Speeches by Cooper.

“To be clear, though, it is something that has been proposed by the EU—they have invited us to put in money if we would like to, or they would like us to.”

“Well, as you know, money talks; all mine ever says is goodbye. Looking at the EU cohesion fund, which is basically a method by which we trolley money to Greece, Estonia, Slovakia, Poland and others with national incomes below 90% of the EU average, we are now expected to contribute to that. Do you have any sense of how…”

“So negotiations are ongoing, and this is not something that is paused or where chunks of it are going on?”

“Okay.”

“This is a subject close to my heart, and also to my liver: Scotch whisky. Scotch is at 10% tariffs in the United States, and there is a potential for that to increase later this year to as much as 25%—in a complicated tit-for-tat that involves aircraft, slightly improbably. That is obviously very worrying, because the …”

“In 1979 my father took me to Newton Stewart cinema to see “Monty Python’s Life of Brian”, and I recall my father being more upset by a spoof travel documentary that preceded the main film, because there was swearing in it, than he was about the supposed slights to Christianity. It was an early lesson to me that no one …”

“Absolutely I am, from the bottom of my heart. But you will realise that it is very concerning to hear that R&D in this country is lagging so far behind in this area. That is a terrifying prospect, isn’t it? Is the answer to that to get the NHS to pay for more drugs? Is that really the answer?”

“Youth unemployment is, in fact, spiking at nearly 5.3%, which is heartbreaking, particularly for young people who cannot get that all-important first job. The Government like to pretend that they are a cork in a storm-tossed sea and unable to do anything about this, but they could reconsider employer national insurance…”

“I am delighted that you are here to tell us about this, but—”

“I have a question on pharma and life sciences. Experts across health, academia and civil society wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister saying that there should be an urgent pause on any plans to strike a deal with the pharmaceutical industry in the US that involves increasing the amount of money that the NHS spend…”

“We touched on the concerns about things coming over here. There has been a lot of concern about chlorine-washed chicken—although I had chlorine-washed salad for lunch—hormone-treated beef, and pork and turkey treated with chemicals that make them more lean but are banned in many countries. Are you sure that our protect…”

“3. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unemployment.”

“Channelling your inner Adam Smith, you talked earlier about the things that we are good at, and agriculture is one of the things we are good at. What are our ambitions for agriculture in this trade deal with the US? What do you think the big gains might be?”

“I may be more gravy browning than Robert Browning, but I am delighted to hear Schnozzle Durante getting his nose into the Business and Trade Committee.”

“On hauliers, the new EU entry/exit system will limit the time that drivers can spend in Europe. In fact, their fortnight in the costas might actually count towards the time that they spend on the continent for the purposes of their work. I have hauliers in my constituency, Dumfries and Galloway, who are very troubled b…”

“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), who chairs the Business and Trade Committee on which I serve. As Chair of such a Committee, he is that rarest of things: capable of independent thought. We know that growth i…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. We Scots are often portrayed as parsimonious—or, to put it another way, as tight as two coats of paint. It is a myth largely down to comedian and singer Sir Harry Lauder, who, to raise money for wounded great war veterans after the death of his son in 1917, …”

“I am very much looking forward to the ending of this chaos; it seems that we are completely mired in it. As a former member of the fourth estate—I was a journalist for a long time—I am always concerned when politicians blame the media. I do not think the media are creating the chaos; they are simply reporting on it.”

“This is unquestionably a really important issue, and the petition is indicative of the public’s unhappiness with this Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that the great difficulties people have with this Government include the number of manifesto pledges that have been broken, the introduction of policies that were n…”

“Again, Minister, to go back to what you said about how we measure ourselves against other countries, how do we do that? We obviously want to avoid marking our own homework or believing the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves. How do you measure our performance against other countries?”