Lord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cormack's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
(12 years, 4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Freud
My Lords, we have a procurement function going on with the credit unions, which will start shortly, in terms of how they can modernise and improve. It may well be that there are contributions that are not financial but intellectual that the credit unions can add. We are currently having a series of working parties with the retail banks as we develop the requirements for universal credit and financial inclusion.
Lord Cormack
My Lords, I greatly welcome my noble friend’s commitment, but can we accelerate things? In this age of rapacious loan sharks, credit unions could be of real help to many people who are struggling on very low fixed incomes. Could we please have a little more expedition?
Lord Freud
My Lords, the whole point of this exercise is to expedite the growth of the movement. There are currently 1 million members of credit unions. The target that we have set is to double that within five to seven years and to make credit unions self-sustaining, which they currently are not.