Oral Answers to Questions
John Cooper Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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James Murray
I hope my hon. Friend will welcome the £200 million investment in the Grangemouth facility, which has already been spoken about today. I hope he will also support the Government’s decision to restore fiscal responsibility to public finances within the tough fiscal rules that the Chancellor set out at the Budget.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Rachel Reeves)
Economic stability and growth are vital to help businesses across the UK to grow. The Lloyds business barometer published last week showed business confidence up 12 points, building on recent surveys by EY and PwC that show that business and investor confidence is rising. The Government are partnering with business to unlock investment and to drive growth.
John Cooper
The Chancellor, with her unimpeachable record in the sector, will know that economics is known as the dismal science. As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, rather than using second-hand statistics, I have spoken directly with businesses one to one and found that the mood is indeed dismal. After her dud Budget, can she think again and go back on this desperate jobs tax? She is in danger of becoming tough on growth and tough on the causes of growth.
Rachel Reeves
Conservative Members welcome the additional money for the NHS, but they never welcome the means to pay for it, which is why we are in the mess that we are with the £22 billion black hole we inherited from the previous Government. The hon. Member says that these are backward-looking surveys. The EY survey of UK CEOs found that 82% felt optimistic. PwC’s latest global CEO survey ranked the UK as the second-most attractive global destination for international investment, and last week the Lloyds survey showed a boost in business confidence. Those are the facts. People are choosing Britain as a place to invest and to locate their businesses. On the Government side of the House, we welcome that.
Family Businesses
John Cooper Excerpts(1 month ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
Britain’s got talent! Right across this great land we have many clever people innovating and working hard. As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, I have been in places as far apart as Exeter and Glasgow, talking with people who make everything from satellites to sausage rolls. The mood, however, is not good. The strivers are still striving, straining every sinew to deliver success, but confidence is not so much on the floor as deep in the cellars below.
In my constituency I spoke to a family firm of bakers who had modest expansion plans—two or three extra staff drawn from the ranks of youngsters who might struggle to find that all-important first job. Those plans are parked; those youngsters, for all I know, are on the dole. Similarly, The Usual Place, a charity in Dumfries that provides wonderful opportunities for youngsters in catering, is making cutbacks. Six people will lose their jobs as the reality of the anti-business agenda—designed in No. 11 Downing Street—bites.
When we, in government, proposed raising national insurance to fund the NHS, one Labour Back Bencher denounced it as the “worst possible tax rise”. Now that same politician is Chancellor, and the tune has changed. And spare us the claim that Labour’s manifesto pledge on national insurance covered only that paid directly by employees, which is sophistry—sheer sophistry.
We lack not for start-ups in Britain, but we struggle for scale-ups—the firms that expand and grow. Family businesses are often among the front rank of successful scale-ups, as their multi-generational nature and the investment, literal and metaphorical, of senior figures imbues stability. The Prime Minister talks a good game, but talk is cheap, and his actions have expensive consequences. He said that he and his Chancellor had made it clear to Cabinet colleagues that in each of their briefs
“growth is the number one mission”.
Well, the Deputy Prime Minister did not hear—perhaps her rave music was too loud—for how is growth compatible with her Employment Rights Bill, which the Government’s own analysis says will cost businesses up to £5 billion a year. That is £5 billion, when grandparents are in tears as family farms face being split up; £5 billion, when families who have been in business for decades look at their bottom line and despair?
The worst aspect of that Bill is the premise that all trade union organisers are saints and all business owners are robber barons intent on exploiting the workers. [Interruption.] The unions are restive. The Secretary of State for Scotland would not attend a reception in his own magnificent Dover House because of a picket line—and how ironic that the meeting was with the Scottish CBI. Now those same strikers have forced the cancellation of a Scotland Office event with National Air Traffic Services. I have said it before, and I make no apology for saying it again: “Unions gonna party like it’s 1979.”
Labour Members see business as a dripping roast to be devoured, taxed to a standstill, and not much mischief if it fails. They perceive a nobility in the public sector when they see only avarice in the private sector, but they are as wrong about that as they are about profit being a dirty word. The drivers of growth are in the private sector. They deserve our admiration and, more important, our support. What can the Government do for them? How about getting out of the way? How about less legislation, not more? How about less petty regulation, and more can-do attitude? How about lightening the tax load, not adding to it? Labour needs to step away from its anti-business policies so that firms in every part of the country can step up with wealth creation, with the private sector leading the charge.
Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms
John Cooper Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison.
I represent Dumfries and Galloway, which is the land of milk and slurry. With due deference to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and his super-valuable land, we have some of the most productive grassland in the whole country. The point that the farmers there make to me all the time—they do not, by the way, have the large estates, but are small and often tenant farmers—is that Treasury Ministers, like accountants, often know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. That is the situation.
There is a fundamental misunderstanding about the reliefs. They are not loopholes; they were specifically put in place to allow multigenerational farming to continue. One of my farmers, Robert, who farms near Moniaive, said:
“APR and BPR are not, as has been suggested, ‘loopholes’ but targeted and necessary reliefs designed to allow multi-generational farming businesses to contribute towards food production and economic growth.”
Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)
Labour Members have made several attempts to project possible tweaks to the legislation, with feedback from our members. On that point about loopholes, however, I do not think that anyone is saying that family farms have tried to abuse loopholes; it is the big billion-dollar corporations and land banks that have started to exploit them—[Interruption.]
John Cooper
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but as he can hear from Opposition Members it has repeatedly been called a loophole. I have been told in the main Chamber that I am scaremongering, which is not right either. That is nonsense—the fear out there is real. Listen to the noise outside. The people outside are not multimillionaires; they are not shroud waving for the sake of it and are not exploiting a loophole. This is a bit like red diesel—again, I suspect, the Minister does not even know what that is. Red diesel is priced cheaply, and that has a direct link with, and effect on, the price of food that we pay in our shops. The whole system is designed, first and foremost, to ensure food security and to deliver quality food at low prices.
We have heard about tweaks and so forth, but it is not for me to suggest tweaks. The Government are in power with a huge majority; they must think again and it is not, as I say, for me to sit down to write out specifics for them. They have the ability not to make a great screeching U-turn, but to make the tweaks that can protect this most important and vital industry. Will the Minister please take away the message he has heard today—including the change of tone from those on the Benches behind him—that this is a real and serious problem? Changes can be made. It is not too late.
Agricultural and Business Property Reliefs: OBR Costing
John Cooper Excerpts(2 months ago)
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James Murray
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising his constituent’s concern. I do not know the specifics of the case, but more broadly, investment decisions depend above all else on a stable economy and stable public finances. Without the hard work that we have done since taking office to fix the public finances and bring back economic stability, investment would be hampered, and our growth ambitions would not materialise in the way that we are determined to ensure happens.
John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
There will be a rally on Saturday, and the Minister appears to imagine that this indicates acclamation for his policy. We heard earlier in the week from the hon. Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) and today from the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Chi Onwurah)—both well-known rural areas—that this is all about the landed estates and wealthy people, but I can assure the Minister that the farmers I will speak with in Castle Douglas on Saturday are tenant farmers and family farmers, and they face being put off the land after generations. Is he really suggesting that I should tell them they have nothing to worry about?
James Murray
I am not going to tell the hon. Gentleman what he should say to his constituents, but what I can tell him about the Government’s policy is that we have reserved generous inheritance tax reliefs for people in the situations he describes. I encourage anyone who is concerned to seek advice, to understand exactly how the new rules might apply to them.
Winter Fuel Payment
John Cooper Excerpts(6 months, 2 weeks ago)
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John Cooper (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
We have heard descriptions today of pensioners as millionaires. We have heard that this is a principled decision to cut money from them. I am astonished at that description. Like my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith), I am from the south-west—the south-west of Scotland—and I can count on one hand, I would suggest, the number of millionaire pensioners there. Even if their homes were worth millions, having risen in price through no fault of theirs, they are asset-rich, and that is very different from being cash and liquidity rich. If they are hit with a bill, they cannot sell their home. That leaves people in an absolute bind.
We have heard very little today from the SNP, because in Scotland the SNP Government have the ability to ameliorate this decision, should it go ahead. It will cost, they estimate, £160 million. I accept that is not buttons; it is not peanuts. However, the last Conservative Government sent £41 billion to Scotland and I think we should be able to find that money in Scotland to help the worst-off in our society. This is a wrong-headed decision, and I am astonished to hear it being described as a principled decision.