Ahead of the EU Referendum, the Co-operative Party’s annual conference voted to support remaining in the European Union. In line with this, the Party did all it could to encourage members and supporters to vote remain during the referendum campaign.

The result was therefore extremely disappointing. The Party’s role now is to do all it can to support the co-operative movement during the months and years ahead as Britain leaves the EU, working with members, Co-ops UK and our subscribing societies. This does not mean that our policy development and consultation seek to replay the debate of the referendum campaign – but to ensure that co-operative values and principles, and the co-operative movement, are at the forefront in shaping what comes next.

The vote to leave the EU on the 23 June 2016 was a watershed moment in British politics – and while it has shown the UK to be a divided nation, there there’s one thing we all agree on: that the status quo isn’t working. The Co-operative Party believes there is a growing consensus that we need to change how our economy works so that employees, consumers, and communities receive their fair share of the wealth they help create.

Internationalism has always been at the heart of the co-operative movement, and the European Union is a particularly powerful example of international co-operation. By working together with other European countries, it has been possible to tackle issues which are important to the co-operative movement, and which reach beyond our borders, from tax justice, to climate change, to Fairtrade.

For co-operative businesses, the EU plays an important role too. The 1957 Treaty of Rome, one of the EU’s founding documents, contained the right for co-operative business to exist within the EU. Since then the role and impact of mutual and co-operative societies, has expanded considerably. A report by the European Commission’s Co-operative Working Group says that more than 250,000 enterprises across Europe are co-operatives, owned by a total of 163 million individual member-owners, and providing jobs to 5.4 million of the EU’s citizens .

Co-operative businesses in the UK operate across all sectors which will each see specific impacts from Brexit – from co-operative farmers who rely on significant numbers of EU workers, high food standards and protection from the market being flooded with cheap imports, to co-operative retailers who need fresh food deliveries to have easy passage through our borders to ensure consumers can buy fresh food.

In many communities, people feel left behind and dissatisfied with the status quo. Trickle-down economics isn’t delivering its rewards to many regions in the UK – particularly those regions with the highest number of people voting to leave the EU.

To regenerate these regional economies from the bottom up, public organisations need to make the public pound work harder by changing the way they buy goods and services and supporting the growth of the local co-operative sector. Much of the law governing how public bodies in the UK procure goods and services is European.
While in the short term, the uncertainty about which organisations and frameworks the UK will remain a member of create some transitional instability for these public bodies, Brexit may afford the UK the opportunity to determine some of our own unique approaches to competition, procurement and state aid. For example, the Co-operative Party has long championed a strengthening of the Social Value Act – our ability to put this into practice may, in the longer term, be within reach.

This policy consultation has three main purposes – it will seek to

1.      Provide support for the future

The first purpose of this consultation is to better understand the immediate impact for the co-operative movement and co-operative businesses, to propose ways to mitigate and manage this to support the sector to continue to thrive, and to look for opportunities for collaboration and the co-operative movement in the long term. For example, this may look at the impact of Brexit on food, agriculture, energy and other areas.

2.      Develop a ‘new internationalism’ based on co-operation and fairness

The second purpose of this consultation is to explore our future relationships with our neighbours and partners around the world, to ensure that Britain remains outwardly focused and engaged with the world post-Brexit.As trade deals and international alliances are negotiated, co-operative values and principles must be at the heart of the UK’s new global relationships if we are to continue to champion the issues that are of central importance to our movement.

This consultation asks for members, subscribing societies and the wider movement to share their priorities on how we work with other countries, and what opportunities there are for co-operative values and principles to play a role in areas like international development, Fairtrade, environment and tax in the future.

3.      Look for opportunities to reshape Britain to create a co-operative nation where wealth and power are shared

Finally, the third purpose is to provide a co-operative response to the Leave campaign’s narrative of “take back control”, looking at longer term opportunities to reshape Britain and its economy, once Brexit negotiations and their immediate impacts have passed.

The Co-operative Party is clear that taking back control does not simply mean shifting control from one set of politicians to another. To this end, this policy consultation will build on the Party’s work on devolution, regional growth and local government to explore how to ensure people have a say in the decisions that affect them and a stake in their communities, and how we can create a new economy where wealth and power are shared through exploring areas like consumer rights and public procurement.

The Co-operative Party is member-led, and so we derive our policy platform from the experiences, ideas and principles of our members, our subscribing societies, and the wider co-operative movement.

Given the enormity of the potential impact of Brexit, this approach of engaging with and listening to our movement must be at the heart of the Party’s response.

The Co-operative Party will invite the views of its members through an open consultation with individual members, Party units, co-operative societies, and the wider co-operative movement, asking for their responses to the questions below. Support will be given to local parties to convene their members for policy discussions. In particular, as Brexit is a UK-wide issue, we will work closely with Parties in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales to ensure the views of their members are well represented. Alongside this, the voice of co-operative societies is very important in the debate about Brexit, and we will consult and engage them in greater detail on issues of particular relevance.

The consultation will begin in January 2018 and close in June 2018, and responses will be collated for review by the policy sub-committee. A report bringing together the concerns and ideas raised by individual members, and responses from the sub-committee to each submission from Party units and societies, will be issued. The points raised will be brought together into a policy platform on Brexit which will be discussed at Conference in 2018 and agreed by delegates.
While this consultation is ongoing, the Party will continue to engage with topical issues within the Brexit debate and will develop standalone pieces of political and policy work as appropriate on issues affecting the co-operative movement, such as consumer rights, agriculture, procurement, and trade. These will complement the ongoing consultation and formal policy process.