The Co-operative Party is a voice for co-operation in Westminster with its 28 MPs and celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. It co-sponsored 28 MPs with Labour, prior to this election. Its manifesto sets out proposals to grow a co-operative sector by “building an economy and society where power and wealth are more equally shared”.
The Agenda for a Co-operative Britain draws on a number of proposals submitted by its members. Specific proposals include:
- Establishing Britain as the best place to start and grow a co-operative business. The first step to achieving this is a level playing field on regulation and bureaucracy between co-operatives with other business types
- How to fulfil Labour’s commitment to double the size of the co-operative sector
Related: What can co-ops expect from the next government?
- Ways to reform corporate governance to give workers and consumers a stronger voice in the boardroom and ensure the proceeds of corporate success are more widely distributed
- The need to improve the competitiveness of the financial services market with continued support for credit unions and building a new generation of community banks and building societies
- Ideas for replacing the Big Six energy companies with thousands of community-owned energy co-operatives
- Learning from the Welsh Labour & Co-operative government’s work on promoting new co-operative housing as an affordable and secure alternative to the private rented sector
Related: Co-op sector’s wishlist for the election campaign
- A vision for delivering a reformed social care market which puts care workers, care recipients and their families at its heart and reduces profit-leakage from the system
- Build on the innovative work emerging in local government, in areas including Preston, on how to ensure that public procurement generates maximum benefit for local economies including building new co-operative businesses to fulfil public sector contracts
- Re-building solidarity in our labour market through the development of new co-operatives of self-employed workers.
