Business and the Economy
Debate between Dave Doogan and John Cooper(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John Cooper
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.
Dave Doogan
I wonder what the hon. Member thinks about a couple of points. When is a trade deal not a trade deal? It seems that what has been agreed with the United States is a tariff deal and what has been agreed with the European Union is a modification to our pre-existing arrangement. What does he think the US trade deal will mean for beef farmers in his part of Scotland?
John Cooper
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. In short, Labour is not working and, terrifyingly, neither are increasing numbers of our constituents.