John Cooper
MP for Dumfries and Galloway · Conservative · United Kingdom
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) on securing this key debate. The vital question on “Desert Island Discs” is not what luxury a person desires or which tune they would save from the waves; it is how they would cope on their own.”
“A person who has £10 in their pocket in a city can do something with it; they can go somewhere or see a friend. But £10 up an isolated farm track is of little use at all. The reasons for isolation are myriad. People living longer is of course a good thing, but the harsh reality is that one half of a couple is likely to outlive the other.”
“Coastal areas are beautiful, none more so than Dumfries and Galloway, with its rocky cliffs, secluded bays, unspoilt empty beaches and rolling gentle hills, but we cannot eat the scenery or have a chat with the big sky overhead. Loneliness needs to be seen for what it is: a public health issue.”
“As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, it is a delight to see the fruits of Brexit being brought home. Will the Minister confirm that the deal is not contingent on us taking Swiss courts as being superior to our own?”
“Metal prices being what they are, if we were to take the amount of brass neck on show here today and melt it down, we could fund defence properly. The right hon.”
“Scotland stands ready to play its full role in the defence of Britain with many fine young men and, increasingly, women in our forces. We also have a huge array of industrial companies working on defence contracts. There is a problem, however, which is the Scottish Executive.”
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“I am very grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for giving way a second time. I do wonder if I may have stumbled across another advantage to floating solar, which may not have occurred to him. If water quality is improved, will that not help the fish? Clatteringshaws loch reservoir in my constituency has some of the best pike fishing in the country. I wonder if the fish might benefit from having a roof over their heads.”
“The Minister is right to point to the figures now, but this is a growing problem. One of the difficulties with the land that goes under solar panels is that it tends to be south-facing land, which is prime agricultural land. That is where the crops would normally go, so this is a growing problem.”
“I thank the Minister for allowing me to intervene again. She is making a powerful argument for looking again at the CfD scheme, which is notoriously complicated and very difficult. I think we need a two-pronged approach—we need some changes to CfD, but obviously technology associated with solar is moving on all the time, so perhaps the two could come together.”
“Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the rare opportunity against the run of play to follow my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) from Strangford. Mark Rutte, the NATO Secretary-General, has recently congratulated President Trump on his “decisive action in Iran”, which he says “makes us all safer”. Will the Minister take the opportunity to do what no one in government has so far done and congratulate the Americans on taking out the Iranian nuclear programme? If not, will she explain why we are out of step not only with the Americans, but also now with NATO?”
“It is—or ought to be—Britain’s arsenal, and as such, Scotland should be top of the national armaments director’s in-tray, yet firms wanting to set up the new ordnance factories recommended in the strategic defence review, or seeking to expand in order to fulfil new MOD orders, cannot count on financial support via the Scottish Government. Whose side is Scotland’s First Minister on? Will the Minister tell the House what powers the new armaments director will have to eliminate the Scottish Government’s reckless fifth columnist policies on defence?”
“Scotland is already a defence powerhouse. Umbrella body ADS estimates that 16,250 people in Scotland work in the sector, producing Royal Navy warships, cutting-edge radars, optronic masts—do not dare call them mere periscopes—for submarines and smart missiles such as Storm Shadow. Even my rural constituency of Dumfries and Galloway produces the helmets vital to the sensor suite on F-35 Lightning fighter bombers, of which we are purchasing 12 more nuclear-capable Alpha variants. Figures from 2023 show that the Ministry of Defence spends £370 per person living in Scotland.”
“We have seen young apprentices denied entrance to the Holyrood Parliament by an elected representative tipped to lead the Greens; and, in recent days, we have seen former First Minister Humza Yousaf—still an MSP—blundering around on the world stage, shroud-waving about it being a war crime to allow US military aircraft to refuel at Prestwick airport, and bemoaning the proscription of the saboteurs of Palestine Action. There is a presumption, as we heard from the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie), that the Scottish Government will not channel funding towards ordnance—a battlefield prerequisite. That has led this Government to step in and say that they will help to fund a new Rolls-Royce centre of welding excellence on the Clyde, which will be key to submarine and warship building. The stakes could not be higher.”
“We have had recent sharp lessons on the reality of modern warfare, from the muddy hell of trenches in occupied Ukraine to the arid highlands of Iran. We have seen high-tech systems—drones, cyber, space and stealth—undergo a baptism of fire. We have also seen weapons that would have been familiar to my infantryman grandfather on the shores of Gallipoli in 1915 plying their old trade to deadly effect; artillery remains the queen of the battlefield. While our sailors, soldiers and aircrew are the tip of the spear, the essential shaft is our factories and shipyards, and every corner of the country can play its full part. I say “every part”, but there is bad news from Scotland under the yoke of the SNP, where the nationalists and their Green party fellow travellers have engendered a hostile environment for defence firms.”
“I have been banging on like a howitzer—well, maybe like a small-bore cannon—about the need to mobilise British industry as we ramp up for possible conflict in an increasingly hostile world. I welcome the news that the new national armaments director is being resourced to oversee the alliance between our military brains and brawn and the sinews of the British defence industry. Civilians talk tactics, but veterans talk logistics, for old warriors know that a modern army marches not so much on its stomach, as in the days of Wellington and Napoleon, as on a very long supply chain, anchored mainly in small and medium-sized enterprises. That extends—to use the military’s favourite phrase—to all domains.”
“Humza Yousaf, the former First Minister of Scotland, has invited those in this place to check their moral compass over the proscription of Palestine Action, but I think we have heard here today that no one is seriously suggesting that these people are anything other than saboteurs, and that anyone who expresses sympathy for them has their moral compass spinning like a peerie, as we would say in Scotland. Mr Yousaf further suggested that American aircraft using Prestwick airport in Scotland could leave us open to charges of war crimes, and I wonder whether the Minister agrees with me that that is absolute nonsense. Prestwick airport is owned by the Scottish Government—in fact, it is a civilian airport, although it is heavily used by our allies, in particular America and Canada.”
“The creation of another new authority will be met with an eye-rolling sigh in Scotland, because although it is called the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority—a very shiny title—the reality is that it will have little oversight in Scotland. The plan announced today will generate Barnett formula money, which will go to Holyrood and disappear—it will go into ferries that do not float and things like that. In my constituency the A75 road is a piece of critical national infrastructure. It services the ferry ports to Northern Ireland, and it is vital for all the countries that make up the United Kingdom. Will we see any money coming for that road through today’s innovation, or will the money once again disappear into the coffers in Holyrood?”
“Today we bury the myth that this condition is somehow shameful. With this first ever debate on the subject, we take a modest but significant step towards improving the life of those who struggle with the burden of incontinence.”
“Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) asked whether there had been discussions about providing bins in men’s toilets for disposal of sanitaryware made necessary by incontinence, a Minister in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs gave a rather technocratic answer, promising a Health and Safety Executive review of workplace regulations dating back to 1992 on the provision of disposal facilities in workplace toilets “in due course”. I hope the Minister can today confirm that the consultation can be fast-tracked. I hope that we have taken a giant stride in this place today by stripping away some of the stigma merely by giving an airing to the issue of incontinence. There has been much talk recently about Parliament at its best, but surely this is Parliament at its best, considering unfashionable yet critical issues.”
“According to the American Urological Association, better prostate treatment is cutting the number of men who suffer incontinence after prostate treatment. Pelvic floor exercises can help both men and women, as can bladder training. But what can Government do, aside from making health policy decisions on treatment for incontinence in all its forms, be it suffered by men or women, and be it post-op, prostate-related or childbirth-related? Small steps can help. When the hon.”
“Prostate Cancer UK says that one in 25 men aged over 40 will experience some form of urinary leakage every year. The scale of the issue, and the number of people facing the problem who report feeling shame, embarrassment and isolation, is greater than many suppose. The guardedly good news is that far from being alone, people suffering incontinence are a very large portion of society. It has been another silent epidemic, and people have been left to suffer in obscurity. Today is part of the solution to that. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dudley (Sonia Kumar) on securing the debate. Given her medical background, I defer to her for advice on what can be done to relieve the physical symptoms of incontinence—and much can be done.”
“Incontinence is no respecter of person, and no respecter of sex, and it is male incontinence that I rise to speak about. The wry old joke is that men do not know they have a prostate until their other half reads about it in the Daily Mail . Campaigning newspapers, such as the Daily Mail , and charity groups like Prostate Buddies in my Dumfries and Galloway constituency have done a power of work to make men aware of prostate disease and prostate cancer—just as well, given that prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men. One in eight of us will be diagnosed with it, and that figure rises to one in four for black men. It is well recognised that early diagnosis is key, but it is less well known that as many as 60% of those treated with surgery will face urinary incontinence, outwith surgical intervention.”
“Israel is a democracy, a pluralistic society and an ally. In contrast, the unhappy and ignoble regime in Tehran is a theocracy that wants to wipe Israel from the map, that foments terrorism around the globe and that suppresses its own people to the extent that even dancing is a crime. Is not the best use of British military assets in the eastern Mediterranean to try to do something to stop the rain of hypersonic missiles and drones on civilian areas in Israel?”
“When it comes to bus manufacturer Alexander Dennis and the jobs at risk there, there is not an elephant in the room—there is a Chinese dragon. The company is in competition not with commercial organisations from China, but with entities of the Chinese state. What representations will the Secretary of State make to the Prime Minister in an attempt to level a playing field that is currently about as flat as the Galloway hills?”
“I thank the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee for his hard work. It is really heartening that the report has received cross-party support on the Committee and across the House. This is about growth and the economy, which affect every single one of our constituents. Does he agree that the word “practical” is absolutely right in this case? The industrial strategy cannot simply be a Soviet-style tractor production statistics list—it cannot be self-congratulatory. Our report is practical and provides almost a blueprint, and its implementation is absolutely key. The right hon. Gentleman has done an excellent job of setting out the potential that is within our reach. The trick is to make it within our grasp.”
“American banker Felix Rohatyn, who rescued New York from financial disaster, said: “banking is not simply about profit, but about personal relationships.” Even in this digital age, we need to capture some of that spirit via our banking hubs.”
“As for the public transport system, let us just say that we need a calendar and not a stopwatch to time the buses. When Dalbeattie, the third biggest town in my constituency with a population of more than 4,000 souls and a slew of thriving businesses, struggles to get a banking hub, surely there is a compelling case for lowering the threshold for hubs. I accept that we cannot have an ethos of “wherever two or three are gathered, there shall be a banking hub”, yet equally, we cannot expect one ATM to carry the banking needs of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. Banking has come on in leaps and bounds since the days of little pens chained to counters and limited opening hours, but on balance, too many people are being left behind in the technological revolution.”
“The need for access to face-to-face banking services remains high, as we have heard. As we have also heard, there are numerous issues with the current banking hub regime. Take Wigtown in my constituency: it is Scotland’s official book town, yet the current banking hub criteria fail to capture the significance of that. Wigtown is evaluated on its modest resident population, with no account taken of the huge influx of visitors when its famous book festival opens its covers. I have a stream of reports of the town centre cash machine running out of spondulicks outwith the festival and anecdotal reports of people gathering for a trip to the nearest hub in Newton Stewart to lift their pensions. That hub is 12 miles distant, and notwithstanding our positively balmy climate in Dumfries and Galloway—no, really—it is not walkable.”
“At the risk of disappointing the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), I rise not entirely to criticise the banks, which have done tremendous work on apps and the like, and many people—not all of them spring chickens—make great use of them. But as banks retreat from bricks and mortar locations, a problem is that even silver surfers who are comfortable with the technology may simply not be able to get the relevant app to work. In rural Dumfries and Galloway, we have too many notspots, where the mobile phone signal is sketchy at best and non-existent at worst. Similarly, there is a lack of decent broadband. The ground truth is that while it might be easy-PC for some to get online, sclerotic broadband and thick stone walls designed to keep out the Scottish damp make too many computers and smartphones expensive placemats.”
“I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend for giving way on that point. Is this not a case of the old adage that rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obeyance of fools? Are we not seeing a punctilious following of rules here, when a man’s life is at risk?”
“Most military operations require an element of surprise, and the Government certainly achieved that by delivering the news of the return of tactical nuclear weapons through the medium of The Sunday Times. That marmalade-dropping moment aside, what impact will the apparent purchase of F-35 Lightning fighters from America have on the global combat air programme that we are putting together with Italy and Japan—or should I wait for the “You read it here last” strategic defence review?”
“Under the yoke of the SNP, Scotland already has a presumption against short sentences, and now the new Scottish commission looking at sentencing and penal policy has been accused of being packed with activists determined to keep criminals out of jail. Why is the Lord Chancellor in Westminster following this lead and failing to put victims at the heart of the justice system?”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman, whose tremendously adroit chairmanship of the Committee has allowed a lot of cross-party working, which has been really refreshing and very good. This is a moment of regret: the Committee did flag up how fragile coastal communities could be damaged badly by a multi-year deal on fishing, and the 12-year deal is beyond anything anybody imagined. It will hammer fragile communities right across Britain, and particularly in Scotland; that is unfortunate. Does he agree that achieving an SPS deal must be balanced with the deals with India, America and so forth that are coming down the tracks—I am sure the Committee will look at this—and that we must have due care for ensuring that the Brexit freedoms that allow us to strike those deals are not damaged?”
“May I give the House the news that ex-special forces soldiers, including the Minister for Veterans and People, have reached the top of Everest today? Congratulations to them. We also have a mountain to climb to create growth in this country. My hon. Friend mentioned HMRC; does it not reflect the Government? The Government’s attitude to business is that it is a dripping roast to be devoured and taxed to a standstill.”
“It calls itself a gateway employer, proud to be the first rung on the jobs ladder for thousands, but it is aghast at Labour’s anti-business approach. Its increased bill for extra national insurance contributions is eye-watering, and now it faces the thicket of rules and regulations that is the Employment Rights Bill—the Deputy Prime Minister’s love letter to the unions. The imposition of day one rights means that a taking a chance on employees with poor qualifications and a poor employment history, or perhaps ex-offenders, is much more risky for the firm. It knows—as do myriad other businesses, large and small—that it is less likely to recruit, while elements of the legislation are designed instead to swell the ranks of the increasingly restive trade unions.”
“The Usual Place is a Dumfries charity that does amazing work helping young people with a host of mental and physical issues move into real jobs in catering. It is cutting back on those jobs because extra national insurance contributions put a bounty on each employee’s head, meaning jobs gone and life chances maimed. I hope the charity will celebrate its 10th anniversary next month, but Labour is doing nothing to help it get there. At the other end of the spectrum, I spoke this week with a major firm whose payroll supports a five-figure number of employees. It has a strong social conscience and tries to tap into the huge cohort of economically inactive Britons and get them into the world of work, with all that that means for their pay packets but also for the intangibles such as the self-esteem and dignity that work affords.”
“What this Government are creating is a hostile environment for some sectors. Yes, there are millions of pounds—maybe billions—for steel, plenty for unionised train drivers and no-strings pay boosts for NHS staff, but what about agriculture, which is the key driver of the economy in rural Dumfries and Galloway, my constituency? Farmers and many associated businesses might just about survive Labour’s urban-centric indifference, but the active harm it is doing by taking steps such as the upping of inheritance tax and the driving down of agricultural property relief is a disaster. The consequences of Labour’s avaricious increase in employer national insurance contributions are all too real.”
“In his highly colourful speech, I was not quite sure whether he was blaming Mrs Thatcher or gas prices for high energy bills, but he should really look towards his own Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, because much of the increase in energy prices, which hammer businesses right across this country, comes from carbon taxes applied by this Government. Critically, all this leads to expansion plans being shelved, as confidence slides. That means fewer jobs, especially for young people and those chasing that all-important first job. This Government’s boast is that they are putting money into working people’s pockets. Setting aside the questionable veracity of that claim, there is no doubt that if someone loses their job, or if they do not have a job in the first place, there is no extra money in their pocket.”
“As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, it has been a privilege to traverse this land from Exeter to Belfast and from Glasgow to Cardiff to speak with people on the frontline of business. They are a doughty, resilient lot, doing amazing things; Britain’s got talent, but heads are going down. The barrage of red tape is taking a toll. Costs are up, and I must reference the speech from the hon. Member for Loughborough (Dr Sandher), which probably owed more to the boards of the Globe theatre further along the Thames than to this place.”
“The hon. Lady is a doughty campaigner on the Business and Trade Committee. Unquestionably, mistakes were made. We know that and we have been through it before, but this Government have been in charge for 10 months now, and we see inflation rising and jobs slipping away. As I said, we are through the looking glass: trade deals are bad, except when they are good. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs last week criticised the Conservatives’ Australia and New Zealand deals for hitting farmers, while saying that his Government’s US deal protects farmers. The US deal put the welly boot into beef farmers, who face cheap imports here and US quotas over there that they just cannot fulfil.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right. These are not free trade agreements in the normal sense of the words: they are frittering around the edges, as he said himself. The difficulty for beef farmers in Dumfries and Galloway is that prices are rising, which is partly down to a drop in stock because of costs and things like that, so they are unable to fulfil this idea of sending beef to America. That is unlikely—it is more likely that we will see cheap American beef coming here. Again, we go back through the looking glass. Up is down when the Employment Rights Bill makes strikes more likely, yet is touted as a boost to productivity. It is incredible. The minimum wage is up, which is no bad thing, but let us not pretend that that is Government money: hard-pressed businesses have to find that extra cash, again.”
“Operation Banner defeated the IRA militarily and paved the way for the Good Friday agreement, so why are this Labour Government now pushing two-tier justice, to the obvious detriment of our brave Northern Ireland veterans and to the advantage of Gerry Adams and his Sinn Féin fellow travellers? Where is the justice in that?”
“Does the Minister have any information about how much aid is being held in Hamas-controlled warehouses in Gaza? Is the key to this desperate situation our links to Tehran? At the end of the day, the Iranian regime pulls the strings of its puppet organisation, Hamas, who are holding the hostages in conditions akin to torture.”
“The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is the terrorism export wing of the despotic regime in Tehran. Why are we not joining the Americans in proscribing this organisation when we did proscribe the Wagner organisation in Russia? Is it possibly because the Americans are pressuring us to continue our tenuous diplomatic links with Tehran?”
“The Daily Mail has said in its coverage of the accord today that industry leaders have warned that the Government must deliver a pipeline of investment opportunities to meet the new targets. What faith can savers have that this Government can deliver on that given that they touted GB Energy as a fantastic investment vehicle when in fact it is a damp squib?”
“The pretence is that Britain is somehow caught in a storm- tossed sea of international gas prices, which drives up energy costs, but when INEOS reports that it is paying £127 million a year in carbon taxes, rising to £2 billion by 2030, is it not the case that we are seeing the cascade of jobs losses because Labour has made decarbonisation deindustrialisation?”
“With the Welsh bottle deposit scheme going down the same disastrous dead end as the Scottish bottle deposit scheme, and now more costs are being added to Welsh tourism, making staycations more expensive, the Government appear to be creating a hostile environment for business. Add in the review of the UK internal market, which is meant to make doing business across this great land of ours easier. Why are the Government loosening the bonds of our great Union?”
“I am relieved to hear that the strategic defence review is coming in the spring—with a great yellow ball in the sky, I assume that will be fairly soon. In all military operations time is the enemy, and I am concerned about reports that the SDR may only be a broadbrush document—an interim document, as it were—and that the important decisions on specific capabilities and weapons systems may not be taken until autumn. Are we marching on to war? If so, should we not be doing so at the double, rather than at a slow march?”
“I had better think of something quick. I will return to the question of fishing. It is right that we draw together with our European allies to fight and to bring this war to an end. However, it cannot be right for the French to leverage in fishing negotiations for defence spending. Will the Secretary of State press on the Prime Minister the need to defend our fragile coastal communities and make it clear to Paris that this cannot be helicopters for haddock or mackerel for missiles?”
“The Minister talks about working at pace. If she wants to see what pace looks like, she might consider the Business and Trade Committee’s report on steel, which was turned around in rapid time—much faster than the snail’s pace review of steel, which has yet to emerge. Will it do so in the spring, or the summer? No one is quite sure. When that review finally emerges, will it address the elephant in the room, which is the ridiculous energy costs in this country? They have been driven up in part by gas, but also by carbon taxes, and by the renewable subsidies laid on by this Government.”
“As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I should remind the House that in March we recommended that the Government should listen harder to our recommendations. I am glad that that seems to have been taken on board, but I am slightly concerned that a lot of back patting seems to be going on, particularly about Fujitsu. Does the Minister not agree with me that he should be telling Fujitsu what to do, not asking it? This Government seem overly deferential to lawyers. He is in charge of this. Can he not get the pace moving, because lawyers are getting their money—their fees—but postmasters are not getting their money at the rate they should?”
“Mayne was a fine ratcatcher, and regulators then and now should not stand between him and this country’s premier gallantry medal.”
“One of the first lessons learned was that history is not fixed—it is not preserved in aspic—but shifts and changes as new details and perspectives open up. Look at the so-called château generals—men who in life were highly rated by their troops, only later to be accused of being donkeys leading lions. Aside from the few who think that “Blackadder Goes Forth” is a documentary, that trope is happily being revisited. We should have courage enough today to look again at the Mayne case, too. Eighty years on, we can sense something odd about the lack of a VC—“signal”, rather than “single”, perhaps? The military is split in two into ratcatchers and regulators, and we need both. We need regulators with their rulebooks and procedures in times of peace, and we need maverick ratcatchers in times of war.”
“Mayne’s hand shaped the SAS, and the regiment has in turn guided special forces around the globe. US Major Charles “Blisters” Beckwith raised the Delta Force—he promised it “Will get you a medal, or a body bag. Maybe both”—after time spent with the SAS. Mayne’s legacy is secure, and there is no doubting his courage. We are not here to critique “SAS: Rogue Heroes”—it is fun and it has a great soundtrack and great acting, although the accents are as sketchy as the history. Instead, we should coolly examine the real Major Mayne and ask why the VC was approved by all who mattered but rescinded in murky circumstances. I am a student of military history, having undertaken a distance learning MA with the excellent University of Birmingham.”
“It strikes me that the only recklessness Blair Mayne displayed was for his own safety, never that of his men—his “Blades”, as SAS troopers are known. Concerning us today is the action at Oldenburg on 9 April 1945, but let me be clear that this is not football-style VAR for gallantry medals; we are not reopening cases by the dozen, just this oddity. We may never know what precisely happened there almost 80 years ago to the day. We do know that Mayne was recommended for the VC, and his audacity was the only thing said to have kept him alive. We may also never learn what made the authorities downgrade that VC. Was it professional jealousy? Special forces face that today: the sobriquet “the Hereford hooligans” is unfairly appended to the SAS in many a mess, and SF officers who ought to be generals somehow do not make the cut.”
“In his Salford accent, he told me, “Oh, yeah, but I’d rather shoot you from a mile away—less chance of being compromised.” That was uncompromising, but careful, thoughtful and cunning too. As such, these men are surely the inheritors of the spirit of Blair Mayne. For certain, he could be a wild man, especially in drink—there is a cottage on the Isle of Arran pockmarked yet by rounds fired from his service revolver after a surfeit of whisky—but it fell to Mayne to protect and indeed nurture the nascent SAS when its founder, Sir David Stirling, was a prisoner of war in Italy and the infamous Colditz. If Mayne were as unhinged as he is portrayed, he would not have been able to apply the quiet discipline needed to forge a bunch of rogues into an effective and elite fighting force.”