With elections to the Scottish Parliament taking place on 7 May, the co-op sector is pitching its ideas to political parties, and last week MSPs met sector representatives at an event in Holyrood promoting ‘A Call for Co-operative Scotland’.
Hosted by Lorna Slater MSP, the event saw representatives of Co-operatives UK and Scottish co-operatives promote their policy platform to incumbent and prospective MSPs.
The programme outlines the contributions of co-operatives to the Scottish economy, proposing policy measures which could support them. These include:
- Implementing the recommendations of the Inclusive and Democratic Business Models Review
- Providing seed funding for the co-operative sector to create its own development institutions
- Supporting ‘crowd’ investing in co-ops, including by bolstering the sector’s access to finance with the Scottish National Investment Bank
- Education initiatives to put ‘Scotland’s rich co-operative and mutual traditions on the curriculum’ and better inform officials
A document published by the campaign goes on to share a number of successful case studies from Scottish co-operatives spanning agriculture, retail, finance, and wholesalers. This includes West Granton Housing Co-operative, a tenant-member-owned group which has a housing stock of 372 properties; Scotwest Credit Union, which has partnered with North Lanarkshire Council to provide workplace savings schemes to council staff; plus other co-ops including Greencity Wholefoods, First Milk, Papay Community Co-operative.
The campaign states that co-operatives add over £1.9bn to the Scottish economy in turnover, delivering “more effective public services for communities without exploiting and extracting wealth from the system”.
Slater told the event: “More and bigger co-operatives, that’s the kind of growth I can get behind”, while Paul Sweeney MSP spoke about the barriers faced by co-operatives in “a sometimes hostile environment”.
As part of the campaign, Co-operatives UK has put together template emails and letters for constituents to send to their MSPs, asking them to read the document and commit directly to working with Scottish co-ops. This includes supporting proposed amendments to the Community Wealth Building bill, currently awaiting its second reading by MSPs.
Related: Co-op Party calls to strengthen Scottish Community Wealth Building bill
