Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what steps the Government is taking to facilitate and encourage self-organisation and cooperatives for self-employed people.

The Government is supportive of the co-operatives sector, including where this model can benefit the self-employed and help their businesses to grow.

To help self-employed people, the British Business Bank facilitates the provision of finance at all stages of a business’ development. In addition, the Industrial Strategy announced the launch of the Entrepreneurship Review and the Scale-Up Taskforce to make the UK the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

In addition, the Government continues to explore further ways to support the co-operatives sector. For example, at Spring Budget 2017, the Government announced that thresholds at which co-operatives will have to conduct a full audit will increase in line with those for companies. This will place co-operative and community benefit societies on a level playing field with companies of the same size.