Co-operatives and Mutuality

Debate between Jonathan Evans and Jesse Norman

Thursday 30th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in a debate under your chairmanship, Mr Amess.

I should start by disclosing that I do pro bono work with the John Lewis Partnership, which kindly pays into a charitable fund for local independent charities in my constituency. I am also the chair of the all-party group on employee ownership.

I massively welcome the debate and its excellent timing, coming as it does in co-operatives fortnight. I very much congratulate the hon. Members for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) and for Islwyn (Chris Evans), as I know other Members will, for calling this important and timely debate.

I want to celebrate two organisations in my constituency. One is Money Box, which is Herefordshire’s own credit union. The second is Widemarsh Workshop, which I am working to help transform into a co-op. It is a social enterprise that creates excellent furniture and works with disabled local people.

I have been interested and actively involved in co-ops, mutual organisations, employee-owned firms and similar organisations for many years. In that context, I pay tribute to an extraordinary man called Robert Oakeshott, whom many Members will know of and who died about 10 days ago, on 21 June. He was a lifelong friend of the co-operative movement in this country and overseas. He wrote a book, “The Case for Workers’ Co-ops”, many years ago, and helped to set up co-ops. His book “Jobs and Fairness” was, and still is, the seminal contribution to the discussion and debate on employee ownership. Robert was an extraordinarily far-sighted man. I wish that he were here to see the debate and the progress that the Government and their supporters across the third sector and the private and public sectors have made in promoting co-ops. I know that he would be thrilled. He was a great influence on me, and he brought me into Job Ownership Ltd, the predecessor organisation to the Employee Ownership Association.

I am also very pleased to have been able to help so many of my colleagues and to spread the word on the value of co-operative and mutual ideas on the centre right of the political spectrum through what we have called the Conservative Co-operative Movement. I have 37 Conservative colleagues who are members, and the number is growing. So far we have published two publications. One is called “Nuts and Bolts: How to Start a Food Co-op”, and is a detailed guide. It was mentioned earlier that the original form of co-operative organisation was the industrial and provident society, but now, and in many respects thanks to the previous Government, there has been an expansion, and people can use many different routes, including trusts and community interest companies. One thing that this lovely little book does is to set out all the possible different legal and practical approaches to setting up a co-op, and to consider the advantages and disadvantages. Our second publication is a pamphlet that we have recently published, called “Co-ops in the Big Society”, which explores all the different ways in which co-ops can add to the delivery of public and private services, and the role they can play in society.

Co-ops, with the mutual ethos that they derive from and celebrate, their spirit of trust, and their moral embedding in our society and communities, are of profound importance. One is reminded of the Rochdale Pioneers, whose history brings out a truth that some hon. Members may find slightly rebarbative, although I think it is important to remind ourselves of it: co-ops are by their nature rather conservative—with a small “c”— institutions. The first successful co-op, as has been mentioned, was established by the Rochdale Pioneers in 1844. They were 28 poor weavers and tradesmen looking for a better future as the industrial revolution mechanised the cloth trade. They relied on slowly accumulated subscriptions of £1 each from their members and initially made a modest £13 a week in sales. By 1850, just six years later, the co-op had 600 members, nearly £2,300 in capital and sales of £300 a week. In 1861, 11 years on, it diversified into housing for its members. By the end of the 19th century the Rochdale Pioneers had in turn established the Co-operative building society, which is a major provider of mortgages to this day.

We should look again at the Rochdale Pioneers’ experience. That success was the result of self-help, entrepreneurship and community energy. It was not the result of state patronage or official intervention. Those men and women were able to adapt the co-operative form and the broader idea of shared ownership to a variety of social needs—a local food shop, local housing and local mortgages. They were motivated as much by high ideals as by economic necessity—a point that has already been well made. In their first year of operation they established the Rochdale principles, to which all co-ops broadly adhere today. I think we need something similar today if we are to combat the fragmentation of British society.

There is a huge opportunity—I am delighted that it is being seized and developed by the Government—to initiate a great wave of change across society, whether that is through Cabinet Office pathfinders, the mutualisation of the Post Office or some of the work that is being done to create new forms of delivery of public services. Those are all thoroughly important. No less important are the opportunities to stimulate the growth of co-ops, mutuals, employee-owned organisations and the like in the private sector. That is a point that is widely misunderstood and I am thrilled that the Government take the same positive and proactive attitude towards private sector co-ops as they have to public ones.

[Jonathan Evans]

I have been looking for an opportunity to return to the issue of Northern Rock, on which my hon. Friend intervened earlier, and his work on assessing the possibility of remutualisation. Is my hon. Friend disappointed by the fact that United Kingdom Financial Investments appears to have made the recommendation on sale but not published the outcome of its assessment of the option of remutualisation? I respect what my hon. Friend has said about it, but it seems a bit odd that we have not seen the detail, even though UKFI obviously must have looked at that subject.

[Jesse Norman]

It is a disappointment that UKFI has not published its thinking on that even in outline. The calculations are not enormously complex. There is, of course, a further political issue, which has to do with the return of cash to the public Exchequer at a time of extreme economic crisis, but one still hopes that something of the form of the mutual ethos can be retained in the new organisation when it is ultimately sold.