12 policies to build a more co-operative Britain

As the 2015 general election approaches, the Co-operative Party has released its policy agenda to help influence Labour during the election process and should its sister party form...

As the 2015 general election approaches, the Co-operative Party has released its policy agenda to help influence Labour during the election process and should its sister party form the next government. Here, we outline 12 of those policies.

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1. Employee ownership: Tax incentives on employee ownership schemes should be reformed so that they are targeted at schemes that give employees a collective, democratic voice, and employees should be given a statutory right to request employee ownership during business succession.

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2. Profit sharing: Legislation should ensure that all British businesses with more than 50 employees are obliged to set up a profit sharing scheme with their staff, with a minimum profit share pot set aside based on a calculation of its annual profits and its financial position.

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3. Changing business: Government should ensure that institutional investors become more accountable to the pension fund savers who ultimately own a great deal of Britain’s biggest companies.

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4. Consumers: Government should create a legislative framework for these consumer clubs to help more people get a fair deal. It should also replace Britain’s multitude of complaint handling services with a single Consumer Ombudsman with US-style powers.

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5. Credit unions: Government should impose a levy on payday lenders which would be used to build the capacity of credit unions and other providers as a means of providing affordable alternatives. Part of this money should be used to offer a £20 deposit into a credit union account for every child, opened in their first year at primary school.

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6. Energy: Government should commit to a dramatic increase in community energy, offering a new right for communities to invest in new energy generation projects and to take over ownership of their local electricity grid supply. The Government should pilot the direct supply of community owned renewable energy to local residents – with a view to making it a mainstream form of energy supply by 2020.

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7. Transport: Government should legislate to enable a not-for-profit operator, run in adherence to co-operative principles, to be established on the railway. As a ‘guiding mind’ for the railway, Network Rail should adopt a genuine mutual structure to become more accountable to passengers and the public.

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8. Housing: Government should take the concerted action that is needed for Britain to build 20,000 co-operative homes per year.

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9. Sport: Government should give fans the right to appoint a minimum of two board directors of all football clubs. Supporters’ trusts should be guaranteed the option to buy up to 10 per cent of the shares of a club at the point of transfer of ownership. The Government should also legislate to protect club names and club colours from change without the approval of a legally constituted supporters’ trust

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10. Schools: Government should legislate to ensure that all mainstream state-funded schools can establish co-operative governance structures, should they choose to do so. All schools should become more accountable to parents, pupils, staff and the local community.

GLL, which runs more than 140 public sport and leisure centres, now also operates ten children's centres

11. Public services: More needs to be done to support smarter and more strategic commissioning and procurement of both goods and services. Co-operative and social enterprises are often able to better meet the needs of end users because their services are influenced by them. They also tend to provide added value through meeting social, environmental and economic development goals, and can deliver services to hard-to-reach groups and work in areas of market failure.

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12. Transferring power and assets: Government should make it easier for communities to take over local services and assets. Existing rights under the Localism Act should be strengthened to give community groups a first right of refusal to purchase listed assets, and a ‘right to try’ when local authorities decide to externalise services.

Read more about the Co-operative Party’s 2015 agenda

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