Speeches by Cooper.

“You talked there about the carve-out for the F-35. We were told that the F-35 supply chain is complex and that all the parts go into one central pool, as it were. We have stopped sending direct to Israel, but none the less the parts go into that pool, which presumably they can draw from. The carve-out was because the F…”

“There are things in there that, to use the technical term, go bang, but our view is that these are for things like missile defence systems, or the Arrow programme?”

“Chris, I wonder whether we can talk about legitimate Israel, if I can use that expression. We are allies with Israel. The Israeli Government are a legitimate democratic organisation. How many of each type of export licence are extant for Israel? Where the Israeli Government are a potential end user, how many of those l…”

“Sir Chris, was that new OGEL something that was driven internally, or was it external demand for it that brought you there? I spoke to a company that is heavily involved in the AUKUS deal, and it reported quite big problems with people moving—not so much the knowledge, but the people themselves moving between the US, t…”

“You mentioned the F-35. Obviously, that has been controversial, to say the least. It is seen as some kind of wonder weapon. We have had evidence here that the only aircraft in the Israeli inventory that could lift 2,000-lb bombs was the F-35. I do not think that that is right—I believe the Israeli version of the F-15 a…”

“Metal prices being what they are, if we were to take the amount of brass neck on show here today and melt it down, we could fund defence properly. The right hon. Gentleman tells us that the ship of state will sail on regardless throughout the summer, but my constituents want to know whose hand is on the tiller and what…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Richard Quigley) on securing this key debate. The vital question on “Desert Island Discs” is not what luxury a person desires or which tune they would save from the waves; it is how they would cope on the…”

“Could I just take you back very briefly to the question about competition in the audit market? The FRC put out a report in December, which was marking its own homework and congratulating itself on what a great job it had done. The reality in that report was that the big four—Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC—still held 40% of…”

“Do you think the FRC has got the balance right between growth and regulation, and that one can go hand in hand with the other?”

“It is something that you are certainly going to look at?”

“As a member of the Business and Trade Committee, it is a delight to see the fruits of Brexit being brought home. Will the Minister confirm that the deal is not contingent on us taking Swiss courts as being superior to our own? We are not aligning with their rules on angular chocolate, for instance, and I know that the …”

“The thing that we have heard time and again here today is balance. Businesses often argue that regulation imposes costs, and investors argue that strong governance underpins confidence. You were at RBS, and we saw what happened there, arguably as a result of light-touch regulation; things went very pear-shaped and very…”

“Scotland stands ready to play its full role in the defence of Britain with many fine young men and, increasingly, women in our forces. We also have a huge array of industrial companies working on defence contracts. There is a problem, however, which is the Scottish Executive. In a remarkable display of overreach, they …”

“One of the things that we have heard today is that Government should be bold. When it comes to policy in this area, we need to be bold and not tinker around the edges. There is a balance to be struck here, isn’t there? It is very clear that AI is a good servant and a bad master. How can we be bold without being reckles…”

“Just following on from that, that is the very high-level, broad-sweep kind of thing. Blair, could I come to you to try to drill down a little bit into what it would mean for the economy? Where do the Government see the opportunities for growth? What sectors are going to benefit from this? What is the overall prize of d…”

“We went on tour, and we were in Newcastle University. I was very struck by a thing that the people there said, which was that they were approached by a household-name company that said to them, “Give us AI.” The university said, “What do you mean?” They had no clue what they meant; they did not know what they wanted. T…”

“I will come to you very quickly, Kate. If we pull off this trick of maximising productivity through AI, how can we ensure that it feeds through into rising wages and helping with the cost of living crisis?”

“You are clear that Government have to take the lead in this.”

“Haulage, agricultural and fisheries firms in my constituency are heavily reliant on Dover, and delays, particularly to seafood, are disastrous—the value of the cargo disappears practically overnight. I am a member of the Business and Trade Committee, and when we visited Dover I was delighted to see £40 million-worth of…”

“Adam, you were first to mention analysis paralysis, but I think you would exclude from that the Government’s ability to monitor what is going on with AI, to look at the workplace and to see the changes that are coming. I do not know whether you are familiar with the AI and future of work unit, which is tasked with this…”