Co-operative and Mutual Businesses

Debate between Gareth Snell and Jeremy Lefroy

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, because he takes me neatly to my next point, which is about learning from good practice on a smaller scale that directly benefits our economy. The Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network, of which he and I were both members when we were council leaders, demonstrates overwhelmingly what can be done if we put a small amount of investment into local projects. Tudor Evans, who leads the council in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), and Sharon Taylor in Stevenage are just a few examples of people who are pushing this agenda nationally.

If we put a small amount of investment into a group of people who want to change the way that their town works, we can get huge dividends back. If we move away from a simple contractual relationship for a new business towards profit share for rental purposes or an equity share in lieu of rent, we can suddenly start to sustain our high streets better. We can see empty units revitalised by businesses that can think about long-term business planning, rather than short-term business planning to meet next month’s rent and rates bill. We end up with a greater economic benefit to the local community.

If the Government thought about how they could help local authorities to do the sort of work that the Co-operative Councils’ Innovation Network is doing across the country, they would see an increase in potential tax take, because there would be more thriving small businesses. What do we know about thriving small businesses? We know that the people they employ spend their money in the neighbouring shops, and we have a circular economy, whereby one or two different thought processes about how we include more people in decision making in a community leads to economic benefits for not only the Treasury but local communities. That should surely be looked at by this Government or the next Government or as part of Labour’s commitment to at least double the co-operative sector.

The mutualisation argument extends to not only high streets but things such as public services for buses and trains. There is an argument for utilities to be mutualised, because these are things that we all use. If we mutualise and say that the people who use those services should have a stake in the control of them, those services can be driven to a higher quality and standard. There can be financial dividends for the users, but there can also be improvements in standards of delivery, because the people using the services are in control of how they are used. That is a fundamentally simple model that is not being exploited sufficiently by a number of Government bodies at the moment.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The hon. Gentleman is making an extremely important point, and I agree with everything he is saying. One body that is, in effect, a mutual and is growing month by month almost under the radar is the National Employment Savings Trust—NEST. It is growing by several hundred million pounds. Last I saw, it had £5 billion, and by the end of the next decade, it will probably be one of the largest financial institutions in the country. It is doing a great job in many ways, yet almost all the top 10 investments of NEST are in overseas companies, not ones in the UK. It may have operations in the UK, but they are overseas investments. Does he agree that, given that it is a mutual, or at least owned with social purpose in the mutual interest, at least some of those investments could be put into precisely the things he is talking about?

[Gareth Snell]

I agree entirely. The hon. Gentleman, as always, has touched on a pragmatic and simple way of fixing something that should not be a problem to start with. He talked about the Staffordshire Credit Union. The reason the Staffordshire Credit Union ended up folding was that we were unable to meet the Prudential Regulation Authority’s 3% threshold rule between capital and assets. With a very small investment that a body like NEST could have provided, we would have been able to continue helping the thousands of people who were members, offering secure, low-return financial products to people who need it the most—people in communities such as Stoke-on-Trent, where payday lenders prey because they know that people want to borrow money quickly. While credit unions do not provide an immediate alternative to payday lending, they are part of the mix that is available. I can immediately think of a number of organisations that would benefit from the sort of investment the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and then the mutual role of NEST would get to grow and become even greater.

I want to go back briefly to my point about railways and buses. I may end up falling out with my Front-Bench colleagues on this issue, as on many others. State ownership is still a monopoly, and if we are talking about ways in which we could open up public services to be democratically controlled by the public, we need to mutualise them. We should allow and facilitate worker and management buy-outs of existing companies that are looking to be sold, and enable places to allow municipal bus companies to come back into the mix. This would help to sustain the market and—again, I go back to this point—make sure that people using those services have some semblance of taking control of those services and delivering them in a way they think is appropriate for their communities and sustainable in the long term.

This goes not just for public services. We have not touched on the potential economic benefits of things such as fan-owned football clubs and how we should do more to push fan-owned stadiums. In many other countries, it is not uncommon for sporting facilities and sports clubs to be owned, operated and managed by the users of those facilities. In this country, we have not particularly got into that model, as far as I can see, with the depth and the courage that others have.

Finally—I am conscious of the time—about 18 months ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) ran a very clever social media campaign pointing out that if the 5% profit of some of the largest companies in the country was shared among their employee base, each employee would receive a certain amount of money, emulating the French profit-sharing law. To turn full circle back to my first point, if we had such a law in this country—it is not necessarily a co-operative solution, but it is about profit sharing and sharing the values of co-operation—what would happen to that money? Most people who work in such companies and small-scale industries will spend that money locally: more money in their pockets means more money going into their local high streets, shops and facilities. I am sure the Government have already looked at the circular effect of an economic benefit coming from a co-operative solution, even if it is not a co-operative model, and if they have not already committed to looking at the French profit-sharing law, I would encourage the Minister to do so.

It would be wrong of me not to talk about the Co-operative Group as a whole. As has been mentioned by a number of my colleagues, it is not just about the financial products and services it offers, but the values and ethics it brings to them. The Co-operative Group is leading the way on dealing with modern slavery, food injustice and food hunger, and retail crime. It knows that, at the heart of everything it does, is its staff and its consumers, and those are the values that I am sure the Minister will have heard about in every contribution today and will want to make part of any Government strategy on co-operatives.

Children’s Social Care Services: Stoke-on-Trent

Debate between Gareth Snell and Jeremy Lefroy

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I agree wholeheartedly. The report makes it quite clear that there has been a marked decline in the provision of children’s protective services in Stoke-on-Trent since 2015. That coincided with the last round of local elections, in which the City Independent group took control of the local authority. If we are being honest, its record of attendance at the corporate parenting panel demonstrates its disinterest in this area. Of the 16 meetings that one councillor could attend, she attended zero, and she is responsible for the funding of children’s services across the council—eight apologies, and eight non-attendances.

We should make it clear—I will ask the Minister later on—whether there is anything that the Government think they can do to ensure that councillors that have responsibility for these very important areas, including both adults’ and children’s social care, are compelled to attend those meetings, to further their understanding of what is going on. From councillors who have been on the corporate parenting panel, where they have heard from caseworkers who feel under pressure and stretched, I know that information was available at that time to the local authority members who make these decisions, had those members chosen to attend. The fact that they chose to attend none of those meetings shows the interest they have in that service. As a Parliament, we should talk collectively about how we can reinforce to people in decision-making roles their responsibilities.

I want to touch briefly on another comment in the report, which said:

“The response to children and young people who may be at increased risk due to contact with extremist ideology is not robust”.

Stoke-on-Trent is a city in which we have had our problems with both the far right and organised Islamist terrorism, and we need to ensure that we protect our young people from both extremes. The report clearly states that young people are not being protected from extremism activity in a place where we know it is taking place. I do not understand how any local authority or councillor can stand up and defend the report in the way that Councillor Janine Bridges did by saying that things are much better under her watch than they have ever been.

The report sets out in black and white one of the starkest arrangements for protecting young people anywhere—not only in the west midlands, but in the country. I wonder whether the Minister could help me better understand at what point Government step in to start to resolve some of this directly. Frankly, I have no faith that the City Independent group that currently runs the council with Conservatives has either the political ability or the determination to resolve this, other than saying that everything is all right. That has been made quite clear in the leaflets that are being delivered around the city ahead of local elections, which say how wonderful children’s services are. It beggars belief that there is this lack of connection between what is written in black and white by the authorities that are responsible for this, and what is written by the people who have taken decisions that led to this chronic failure in the first place.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this very important debate to the House; it is vital that this issue gets debated. I understand that Stoke-on-Trent City Council is in quite close contact—particularly through the multi-agency safeguarding hub—with Staffordshire County Council and other excellent councils, such as Leeds. Has he seen a determined effort by the leadership to ensure that—even now—the deficiencies pointed out in the report are beginning to be addressed?

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman points to the MASH system in Staffordshire County Council, which is one of the areas where Stoke-on-Trent City Council has made a rod for its own back. Across the border, in Staffordshire County Council—literally on the doorstep—is a system that is more robust and much better than the one that Stoke-on-Trent City Council operates. A lot of the agencies that are involved in it, including the police and some of the third-party organisations, work with both authorities, so it is not as if it was not possible to tap into that system to see how it works.

The officers that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) North and I have spoken to understand the severity of the report and want to fix the problem. The officer corps desperately wants to resolve it, and the social workers we know are heartbroken. They have taken it personally, because it is young people entrusted to them who have been let down. However, I have not seen any element of acceptance from some parts of the political leadership that there is a problem that needs to be resolved. They took to the airwaves on the day the report was published to dismiss it and say that it was the Government’s fault for not giving them enough money, local MPs’ fault for not shouting about it previously, and in some cases the families’ fault for having the audacity to find themselves in need of social care in the first place.

I do not have the sense that the cabinet member responsible and the leader of the council understand the gravity of the report that is in front of them. If I am being honest, I do not believe that they have any interest in resolving this problem, because this is not the sort of politics that they want to do. They are not interested in rolling up their sleeves and dealing with the difficult parts of civic life in Stoke-on-Trent. They like to do the fun, happy stuff, such as cutting ribbons in front of new car parks, filling potholes and having their pictures taken—but children’s social care is the sort of stuff that matters to people on a day-to-day basis.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The hon. Gentleman and I have joint concern for the city, which is important to the whole of Staffordshire, not just its residents. I understand that an improvement board has been set up to deal with the situation. What is his understanding of its work and its effectiveness so far?

[Gareth Snell]

There is an improvement board, but unfortunately, given the timing of the report and the purdah period for the local election cycle, no one will tell us what is going on with it, what actions it is taking and whether it is looking to Staffordshire County Council, which I hold up as an example—it is run by a good Conservative administration, which has taken responsibility for these issues and is dealing with them. This is not about Labour and Conservative party politics. There are perfect examples around the country of good Tory councils doing this well, and examples of Labour councils doing it well. This is an example of a council doing it badly, and the leadership refuse to accept that.

Healthcare: North Staffordshire

Debate between Gareth Snell and Jeremy Lefroy

Monday 23rd October 2017 Commons Chamber

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

At the heart of every community is a hospital, and a hospital such as north Staffordshire’s Royal Stoke is one that has many potential problems. As a result of previous occurrences, the trust has grown in size, and at the end of 2017-18, the hospital was predicted to have a deficit of £119 million. We know that the NHS is one of the things we are proudest of in our country, but we also know that it is one of the things in our country where spending squeezes have been greatest.

It was announced earlier this year that £29 million would be saved in-year by the hospital as part of the cost improvement programme. This hospital has one of the highest entry rates at accident and emergency, and it is also one of the places at which people routinely present themselves out of frustration at not being able to get a doctor’s appointment locally. The figure of £29 million in-year savings was increased in March to a target of £50 million, and further savings were projected for 2018-19 and 2019-20 of £35 million each, taking the total savings of the hospital to well in excess of £120 million.

After serious work, the hospital is now suggesting that it will be able to end the year with a deficit of £68.9 million. However, the deficit is dependent on two other funding arrangements that have yet to materialise relating to the County Hospital in the constituency of the hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), and I am grateful to him for being in the Chamber. NHS England has promised £14.9 million towards the transitional fund to help Royal Stoke with the demands placed on it by the County Hospital and to help the people of Stafford to maintain the hospital that they want and so richly deserve, and a further £9.9 million was promised from the Department of Health, but that money has not materialised. That bill of about £25 million is one the University Hospitals of North Midlands NHS Trust needs and would like to have in order to secure the provision of health services for north Staffordshire.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I absolutely agree with him that the work Royal Stoke has done to bring stability to County Hospital, Stafford, has been of great benefit to my constituents and the people of the whole of my part of Staffordshire. It is therefore absolutely vital that the trust and Royal Stoke should not suffer from having undertaken this very important work.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The trust in north Staffordshire should not suffer, and nor should his constituents in Stafford, who quite rightly want to have the hospital they have with the services it is providing, including an A&E service that is vital to relieving pressure in Royal Stoke A&E at peak times.

As I have said, the cost improvement programme in-year saving was raised to £50 million in March. Having already found itself with a £25 million hole, because money had not materialised from NHS England and the Department of Health, the trust decided to up the cost improvement programme savings by a further £10 million. That means the hospital is required to find £60 million in this financial year, on top of all the savings that are being made through the capped expenditure programme.

The hospital is aware of things it can do to help to alleviate its problem. For instance, it is investing £2 million in creating 45 additional beds to alleviate waiting times in A&E by taking out excess space in corridors and smaller bathrooms to use for beds. We would all agree that we do not want them to be in such a position, but it is taking that risk and making that investment to try to improve the health service in Stoke-on-Trent and in north Staffordshire.

I pay tribute to Paula Clark, the chief executive of the trust, who has worked tirelessly with the former chair of the trust, John MacDonald, to try to overcome the problems the hospital has faced, not least the reputational issues that came with some of the incorrect information circulated under the—

Stoke-on-Trent City of Culture 2021

Debate between Gareth Snell and Jeremy Lefroy

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend, as always, shows his experience in matters that are above me. Given that my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) are present, and that my other neighbour, the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), is the Culture Secretary, it would be remiss of me not to point out that everybody needs good neighbours, and that with a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend.

Stoke-on-Trent’s historic contributions to cultural advancements are not limited to music, food, theatre and ceramics. We have a rich scientific heritage too. Sir Oliver Lodge, born in 1851 in Penkhull, was a physicist and inventor who identified electromagnetic radiation independent of the work being carried out by his contemporary, Hertz. His work gave the world the spark plug. The fact that that is not better known is shocking. Thomas Twyford, born in Hanley in 1849, may have bequeathed to our society one of the greatest cultural advances ever: the single-piece ceramic flush toilet. In doing so, he performed a public duty for public sanitation.

Our city’s industrial heritage is well preserved at the Etruria Industrial Museum. The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North mentioned, is also home to part of the Staffordshire hoard. The Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston has kept a real and tangible link with the historic family, who made their name in Stoke-on-Trent. The Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke-on-Trent South ensures that skills from our past are being passed on to our children for their future.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the name Wedgwood. He may also know that one of the Wedgwood family, Emma Wedgwood, married Charles Darwin, who has an extremely strong connection with our area. I do not think one needs to say more about Charles Darwin, but I am sure that if Stoke-on-Trent were to be city of culture, we would celebrate that connection.

[Gareth Snell]

Absolutely. The Wedgwood family are still very much active in civil society in Stoke-on-Trent today, in a number of ways, and I am sure they will lend their support to our bid.

In recent years we have seen Appetite Stoke run public art exhibitions to demonstrate that culture is part of Stoke-on-Trent’s everyday existence and not simply something that happens at weekends. It has been successful in bringing forward plans for young people to be more actively involved in how Stoke-on-Trent celebrates its heritage and past, and it encapsulates what we can do going forward.

Thinking of the past, it would be remiss of me not to mention that Philip Astley was born in 1742 in neighbouring Newcastle-under-Lyme and spent most of his formative years in the Potteries. He, of course, is known as the father of the modern circus. Stoke-on-Trent has another famous adopted son in the form of Neil Baldwin—or Nello the Clown, as he is known to us—who was Stoke City’s kit man but has also been a great advocate for the circus industry; he still performs, even though he is in his early 70s.

I cannot participate in this debate without mentioning Staffordshire University. It is one of the finest universities that can be found—a modern university that has taken all that modernity gives and made the most of it. It has a thriving ceramic art department. It has a world-renowned gaming department that is now at the forefront of developing digital technologies. Its performing arts are well received, and it is difficult to get tickets to some of its events, although I figure I might have a slightly better chance now. The university is also at the cutting edge of scientific advancement, which participates heavily in the cultural identity of Stoke-on-Trent.

Finally, it would be wrong not to mention professional football, which is a great part of our city’s cultural identity. Stoke City is one of the oldest professional football clubs in the world. It has been at the forefront of community work across Stoke-on-Trent, and its current chairman, Peter Coates, does much to help and support the city.

[Gareth Snell]

I most certainly do not agree. There is but one team in Stoke, and that is Stoke City. My hon. Friend should look at the name, although I appreciate that she has her own loyalties.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

Perhaps I can cool things down a bit. To be serious, is it not true that Stoke City is a fine example of a local family—local investors—putting money into their local club and taking a long-term view? Would that most other premiership teams followed that model.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. This is not even about the football club. Peter Coates and Stoke City have demonstrated that there is a role in communities for professional football clubs that wish to make an investment with their fans. It is not simply about providing a game mid-week or at weekends. There are multiple examples across Stoke-on-Trent of families, young people and schools benefiting as a direct result of the commitment that the Coates family and Stoke City have shown to Stoke-on-Trent. Without them, our city would be all the poorer.

Stoke-on-Trent is a city where people can eat and drink, laugh, dance and sing, learn, love and live. We are artists, educators, innovators, engineers, potters, miners, toilers and industrialists. Ours is a city of culture born out of labour, and a city that has contributed so much to so many. It is a privilege to support the motion this afternoon.