8. What steps he is taking to increase levels of employee ownership. (119398)

The Government have welcomed the excellent report by Graeme Nuttall, which provided a series of recommendations on how we can promote employee ownership. We will publish a full Government response to his recommendations this autumn. We have already published a call for evidence on the right to request employee ownership, and I encourage any Members who have ideas on it to get in quick as it closes tomorrow.

I thank the Minister for that answer and warmly welcome her to her new role. The German and US economies have a much greater diversity of corporate ownership structures, so I wonder whether the Minister, in addition to looking at excellent British companies such as the John Lewis Partnership, will be looking abroad for useful lessons.

We certainly will. We are always happy to learn from and share experiences with other countries. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary has been looking at the issues of corporate governance. I know that my hon. Friend has had a strong career with the John Lewis Partnership, which is one of the better known examples of employee ownership, but of course there are many other great examples of British companies that do that, and we are looking forward to promoting that more widely.