13:49 Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)

I refer the Government to “The Co-operative Advantage”, a book edited by Ed Mayo of Co-operatives UK. It lists the areas in which co-operatives are being applied, to great social benefit: agriculture, community food, renewable energy, retail, insurance, banking, creative industries, sport, tourism, education, social care, health, housing, criminal justice and transport. There is huge scope in our lives and society to advance co-operatives, to general benefit. Indeed, one of the most inspiring people I met in the previous Parliament was a young women working as a careworker for an employee-owned co-operative. She spoke about issues of employee engagement, capital, administration and accounting as vibrantly as a venture capitalist might. She was fully engaged in what she was doing. More than that, the users of her service, as participants in the ownership of the service they used, were also fully engaged.

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13:52 Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)

Thirdly, the co-op has a celebrated history, but it is really all about the future. We know the story of the Rochdale pioneers who, all those years ago, started the first co-operative, but when it comes to the challenges of tomorrow—tackling global poverty, helping the poorest nations to build their economies and meeting the challenge of climate change—it is the co-operative ideal that best equips us to succeed.

Co-ops can provide greater stability and support in a post-Brexit world of insecurity and risk. It is a real shame, and a missed opportunity, that both the coalition Government and, more recently, the Tory Government have paid so little attention to co-ops. We have come a long way since the days of the Conservative Co-operative Movement—one of the more audacious pieces of repositioning by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron). The Conservative-led coalition was no friend to the co-op movement. Between 2010 and 2015, Ministers withdrew support for solar renewable energy co-operatives, forcing many to close down; took funding away from the co-operative schools project, which was making a real difference for many schools throughout the country; and shelved plans for more co-operative Sure Start centres and housing trusts. I am a passionate believer in education about alternative models of ownership. In too many schools throughout the country, from primary right through to secondary, young people are not learning about the co-operative and mutual alternative.

We also want tax incentives for community energy. What could be better or more important than allowing communities to create energy and own it themselves? That would not only reduce our reliance on carbon sources and do more to meet our renewables target, but ensure that all the people in a community could own their own energy. Over the past two years, the Government have radically changed the regulatory environment for community renewable energy schemes and withdrawn tax incentives that encouraged community investment in those schemes. I sincerely hope that they will revisit that decision.

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14:36 Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour)

I hope the Minister is listening, because we should be more ambitious about what can be achieved through policy. We want to see resilient, high-productivity businesses in an economy that is fairer for everyone. My hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has previously expressed his ambition to at least double the size of the co-operative economy, which would be a £40 billion boost to the economy, but too much existing Government policy works against that. Cuts to renewable energy, and community generation in particular, make little economic sense. The damage done to genuine community-owned energy schemes through the withdrawals of incentives to investment, such as the seed enterprise investment scheme, has been significant.

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