Meeting of the Parliament 17 September 2019
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in an excellent debate that is full of ideas from all sides of the chamber. I thank the Government for the debate and compliment the cabinet secretary on the open and engaged way in which she presented the Scottish Government’s motion. The commitment to work with the credit union sector and to co-produce the strategy is incredibly important.
I am honoured to have two outstanding credit unions in my constituency. Johnstone Credit Union celebrates its 40th anniversary this year; it was founded in 1979 and was one of the last credit unions to be established before the Credit Union Act 1979. It has more than 5,000 members on a Renfrewshire-wide common bond, serving not just Johnstone but the whole Renfrewshire community. It is an award-winning credit union, having received the Scottish Enterprise millennium award for community development and, in 2004, the Queen’s award for voluntary service.
I also pay tribute to Pioneer Mutual Credit Union—formerly known as East Renfrewshire Credit Union—which was established in Barrhead in 1993. Its common bond enables access for 1.8 million people. I commend it for being a signatory to the women in finance charter, with a pledge
“to retain 50% of women in senior management positions”.
There have been many substantive speeches. As Pauline McNeill highlighted, this is not a “cuddly debate”, as consensual as it may be. At the credit union movement’s heart is an ethos that has never been more relevant to our society and the contemporary challenges that we face—an ethos of individual responsibility and mutual assistance.
We all understand that the prevalence of cheap, easy and accessible credit led to the financial catastrophe of 2008. My generation and subsequent generations are growing up in the wake of that catastrophe and are having to face its consequences, which have also manifested themselves in the political arena. Such challenges might seem insurmountable, but I believe that the way to approach them is to start at the granular level, in each and every one of our local communities. The ethos of a member-owned institution that is designed to put the interests of its members—and not profit—first is relevant not just to the financial sector but to many other sectors across the country.
Time is limited—I have only a few seconds left—but before I close I want to welcome the exciting commitment to the £10 million investment fund that the cabinet secretary announced. I noted that some of that fund will be available for spending on information technology. It is important that we do all that we can to support our credit unions to keep pace with the latest innovations. I will give an example in relation to which there might be potential. There is now growing use of rounding-up apps on mobile telephones as a means of saving. I am curious to know whether such a process could be applied to the credit union movement to enable people to save more efficiently and with greater ease.
Unfortunately, lack of time prevents me from going any further, so I will close there.