David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

Cooperatives and Community Benefit Societies Bill

Mr. Lepper: I am glad to have this brief opportunity to add my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mr. Todd). The fact that he chose to introduce a Bill relating to co-operatives after having drawn the No. 1 spot in the ballot for private Members' Bills this year is a sign of the strength of the revival of interest in the co-operative and mutuals sector. I pay tribute to him for that and for the way in which he has guided the Bill through a process that can often be strewn with obstacles for a Back-Bench Member of Parliament.

In the co-operative and mutual movement, we often spend a lot of time talking about our history. Indeed, we have talked a bit about that history today, (see below) and I shall do so a bit more, if I may. I have already referred to Dr. King and his pioneering efforts back in the 1820s, but it was also in Brighton that Peter Kropotkin was inspired towards the end of the 19th century to write "Mutual Aid", partly as a repost to the popularised Darwinian theories of individualism that were so dominant at the end of the Victorian era. It is perhaps no coincidence that when a group of 30 or so organisations operating on co-operative and mutual principles got together five or six years ago to act more cohesively in the Sussex area, they decided to adopt the name "Mutual Aid" for their organisation, which took the form of an industrial and provident society. I am glad to say that they were supported by the co-operative retail group in their activities.

In the past few years, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, West (Mr. Bailey) has said, partly because of attempts to demutualise building societies and attacks by carpetbaggers on the Co-operative Wholesale Society, we have seen the co-operative and mutual movement reviving and galvanising itself. It has done so not only because of the need to protect, but because of the need to look to the future. In the past year, two Bills on such issues have been introduced—those of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Thomas), to whom I pay tribute as president-elect of the Co-operative Congress for the next year, and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mr. Lazarowicz). Both those Bills dealt with aspects of co-operative and mutual organisation.

I am proud of the record of this Labour Government in supporting co-operatives. Mention has already been made of Supporters Direct, which was established with funding from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and it was my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister who set up the Co-operative Commission a couple of years ago to consider the future of the co-operative movement. In public service provision and well-known examples such as those in Bristol and Greenwich, we can see how co-operative forms of organisation are making services more responsive to the needs of those who are using them. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West rightly suggested that the principles of community benefit societies might well have a part to play in the organisation of foundation hospitals.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire on his Bill and I hope that it completes its remaining stages. It is part of the welcome revival of interest in co-operative and mutual principles that I am sure will now go only from strength to strength.

Extract from an earlier part of the debate.

Andrew Love: I wish to …pay tribute to the founders of the co-operative movement and the community benefit movement, including the Rochdale pioneers of 1844 and J. T. W. Mitchell—a person of very humble origins—who was the chief executive of the Co-operative Wholesale Society in 1895 and took part in an investigation by a Committee of the House of Commons into retailing. His comments and his vision for the future are due great respect, even today.

Mr. Lepper: In his catalogue of pioneers of the co-operative whom he congratulates, I am sure that he would want to include Dr. William King and those others who in the early 1820s, some 20 years before the Rochdale pioneers, set up a co-operative retailing shop and a working men's institute based on co-operative principles in West street in my constituency.