Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Jim McMahon Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft). I thank her for the work she does and for being a champion for disabled people.

Watching the King’s Speech was quite an occasion, as it is a moment in history. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) painted a picture of how significant it was, but the irony was not lost that the King arrived in a gold-plated, horse-drawn carriage to announce legislation on banning pedicabs at Westminster tube. It just shows that, however grand the occasion, there is nothing like a Conservative Government to bring it down into the gutter—and much else did follow that.

The test of any King’s Speech must be whether it makes life materially better for the people we are all here to represent, and whether it makes the country we love stronger, more confident and more resilient in the face of global uncertainty. By those measures, it can only be marked as another missed opportunity.

It is a missed opportunity to address one of the biggest economic challenges our country faces. The very bond of the British contract is broken—the promise that if people are willing to work hard and play by the rules, in return they can get on in life and do well, and that through our generational effort, our children can go on to do even better. That contract has not just been reneged on; it has been torn up. People in Chadderton, Oldham West and Royton, and right across Britain, know that and they feel the betrayal every single day: families working all the hours God sends, but still unable to make ends meet; young people starting off in life unable to get on the housing ladder; and older people denied the care they need and deserve to live well into older life.

It is a fact that life has always been challenging for working people, but it has not always been this grinding. There was so much missing from the King’s Speech on social care, the environment and nature, child protection and a range of other issues. It was completely hollow and void of ideas and solutions to the issues facing the country. As the proud chair of the Co-operative party, it is disappointing to see the Government fail to take the opportunity provided by the King’s Speech to seize the many solutions put forward by our movement to address those challenges.

As Labour’s sister party for almost a century, co-operators believe in enterprise, grassroots organisation, and that the wealth and value we create together can and should be used to build stronger communities and stronger economies that we can all share in. We believe, too, that ownership matters, because it drives decision making and ultimately determines where the dividend is returned. On energy, for instance, the Labour and Co-operative parties together have a shared commitment to bringing back community energy as a blueprint to safeguarding energy security and investing in cheap, clean renewable energy that is produced and owned right here in the UK. Instead of investing in non-renewables that help only multinational oil and gas giants, the Government should be backing local communities to produce and own their own renewable energy. Labour’s local power plan sets out how to do that, with a bold ambition for 1 million new owners of energy producing 8 GW of energy by 2030.

We also fail to see any action on retail crime, despite an announcement in the Criminal Justice Bill. It is a crisis and a blight on our high streets that stores such as the Co-op Group are victims of significant retail crime. The Co-op Group reports that 175,000 incidents were recorded in the first six months of this year alone. Retail crime should be a stand-alone offence. Shopworkers enforce the laws set by this House, and they should be afforded the protection of it, too.

The Government’s agenda for this Session also neglected to address the ownership that people desperately need over their local communities and the places that really matter to them. Our high streets have been hollowed out. We see the empty, boarded-up buildings; the pubs, shops and community hubs on which we have relied closing down; and the services on which people depend disappearing. Again, the Labour and Co-operative parties can contribute to the solution. By strengthening the Localism Act 2011 and introducing a genuine community right to buy, we can address head-on that issue of community loss. We can encourage communities to come together to buy at-risk pubs, shops and other assets to make sure that they are protected for future generations.

We believe that words are one thing, but there is nothing like action to show what change can achieve. For instance, in my own constituency, when the Daisyfield Inn, a local pub in Bardsley, was at risk of closure, we managed to secure an asset of community value protection on the register of that building. Now, not only has it been retained for the local community, but it has a community allotment out back to help local people fight isolation and to bring the community together even more. It can be done; the model is there, but we can do even more.

Oldham Athletic Football Club, our pride, is now backed by local power, because Boundary Park and the fields next door used for training—Little Wembley—are now also an asset of community value. We recognise that, beyond the bricks and mortar, these are meeting places—they are the fabric, the glue, the identity, the belonging, the past, the present and, with effort, the future, too. Another blueprint for change offered by the Labour and Co-operative parties—yet another chance missed by the Government—really breaking down the barriers that we are talking about here today.

People feel that the economy is not working for them, and that power is being taken away from them. We believe that if we can double the size of the co-operative sector, where more people have a stake in the future, where businesses are rooted in the community, and where decisions are being made for the benefit of the community, not for short-term dividend payment extraction, we will see an economy that is more resilient and more robust, and that will benefit the UK as well. It has been proved that these businesses are more productive, more resilient, and more equitable, because co-operatives are more than twice as likely to survive the early years of trading when compared with other styles of businesses. We have seen that in huge sectors right across the UK. With just a little more effort, we can see them grow even further.

What would that mean for the UK? According to research commissioned by Co-operatives UK, just last year alone the turnover of the co-operatives in the UK contributed £41 billion to the UK economy, an increase of 3.7% on the previous year. This is not a small-fry contribution; it is a significant part of our economy. Instead of wealth being concentrated in the hands of a small number of people at the top, ownership is spread in the communities where the co-operatives operate. That is important for the local community and important for the country overall.

In the end, what we see from the King’s Speech is what we have seen for the past 13 years: a country that is fragmented socially and economically and a Government who have run out of road, out of ideas and out of solutions to fix those problems. Surely the only way now to repair the cracks in the foundations and to give Britain hope again is to call a general election, not provide a King’s Speech.