the way in which co-operative models and values have informed new solutions to a range of society’s problems. Will he put on record his support for the role of the Co-operative party in promoting those ideas and bringing them to the House’s attention?

[Stephen Williams]

Oh dear! It’s Christmas! I was hoping we would not have to discuss the Co-operative party and the recent events—fun though that might be. A lot of us, myself included, would regard ourselves as fully supportive of the co-operative model, of mutuals and of social enterprises, and we have spent a large part of our political careers doing a great deal to encourage that agenda. We are now spending time in Government pushing that agenda forward. For some reason, the Co-operative party chooses to fund only candidates who are associated with the Labour party, and that is a shame. I am going slightly off topic here, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I was led astray. I wish that the Co-operative party would use its resources to fund candidates from any party, be they Labour, Liberal Democrat or even some of our coalition partners who are genuinely interested in pushing forward co-operative ideals. The people who founded the co-operative movement in the 19th century might be surprised to find that the Co-operative party in the 21st century is now allied solely to a Labour party and not to a Liberal party, because many of them would have been Liberals at that time.

[Mr Thomas]

May I gently point out to the Minister that the Co-operative party was established in response to discrimination in the way in which staff were called up from co-operatives, as opposed to private businesses, by the Conservative and Liberal coalition Government during world war one? In the spirit of bringing a sense of Christmas back into the Chamber, let me say that if he were willing to defect, I would be willing to champion his membership of the Co-op party.

[Stephen Williams]

Even if the hon. Gentleman and I were to visit the Ivy House pub in Nunhead later and drink however much it took to get us both thoroughly inebriated, I do not think that my will would be so weakened as to accept that kind invitation, which I must admit has been offered by his colleagues many times over the years.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned credit unions. I am a member of Bristol Credit Union—I am reminded that I need to top up my funds. The reason I became a member in the first place was to be able to use the Bristol pound. Local community currencies are another example of putting power in the hands of local people to keep more of their spending power in the local economy and to support businesses and the agenda he is putting forward.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and hope that both he and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) will accept my apology for arriving late—I, too, was surprised by how early the debate started. Will he agree to look at the financial regulations for credit unions? Barrow-in-Furness now has a credit union and has done very well to establish it, but it is dealt with in the same way as some much larger institutions even though they have nothing like the same level of financial risk.

[Stephen Williams]

I suspect that the regulations for credit unions are the responsibility of the Treasury, so I will ensure that a note of the hon. Gentleman’s point is sent to Treasury colleagues and that he receives a reply.

The hon. Member for Harrow West questioned why there is no military credit union and gave the example of north America. I was unaware of that and will raise it with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to see whether complementary provision already exists in the United Kingdom or whether we should look at that model seriously to see if it would work in this country.

I was pleased that the hon. Gentleman mentioned the Bristol Ferry Boat Company share offer. Mr Deputy Speaker, I do not know whether you have made your life even more complete by journeying to Bristol West to see the yellow boats that plough their way around the harbour, but you are very welcome. People visiting Bristol are often surprised to see ferry boats in the heart of a city centre that they thought was well inland. Unfortunately, the company that owned them failed last year, but it has now been saved through a community share. All of us in Bristol were delighted to see that.

In conclusion, I think that all the Members who were watching the Annunciator screens carefully and managed to get into the Chamber for this debate have made useful contributions. I will ensure that the hon. Member for Harrow West receives responses to the questions he asked. I thank him for securing the debate. To end on a note of Christmas unity, I am sure that co-operatives and mutuals have a great future in this country, as do social enterprises. The coalition Government are determined to ensure that that is the case.

Question put and agreed to.