Social Enterprises and Community Ownership

(Limited Text - Ministerial Extracts only)

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Blair McDougall)]

I certainly will, Sir John. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is also a privilege to respond to a debate with so many passionate and proud speeches on behalf of local community enterprises and charities.

I am glad to have the opportunity to congratulate Leigh Spinners on all of its success so far, to thank the Rebuild Site in Carlisle, to raise a glass to the Black Bull in Gartmore, the Fleece Inn in the Cotswolds and the Brewers Arms in Worcestershire, to tell Cosham Community Kettle to put the kettle on for me at some point when I visit, and to highlight the Low Port Centre in Linlithgow, the Oxleathers in Stafford, the Central Football Foundation in Grangemouth, and so many others that make our communities what they are. I will also abuse my position as Minister to talk about Social Blend in my constituency. It is a remarkable social enterprise that provides not just fantastic coffee and food, but employment and a sense of purpose to adults and young people with additional needs and disabilities. I recommend a visit to anyone.

What underpins this, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) intimated, is a belief that everyone has something to offer. In the words, perhaps, of Robert Owen, “There are good hearts to serve men in palaces as in cottages.” The Government are passionate about the social enterprise sector and its contribution to society.

An estimated 347,000 social enterprises are helping to meet some of the toughest challenges in our society. When Governments and markets fail, and when others walk away, social enterprises step in and fulfil the needs of our communities. To support such organisations to deliver their invaluable work, and to help them to grow and to introduce even more innovation and services, the Government have introduced several measures over the past few months.

The Prime Minister wants the Government to work differently by putting partnership with civil society at the heart of everything we do. The civil society covenant embodies the ambition to recognise the value of civil society, and for every part of Government to partner and collaborate with civil society at every level, as hon. Members have asked for. At the civil society summit in July 2025, the Prime Minister said that he would give civil society

“a home at the heart of government”

and the newly established Civil Society Council will meet quarterly in Downing Street and be supported by a dedicated team in No. 10. The purpose of the Civil Society Council is to work in partnership with Government at the highest level to drive and oversee the implementation of the covenant, helping Government and civil society, including social enterprises, to design and deliver policies and services in genuine partnership.

DCMS is taking the lead on the local implementation of the covenant through the launch of the £11.6 million local covenant partnerships fund. Hon. Members asked for more support, and the fund will support local government, public service providers and civil society organisations to work collaboratively to tackle local policy priorities and better meet the needs of communities. In recognition of the need to diversify and unlock more income for the sector, the Government are delivering several strands of work that focus on ensuring that all organisations, including some of the smallest charities, are able to continue delivering impact and, where possible, to grow their operations.

Last summer, DCMS published the Government’s first-ever dormant assets strategy, which sets out our ambition to boost the reach and impact of the scheme. The strategy sets out how we will ensure the continued good governance of the scheme and, crucially, illustrates how the next £440 million tranche of funding will be distributed. That includes £132 million to benefit young people and £87 million for social investment. Part of that money will go towards providing small, flexible and affordable loans—the access to finance that hon. Members mentioned—to grassroots organisations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Patrick Hurley) spoke with evangelical zeal about the better futures fund, based on his deep experience in this area. We announced that £500 million fund in July 2025, and it is the world’s largest outcomes fund. It will support up to 200,000 children and their families over the next 10 years, and it will bring together Government, local communities, charities, social enterprises and philanthropists to give children a brighter future.

More broadly, I want to celebrate the remarkable growth of the impact economy, with recent reports estimating that it contributes a staggering £420 billion to the UK’s GVA, amounting to 15% of our GDP. The impact economy is a diverse system of purposeful organisations and capital, with the shared aim of delivering a strong economy in which everyone benefits. Social enterprises have a unique and powerful ability to innovate and to scale solutions to the big challenges that we face as a country, and the Office for the Impact Economy will continue to support closer collaboration between these organisations and Government.

I come to the second best thing to come out of Rochdale: the co-operative sector. [Interruption.] Someone just said “Lisa Stansfield”, which I think is unfair. We have an ambitious manifesto commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector, because we see co-operatives and mutuals as the key engines of inclusive and community-focused economic activity. Several hon. Members mentioned the need to increase the support and advice for co-operatives in order to meet that commitment. I work with members of our business hub network around the country, and they often tell me that as many as one in four people coming through their doors is looking for advice on co-operatives and community interest companies.

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is rightly talking about people who want to set up co-operatives. I wonder whether he might talk to his colleagues in the Department for Education about the role that co-operative education should play in the curriculum through history, business studies, and personal, social, health and economic education. Young people need to understand what co-operative, social enterprise and mutual models look like, so that they instinctively think about setting up one when they go into the world of work, rather than being talked into doing so later on.

[Blair McDougall]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are having a wider conversation at the moment about how enterprise education in general should go through people’s experience in school, and the co-operative and social interest models should be part of that.

The co-operative development unit in MHCLG is helping to develop guidance and partnering with local authorities to see how we can improve access and advice. On community ownership, we are committed to communities and we are going further than ever to ensure that they have powers to take advantage of the assets that they value. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) asked specifically about the community ownership of power. He will be aware that the local power plan announced by colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is designed to address the barriers to community energy ownership and is backed by £1 billion to fund those local projects.

At the beginning of the debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) asked whether the Government are willing to back local areas in taking control of the things that they value and that are important to them. I hope some of the measures that I have set out show that the Government’s answer is a resounding yes.