Speeches by Cooper.

“The WTO is effectively a backstop then. The WTO deal effectively exists already before the FTA comes in, but you think it is just an emergency brake?”

“You talked about the SPS deal and the chapter that is there. You seem quite confident that that safeguards UK agricultural standards. Are you confident that a good job has been done?”

“Do you think that ship has sailed, effectively, and there is not an opportunity to—”

“There have been suggestions from the Indian side that it was apparently reluctant to include anything at all about labour and environmental standards. We do have two chapters in there. There are suggestions that on the Indian side that is seen as quite a win for the UK. Would you agree with that? Can you square that wi…”

“So that all comes under the DBT at a time when you are under pressure.”

“You are saying that you are going to have a series of negotiations effectively through joint committees and things like that and you are going to be talking to the Indians. That is going to be a sizeable team.”

“You have outlined some of the difficulties that DBT faces at the moment with resources; resources are scarce right across Government. Given those cost pressures, how confident are you that the FTA can be implemented through things like the joint committee and the structures that you have outlined? You said that the tra…”

“You have a system in place, but we are not sure of the timeline of that. When will these meetings begin? It could be very difficult negotiations and it could take a long time before we see practical change.”

“We touched there on the non-tariff barriers. This is clearly going to be a big problem as we move from the philosophy of all this into the implementation. One of the big problems is quality control orders. The Indians seem very fond of these, and they have been described as being put in place by stealth; they are disgu…”

“You do not think that there is any leverage there, and there is nothing that we can do to influence Indian behaviour, based on this?”

“My hon. Friend is delivering a searing indictment of this Budget. Does he agree that the intention of the farm tax may have been to take in multimillionaire so-called “slipper farmers”, but in rural constituencies like his and mine, it is hitting tenant farmers?”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. In my short time in Parliament, perhaps the most terrifying thing I have heard so far is the evidence we took on the Business and Trade Committee that state actors are joining forces with criminal gangs to attack this country in the cyber-theatre. From his v…”

“How are you going to mark your homework on this? Are you going to have metrics on how many people are taking this up? Are you getting feedback? How are you going to know whether it is a success?”

“So you are looking at some cross-Government working, and you are going to move across these silos that we always hear about.”

“Could you give us a clue as to what you might be thinking about? Are there any hints at this stage?”

“You mentioned there the business growth service. The business support picture is quite a thicket of layers and levels. It is very difficult to navigate. You would think that that new website is very good as a one-stop shop, but we picked up on the roadshows that not a lot of people know about it. I wonder what assessme…”

“On the Business and Trade Committee, we hear all the time that energy costs in this country are unaffordable, and it puts industry of every kind at a disadvantage. We are seeing the results of that today. The other issue is the perverse carbon border adjustment mechanism, which actually makes imports of ethylene cheape…”

“The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that “the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself.” Are we not presenting an opportunity for defeat when members of our military ride around in Chinese cars, and why on earth are this Government facilitating secretive trade trips to Beijing for members of the…”

“Since coming to this place, I have struggled to find out how much money the UK Government are putting into the A75 road, which runs right through my constituency. I was astonished to find that a Labour candidate had said on social media that the figure was £8.5 million. I asked the Secretary of State for Transport whet…”

“T5. Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney is not often right, and he is wrong again with his slavish devotion to the European convention on human rights. If this place is to update the ECHR to make it fit for the 21st century, what steps can the Justice Secretary take to ensure that soft-touch Scotland does not become…”