Speeches by Cooper.

“3. What recent discussions he has had with the First Minister of Scotland on a new referendum on Scottish independence.”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. At first blush, the draft Scotland Act 1998 (Increase in Borrowing Limits) Order 2026 is, as outlined by the Secretary of State—we are honoured to have him with us, and it is the second time I have seen him today, which is twice more than the First Minister has…”

“I thank the hon. Gentleman for a very important question. The GDP deflator is incredibly complex, as are all these matters. We talk about cross-Government working here, and I think there is a genuine attempt by this Government, as there was by the previous Government, to maximise the money available. The system is comp…”

“In January, I wrote to the Home Secretary because a whistleblower suggested that Border Force lacked sufficient personnel to cover night sailings from Belfast and Larne to Cairnryan, the main port in my constituency of Dumfries and Galloway. We have heard today that much more focus is also needed on the clearly unlocke…”

“Thank you, Chair.”

“Absolutely. I would like to clarify my point: it is not unreasonable in the context to look at this issue in the round. This is public money. The SNP wants to pretend that this is an internal matter for themselves, but question marks still hang over us about whether or not public money has been involved in what happene…”

“May I come to you on that point, Professor Carr? The Committee constantly hears about Government working in silos. This seems to be another case of that, where different people in different parts of the forest are beavering away doing very good work individually but, without joining it up, it is all ultimately rather a…”

“You have touched on the approach of other countries to all this and what they are doing. Both Europe and America have been mentioned as, obviously, very close partners. The US has gone down the route of the Connected Vehicle Security Act, which specifically targets vehicles from named countries. That looks fairly water…”

“Touching on data collection, there seems to be an incredible ability to harvest data; there may be little indication that they are doing much with it, but the ability certainly is there. How much of a risk is that? Mr Parton, I think you have talked about this previously. Tor, are there implications for national securi…”

“It is obvious that if you were able to harvest secret data from another country, that could be usable. What possible uses could any state actor have for information about us as individuals? I am not quite clear on that. I hope we are not going to hear that you can send a kill switch out for an individual person. If the…”

“Charles, I will come to you on this. We are basically riding our luck at the moment; we are trusting the Chinese Communist party not to do anything with this data. We know they have it, and we do not really seem to be able to stop them from having it, so we are hanging on and hoping that they do not use it in a bad way…”

“I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman that this Bill has huge difficulties, and its popularity does not capture those. The Salisbury-Addison convention that the Lords will not seek to prevent the Government from implementing manifesto pledges simply does not apply. In this case, it has not been breached. The Gover…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under the iron grip of your chairmanship, Sir Edward. We are here not to relitigate the substance of the assisted dying Bill, but to consider a profound change to the way we in this place carry out our duties as legislators. The petitioners seek, in short, for a failed Bill to be smashed throu…”

“I will finish. Of course, the legislation approving abortion in this country came through the private Member’s Bill route, but that was backed by the then Labour Government, who appointed a medical advisory committee that also supported its passage. That was a gold standard, against which this Bill is mere base metal. …”

“You talked there about evidence that you have seen. Stakeholders have told us that they are very keen on this new focus on securing supply, but they were a little concerned about some of the vagueness around it. They wonder whether—you touched on it there—you are going to specific countries and talking about specifics.…”

“With these growth partnerships that you are talking about, you are quite agnostic about the shape of them. You are happy if it is multi-country or bilateral. You are quite relaxed about that.”

“Minister, you are committed to building a resilient UK and global supply network, which is great. You have also committed that the Government will take a more active role in helping facilitate offtake contracts. I just wonder whether you could put some flesh on the bones of that. What is going to be different about the…”

“Is that a difficulty? Everyone is scrambling for this now, aren’t they? That is a problem. Are we having to get our elbows out and get ahead in this race?”

“I had constituents in the Gallery today, and they will be aghast to find out that their flight back to Scotland is potentially using Russian fuel. Surely, regardless of whether that was the case before, we need to grip that issue. We also need to grip the reality of the North sea. We keep hearing that North sea oil is …”

“The trick here is the processing, isn’t it? This is the point. That is what China has cornered. It is not that China has these things in the ground. It has the processing and the ability to manufacture these things. Canada is a good example of that. It has lots of these critical minerals, elements, metals or whatever, …”