Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am afraid that what my hon. Friend has described is the Grinch in action. That Christmas market, in the home of Magna Carta, was beloved by local residents, but the council has totally ignored their wishes and cancelled it. It should reverse that decision.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

On behalf of the Liberal Democrats, I offer our condolences to the friends and family of the late Lord Frank Field, and wish a happy Passover to all those in the Jewish community.

Unpaid carers have shared heartbreaking stories of how they have been hounded by the Department for Work and Pensions and told to pay huge fines for minor infringements of carer’s allowance earning rules, all because the Government have failed to do anything about a problem that they have known about for years. Yesterday, one of the Prime Minister’s own dementia advisers resigned, saying that the Government’s treatment of those unpaid carers was “beyond the pale.” Will the Deputy Prime Minister apologise to all unpaid carers who have been failed by his Government, and will he commit to a full review of the system?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to all unpaid carers. Indeed, I met some of them over the weekend and know how hard they work. They keep our society functioning through their commitment to us. That is why we have uprated the benefits by £81.90 a week, and have increased the carer’s allowance by almost £1,500 since 2010. In respect of allegations of overpayment, of course appropriate discretion should be shown, but if there have been erroneous overpayments, it is right, on behalf of the taxpayer, to be able to recuperate them. However, we will work with anyone who is struggling with those repayments to negotiate sustainable and affordable repayment plans.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I extend my sympathies to all those impacted by the recent storms and flooding. We are investing record sums in flood defence across England and a recovery support framework is in place for families and businesses in every area that has experienced exceptional flooding. I know that my hon. Friend is in touch with Ministers in the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities about how those schemes affect her constituency, but I will ensure that she gets the correspondence and meetings that she needs to deliver for her local communities.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Q8. Two weeks ago, I challenged the Prime Minister on his Government’s broken promise on building new hospitals by 2030, including in my own area. Now it seems the Government are downgrading existing hospitals too. Children and parents in Eastbourne will be forced to travel for miles if the proposed downgrade of the hospital’s paediatric services goes ahead. Campaigners have asked the Government to call in this disastrous plan, so will the Prime Minister agree?

[The Prime Minister]

Actually, we are investing record sums in improving hospital infrastructure across the country. In Eastbourne in particular, spades are already in the ground to deliver an elective surgical hub. I know that there is local Liberal Democrat scaremongering about the future of services, but the local Conservative MP is doing a fantastic job, engaging with her community and working with local health officials.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It is great to hear that my hon. Friend is an avid parkrunner. I thank him for volunteering so that the people of Tamworth can enjoy one, too. I completely agree with him—when I had more time, I was a regular at the Northallerton parkrun, and the junior parkrun, which I recommend to those with children. It is a fantastic and accessible way to get people moving. I join him in encouraging everyone to get involved in his local area and beyond.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Q13.   At the last general election, residents in west Hertfordshire were promised a new hospital, but we are still waiting for the green light and are having to put up with broken lifts and overly crowded treatment wards. In other parts of the country, entire hospital buildings have had to be closed down, like the one in Stepping Hill in Stockport, because they are structurally unsafe. From broken promises on new hospitals to the backlog of repairs, people are sick and tired of waiting. Will the Prime Minister tell me, by the time of the next general election, how many broken hospitals will be fixed, and will my residents be able to point to a single spade in the ground?

[The Prime Minister]

We are investing record sums to deliver not just 40 new hospitals across the country but 90 different hospital upgrades. The hon. Lady will be familiar with the plans at West Hertfordshire trust to develop a new emergency and specialty care facility at Watford General, including women’s and children’s services. It will make an enormous difference to residents in the area.

Tata Group Gigafactory Investment

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

Brit European sounds like one of the firms I need to meet. No doubt my hon. Friend will invite me to visit, and I look forward to meeting the firm with her. She is absolutely right: this is a huge vote of confidence in our ability to adopt new technologies to achieve net zero. It is not just about finding and securing new sources of critical minerals; we are at the leading edge of battery recycling too. The UK Battery Industrialisation Centre will help us to stay at the forefront of recycling.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

My constituents are desperate to embrace the transition to electric vehicles, whether cars, vans or buses, but electric cars remain far too expensive, and the charging infrastructure barely exists—and where it does exist, it is not reliable. Although investment is welcome, we need a consistent strategy. If the Government are serious about reaching net zero, I urge the Minister to look again at reintroducing incentives to take up electric vehicles. Will she consider giving local authorities a statutory responsibility to roll out, with pandemic-style urgency, the EV charging infra- structure that we so desperately need?

G20

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that private citizens in the UK should follow the example of several British businesses and sell any shares they have in businesses that still operate in Russia?

[The Prime Minister]

The United Kingdom took the lead in imposing some of the most stringent economic sanctions on the Russian economy, Russian businesses and Russian individuals. It is pleasing that other countries have followed. We will continue to push other countries to follow our lead on sanctions and we will continue to tighten them where we think it can make a difference.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

The Minister for Climate was asked—

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

1. What steps he is taking to help ensure that international partners deliver on the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use commitments.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

14. With reference to the Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use, what recent steps he has taken with international partners to conserve forests.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

Through the Glasgow leaders’ declaration, 145 countries, representing 90% of the world’s forests, committed to ending and reversing deforestation this decade, and we secured $20 billion of public and philanthropic finance to help them. We also secured a commitment from the world’s biggest traders to stop buying commodities grown on illegally deforested land. At COP27, the world leaders who made that pledge are gathering again to report back on progress and agree next steps.

[Daisy Cooper]

The Environment Act 2021 was passed nearly a year ago, but we still do not have the necessary strong secondary legislation to regulate the use of forest-risk commodities in the UK. Ministers are yet to decide which commodities should be regulated, and under every one of their own scenarios the Government will not even manage to halve the UK’s deforestation footprint between now and 2030. With COP27 starting in just a few days, will the Government commit today to bring in regulations within a year that apply across all items that pose a risk to forests?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Lady raises an interesting point. I am new in post as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but I spent three years there working on such projects. I assure her that the protection of sustainable forests is key to this Government, which is why we continue to ensure that the £1.5 billion specifically earmarked for forests across the current international climate finance period will be honoured.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for her role and to the former Foreign Secretary and colleagues across the House for the part that they have played in bringing about that outcome. My thoughts are with the family, and I join my right hon. Friend in her sentiment that it is very welcome.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Q9.   West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in my area is still hoping to receive funds from the new hospital programme—the same programme that is supposed to deliver the Government’s so-called 40 new hospitals. There has been a lot of speculation that the new Prime Minister and his Chancellor might seek to cut infrastructure projects, so can the Prime Minister confirm that my local hospital trust, as well as all the other local hospital trusts that are set to benefit from the new hospital programme, will in fact get that money—yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

The Chancellor will set out our plans in the autumn statement shortly, but this is the Government who put in place plans that will significantly increase capital expenditure. Even though difficult decisions need to be made, I think the country can rest assured that we will continue to invest in our future productivity and, indeed, invest in our public services like the NHS.

Oral Answers to Questions

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 12th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What is taking place in Afghanistan is extremely concerning, I am afraid, with the reversal of women’s rights and women’s opportunities. One of the things we have done is to make sure that we are restoring the aid budget for women and girls, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be very happy to meet the group to discuss further.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Q9. The Government’s botched Budget gave unfunded tax cuts to some of the richest companies, while across the country there are hospitals worried that their roofs might collapse at any moment: Hinchingbrooke Hospital, Frimley Park Hospital and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, which is in the Prime Minister’s own local area. Those are just three of a number of hospitals that together need hundreds of millions of pounds, some of them urgently. Will the Prime Minister promise that every affected hospital will be given the money it needs to fix those dangerous roofs in the next 12 months?

[The Prime Minister]

I want to correct the hon. Lady, because what we are doing is simply not putting up corporation tax. It is not a tax cut; we are just not raising corporation tax. I feel it would be wrong, in a time when we are trying to attract investment into our country and at a time of global economic slowdown, to be raising taxes, because it will bring less revenue in. The way we are going to get the money to fund our national health service and to fund our schools is by having a strong economy, with companies investing and creating jobs.

Health and Social Care Update

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend and appreciate her warm welcome. The House will be aware that, in effect, GPs and, indeed, dentists are private and independent practitioners. This is important. On primary care, we have already seen reasonably good success with the NHS getting doctors right across the country. I think there is a lot more to be done on dental care.

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

This is not a plan; it is an ABC of Conservative failures. GPs are now seeing almost 12% more patients than they were just five years ago; the GP sector is facing a retirement timebomb; and one in five patients can only see a GP for less than five minutes. Patients need to have more fully qualified GPs. The Government set themselves a target of 6,000 by 2024. Have they now just given up?

[Dr Coffey]

No.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

Throughout her extraordinary reign, Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was a beacon of stability, duty and selflessness. Many of my constituents in St Albans will find it impossible to imagine Britain’s public life without her. On a personal level, I met the Queen a number of times when I worked in Commonwealth affairs trying to advance democracy and human rights. The Queen was not just a constant; a few times a year, for Commonwealth Heads Of Government meetings, Commonwealth youth meetings and the annual multi-faith, interfaith Commonwealth Day service and reception, she was literally part of the day job. The Queen and the Commonwealth—the only modern intergovernmental organisation like it—were inseparable.

Each year, we Commonwealth Secretariat staffers loved celebrating the diversity of the Commonwealth on Commonwealth Day, but it was sometimes slightly surreal. The annual Commonwealth Day reception at the secretariat was rumoured to be the only event in the Queen’s diary where she did not know who she was going to meet. There was no official line-up—it was all organic and not organised—and there was no protocol on ordering people and guests by rank or into different rooms. As a result, it was not unusual to see the Queen greeting a disorganised throng of diplomats and high commissioners—often with their husbands and wives—who were jostling to a backdrop of Fijian dancers in coconut bras, Ghanian acrobats and British pop stars from the 1980s all jockeying for position to get a glimpse of the Queen or to shake her hand.

On one day, I was tasked with taking a group of dignitaries to Buckingham Palace for an audience with Her Majesty. One such dignitary had just got a new smartphone and was particularly keen on telling all the other group members about its merits in spectacular detail. When we arrived at the Palace, we were all told, quite rightly, to turn our phones to silent and to put them away, but, during our polite conversation with the Queen, this person tried to persuade Her Majesty that she should get a phone just like his. He proceeded to take it out of his pocket and started to press buttons. He thrust it under her nose and plucked up the courage to say, “Your Majesty, I think you should get a phone like mine.” We all stood in stunned silence. She just said, “Who do you expect me to text?” It was fantastic—he blushed like a schoolboy. That one-liner was wildly refreshing, and the rest of the group were incredibly grateful.

So many people who met the Queen have many memories and stories to share, including many of my constituents. Many of them will remember the three occasions when the Queen visited St Albans cathedral and abbey, where a book of condolence is now open. The Queen’s passing feels like the end of an era, but on behalf of myself and my constituents in St Albans, I extend my thoughts and prayers to the royal family. Rest in peace, Your Majesty, and thank you.