The NEC of the Co-operative Party is elected every three years, with the current members serving from June 2017-20. The NEC is also the Board of the Society, Co-operative Party Ltd. It normally meets quarterly.

The most recent meeting of the NEC was the AGM, which took place on June 7, in Newcastle. Gareth Thomas MP stood down as Chair of the NEC after serving in this role for nineteen years. Anna Turley MP is the new Chair of the Party.

The NEC also paid tribute to Graeme Watkins, who passed away recently. Graeme was one of two members representing the Societies on the NEC.

The NEC re-elected Chris Herries (East Region) as Vice Chair of the NEC and  members to the Audit, Staffing & Remuneration (S&R), Policy, Rules and Disputes Sub Committees.

Jean Nunn-Price was elected as the Co-operative Party’s representative on the Conference Arrangements Committee.

Chris Bain and Cheryl Barrott, alongside the General Secretary, were elected to Labour’s National Policy Forum.

The NEC discussed the process for the appointment of a new General Secretary to replace Claire McCarthy who leaves the Party at the end of July. Interviews took place on 30 June and 1 July and members will be informed as soon as the new appointment is confirmed.

The NEC was happy to welcome the London Federation of Housing Co-ops as a new organisational member of the Party.

Each year the NEC reviews the individual membership subscriptions to put to Annual Conference to confirm. The NEC agreed to recommend that individual membership subscriptions be increased by RPI + 1% each year, with effect from 2020.

The NEC also discussed an additional levy on MPs and other elected members, to be implemented after the next General Election.

474 new members were recruited in January to May, down 31.7% from 694 in 2018 but similar to recruitment levels in 2017. This follows on from much smaller growth to our supporter email list, our main source of new members.

We started 2019 with a larger than normal arrears rate but following a targeted renewal campaign around the launch of the new brand we have brought this down to 7.3%, which is within our target.

The Party had 11,008 members at the end of May, down from 11,265 at the same point in 2018.  This reflects lower recruitment and lapsed members in arrears.

However, we have had a great response to our campaigns to improve uptake of the voluntary higher rates. This and better renewal targeting have helped increase membership income by 9.0% year on year.

Although recruitment has proved to be more difficult than in previous years, we have continued to grow our membership income in 2019.

We are updating our recruitment and retention strategy so that we are in a position to deliver strong, sustainable growth in the Party’s membership. We still have a compelling membership offer with strong policy and campaign outputs, but we need to continue to adapt to the changed environment e.g. changes to social media algorithms and the current political context, to return to the levels of growth we’ve seen. The Party’s strategy for membership growth will include:

• New social media email gathering relating to our campaigns such as Food Justice, and building on from Modern Slavery and Violence Against Shop Workers.
• A recruitment campaign over the summer and autumn targeted at the very many Labour councillors who are up for election in 2020.
• Utilising our more diverse group of councillors and increasingly active networks.
• A renewed focus on gathering email addresses at external events and conferences.
• Encouraging local parties to focus on email capture
• Developing our work with CLP delegates.
• A new email journey to improve conversion from supporters to full members, with research to better understand the best prompts to join or renew.
• Imbedding new responsive retention efforts with quicker prompts when members may be about to leave, including easier and tailored methods or renewal.

The NEC looked at a new format for the Rule Book that sets out the exiting rules in a clear format – simplifying the language, removing duplication and separating out which are rules, procedures, policies and guidelines. We will make this available to parties and members shortly.

Some anomalies in the current rules, particularly in the procedures for selections to the Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly, have been referred back to the respective parties for review.

The NEC agreed a statement on Islamophobia, which is now available on the website. This statement will support the Party’s rules and their interpretation in a similar way to the statement on anti-Semitism agreed in 2018.

The NEC Rules Working Party will continue to review whether our rules and policies are fit for purpose. The next stage of this work will focus on strengthening our equalities policies.

Local elections took place on 2 May for 8,311 seats across 248 of England’s 343 local councils, including 33 metropolitan borough councils; 168 district councils; and 47 unitary councils.

There were also elections for six directly elected mayors and some parish and town councils.

Labour & Co-operative Candidates won 239 seats (+137), and there are now 815 Labour & Co-operative Councillors.

41% of Co-operative Party councillors are women (compared to 36% of all UK councillors). 22% of Co-operative Party Councillors are under 40 (compared to 10% of all UK councillors).

A new national system for selection of Council Candidates was introduced for these elections, based on the work done in Scotland and Wales in 2017 and London and Yorkshire in 2018. The changes made the process easier and more transparent for candidates, and reduced the administrative burden on officers. This resulted in the number of candidates doubling, and more candidates having Co operative Party on the ballot paper. Only 2 of the 26 parties with elections fully opted out of the national process.

We also saw genuine progress in the prevalence of co-operative ideas and policies in local Labour manifestos. Just some examples included:

• Bath and North East Somerset – the Labour & Co-operative manifesto commits to encouraging major local organisations to buy goods and services from local co-operatives.
• West Oxfordshire Labour & Co-operative candidates promised to set themselves the target of doubling the size of the local co-operative sector
• In Swindon candidates committed to turning the ‘Preston model’ into a Swindon model of local procurement and co-operative growth.
• Stoke-on-Trent’s co-operative candidates promised “a £3m Community Wealth Fund to support organisations making a sustainable difference in our towns”. They also pledged to tackle fuel poverty by expanding their community energy switching programme.
• In Sunderland the manifesto committed to working with anchor institutions to create a co-operative development fund.
• Successful Labour & Co-operative mayoral candidate for the North of Tyne, Jamie Driscoll, proposed a People’s Bank to invest in local businesses – co-operatively owned by its customers.
• North Hertfordshire’s Labour & Co-operative manifesto promises to “seek opportunities to support new co-operative and community-led housing”.
• In Swale, the manifesto also commits to exploring tenant management schemes, which give residents a say in how their homes are run.

Many manifestos, including those in North Hertfordshire, North Warwickshire, Nottingham, Bath, Newcastle, Brighton and Hove, and Derby, focus on credit unions as ethical alternatives to high street banks and as a way to support learners, encourage saving and tackle financial exclusion.

Doubling the Size of the Co-operative Movement

The Doubling the Size Implementation Group has continued its work. Two roundtables have been held, one in Newport in South Wales and one in Edinburgh, to consult with the co-op movement on the key recommendations of the NEF report. Participants at the roundtables included representatives from Co-operative Development Scotland, the Wales Co-operative Centre, ABCUL, Merthyr Valley Homes, Principality Building Society, Supporters Direct, Community Energy Wales, Indycube, Development Trusts Association Scotland and Edinburgh Student Housing Co-operative.

Lee Waters, Labour & Co-operative Assembly Member and Minister for Economy and Transport spoke at the Welsh event. He committed to supporting the co-operative growth agenda and asked for on-going input into what more could be done.

Co-operative MPs have been successful securing a cross-Party Parliamentary debate during Co-ops Fortnight that will seek to highlight the contribution of co-operation.

Influencing the Labour Party policy agenda

Members of the Co-operative Party Parliamentary Group met with Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn MP in April to discuss how a future Labour Government would work to deliver on commitments to grow the UK co-op movement. The discussion was very positive and wide ranging. Follow up discussions have been had with shadow ministers and with senior members of the Leader and Shadow Chancellor’s policy teams.

The Co-operative Party will be submitting to the on-going Labour Party policy review process, including on models for Democratic Public Ownership where we believe Labour is not being sufficiently radical in terms of democratic, public involvement.

We have also recently convened two roundtables, one for large credit unions to discuss their policy agenda with Jonathan Reynolds MP who is the shadow Cities Minister, and one for small co-ops to meet with Rebecca Long Bailey, Shadow Business Secretary.

Food Justice Campaign update

Our campaign for food justice has already achieved some real progress since its launch in March.

Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford AM has backed the campaign and following a motion to Welsh Labour Conference on food justice, the Chair of the Co-operative Assembly Members Huw Irranca-Davies AM tabled a ‘statement of opinion’ in the Assembly on the issue.

In Scotland, Labour has formally adopted a Right to Food as policy and is pushing the Scottish Government to include the right in the Good Food Nation Bill. Our campaign has been backed by Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard MSP, and has been referenced recently in a Holyrood debate. There is a growing support a right to food including from the Scottish Commission for Human Rights.

Co-operative Parliamentarians held a session on the issue of food justice in Westminster in April. They heard from speakers from Central England Co-operative, FareShare and the London Food Board about the scale of the challenge and what can be done.

The immediate next steps of the campaign involve persuading more councils to follow in Hackney’s footsteps and appoint a Lead Member for food and influencing Labour’s emergent food policy which is currently under review as part of the National Policy Forum’s work.

Safer Colleagues Safer Communities

Jim McMahon and Gareth Snell joined a Parliamentary debate on April 11th and raised concerns of retail workers and action being taken by co-operative retailers to address this growing problem.

We will be publishing some thoughts on using co-operative values to build safer communities, in part with the aim of shaping our thinking ahead of Police and Crime Commissioner elections next year.

The next scheduled meeting of the NEC will be prior to Annual Conference in Glasgow. The NEC will meet by phone in September to discuss conference business.

You can find full details for members of the NEC on the website here. The NEC is elected every three years, with the next election taking place early in 2020. If you might consider standing for the election to the NEC, contact Karen Wilkie, Board Secretary for more information.