Co-operative and Mutual Businesses — House of Commons, 2019-06-27
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Luke Pollard (Labour, Centre-left): It is a pleasure to follow my fellow south-west MP, fellow co-operator and fellow shadow Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). As we have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber, there is a real energy and dynamism around co-operatives and the values that they stand for. We need to grasp the opportunity to stop just talking about co-operatives and mutuals as a worthy activity that happens on the periphery of our economy; we should have it as a mainstream alternative and option in nearly every single area of public and private organisation. That is what we need to look at much more and I am really glad that so many Opposition Co-operative MPs, in particular, have spoken so passionately about the opportunities that lie ahead. That is what I want to talk about today, because the time for co-operatives is now, and we must seize the nettle Before that, I echo the praise and thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for serving for so long as chair of our Co-operative party—he would have got less time for murder. He has done a very good job. I also put on record my thanks to the outgoing general secretary of the Co-operative party. Claire McCarthy has served our party and movement incredibly well. We all wish her well for the next stage of her career and wish the best of luck to all the contenders who are being interviewed to replace her. As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I am very proud to have stood on a manifesto that pledged at least to double the size of the co-operative sector. As Plymouth’s voice in this debate, I will tell the House a bit about what Plymouth is aiming to do, because we have a Labour and Co-operative-run city council that has pledged to double the size of the co-operative economy in our city by 2025. The Minister will know many of these things well, as a former Conservative candidate for a Plymouth seat, and I know that he will welcome and pay special attention to my remarks Doubling the size of the co-operative economy is a worthy ambition of our times. To achieve that, we need not only to accelerate community wealth-building initiatives, reviewing procurement and providing support to grow the capacity of co-operatives to engage in procurement exercises, but to focus on economic development policies. For folks that are really passionate about co-operative politics, it is sometimes frustrating that co-operative politics tend to be put just in "procurement"—if only we procured differently, we could grow our economy. Yes, that is right—we should and we must—but we must also not neglect the importance of co-operative economic development policies. That is really where Plymouth city council has led the way In Plymouth City Council’s strategy, "Doing it Ourselves", which was published recently, the ambition to double the size of our co-operative economy has been laid out. We want to grow from the 23 co-ops that we have in our city to 50 co-ops; from a turnover of £18.6 million to £40 million; from 9,500 members to 20,000; and from 226 employees to 500. That is a really good ambition and I want every single Member in this House to challenge their own councils—whether Labour, Labour and Co-operative, or of the blue team persuasion—by saying, "What are you doing at a local level to encourage the economic development, growth and starting up of new co-operatives?" Plymouth is rightly very proud of its focus on the wellbeing economy, community-owned infrastructure, worker-owned tech and creative industries, public-facing and cultural hubs and municipal co-operation, but that is not Devon-specific. It can work in every part of the country, and that is what many of things that I want to discuss relate to. Before I continue, I should say that I am a very proud member of the co-operatives that I am speaking about today. I hope that other hon. Members will consider joining them after they hear what I say I will first mention a co-operative that I have spoken about in the House before: the Plymouth Energy Community. It was set up in 2013 to provide radical and green solutions to fuel poverty, which affects 13.4% of the people who live in Plymouth. Since it started, it has done amazing things. In 2014, it invited members of the public to buy a stake in that co-operative. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) said, crowdfunding is really important. At the time, we had the lowest buy-in level—£50—of any crowdfunding co-operative in the country. That was nearly £450 lower than any other at the time, and it made co-operative ownership and innovative projects available to more and more people Having raised more than £600,000 and received a £500,000 loan from Plymouth City Council, Plymouth Energy Community provided solar panels to 21 schools and community buildings. It has gone further, adding 15 primary schools to that list, and we now have new solar panels on the roof of our Olympic-quality sports centre—the Life Centre. It has also opened its first solar farm at Ernesettle, which is incredibly exciting. It has also become a real champion for insulation and energy efficiency, particularly helping communities on low incomes—not only in Devonport, in the patch that I represent, but in St Budeaux and Ham in the north of the city—to reduce the energy costs of their homes by investing in infrastructure and upgrades. It is very proud of that and it should be I spoke to the Plymouth Energy Community during the "The Time is Now" demonstration on Lambeth Bridge yesterday. As well as being an organisation that has excited people to invest in infrastructure, it is also exciting people to get involved in the fight against climate change, and rightly so Plymouth is not just about solar panels on primary schools; it is also about how we use co-operatives to challenge the big evils of our time, one of which is hunger among our schoolchildren. That is where CATERed, the co-operative owned jointly by Plymouth City Council and 67 of our primary schools, has been pioneering. It has pooled all the school catering contracts for the entire city. That includes all the different types of school, as Plymouth has one of every school that every Government since 1945 have ever thought of; diversity of provision is not our problem in Plymouth, although a lack of funding is. CATERed now provides wholesome, healthy food all year round, including over the summer. To its great credit, instead of providing meals for kids who cannot afford to feed themselves properly over the summer from empty school buildings, it does so from parks, reducing the stigma for families who really struggle for food.