Speeches by Cooper.

“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Madam Deputy Speaker, I beg for your patience as I retread some of the remarks I made earlier. It is my view that the family farm tax gives us the worst of both worlds at the moment. It does not prevent equity companies from buying up land, but it does treat family farms as…”

“I will resist that invitation. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand the nature of a windfall tax? It raises money on the windfall that a sector was not expecting. We know that the big oil and gas giants base their investment plans on the profits that they were expecting, but clearly they raised a lot more money bec…”

“Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?”

“My hon. Friend is absolutely right that this broken business rates system is unfair in many ways and it is the big giants, online or otherwise, that are getting an easier ride. The Bill fails to address many other problems with business rates. For example, it does nothing to support businesses outside the three sectors…”

“The Great British high street is on life support. Many bricks-and-mortar businesses are barely surviving and, where they are, it is often against the odds. Changes in our trading relationship with Europe, the covid-19 pandemic, energy prices, the cost of living and the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-Budget have all tak…”

“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He may know that during those coalition years, both the health and education day-to-day budgets were protected and it was after the Liberal Democrats left the coalition in 2015 that capital budgets were serially raided to pay for day-to-day spending. To return t…”

“It is clear that social care providers will be worse off, so I urge the Deputy Prime Minister and the Chancellor to look again at that. Somebody else who was worried about the Budget is Cathy, a farmer in my constituency, who told me yesterday that she thinks the Government changes simply do not make sense. They mean t…”

“May I associate myself and the Liberal Democrats with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks on Ukraine? Ahead of the Budget, I warned the Deputy Prime Minister that increasing national insurance contributions on social care providers would make the crisis in social care worse. Now, OBR figures suggest that the increase i…”

“Thank you, Mr Speaker. Farmers told me yesterday that they feel as though they have been betrayed by the Conservatives, but they now feel that they have also been lied to by Labour. Will the Deputy Prime Minister think again on this measure, so that our farmers can feed Britain?”

“We welcome any reforms that will provide an effective route to growth without putting undue pressure on people’s savings, so we look forward to seeing more details from the Government. In the meantime, I press Ministers on their broader goal of getting investment in innovation. Constituents in St Albans report that the…”

“As others have said, this legislation is uncontentious; I am happy to support it. This is a good opportunity to highlight the difference that some of these loans make to people’s lives. In my local area of St Albans, the district council has used Public Works Loan Board borrowing to help fund a range of really ambitiou…”

“It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi), who has given another customarily powerful speech and reminded us of the injustices facing those who fall between the cracks. We live in an uncertain and unstable world, and the US election result makes it more so. As we d…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent intervention. I absolutely agree that they should be exempt; I think the rise in national insurance contributions is the wrong thing to do, full stop, but if it is going to go ahead, there must be exemptions. In my own area, for example, one local hospice in Hertfordshire will …”

“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point. He may remember that at Deputy Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago, I raised precisely that point with the Deputy Prime Minister and advised the Government that if they went ahead with the rise in national insurance contributions, it would affect social care.…”

“As the newly appointed Treasury spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, this is my first opportunity to welcome the Chancellor and Ministers to their places. Notwithstanding that, on the winter fuel payment, the Government need to think again. I recently spoke with representatives of Citizens Advice in St Albans, who a…”

“Small businesses are the engine of our economy, but many of them are penalised for investing in their businesses because of the broken business rates system. Will the Chancellor ensure that investment is exempted from business rates, and will she ensure that the Budget tomorrow is the final Budget in which business rat…”

“Under the Conservatives, the fiscal rules changed five times in seven years, so a change to fiscal rules is not that unusual in and of itself. However, does the Minister agree that what would be completely unforgivable is a repeat of the Conservatives’ disastrous mini-Budget, in which they tried to pursue £40 billion o…”

“May I associate myself and the Liberal Democrats with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks about Chris Hoy, and about all those involved in the train crash? Our NHS is bracing itself for a winter crisis. One of the causes of the winter crisis every year is that there are thousands of people in hospitals who are fit to g…”

“I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for her answer. We stand ready, as a party of constructive opposition, to work with the Government to fix our social care system. However, a measure that could make it harder for us to keep the carers that we so desperately need would be an increase in employers’ national insurance con…”

“I welcome the Minister to her place. I also thank her for her support when she was not in this place and I was further back on these Benches, and we worked together on some of the issues under focus today. We Liberal Democrats want Britain to be one of the most attractive places in the world for business to invest. We …”