British Steel

John Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Darlington and the Tees valley are excellent places in which to invest, so I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. In many parts of our country, steel is in the bones of our communities, but of course, this is not about looking back—it is about looking forward. In the future, we will need steel for not just clean energy, but for building the 1.5 million homes that we want to build, for Heathrow expansion and for our railways. We will need it across a whole range of sectors, and we know that demand is increasing, not reducing.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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.

[Sarah Jones]

The ridiculous energy costs that the hon. Gentleman refers to are a result of 14 years of Conservative Government—we need to be really clear about that. His point about the steel strategy, which has already been made, is reasonable. Of course, Members are really keen for us to bring that strategy forward as soon as possible, but I repeat what I have said: we are looking at spending up to £2.5 billion, and there is absolutely no way that I, the Secretary of State, the Chancellor or the Prime Minister could come to this House and say, “Here is a steel strategy that we have written on the back of a fag packet after a couple of weeks thinking about it.” We need to do this right, and that is what we are doing.

Horizon Redress and Post Office Update

John Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 8th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

I know that my hon. Friend has always been a great champion of Salford. Like other Members, she has made it very clear to me how significant the post office is in her community. The vast majority of post office branches across the country are already franchised. Both main and local franchises are often open longer than directly managed branches.

My hon. Friend asked what guarantees there are. As I have set out, we have made it clear to the Post Office that we want every directly managed branch to ensure that there is a main franchised operation in those communities. I recognise that there will be concern while that change takes place, but if she or any other Members have concerns about aspects of that transition as it moves forward in their constituencies, I will obviously be very happy to meet them to discuss those.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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?

[Gareth Thomas]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to want progress on Fujitsu, which is one of the reasons why I have made it clear to Fujitsu that an interim payment would be a very welcome and significant step forward. We have said that we think it is important that we hear the view of Sir Wyn Williams, who has been looking in detail at the responsibility of both Fujitsu and senior leaders in the Post Office during this scandal. We need to recognise that there is a process, but we are absolutely clear about our responsibility to move the negotiations forward.

Scunthorpe Steelworks

John Cooper Excerpts

Monday 7th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I would be happy to come to my hon. Friend’s constituency to have a look at and to talk to some of the people who work in the steel business. Huge numbers of organisations and businesses across the country rely on, use, and produce things from steel, and we need to ensure that we factor them into the conversations we are having. We are looking at the supply chains and how we boost industry more widely through our industrial strategy. We are looking at all the things—whether it is skills, R&D or access to finance—that businesses of all sectors have told us they need. Whether it is through the industrial strategy or the plan for steel, we are trying to ensure that we have a robust industry in this country so that jobs are not offshored and we have the security of knowing that we are producing the things that we need here in the UK.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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?

[Sarah Jones]

I will repeat what I have said: we are looking at all the options on the table; we are talking to British Steel about the right outcome; and we will do what is right for our country and our industry. On energy prices, the hon. Member is right to raise the high costs of energy. The supercharger comes into effect this month, and British Steel will get support from that, as will other high-end energy-intensive industries. But he is right to point to that issue and we are looking at it.

Scunthorpe Steelworks

John Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his expertise as a member of the Select Committee. We had this debate yesterday. Yes, having a long view has to be the right thing. The Government must ensure that we spend that £2.5 billion of taxpayers’ money in the right way to secure the industry well into the future.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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?

[Sarah Jones]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I very much have a grip. We are working with officials, the Secretary of State and others all the time. In terms of the conditions that he suggests we should put on the offer of funding, the offer we made was conditional on job targets, fair terms for workers, adhering to UK law, protecting taxpayers’ money—a whole raft of conditions were set and need to be adhered to.

As for the hon. Gentleman’s haste, there was no steel strategy in the 14 years of the previous Government. We are developing one. I am not going to stand in front of taxpayers in my constituency and say, “I have spent £2.5 billion just on a whim.” We have to get this right.

We are working with industry. I was at Celsa in Cardiff this week at a roundtable of the scrap industry and the steelmakers talking about the plan. I have done roundtables with all the industries that buy steel to ensure that we understand what demand will be over the coming years. We are getting this right, which is what the taxpayer would expect of us.

Employment Rights Bill

John Cooper Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 12th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Antonia Bance]

I do acknowledge that, every single of which will go into the pocket of a working person in improved rights and higher wages, alongside £13 billion of increased productivity, reduced stress, better employee wellbeing and reduced conflict in the workplace.

On the amendments, I will start with access to workplaces, which are the key to getting more workers into unions. I strongly welcome provisions to give unions the right to access workplaces for meeting, representing, organising, recruiting and collective bargaining. I am glad the Government amended the rules to ensure they cover digital as well as physical access, and I am glad to see the Central Arbitration Committee oversight and penalties when employers do not comply, as is sometimes the case.

Once a union has established membership in a workplace, it will want to seek recognition. Most employers do not have to be forced to recognise a union—it is just what they do as a responsible employer—but where employers refuse, statutory recognition can be triggered. Until now that process has been absolutely mad and totally dysfunctional, and the cards are stacked against the working people and their union at every turn.

The worst example of this in recent years is at BHX4 in Coventry where a company dedicated to keeping unions out of its warehouses brought its US-style industrial relations to the UK, and took on its own workers who wanted no more and no less than for management to have to sit down and negotiate with their union, the GMB. Amazon is a £27 billion company in the UK yet its sales are growing three times higher than its frontline workers’ wages and it has had 1,400 ambulance call-outs in just five years. BHX4 in Coventry is not a safe workplace, with fulfilment centre workers getting injured, being asked to pick up too much, to load from the back of vehicles on their own, and to lift heavy weights above their heads. Those workers at that Amazon plant were forced to take 37 days of industrial action over poverty pay. At the Select Committee, the company’s badly briefed, evasive executives could not bring themselves to acknowledge that.

Recognising the GMB is a modest request, something 1,000 companies would have accepted without question, but not Amazon. At the Select Committee, the GMB organiser, Amanda Gearing, told us that Amazon flooded the bargaining unit; there were 1,400 workers when the GMB first sought statutory recognition but, strangely, just 27 days after that application went in the number went up to 2,749. Amanda told us how Amazon delayed the access agreement— 52 days to agree access to the workplace, a chance for the company to swamp the workers with anti-union propaganda. All the screens in the warehouse and the app used for work allocation were anti-union, threatening to close the site if workers unionised. When the access scheme was finally agreed, the GMB got a tiny number of screens and one 45-minute session with each worker, while Amazon had five one-hour sessions and screens everywhere. It induced GMB members to leave the union and in every way impeded access.

I pay tribute to the GMB leaders at Amazon in Coventry: Ceferina Floresca, Garfield Hylton, Paramanathan Pradeep and Mohammednur Mohammed—heroes, all of them. Standing up to huge intimidation and under huge pressure, they ran a brilliant campaign, but the deck was stacked against them, and they lost the ballot by a heartbreaking 29 votes. The GMB’s general secretary, my friend Gary Smith, is clear: if the legislation we are debating today had been in place, the GMB members at Amazon would have won their fight.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Before the hon. Lady responds, she will no doubt realise that she is close to eight minutes. I know she will want to speak for a little while, but not too much longer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Frith]

I have had conversations with the vast majority of them. They support the general emphasis—[Interruption.] Actually, if the right hon. Gentleman has been listening, he will know that the argument I am making is that on much of the proposed legislation—giving rights on day one, being fair minded, making work pay—they are already doing that. The point I am making—[Interruption.] I have just named several. The most recent conversation I had was with MSL Solution Providers. Its challenges and arguments are around R&D tax credits, an argument I will make in due course. But the Conservatives’ claim of being the voice of small business and entrepreneurship is misguided, misrepresented and, frankly, out of date.

Once we have laid the new employment foundations, we must support them in building their businesses further. In particular, for some that means ensuring that AI enhances and expands prospects and prosperity in the employment market and the wider economy.

Lastly, I am proud to highlight my support for extending bereavement leave to those who experience a miscarriage—a compassionate and essential measure that I proudly support alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen).

The Bill is not just about a legislative process; it is about our values. It is about recognising that a thriving economy and a fair society must go hand in hand with tackling our inequalities. It is about ensuring that whether employer or employee, the foundation on which our employment is built ensures strength for all.

[John Cooper]

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?

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. 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.

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.

“Chapter 4A

John Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 11th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Wheeler]

I think that a Bill that promotes good, secure work across the economy is something we should not shy away from. I believe, if I am correct, that the figure referenced represents 0.5% of the costs of businesses, so no—I am not concerned.

I would like to finish in a slightly odd place. Benjamin Disraeli believed that his Government’s active role in passing legislation that benefited the working person would

“gain and retain for the Conservatives the lasting affection of the working classes”—

clearly he failed in that endeavour. One nation Tories are now a vanishingly scarce presence on the Opposition Benches. I ask all hon. Members on those Benches, with their opposition to this Bill: when did the Conservatives give up even trying to be on the side of working people?

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

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. 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. 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?

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is quite clear that the Government did not do the work needed to get the Bill into the right place and position to be introduced to this House in the first place? That was exemplified in Committee, with the amount of drafting that had to be done at that stage. The Bill should have been stopped by the parliamentary business and legislation committee; it should never have been allowed to get to the Floor of the House.

[John Cooper]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend. He is a very experienced parliamentarian and knows full well that to arrive at this stage with, as we have heard from other Members, a telephone directory of amendments is quite an incredible situation. How could any self-respecting Secretary of State for Business and Trade stand over the anti-growth regulations contained in—but not confined to—parts 1, 2 and 4 of this Bill? Even a trainee solicitor can see that they strip out flexibility for both employees and employers, making it less likely that people—especially young people and people with sketchy backgrounds—will be hired for that all-important first job. Whither your employee rights if you have no job?

As someone who bends his elbow, I am familiar with the occasionally coarse atmosphere in pubs. My daughter took a part-time job in a bar while studying at university, but I see nothing useful for her in the Bill’s bid to make employers liable for third-party harassment. It is why I also support our amendment to exclude the hospitality sector from this onerous clause. Aside from the fact that my daughter was well capable of dealing with the rare rude, sexist or obstreperous client under existing laws, clause 18 risks the Bill becoming a snooper’s charter—a busybody’s dream. If our amendment 289 falls, the public bar will no longer be the cockpit of free speech, but placed in the purview of the censorious, and the malicious gauleiters of orthodoxy.

Set as we are in a sea of troubles amid global turmoil, are Labour really so afraid of off-colour jokes, or the bar stool crank with outré political views, that it will establish the banter police? One of my criticisms of the Holyrood Parliament in Edinburgh is that it passes “never mind the quality, feel the width” legislation in a bid for self-justification. With this Bill, that accusation could rightly be levelled at this Government, too.

[Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will be proud to see this Bill progress through Parliament and to develop accordingly. That is what the amendments before us offer us the chance to do. May I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Heeley (Louise Haigh), who is no longer in her place, and the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) for the work that they are doing?

In the short time available to me, I wish to speak to new clause 7, which reflects a manifesto commitment made by the Labour party that said explicitly that the current parental leave system does not support working families. Millions of people across this country will recognise that that is the case. New clause 7 is about putting meat on the bones of that commitment, because it is long overdue. We are behind the curve in this country in how we treat dads. I wish to thank everybody who has signed this amendment, because it sends the message that we care about our fathers in this country.

We have the worst paternity leave in the EU, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), who is no longer in his place, pointed out. Two weeks is just enough time for the dad to realise that the meconium is going to stop and that they might eventually get three hours’ sleep at some point. Let us see how our economic competitors treat dads better. Dads get 16 months in Sweden, eight months for each parent and three months protected for the dad. In France, Spain, Norway and Luxembourg, dads get at least six weeks. In Japan, they get a year. Why do they do that? It is because dads make a difference. Yes, this Bill would give them a day one right to paternity leave, but only two weeks. One in five dads—35% of them—in this country does not take any leave at all, because they cannot afford to do so. They need a paid and protected right of itself to benefit from paternity leave. It benefits them and it benefits their kids. It is better for the mental health of the father. It means that they take fewer sick days—there is evidence to prove that—and it is good for the kids. It is also good for the mums.

We need to end the battle of the sexes when it comes to childcare, because research shows that women really cannot win. Even when we do not have kids, we pay the price because of maternity discrimination. We all know of employers who do not employ women in their 20s and 30s because of the risk that ladies do babies. The challenge with this legislation, which rightfully strengthens maternity discrimination powers, is that it could inadvertently reinforce that message if we do not bring forward legislation to support fathers. [Interruption.] I am glad Conservative Members support what I am saying. I wish they would vote with us on this tonight.

The gender pay gap does exist in this country, but it is basically a maternity pay gap, because the motherhood penalty is all too real. By the time of their first child, a woman’s wages are a third below a man’s within 20 months. Members might say that that is to do with working part-time, but that is even when women return to the front. One in nine mums have been dismissed, made redundant or forced out. Women are considered 10% less competent in the workplace when they become mums, as if juggling things make them less able to do things rather than more. Childless women are eight times more likely to be promoted. Conversely, dads are considered 5% more committed than non-dads because we expect them to be in work, paying for their children rather than helping to look after them.

I want to deal not in caricatures but in cold, hard cash. Above all, supporting paternity leave in its own right, and leave for the other parents in relationships, is good for the economy. It helps boost women’s participation and productivity. Countries with better paid parental leave have a smaller gender participation gap in their economy, with all the economic benefits that that brings. Closing that gap could bring £23 billion into our economy—1% of GDP.

North Sea Energy

John Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 6th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

The National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy will be incredibly important in this space. Most countries have a sovereign wealth fund like the National Wealth Fund. We have set that up. Most countries have their state energy companies. We have loads of state energy companies�just other countries�. It is absolutely right that we set up our own. We also have the clean energy bonus, which will mean that we are encouraging supply chains and jobs here in the UK, so we can move away from reliance on other countries.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

With due deference to the newly appointed Minister for Aberdeen on the Conservative Benches, the question of these jobs is not a matter purely for the north-east or purely for Scotland. Those 200,000 jobs are spread across every constituency in this country and they are all at risk. As we heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), they are being pushed off a cliff edge. The Minister talked about our energy bills being in the hands of Vladimir Putin. Does she not agree with me that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place? We have Vladimir Putin on one side driving up energy bills and her dogmatic Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on the other.

[Sarah Jones]

I do not agree with that framing whatsoever. We have Putin who invaded Ukraine, leading to the massive global shock for energy prices, and we have a Secretary of State who is very pragmatically taking forward plans to, as the triangle tells us, protect and grow jobs, and give us energy security. I think most people in the country understand that. They get that we need energy security and to tackle the climate at the same time.

Department for Business and Trade

John Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

I, too, am a member of the Select Committee.

Perhaps no other Department has an impact on the lives of so many Britons. The economy affects each and every one of us, and when the Government’s No. 1 priority is the fastest sustained economic growth in the G7, then—to use football parlance—the Chancellor is the midfield general and the Department for Business and Trade is the big striker in the opposition box. The rest of us—all of us—have a spot on the terraces, but oh dear! We have barely kicked off, and we are pinned in our own half.

Where is business confidence, given that less than a quarter of the businesses that cheered Labour on, signing a letter ahead of the election, are still waving their red scarves? One said that it now feels “duped”. What of the financial back-up? The eye-catching headline figure in the supplementary estimates is that the Department has been allocated a total funding increase of £1.8 billion, yet that money is largely earmarked for Post Office compensation. It is absolutely right and proper that the victims be compensated quickly, but there should be no pretence that the money is a shot in the arm for DBT.

Although the extra £440 million for the British Business Bank is good news, is it enough? This country lacks not for start-ups but for scale-ups, and we hear time and again that a lack of finance from risk-averse banks is the block. Scale matters. The Business and Trade Committee heard only yesterday that although work by the previous Government had created an ideal environment for the emerging technology of quantum computing, Britain has earmarked a few billion pounds for the sector—impressive, until one hears that the United States is injecting over $50 billion. The US’s R&D spend alone is perhaps seven times our total budget in this field.

No Government are ever in full control of events, and the storms of war are howling. Even as this Government’s industrial strategy is being shaped, defence is now the utmost priority. If we as a nation are not secure, we are not a nation. Wars are fought in trenches and on myriad battlefields, but they are won in boardrooms and on the shop floors and shipyards of industry. Economic growth, then, is a key arrow in the British quiver. But do these estimates give us hope for growth? Rather than confidently striking out for new global deals, Britain today looks like a cork in a storm-tossed sea—at the mercy of events, and not their master.

On a Business and Trade Committee visit to Brussels, we explored what the Government might expect of their much-vaunted reset of relations. Troublingly, Britain lacks for any clear definition of its ask beyond warm words about defence and security, yet the EU, being made up of good protectionists, already has an invoice drawn up.

We have acceded to the comprehensive and progressive agreement for trans-Pacific partnership—that is not easy to say, especially with these teeth. It covers a bloc of over 500 million people and includes countries such as Australia, Canada, Japan and Singapore, and economies that are ripe to bloom, such as Vietnam and Malaysia, in contrast to the sunset economies of Europe, which have sclerotic growth. Yet we are told that trade deals take up British GDP only marginally. We lack ambition.

[Alison Griffiths]

I want to follow up on my hon. Friend’s comment on international trade. Does he agree that the Government currently lack the capability to support businesses appropriately in international trade?

[John Cooper]

I completely agree that much more needs to be done on international trade. As I said, we lack ambition in this field, because we base so much of what we expect on previous deals. Frankly, there has never been a deal like CPTPP, the putative deal with India and the dripping roast that is a free trade deal with the US.

The Department for Business and Trade needs to step up, not be beaten before we even start. Growth is the destination that we in this House should all agree on; the path there is where the disputes lie. We are in an economic relegation zone after a dud Budget. Can the Department for Business and Trade help pull off the shock result that we all need? Britain’s got talent, and the Department for Business and Trade can boost it.

Competition and Markets Authority Chairman

John Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Justin Madders]

We absolutely agree that competition is vital for driving investment and growth. The CMA will remain operationally independent, as it always has been.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

The Government seem fascinated by the price of Oasis tickets. Meanwhile, debt and the cost of debt are soaring. Should the Government—definitely, not maybe—come up with some ideas of their own for growth, rather than trying to copy the homework of regulators?

[Justin Madders]

We have our own ideas for growth. We have important planning reforms coming forward, and the industrial strategy, which drives forward the strengths of the UK economy. As for the hon. Gentleman’s Oasis pun, I think he needs to work a bit harder on that one.

Harland & Wolff

John Cooper Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call John Cooper, a member of the Business and Trade Committee.

[John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)]

I congratulate this Front-Bench team and the wider Government on landing this deal in the face of what the Secretary of State has euphemistically called the “headwinds” —I would call them a full-force gale—created by the Budget. Did Navantia raise concerns about the forthcoming Employment Rights Bill? It swings the pendulum very much in favour of trade unions, which, as we know, are very often red in tooth and claw. Was that an issue in landing the deal?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

No, it was not—it is a good try, but no. First, the employment rights framework in most parts of continental Europe is very different from our own. Secondly, as I have repeatedly said, the changes in the Employment Rights Bill do raise terms and conditions for some of the lowest-paid workers in the country, but many companies in the UK—particularly larger ones—already operate to a significantly higher level. Shipbuilding is historically a fairly unionised sector, so I do not think there are any concerns or worries in that field—to be frank, the trade unions in that sector often fought harder for the industry than former Conservative Governments. I understand the try-on point that the hon. Gentleman is making, but no, the Employment Rights Bill has not been a problem. In terms of wider UK Government policy, this has been a great endorsement of our EU reset and our willingness not to revisit the arguments of Brexit, but to work more closely with friends and allies in Europe, to ensure that we are getting the maximum opportunities for the UK and always working in our national interest.