Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, with reference to page 16 of the Government’s Civil Society Strategy, what progress her Department has made on extending the support offered to public sector teams aspiring to form mutuals to other social sector organisations that wish to deliver public services.

The Government currently runs a support programme for public service mutuals. Following a series of engagement events, the then Minister for Civil Society launched a public consultation on the future definition of public service mutuals on 19th July 2019. The consultation, which closed on 18th October 2019, included proposals to widen the current definition to include organisations that don’t originate in the public sector and to strengthen and clarify requirements around employee influence, independence, and the distribution of profits. We will be considering responses over the coming months.