John Cooper
MP for Dumfries and Galloway · Conservative · United Kingdom
“One of the great sports in this place is who has the best constituency. Well, National Geographic magazine’s verdict is in and the only place in the UK to get a mention in its “Best Places in the World to Travel to in 2027” is Dumfries and Galloway. This news is absolutely delightful.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“CropLife UK warns that the heedless rush to align with the EU could cost British farming £810 million. That is £810 million off bottom lines, which are already very marginal. Further, it could also hit production in this country, so we cannot export what we are not even growing.”
House of Commons22 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Food security is national security, as the mantra from the Government Benches goes. Yet the reality, I am afraid, is that it is much spun and little done. The family farm tax sent a chill through my rural Dumfries and Galloway constituency and underscored yet again the disconnect between this urban-centric Government and rural Britain.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a big difficulty as well for the fishing sector. I have asked the Fisheries Minister if he will convene a meeting with the fishermen, because British boats are afraid to put to sea when French boats are able to access finance from the French Government to fish in British waters. Funding in Scotland, as we heard from my hon.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The block grant and the Barnett consequentials go north. This place should have some say in what goes on there. The hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) opened this debate with his usual paean to the EU.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend and I were in the Committee that discussed the carbon border adjustment mechanism. Does he share my surprise that the Government did not seem to realise that it would affect fertiliser?”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
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“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons21 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons19 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons14 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons13 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons1 May 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons30 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons30 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons22 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons22 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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?”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Mayne was a fine ratcatcher, and regulators then and now should not stand between him and this country’s premier gallantry medal.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“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.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Sadly, both men are no longer with us, but in life one thing was obvious: neither was a reckless psychopath. They were hard men—yes, of course, for theirs is a lethal business—but rather more planning and preparation goes into tier 1 special forces than novels and TV would have us believe. Controversy reigns over television’s brilliant “SAS: Rogue Heroes” and Blair “Paddy” Mayne’s depiction, but it is nothing new. There were all sorts of claims about the book “Bravo Two Zero” when it emerged after the first Gulf war. Was it fact or fantasy? Peter “Billy Rat” Ratcliffe, former regimental sergeant major of 22 SAS, told me, “Life in the regiment is not really about garrotting 200 sentries, you know.” “But you do know how to garrotte a sentry, don’t you?” I asked.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I congratulate my neighbour the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) on securing this important debate—we could almost smell the cordite in his opening remarks. My first encounter with the Special Air Service was when, just as we were getting to the good bit, the John Wayne film on TV was interrupted, and it was over to Kate Adie as men in bug-eyed respirators ended the Iranian embassy siege on 5 May 1980, amid the thunder of flashbangs and the staccato rattle of small arms fire. As a journalist, I later met John “Mac” McAleese, who really was the man on the balcony, not—I hate to break it to Members—that bloke down the pub mumbling about the colour of the boathouse at Hereford, as Walter Mitty characters do. I also became friends with Colonel Clive Fairweather, second in command of the regiment.”
House of Commons8 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Between 1997 and 2010, about 36,000 jobs were lost in steelmaking, or about half the workforce—that was under Labour, of course. I am concerned to hear talk today about nationalisation, and I say that with due deference to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers); the old joke is that if we want to stop crime paying, we should nationalise it. Given that this Government could not run a bath, never mind the steel industry, would a better idea not be to support the industry with, as I have mentioned before, a golden share to give us some say over what happens? Again, is the truth not that the dogmatic pursuit of net zero is driving up energy bills in this country to a level that is simply not sustainable for industry?”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“There is no question but that the hon. Members for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang) and for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed)—who are sadly no longer in their places—had a difficult experience in Israel, and that is to be regretted. However, we are hearing today that that somehow makes criticism of Israel impossible in this place, but as we have heard time and again, that is simply not the case. We can speak out in Parliament, and we can continue to do so.”
House of Commons7 April 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“As the grandson of a steelworker in Corby, Northamptonshire, I understand something of the iconic nature of the industry. The hon. Lady tries to blame us Conservatives for what went wrong. Is the situation not too confused? The Government are not sending the right signals to the industry and we are not sure what we want. We already do not make the right kinds of steel for much of the defence industry. The steel strategy will be published in the spring—wonderful. When is the spring? The Government need to get a grip and send out signals now. If we are going to negotiate with the Chinese about the Scunthorpe mill and the amount of money we are spending there, should we not have some kind of golden share so that taxpayers are comfortable about what is going on there?”
House of Commons27 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What is inappropriate is the way devolution does not appear to be working. Can we pluck from the logjam of Backbench Business Committee debate ideas one on devolution and how it is failing?”
House of Commons27 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The A77 and A75 roads are critical to the people of south-west Scotland, but they are also critical to the UK, because they service the exceptionally busy ferry port of Cairnryan, which links us with our friends in Northern Ireland. The difficulty with these roads is obvious if we ever travel them. There is another difficulty, however, which is that the Department for Transport here does not seem to think this has anything to do with it, and the Secretary of State for Scotland is too busy to meet me to discuss the issue. When the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Elaine Stewart), who is in her place on the Government Benches, and I wrote to the Transport Secretary in Scotland, we received a high-handed letter saying that it would be inappropriate to meet us.”
House of Commons27 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“To say that boats can simply up nets and go elsewhere is to demonstrate a terrifying lack of knowledge about the sea. Fish and seafood are not evenly suffused; they are in some places and not in others. Fishing is food security, as we have heard. It is a livelihood for many—not just for those who literally risk life and limb on the storm-tossed seas, but for those onshore. Fish and chips are as emblematic of this country as the bright fishing boats at quaysides from Kirkcudbright to Kirkwall and more. They must not be frittered away at the behest of an avaricious EU.”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Member for St Ives is not a huge fan of it, but I certainly am—the EU catches around seven times more fish by value in UK waters than we land from EU waters. Britain’s status as an independent coastal state was hard won, and we must not allow our fleet to be dragged back into the ambit of the hated common fisheries policy. We cannot allow a linkage between fisheries and access to markets to be established. British fishing is already under a series of threats. Let us be as clear as the blue ocean about the conservation issue: fishermen are to the fore in this area, for they know that if they clear the seas of fish today, there is no tomorrow for them. Things such as spatial squeeze are real. Our seas are vast but not limitless. Boats cannot fish between floating wind turbines or trawl near those turbines’ subsea infrastructure.”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“What Labour expects from this reset is opaque at best, but the EU—good protectionist that it is—has already drawn up an invoice, and top of its list is fishing. Amid warm words about security and co-operation between Britain and the EU, the French are keen to lock us out of the new £150 billion Euro defence fund, only to then show a bit of ankle on negotiations involving—quelle surprise!—fishing. Just as Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, with its heavy pro-union bias, takes us back to 1979 and the winter of discontent, so fishing is drifting back to 1973. Then, our prized and pristine waters were the quid pro quo for access to what was then the European Economic Community. Today, the dice are loaded in favour of the EU fleet. According to the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation—I note that the hon.”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“But let us talk about chips—not the golden-fried essential component of what we Scots call the fish supper, but bargaining chips, for that is yet again what our fishing crews risk becoming. The statistics are superficially simple: the Office for National Statistics says that fishing accounted for just 0.03% of the UK’s economic output in 2021. However, that does not capture the reality that a great many of our fragile coastal communities, not only in Scotland but across the UK, are entirely dependent on jobs in fishing’s at-sea component and its allied onshore processors. If fishing were a trifling little homespun affair, why is the EU so interested in it? With the Business and Trade Committee, I travelled to Brussels to discuss this Government’s reset of relations.”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Andrew George) on securing this important debate. I declare a sort of interest: in a previous life, I was a special adviser with the Scotland Office, and I spent the larger part of 2021 working on exports from Scotland to the EU. I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that the EU, far from being our avuncular friends in this matter, were a protectionist bloc. Many of the difficulties we faced, including the transport of live langoustines—he mentioned vivier transport—were to do with problems on the far side of the short strait. It was bloody-mindedness at best and outright protectionism at worst.”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Q9. When he was Director of Public Prosecutions, I do not think the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have sat comfortably in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Cameron, but incredibly in Scotland, we have a situation in which the head of prosecutions—the Lord Advocate—does sit in Cabinet. This situation has been thrown into sharp focus lately by a police probe into the finances of the SNP, and has been thrown further into focus because, although not personally involved, the Lord Advocate ultimately sits at the head of the investigation into former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who faced potential criminal charges. This situation has been created by the SNP, who will not fix it. Does it sit with this House to amend the situation?”
House of Commons26 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“T6. The Hawk aircraft, most famous in the scarlet livery of the Red Arrows, is at the end of its service life. Can Ministers explain what steps they are taking to ensure that we replace it with a British-built sovereign capability?”
House of Commons24 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“My hon. Friend has begun what I am sure will be an exquisite speech, and she hits the nail on the head when she talks about transport connectivity. One of the great problems that unites all our coastal communities is that it is difficult to get anywhere. For a community like mine in Dumfries and Galloway, it is 80 miles to the nearest hospital. Perhaps rather than a new Minister looking at coastal communities, we need existing Transport Ministers to put their foot down.”
House of Commons20 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Large spending announcements for defence would make people think that Britain is marching to war, but the Ministry of Defence is bimbling along with procurement systems that are better designed for peacetime. Will the Prime Minister use his good offices to bring British industry into this fight, and quickly?”
House of Commons19 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is in fact my neighbour, for giving way. He talks about the number of farms that will be affected by this. It is far higher than the Treasury tells us. We know that the Scotland Office is compiling its own figures, to push back against the Treasury figures, which will no doubt be trotted out here again today. Is there not a fundamental problem here, as the vast majority of farms will be affected by this?”
House of Commons13 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“3. What estimate she has made with Cabinet colleagues of the number of farms affected by changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief in Wales.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Scotland Office is conducting a series of agricultural roundtables, talking directly to farmers and putting together statistics to push back against the orthodoxy that only a tiny number of very wealthy estates will be affected, which is simply not the case. This increasingly looks like a war on farmers by the Treasury. What part is the Minister playing in fighting back against it?”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The hon. Lady is a fearsome campaigner on the Business and Trade Committee. She talks about intimidation and paints a lovely picture of unions working actively for their workers, but how can we square that with the version of intimidation that the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) seems to be referring to with the return of flying pickets?”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“This skimpy Bill, cobbled together with indecent haste to meet Labour’s “first 100 days” deadline, bears all the hallmarks of a thank you note from Labour to its union backers. If it passes, the unions are going to party like it’s 1979. However, Labour Members pocketing supposedly pristine union donations should have a care, because that 1979 winter of discontent saw the public lose patience with a Labour Prime Minister captured by the unions. History does not repeat precisely, but this does look awfully familiar.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If a Cabinet Minister is already at the unions’ mercy, what chance do the general public have? We have heard about positive trade union benefits, but it is not all sunlit uplands. One rail union refuses to let bosses use email for rotas, insisting on fax machines— I imagine I am one of the few Members who remembers those. Another left passengers inconvenienced when it ordered members not to use a footbridge as it had a skim of snow on it no thicker than the icing on a cake. They must be licking their lips at clauses that remove previous thresholds for strike action such as the 50% turnout requirement and the 40% support requirement. I think the public will support amendments that would keep existing benchmarks as modest guardrails, not to crack down on unions but to limit the damage that hotheads might inflict.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“In the Business and Trade Committee we have heard that good relations are possible between employers and trade unions. Of course they are—not all union reps are agitators, any more than all bosses are grasping exploiters of the workers. But stripping out existing protections, as this Bill does, risks tilting the law too far in favour of the unions, making strikes more frequent and more damaging thanks to, for example, lower notice periods. We know that the unions are already restive; just ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, unable to attend an event with, ironically, the Scottish Confederation of British Industry in his own office because he would not cross a picket line, and he has had to cancel at least one other event as the pickets strike on.”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I rise as a former member of a trade union, and the harsh lessons I learned then are what concern me about this Bill. As a low-paid journalist on a local paper, I had hoped that the union would go in to bat for me. Instead, it was more interested in Cuban socialism and collective bargaining, more concerned about traducing Mrs Thatcher’s legacy than the tribulations of a junior reporter, more interested in funding the Labour party than supporting me and my newsroom colleagues. That is why I am backing amendments such as amendment 292, which seeks to defuse what has been called a subscription trap, where inertia is used to allow political donations taken from members to tick up year in, year out. Is this the clean money of which the hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) spoke?”
House of Commons12 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“We are being asked to walk into a cage without a key. I have seen this before with the SNP’s woeful prospectus for Scottish independence in 2014. Scots were bright enough then to see through the smokescreen. Will Members across the House be sharp enough to discern the dangers here?”
House of Commons11 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“The Secretary of State for Business must surely recognise the importance of this—after all, I saw him just days ago in a slick video, with cuts quicker than the shower scene in Hitchcock’s “Psycho”, boasting of “working together abroad to deliver growth at home”. Now, I love a fantasy film as much as anyone, but the Secretary of State is in danger of jumping the shark with this level of sophistry and stretching credulity beyond snapping point. Growth at home is feeble, and this Bill is its enemy. So lacking in detail is this Bill, which was clearly scrabbled together to beat the Government’s own deadline of the first 100 days, that it is the equivalent of a parliamentary blank cheque—sign here, and we will fill in all those pesky details later—handing sweeping powers to the Secretary of State.”
House of Commons11 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“If growth is the intended destination, as my friends in Dublin would say, “You can’t get there from here”. This Bill—so long on amendments and so short on detail—cannot be reconciled with this Government’s stated mantra of growth, growth, growth. By their own estimate, the Bill will cost business £5 billion—so easily dismissed by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles (Michael Wheeler), despite being a serious amount of money. The only growth will be in the mountain of red tape in which the Bill will snare businesses. I rise to speak in favour of new clause 87, which would require the Secretary of State to have regard to the objective of the “international competitiveness of the economy” and its growth in the medium to long term.”
House of Commons11 March 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗