Co-operatives, Mutuals and Friendly Societies Bill

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 24th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, as a proud member of the Co-operative Party, it is a genuine pleasure to contribute to this debate. I pay tribute, as so many have, to my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark for introducing this incredibly important Bill and for continuing the work started in the other place by Sir Mark Hendrick.

I do not believe that anyone who has listened to my noble friend during this debate or at any other point could doubt his commitment to the co-operative movement. He is a stalwart co-operator and has dedicated many hours to campaigning for the co-operative movement, seeking to ensure a fairer and more equitable approach to our local economy.

As my noble friend outlined, co-operatives, mutuals and friendly societies are not relics of the past but a fundamental aspect of our national economy, and provide a lifeline to communities seeking to be directly involved in the provision of services in their immediate vicinity. As my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton reminded us, for many of us nothing is more evocative of childhood than conversations about our family’s divi number. My partner can still cite his grandmother’s: 207619, Thelma Snell. But co-operatives and mutuals are more than retail outlets, important as those are.

As my noble friend Lord Mann and the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, both referenced, the British co-operative movement is as diverse as our economy and includes everything from cricket clubs to football pitches—that was news to me—and from housing providers to funeral societies, credit unions, insurance companies, shared community spaces, retail offers and even the odd public house.

That is why this legislation is so important. In the UK, 14 million of us are members of a co-operative or mutual. They employ more than 250,000 people and generate a combined turnover of £39.7 billion a year. They also collectively hold more than £200 billion in assets, as the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, highlighted. While those numbers may seem impressive, they are small fry compared to those of our friends in the EU. The co-operative sector in Germany is four times the size of the UK’s and is a sector of its economy embraced at both a federal and a local level.

Around the world, 12% of the population are members of a co-op and the largest 300 co-operatives and mutuals report an annual turnover of $2.1 trillion. From that comes a view of how capital can be used not for short-term gain but for long-term investment in which members understand that the success of the business and surpluses generated above the original capital asset are used for the common good. This business model also creates a stable and dynamic enterprise; co-operatives are twice as likely to survive their first five years of trading than other start-ups and are known to be much more ambitious in their plans for growth.

It is therefore imperative that we do what we can not only to foster the creation of new co-operative and mutual societies but to protect the ones we have, which is why the Labour Party has already pledged to double the size of the British co-operative sector after the next general election.

This Government speak a great deal about economic growth and levelling up. The co-operative movement is a vehicle that can and should be involved in delivering both, and this piece of legislation is a small step in helping the sector to move forward. It provides the safety mechanism that allows for any capital surplus to be held over and for the associated funds and assets to remain committed to the wider public good should a mutual cease to trade. It empowers the members of mutual societies to decide what should happen to assets upon the dissolution of their society. It will allow members the right to preserve the assets for the future, to deliver the original guiding intentions upon which their society may have been founded.

Currently, no such provision exists in the UK. Nothing exists that allows members to specifically confirm that any capital surplus would be non-distributable and remove the very tantalising incentive for demutualisation. Those pioneers who set up and found co-operatives, mutuals and friendly societies never do so in the hope of turning a quick profit. They do so because of a desire to enhance the common good, which can be achieved only by co-operation. They seek not only to build a financial enterprise but to provide a community with a tangible solution to a shared need. Indeed, these co-operators have neither the right nor the expectation of securing personal financial benefit from the increased value of their society; this is where the problems arise.

This Bill, therefore, establishes the right from day one, if they wish, for new mutuals, co-ops and friendly societies to enshrine in their governing documents that any capital surplus in the event of dissolution will be held securely in the hope that future generations may, one day, pick up where they left off. It would stop eagle-eyed investors seeking to demutualise, distribute an unearned windfall profit and for ever end the common good that the founding members had intended from their original stake.

This Bill is a bulwark to those who see successful mutuals and co-operatives as an opportunity to asset-strip and make a quick buck on the backs of generations of working people who made a choice about the type of business they wished to support, so it definitely has the support of our Benches.