Bridging the Gap: Diversity as the Key to Better Business with Steven Cooper CBE

Available wherever you listen to your podcasts.

In this episode, we will explore Aldermore's groundbreaking approach to financing. which offers a lifeline to individuals and businesses typically ignored by mainstream lenders.

Steven Cooper CBE will share with us the emphatic strides Aldermore is making in transitioning towards a more sustainable future, focusing on not just the quality of vehicles and the ever-crucial EV infrastructure, but also on the importance of affordable and fair financial products in the mortgage and savings sectors.

Diversity and social mobility stand at the heart of our conversation as Steven explains how Aldermore is setting new norms. Discover how the company champions gender balance, inclusion, and apprenticeship schemes to harness untapped talents from various walks of life.

Transcript

Rt Hon Justine Greening (00:01.354)

Welcome to this week's Fit for Purpose. This week I'm really delighted to be joined by Stephen Cooper, CBE. He's chief exec at Aldemore Bank. It's an award-winning bank that's got a really distinct purpose that really pushes social mobility. So we'll be hearing more from Stephen shortly, but it's really timely as well because the bank's about to launch its second annual report to society. The first one was back in 2022 and its follow-up report for 2023.

provide some real insight into Aldemore's impact, but also that deep dive into the bank's purpose and strategy. Stephen, brilliant to have you doing the podcast. I think maybe for people who are less familiar with Aldemore, tell us a little bit about Aldemore's purpose, the strategy, and then we can come on to talk about the report to society that you're launching.

Steven Cooper (00:54.433)

Yeah, Justin, thank you for having me as always. Audemar is a multi-specialist lending and savings bank and our purpose, it's stated, is to back people and businesses to go for it in life.

What we really do is we support those individuals and businesses who others do not. So, for example, we often help people get a home for the first time. That doesn't mean we are giving loans or mortgages to people who can't afford it. They can afford it, but they have unique circumstances that get overlooked by mainstream. Similarly with businesses, we help them to expand, create jobs, or transition from old economy, old climate, to new.

So that's our purpose, it's what attracted me to the business and it's undoubtedly what enables us to attract and retain great talent.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (01:47.01)

And I thought it was interesting, you know, if you go on your website, it talks about a bank that wants to back you to achieve more. And as part of that, it says, you know, it's supporting exceptions to the rule. And I think it's quite interesting how, in a sense, you're recognizing that not everyone fits that almost cookie cutter approach to be able to get credit and finance. And yet whether you're an individual or a business, it's actually crucial to be able to getting on with life and realizing ambitions.

Steven Cooper (02:17.641)

Yes, and to your point, everyone's circumstances are different. So we look beyond.

just a credit rating or what the computer says yes or no, we always apply a human lens to look at it. We focus hard on the ability for the individual or the business to afford the borrowing they are taking on. Particularly the interest rates may or may not change through time. So our bad debt levels at the moment are pretty low. We are not seeing much change despite the much tougher environment. It's not just about lending, it's helping people to save for the first time. So very simple products, easy to understand in terms of conditions.

rates that are highly competitive. We've just launched, for example, a new regular savings account, trying to encourage people to save on a regular basis, to have a financial cushion behind them. Many of those people haven't saved on a regular basis before. But it's a very simple product. It enables people to have access to the money should they need it without penalty. And that's really important to what we do.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (02:59.874)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (03:17.45)

And in terms of this next report to society that you're just publishing, tell us a little bit about almost how you see the world having changed since the first one that came out back in 2022.

Steven Cooper (03:31.149)

The purpose of the report really is to show to our stakeholders who are multiple different people.

people from different backgrounds or different needs in society that we are a business, we're a successful business, we're a growing business, we're a profitable business, but it's not just the sake of making profit for a shareholder, it's about how we contribute to society. So it's what we do and probably even more importantly how we do it as we're trying to be transparent and open about that and holding ourselves to account as to how we do that better.

Steven Cooper (04:07.427)

as to what we do differently, but the macro environment, fundamentally different. So interest rates dramatically higher than they were 12, 18 months ago. Cost of living, which is maybe starting to increase for many people, 12, 18 months ago, really is now super hard for many. I mean, no matter how much you earn or money behind you, if you have a loan or a mortgage, you are experiencing much higher for most people, cost of that. Food inflation, I mean,

Rt Hon Justine Greening (04:14.39)

Yeah.

Steven Cooper (04:37.327)

The inflation itself is starting to come down and I've just noticed my own gas bill come down dramatically actually, but it's only gone back to a little bit higher than where it was 18 months ago. But food inflation is still really high. So the ability for people to afford an okay lifestyle is much harder than it was. Similarly for businesses, they're grappling with costs of interest if they are borrowing or wanting to invest in a business much higher than they've had before.

and the cost of operating the business is much higher. So the macro environment is much harder for a lot more people now.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (05:15.946)

And what's that meant for Oldmore in terms of the business you are and the products you already offer and how they've had to adapt over time? How have you found that shift in what is quite a profound change in the economic climate for a bank, for your customers?

Steven Cooper (05:33.425)

Yeah, so we've done a lot of products, we've thought about how we make it more affordable for people. We've put solutions in place for a relatively small number of businesses and consumers who have changed their repayments, for example, from capital to interest only. That's not viable long term, but it does help in the short term. Thankfully, we have very few people who need that help.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (05:48.77)

Go ahead.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (05:54.456)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (05:58.605)

but it's there for those who do. We've done thousands of outreach calls to customers who we make, we can see some of the data and so forth that may be signs of stress, financial stress in their lives, just help them to think about how they might budget differently, what support we can give. Sometimes just talking to someone helps, you know, they realize they're not alone, they're going through this decline with many, many other people and that there are people out there like us amongst

Rt Hon Justine Greening (06:16.47)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (06:28.359)

others who can offer help and support and guidance. So we've done a lot of that. There are several thousand calls we've done. At the same time we're doing that internally. We've got colleagues who are also struggling with their cost of living that is increasing. We've increased our salaries to lower paid colleagues and we've got a small hardship fund for those who are really struggling. I don't know who those people are, we keep it anonymous.

with a little team in place who do that. But we're taking some of that learn from our own colleagues and applying that to our customer base and vice versa.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (06:59.448)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (07:07.466)

And one of the things that you've always done, and I think it in a sense ties back to your wider role that you had as co-chair of the Social Mobility Commission is to really fuse that purpose you had in that role into Aldermore. I mean, it really, really runs through it. So it's probably a good time to dig into what that does mean for you, that focus on social mobility, both internally with your own opportunities and the staff you just talked about, but also externally on some of those

those products that you're offering to people.

Steven Cooper (07:41.249)

So I think, you know, with my own background, I feel, as you know, very strongly about the circumstance of your birth should not dictate the outcomes in your life. That should be down to personal choice and informed choice. And that's at the heart of the purpose of Audemars, what attracted me to the organization. And I've changed many things since joining Audemars. The one thing I haven't changed, if you tweak the word slightly, is the purpose statement I mentioned.

The reason I didn't change it, one is it resonated, two is we have amazingly high customer satisfaction scores because of generally speaking what we do and how we do it. I'll come back to that in a second. But I was really struck by how much it enabled us to attract really good talent.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (08:20.258)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (08:29.645)

to a certain extent, punching above our weight in terms of what we do. And it's that talent that drives those high customer satisfaction schools. I listen to the conversations with customers who we are helping, where others do not, or reaching out to, are you okay? How can we help you? Are things tight? What can we do to help you? They are great conversations.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (08:32.129)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (08:47.054)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (08:50.369)

When you go home at night, you feel good about that. That translates into what we do around our products, which are very simple, very transparent, easy to understand. No gotchas or anything like that, both on the banking side and on the savings side. And that's definitely helped us to attract...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (09:01.315)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (09:08.357)

and grow our custom base and market share over the past 12, 24 months. A link to that, we then look at how we open up to our talent. So we have two, I think, or three strands of activity. One is an apprenticeship scheme.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (09:24.127)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (09:24.673)

I mean reaching to all parts of society, often those who haven't had the chance or the ability or desire in some cases to go on to university. So taking people from school age into the workplace, a structured apprenticeship scheme. Johnny who you know well here, he's made it a mission to spend every pound of our apprenticeship levy in a good way.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (09:47.322)

And Johnny Carberry's your, essentially your head of talent, isn't he, I guess?

Steven Cooper (09:52.793)

Yeah, and he does a fabulous job. He's a teacher by profession, so he understands it and he leads some amazing outreach programs into local schools where we have our operations to help think about financial education. I mean he's won awards for that thought for the organization, but the passion and energy that he brings to that is just tremendous. Our apprenticeship scheme is very proud of that and we've got components linked to that such as black interns, by the way we've offered half of

Rt Hon Justine Greening (10:18.897)

Yeah.

Steven Cooper (10:22.087)

permanent jobs because they are superb and we're really excited about that. And the other element which I like probably more than anything is, you know, like every business we have to think about how we become more efficient, more effective. We are automation into business. That means some roles are being done by people, manual activity aren't there anymore. And this year we've just taken a program to take 10 people from that kind of activity and we

Rt Hon Justine Greening (10:36.238)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (10:51.947)

we train them to do technology roles. So very excited to see how that will play out as well. But that's an example just of what we are doing internally around sort of the transition around technology automation. Jobs will change and we're helping people to change their careers as a result.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (10:54.512)

Ooh.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (11:07.854)

And how have they responded to that? This opening up of a potentially really different career ahead of them.

Steven Cooper (11:14.509)

So we talked about it a lot on road shows through the business and we said that's tried ten places to start with.

and opened up to people to apply. We had more than 10 people apply, which is a good thing. And we whizzled that down through a number of interviews and so forth to 10. They are super excited about that. We're very excited about what that might turn into. Frankly, we will learn. These are real jobs. These are jobs that are transitioning from an old way of doing things to a more modern ways of doing things. We will learn from that, take those learnings and apply it both internally but also externally to our customers.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (11:37.176)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (11:52.002)

And I suppose that then ties back to the offering of products, because actually for people who just implicitly get that social mobility journey, because it's often be part of their own life, your better place is about to be able to shape products for people who are outside the organisation, but wanting and interested in the products that you can then offer. So it's a win-win really, isn't it?

Steven Cooper (12:14.717)

It is. And the products we develop with our customers, we always have a human over

looking at it, it's not a computer that says yes or no. We understand the individual circumstances of those who either borrow from us or save with us. The nature of the product which is simple, easy to understand, consistent, no big changes up or down, that really helps people to feel confident about the services and products they have with us, that they know that we will always make it a fair deal for them. So they're responding.

well to that. That's very much the way we think about things. I mean, in the industry, the regulators brought in something called consumer duty. Look, that's been...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (12:59.034)

Yeah.

Steven Cooper (13:01.229)

good for us, we've taken a good hard look at ourselves, given what we do, we haven't had to change much, but just in our motor finance business, we've reached out to the hundreds of dealerships that we do, helping them to think more about that. That's settled into stronger relationships with us, so how we do business is really, really important.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (13:13.489)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (13:20.746)

And I think what that new consumer duty did was to take an existing standard level and raise it. And it basically said you have to put consumers needs first and they need to be treated fairly. And, and I guess for Aldermore that very much tied into that mission on financial inclusion anyway. And I think what's interesting about all the social mobility work that you're doing is it potentially shows where the next step up might go.

for the sector in a broader regulatory environment, which is not just to put needs first, but actually to overtly seek to improve outcomes and circumstances. And I think that pretty much is the Aldermor purpose when you break it down.

Steven Cooper (14:05.453)

Yeah, it is. I mean, just you mentioned sort of inclusion. One of the things I'm conscious of, if you just take our mortgage business, we help people often get at home for the first time. The reason they're not with our mainstream bank is their credit rating is slightly impaired. That doesn't mean they are bad risk or bad credit far from it. As I mentioned earlier, our default rates are very, very low. I'm constantly surprised at how low they are.

But there's usually a reason behind their impaired credit rating. It might be they've got more than one job. Many people do. So therefore, there's two sources of income and all three sources of income in some cases. And a computer can't compute that elsewhere. Or they've gone through maybe a separation or a bereavement. Or they have lost their job. Or they're transitioning from an old style employment to a new one. We find that about 90% of those over the lifespan of the mortgage with us.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (14:41.262)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (15:02.453)

two, three, four, five years, their credit rating has sufficiently improved that they can qualify for mortgage pretty much any way. Now we work hard to then retain them, but that's...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (15:10.743)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (15:11.369)

That's our purpose, is helping people to get on in a more stable footing financially, much like it is in the savings side, which is simple product encourages and incentivizes regular savings that offers a decent rate of return, but constantly helps people to £10, £20, £50, whatever. We have people with a lot more than that with us as well, but it's not looking after one part of society more than another. We're inclusive to all and we learn from all.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (15:21.395)

Mm-hmm. Mm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (15:41.886)

and steadily improving circumstances. And if you go back to that report for society, which of the bits of it, Steven, that you almost feel most proud of? I mean, there's a whole range of activities that Aldermore has, because this is, it runs through the whole business. Where would you sort of maybe particularly point to where you thought, actually, I'm really, really proud of that area?

Steven Cooper (16:05.409)

You know, it's probably going to be difficult. I struggle to get to one. If there is one, I've read the report now three times. It's quite big, actually. It's a very nice one or two pages, some at the beginning. But I think that's probably, in essence, what I'm most proud about. There's a lot of stuff in there. Not just one thing, because actually, I don't think you can just do one thing. How a business is multifaceted with multiple stakeholders.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (16:24.99)

Yeah, it's comprehensive.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (16:32.348)

Mmm.

Steven Cooper (16:34.537)

And we've tried to think about what's our role in society. I make no apology. We are very profitable. I have to be profitable.

But don't generate profit. I can't reinvest that back into the business to create more jobs, grow our business, lend more money, if we're not financially stable, we don't attract people to put their deposits with us and put that to good use. I had to attract good talent. I invest in developing talent and so forth. So it's multifaceted and you know, we are helping people like landlords to, um, uh, to improve their properties, to make them more private. We are helping.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (17:10.701)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (17:13.499)

businesses to do that. We've funded for example low carbon housing projects. No doubt people will say to us, well you're number three in the UK for provision of finance for used vehicles. Yes we are. People need to be mobile to move themselves, families or goods around the UK, particularly more rural parts of the UK.

We are helping people to think about how you transition to better quality vehicles, EV, the infrastructure around that. But that's a slow transition. In the meantime, people do need help with that. So it's multifaceted. And I'm probably most proud of the fact that we are trying our best to make sure that our impact in society, our impact on climate is as balanced as we can make it.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (18:00.614)

And I think the final area I really wanted to pick up on is the work that you've done on tracking socio-economic background, which is really groundbreaking. And this is something, again, that you had focused on when you were co-chair at the Social Mobility Commission. And I think what's really interesting is I would say that Aldemort has probably done as much as literally any business I've come across on tracking socio-economic background. But going down a process.

of doing so that's really methodical and I think probably will be what many companies end up following your footsteps in. But maybe for people who are a bit less familiar with this area, tell them a little bit about why you think that matters and the work that Johnny Carberry has been leading internally to start getting a handle on that socioeconomic diversity that Aldenmore's got.

Steven Cooper (18:51.145)

Yeah, I mean, I guess I'll put in two examples. One is from my work at the Social Mobility Commission and some great commissioners there, a great fellow co-chair, and probably more importantly, a really passionate secretary at the Civil Service who really do care about this. But all the data we saw there was that the more diverse, the more inclusive businesses, organizations,

Rt Hon Justine Greening (19:03.126)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (19:19.341)

groups of people, the more balanced it is, you tend to end up with much better outcomes because it's a much more representative part of society. If you are narrow in any way, you don't get the best outcome because you have a lack of perspective or a lack of experience or a lack of viewpoints. And I've definitely seen that in the business world. I have seen groupthink.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (19:41.652)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (19:42.097)

on more than one occasion because there's been a lack of diversity inclusion in those groups or teams who are making decisions and that turns into bad outcomes ultimately for shareholders or society as a whole. So I care deeply about that from a real business need. We've worked hard on making our business more diverse. We had a gender imbalance. We are working hard on that. We are broadly 50-50 across the organisation.

the top two tiers, I set ourselves a target of getting to 40% female representation by about now. I will be there or thereabouts and there is zero compromise on capability because no one, male or female in my view, wants to be enrolled because of their gender or any other component in their lives. And on the social mobility side, which is really

Rt Hon Justine Greening (20:29.066)

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (20:37.833)

reaching out to parts of society won't naturally fall into financial services because maybe it's scary or there are barriers in place around qualifications and so forth. But great talent there. We've decided to, with your leadership really, to understand the bank of our own.

Conic Bay. So as part of our employee engagement survey we've asked four questions that really helped to identify the social background. The first one, the most easiest to understand is for most people what are the occupations of the highest earning member of your household when you were the age of 14 or thereabouts.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (21:14.563)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (21:16.733)

We've had a great response rate to that. 80% of our, I think 83% of our colleagues have responded to that. So we've got a good understanding of that. We are now working through our own HR processes to ensure how people can constantly update their profile. That's what our people are doing on a very regular basis. We have that data, which we're calculating at the moment. We'll work out what that means for us as a business.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (21:39.659)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (21:40.769)

because we want all walks of life and society in our business because it makes us a better business with better decisions and a more fun place to be.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (21:49.406)

And are there any insights in a sense that are already coming out from having done that original employee survey, which of course was, that was anonymous in a sense. So you got the company-wide data. And I think what's interesting now is how you use this Count Me In campaign to start really getting that more by-person data. So you know exactly where to target, but what were the sort of original insights? How did you find in a sense as an executive team, it helped shape.

the discussion about where you went with all this.

Steven Cooper (22:21.909)

Yes, we're still learning from this. It's definitely helped us to shape more our apprenticeship scheme and reach into communities that we weren't in before. There's an amazing talent that comes from there in terms of the energy, the passion, the thinking and putting it across the broader business. You just get a better level of...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (22:31.246)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (22:43.209)

decision making and appreciation of what's happening in life and society that's starting to turn into things like how we think about our products and our literature and our language and how we train, develop and support people. We're pretty good at getting people from more diverse backgrounds in the business. Like many, we are less good at progressing people from different backgrounds through the organisation.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (22:53.368)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (23:04.648)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (23:06.289)

Often that comes down to location. Frankly, some of that's around support, confidence-giving, an environment where people don't feel, I don't know if embarrassed is the right word or not, but it still happens to me in my life. On occasions I still need to have my grammar or my spelling or my language corrected in terms of when I'm...

putting a paper together or a presentation to the board, speaking at different places where I speak because I didn't have that level of education. Even now, you know, 35 odd years since I left school, I still feel on occasion that lack of confidence and we see that in our business. So it's giving people that confidence.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (23:37.727)

Mm.

Steven Cooper (24:01.393)

doesn't mean we shouldn't have grammar corrected for example, but making people feel that's okay. And wanting to learn from that. So many times it's really the soft skills and support and a metaphorical arm around the shoulder that on those occasions is needed and we're building our training programs around that as well and in terms of training people for a new role but it's in a way that people can

Rt Hon Justine Greening (24:05.771)

Yeah, yeah.

Steven Cooper (24:29.141)

receive those messages and not feel awkward about it.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (24:33.602)

And how have people within Aldermore responded to this route you've gone down on? Effectively social mobility background tracking. Have people sort of seen it in the light of that broader purpose of the business and bought into it?

Steven Cooper (24:49.313)

So it definitely connects with our broader purpose, which makes it easier. In many cases, just if we're talking about their friends, their family, the environments in which they live. So in some ways it's not been difficult. We've been super transparent around it. We've been very open around it. It's not, I mean, to a certain extent, I guess I've sort of cajoled and led it, but not much frankly. We've got great, I mean, you mentioned Johnny, but there's a whole team of people who...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (25:03.645)

Mm-hmm.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (25:15.939)

Mmm.

Steven Cooper (25:18.189)

I care deeply about this and one of the things, slightly deviating, but one of the things I'm so proud of and being quite an eye-opener for me actually is the number of colleague networks we have which might be around gender or helping people think about being a working parent or mental health or sexuality. And so we've had conversations around the menopause and what that does for males and females.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (25:46.786)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (25:48.205)

thought about that in the workplace. The real lesson with all of this is be open, have straight forward conversations, learn from each other, help each other, understand what each other is going through. It's amazing when you do that, you find people, you're not alone, there's others who have got similar experiences and you can learn from them.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (26:10.242)

And I remember, I think that's all right. And I remember doing effectively a sort of virtual town hall webinar with you and with Johnny about the, the Count Me In campaign and the socioeconomic background tracking in the survey. And I thought what really struck me was how positive people were on the chat. This sense that actually it tied in with any way what Aldemore's purpose was, but I think people could see.

how this was important. And actually I felt like there was also a real willingness to be a bit of a trailblazer for the company and to find out. So I think what's fascinating is people want to be part of that approach on improving social mobility. And it's something pretty much everyone buys into. And this is probably, if you could do one thing as an individual.

to help make social mobility happen. It's probably answer this question if your employer asks you, because it will help them build a picture that means they can create your organization to be an engine of social mobility and make sure that's actually happening.

Steven Cooper (27:23.049)

Yes, and you've heard me talk about this many times, but it's a must do for a business. It is a nice to do, but it's a must do. The amount of talent we put into our business that come from more disadvantaged backgrounds that we would not have got access to if we put artificial requirements in around qualifications or experience frankly.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (27:42.862)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (27:43.557)

have to more into things like, so what would the person's attitude, what would they do in a certain situation, what do we get with Justine as the person. We've got some great people in our organization as a result. The survey is very easy to answer, it's four simple questions. You have to talk about that as an organization, why do you want this information, what will you do with this information, sharing the outcome of those data surveys and what will happen.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (27:51.254)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (28:08.913)

as a result and we're working very hard on progressing different people through the organisation. The biggest thing for me is helping people break out of continual low paid work and putting those people into higher paid work. They're good, they're earning the right to be there, so it's not about putting, there's sort of a meritocracy, but you've got to give people the support, the opportunity, the chance, the confidence. And when that happens...

Rt Hon Justine Greening (28:21.435)

Mm-hmm.

Steven Cooper (28:37.973)

we are, and I think we're performing pretty well in a very difficult environment, it's because of our people. And it's because we get the best people in those opportunities and we develop and we support them. And I definitely get the extra mile in return.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (28:51.742)

Well, I think that's a brilliant point on which to finish. Stephen Cooper, CBE, Chief Executive of Aldermore Bank, thanks so much for doing the podcast, it's been brilliant. And good luck with the Count Me In campaign and all of the work that you're doing through that report to society. We're really proud to have you as part of the Purpose Coalition. Thank you very much.

Steven Cooper (29:12.318)

Justine, thank you as always for your support, your cajoling and in this space it's much appreciated.

Rt Hon Justine Greening (29:16.01)

Thank you.