Speeches by Cooper.

“Will my hon. Friend give way?”

“I have been contacted by a number of constituents concerned about the requirement to have worked continuously with the same employer to qualify for statutory maternity pay. Women who change jobs shortly before pregnancy are excluded from statutory maternity pay. They miss out on the six weeks at 90% of average weekly e…”

“I am sure everybody recognises how important it is to do this once and do it right. Is the Minister able to commit to legislating in this Parliament?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) on leading this debate and making many a point that I am about to make and agree with. I thank those who created and signed the petition, including 357 of my constituents. I have heard fro…”

“We have established a principle in this country of changing our electoral system via referendum. We had a referendum on the alternative vote system during the coalition era. The Bill is going to switch the system back to single transferable vote as it was when it was originally envisaged, so I believe that it is fair e…”

“T9. I recently met Estonian MPs to hear about their experience of using digital ID over the last two decades, and particularly about how people’s ability to see who has accessed their data is the cornerstone of the data privacy controls at the heart of their system. They talked about the efficiency gains across the pub…”

“I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman’s argument. In many ways, it is the ultimate Conservative argument that the status quo is exactly right and exactly what we need. Has the hon. Gentleman done any research on public opinion of local government reorganisation in London in the 1960s, or the 1974 local government reorg…”

“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…”

“My problem with the hon. Lady’s argument is that her amendment states: “Engagement…must include…consulting town and parish councils”— not “can include”, but “must include”. Of 300 parish councils, some might be home to only 150 people and some to 20,000 people, so they are completely different. I do not think that “mus…”

“Where in the legislation does it says that mayors will be prohibited from talking to town and parish councils? The way that the hon. Member phrased that implies that something in the Bill stops them from doing so, but I am not clear where that is.”

“We are about to embark on a devolution deal for Cheshire and Warrington. The county of Cheshire alone has more than 330 civil parishes. Is the hon. Lady not concerned about the burden that would be placed on a mayor? Her amendment would require the views of all those parishes to be set out, so requiring the mayor in st…”

“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 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…”

“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…”

“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…”

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

“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?”