Social Enterprises and Community Ownership

Patrick Hurley Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Hurley (Southport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. My hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) said that ownership matters. She is spot on. Ownership affects who makes decisions and who benefits from those decisions. For too long, we have had too little ownership of commercial and community assets by local people, and too much by remote organisations with no real stake in the places they operate in.

Before coming to this place, I worked for years in what is called the social enterprise sector. I have never been keen on calling it a sector. One of my old mates once said to me, “Sectors are where movements go to die.” I think social enterprise is better understood as a movement. It is defined not by business structures, but by an underlying philosophy that business should work in the interests of communities and that wealth should circulate locally rather than being extracted.

I will devote the rest of my speech to the new Office for the Impact Economy, which sits in the Cabinet Office. It is a positive development that shows that there is an understanding that tackling social and economic challenges requires taking a different approach. We already have a good example of the Office for the Impact Economy’s approach in the better futures fund, which currently sits in DCMS. That fund is bringing together public, private and social investment to support early intervention, and it pays for results rather than just for activity. Rather than having the Office for the Impact Economy reinvent the wheel, there is an opportunity to build on the success of the better futures fund. The Office for the Impact Economy would be better placed to take on responsibility for the existing fund from DCMS and further develop it as a cross-Government programme.

The approach that sits behind the better futures fund should not be limited to one programme affecting young people, because the same model can be applied to a much wider set of complex social issues, including homelessness, street drinking, library services, outreach and high street regeneration. In all those areas, we are not suffering from a lack of effort; we are suffering from over a decade of underfunding and from a system that is often too short-term and too tied to the wrong outcomes and outputs.

The better futures approach allows for longer-term investment, focuses on prevention and gives organisations the space that they need to deliver outcomes that work. If the Office for the Impact Economy can take the better futures fund model and apply it more widely to new problems, it could play a significant role in supporting social enterprises and community businesses to tackle some of the most complex problems facing our communities.

We all want economic growth. We all want growth that is felt across the country. But we need ownership of that growth. We need control and investment to be more closely connected to our communities, where people live. That is where the social enterprise movement has an important role to play.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir John. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh—a different Leigh—and Atherton (Jo Platt) for introducing this important debate. Like her, I am low-key obsessed with towns, so it is a genuine pleasure to speak on the subject.

When we talk about ownership, what we are really talking about is power: the power that communities have over the places they live, the services they rely on and the futures that they want to build. Nowhere in my constituency is that clearer than in the story of a pub called the Oxleathers. In 2023, thanks to the efforts of Highfields and Western Downs community group, the Oxleathers was registered as an asset of community value. That is not an obscure, technical planning designation. In reality, it is an incredibly powerful tool. It means that the community stood up and said, “This place matters to us.”

[Patrick Hurley]

I neglected to declare an interest in my capacity as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the social, co-operative and community economy. Does my hon. Friend agree that all Members at this debate should attend the annual general meeting of the all-party group on Wednesday 25 March at 5.30 pm? Sadly, it will not be in a community pub, but in Room N in Portcullis House.

[Leigh Ingham]

I encourage everyone to attend that meeting.