Speeches by Cooper.

“I have a lot of sympathy with what the hon. Lady is saying. If she likes “piña coladas, and gettin’ caught in the rain”, may I suggest that she looks no further than the Piña Colada festival in Northwich, which is delivered by Northwich town council and adds £500,000 to the local economy? I completely agree with her ab…”

“I agree entirely with the principle of mayors holding responsibility for police and crime commissioners where the boundaries of the roles are coterminous, and the idea of appointing a deputy mayor to that role makes absolute sense, as does the power to align boundaries where it makes sense administratively. That all wo…”

“This is a timely set of proposals in an area that is too often overlooked by Government. In my constituency, further education has not functioned properly since the Tories’ failed top-down review of post-16 education in Cheshire led to the closure of the main FE campus. NEET levels in Winsford are now five percentage p…”

“I was a town councillor for a good decade and a half before I became an MP. We went through unitarisation in Cheshire in 2008, so I recognise a lot of what the hon. Lady is saying about town and parish councils being asked to take on more services—I saw it under the last Conservative Government as funding was taken awa…”

“As the hon. Lady refers to Greater Manchester, I am minded of the role that Chris Boardman has played in Greater Manchester in rolling out active travel. He is unelected, and I think it would be a shame if we could not take advantage of such a person’s expertise. Does she accept that is a risk with what she proposes?”

“Q The Bill will create several new mayoral combined authorities, and we might reasonably expect to see more mayoral development corporations created afterward. In recent years, there have been significant questions about the accountability and transparency of mayoral development corporations. Do you think you have suff…”

“Q Do you believe that this Bill will do that? Gareth Davies: As we have said, it is not going to be quick or easy, but this is the right approach. It is just going to need substantial application of shoulder to the wheel and strong leadership of the new Local Audit Office, when that is created. That will make a big dif…”

“Will my hon. Friend give way for a very short intervention?”

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will do my best to indulge you on the fly. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) for securing this debate. Transport is not just about going from one place to another; it is about enabling progress. It opens doors to education, employment and enterpris…”

“It is a pleasure to speak on what may prove to be one of the most impactful and transformative pieces of legislation of this Parliament. The Bill represents one of the most significant shifts in local government in more than half a century. It sets out a clear ambition to move power out of Westminster and into the hand…”

“Does my hon. Friend agree that mayoral development corporations need to be brought under the remit of the new local audit offices that are proposed in the Bill, placing the power to audit them beyond reasonable doubt?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Connor Naismith) for securing this timely debate. I do not intend to speak for very long—although, unlike the west coast main line, we have plenty of capacity in this debate—because he has set the s…”

“My heart absolutely breaks hearing the story about Lauren—it is awful. Many autistic women and girls are undiagnosed, misdiagnosed or diagnosed late in life due to the outdated belief that autism mainly affects males. As a result, many women receive mental health treatments for conditions they do not have, including tr…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Jeremy. I declare an interest as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Down syndrome, along with the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) on securing this important and tim…”

“The fight for the Middlewich eastern bypass started more than 40 years ago, and after all these years of false starts, dashed hopes and frustrated residents, I could not be prouder that this Labour Government are finally delivering on that project. After 14 years of under-investment in areas such as mine, it is really …”

“A few weeks ago I visited Leftwich primary school and met the fantastic headteacher Claire Harrison and her team. The one thing Claire wanted to get across was how much the job has changed over the last decade. The dismantling of early help and prevention services has meant that teachers and headteachers are spending m…”

“I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend, his team and NHS staff, who have put this plan together so that the NHS does not just survive but thrives. Last weekend, I met a family in Winsford who, that morning, had received a bill of £180,000 for their mother’s care. The daughter said to me, “Andrew, I don’t know…”

“If the Leader of the House likes piña coladas and getting caught in the rain, may I suggest that she looks no further than the Piña Colada Festival in Northwich on 16 August? This event, in honour of Northwich-born Rupert Holmes’s song “Escape”—or, as he describes it, the song from which there is no escape—adds around …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dame Siobhain. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) and for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge), as well as the hon. Member for Henley and Thame (Freddie van Mierlo), on securing the debate. Before I begin in earnest, I am proud to …”

“I understand the Minister’s point, but that does not accurately characterise my position. I am very happy for the Government to do a broader set of reforms, but I and others are arguing that we do not necessarily need to wait for that before acting on humanist marriage. The two things could happen in parallel. Would th…”