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Northern Rock

Like my fellow Co-operative party MPs, I strongly wanted to see a mutual solution for Northern Rock. The Government's reasons for not going down that route seem to change every time the issue comes before the House. The Government were happy to sell at a discount and use vendor financing, but are not those the very reasons why the Government used to say they could not proceed with remutualisation? Further to that, the Minister's statement that ““no mutual came forward with a bid”” suggests that he does not really understand the issue at all. Surely the point of a mutual is that the members themselves would buy it out and become the owners.