Daisy Cooper MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Where was it?

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  As the right hon. Gentleman will understand, I am not setting out proposals; I am commenting on the proposals from his party. For the record, I was not setting out Liberal Democrat policy; I was discussing what some commentators have pointed towards. I am sure that in the next two or three years, as we get closer to the general election, the Conservatives will be very interested to read our tax plans, which are under active consideration. Even if people cannot agree on what should replace stamp duty, they can agree on this: if we change one tax in isolation, there are knock-on negative effects. Far from giving more people the security of home ownership, this measure in isolation would put it further out of reach. How do we know that? We know it because there was a big surge in house prices during the temporary stamp duty holiday in 2020-21; it had a negative impact on house buyers. If the Conservatives—and, indeed, the Government—are truly interested in growing the economy, surely they will agree that the best and most immediate way to do so is to reverse the damage of their terrible Brexit deal with Europe. Analysis shows that if the Government did a better deal with the EU, within their own red lines, they would raise an additional £25 billion per year by unleashing the growth potential of our exporting British businesses.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Our tax system is a mess. It is complicated and unfair. It is riddled with cliff edges that distort behaviours and create inequities, and there are exemptions that have not been reviewed for years. Council tax is outdated and hated. Inheritance tax and capital gains allow the super-wealthy to exploit loopholes while the squeezed middle picks up the tab. Business rates are a tax on bricks and mortar that penalise our high streets while online giants corner more and more of the market. IR35 is a sledgehammer to crack a nut for contractors, and research and development tax credits are in such a muddle that they are triggering lots of disputes, even for legitimate claims. When any one of those taxes is tweaked, it causes problems elsewhere. Time and again, we see that when people want to do the right thing and pay the right amount of tax or query a tax issue, they call His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, only to have the call handler hang up, or they contact the Valuation Office Agency and have to spend money on an expensive third party that specialises in disputes. Stamp duty has all the hallmarks of a bad tax. It is a transaction tax and an extra cost that stops people from moving, when they might want to move to start a family, to take up a new job or to take on caring responsibilities. It prevents people from getting on the housing ladder, from upsizing and sometimes from downsizing. It gums up the housing market in a country where we simply cannot afford for that to happen. It disincentivises people from moving and holds back a dynamic economy.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making a fantastic speech. It really does irk me that the Conservatives keep talking about the welfare bill going up when they blew a hole in the public health budget, eroded primary and community care, and did nothing to fix social care—and NHS dentistry has been hollowed out. Is it any wonder that when people cannot get the care that they need when they need it, we end up firefighting and spending loads of money on welfare and the NHS further down the line? We should be investing to save.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  Well, I’ll say it again. The way to grow our economy is to do away with the 2 billion pieces of paperwork that have come in since Brexit: enough paper to wrap around the world 15 times—and yet still the Conservatives groan. Fifteen months ago, it seemed as though the Conservatives were struggling to adjust to life in opposition; now it seems that they are simply enjoying it far too much. That is precisely why the idea of abolishing stamp duty in isolation and funding it through cuts to public services alone is fantasy economics and desperate politics. The announcement at the Conservative party conference had everything to do with the Leader of the Opposition keeping herself in post until after May’s elections and nothing to do with making a serious contribution to the debate on tax reform. This motion is unfunded, unserious and not worth the paper it is written on, and that is why we will not support it.

• 28 Oct 2025 · Stamp Duty Land Tax · Hansard source

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  No—for all the reasons that I will come to. The hon. Gentleman was a fraction too early. Here’s the rub: stamp duty raises a lot of money, and that is presumably why the Conservatives did not seek to scrap it at any point during all their years in power. Stamp duty for primary residences in England and Northern Ireland raised around £4 billion in 2023-24, and it is suggested that it will raise £9 billion in 2029-30. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that the cost in 2029-30 will be around £11 billion, with the additional costs in Scotland and Wales taken into account. That means that abolishing stamp duty on primary residences would cost in the region of £36 billion to £44 billion in total over the next five years. For anybody who is not keeping up, that is almost the cost of the mini-Budget, just in slow motion. The Conservatives say that they want all those cuts to come from public expenditure, but in this motion they do not say where those savings would come from. By my calculations, they could choose to scrap nearly the whole of the Ministry of Justice—given revelations in recent days about prisoners being let out wrongly, it feels like that may already have happened. The Conservatives could instead decide to end all support for farmers by scrapping the entirety of the budget for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which reached £7.4 billion in 2028-29, including capital— [ Interruption. ] Well, it does not say that in the motion. Maybe they would want to do away with the cost of clearing the vast majority of the NHS maintenance backlog—a cost they would reach in a single year—or maybe they would want to scrap the £12 billion a year budget for special educational needs and disabilities. It is not clear in the official Opposition motion where the cuts would come from. There is a strong case for looking at reforming or scrapping stamp duty all together, alongside other property tax reforms and moving to a land value tax. Indeed, some commentators suggest that scrapping stamp duty and council tax together and phasing in a land value tax over time could be one way to move ahead.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Draft Companies (Directors' Report) (Payment Reporting) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister to his place. When it comes to the treatment of small businesses, there are two things that get right up people’s noses. The first is the big David and Goliath fights that sometimes happen between big companies and their small suppliers; the other is regulators that are tasked with tackling those problems, but can do nothing about them, because they do not have the teeth. Fundamentally, we are a country that believes in fairness, and late payments are a problem that is deeply unfair and unjust, and can be existential for some small businesses. The Liberal Democrats welcome this extra transparency on payment practices and performance; it will really help. We support this measure, and we hope very much that the Government will power ahead with introducing additional powers for the Small Business Commissioner so that they can launch proactive investigations, rather than passively receiving complaints. Would the Minister like to say a word or two on that? If I may test your patience for a second more, Ms Vaz, it is Small Business Saturday in just under seven weeks’ time, on 6 December—just a few days after the Budget. We know that transparency and improved regulation matter to small businesses, but the tax burden matters too. I urge the Government to ensure that, by the time Small Business Saturday arrives, there is some more good news for small businesses to be happy about.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  I think Hongkongers will require a lot more reassurance and action from this Government. It is not just the Chinese Government who are a threat to our country. On Monday, the far-right, racist hate-preacher Tommy Robinson, who is on trial for allegedly refusing to comply with counter-terror police, claimed that his legal costs are being paid by Elon Musk. It is outrageous that a man who has so much control over what people read online every day could be funding someone who stokes far-right extremism on our streets. If it was Putin, the Government would surely act. Will the Prime Minister commission the security services to assess the threat that Elon Musk poses to our democracy, and to recommend measures that this House can take to stop that?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  May I associate myself and my party with the tributes to David Amess? On behalf of my party, may I also pay tribute to Ming Campbell, who is being laid to rest today? That is the reason why my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) cannot be here. I thank you, Mr Speaker, the Prime Minister and other Members of this House for the very kind tributes paid yesterday. We welcome the new level of transparency from the Prime Minister, and we will scrutinise the witness statements closely, but it is clear that there are still many questions to be answered, including questions from Hongkongers. Hongkongers in St Albans and across the UK settled in our communities after they fled repression at the hands of the Chinese state, but they now see a British Government who want to make it harder for them to settle here permanently, refuse to impose targeted sanctions on Chinese officials who put bounties on Hongkongers’ heads, refuse to rule out a Chinese super-embassy and are failing to tackle Chinese espionage. Hongkongers are starting to ask whether the Prime Minister is trading away their security and safety in our communities for a cosier relationship with Beijing. What is the Prime Minister’s answer to them?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  Let me start with huge congratulations to Save Our Children’s Rights on securing more than 120,000 signatures. I was pleased to see that Special Needs Jungle is one of the organisations supporting the campaign; its co-director is one of my constituents. Children in Hertfordshire suffered a double whammy under the Conservatives. The Conservatives had a broken funding formula that they refused to fix, which meant that children in Hertfordshire were short-changed, and the former Conservative administration at Hertfordshire county council was rated by Ofsted as one of the worst in the country. I am pleased to say that the Liberal Democrats have taken control of Hertfordshire county council, and our new leader’s very first announcement was on the creation of a SEND summit. That summit took place this morning. Ahead of it, there was a SEND listening survey, and 130 people attended community engagement events, because we Liberal Democrats know that the voices of children, parents, carers and teachers must be at the heart of any reforms. Political will at the local level goes some way, but of course we require the Government to act as well. Hertfordshire faces a number of challenges, which are not inconsiderable. Due to the various reforms under way by the Labour Government, we are facing a move to one or a number of unitary authorities; there is a reorganisation of our health body, the integrated care board; and the so-called fairer funding review could see the loss of up to £54 million by 2028-29. Our SEND budgets have necessarily been overspent for the last number of years, with an accounting tool used to keep the deficit off the balance sheet, but that tool is set to expire in May 2026. Hertfordshire is still under an improvement notice. It was due a monitoring visit, but that has been delayed, awaiting the Government’s national announcement. These top-down reforms are taking up valuable political oxygen among the political leadership and the senior leadership team at the council, taking them away from helping families. The drip-feeding of information on the changes the Government are considering is causing enormous anxiety, too. Children, parents, carers and teachers cannot wait any more. As many other hon. Members have said, they are at breaking point. Please, we need action.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Employer National Insurance Contributions: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The jobs tax has hit small businesses the hardest, with statistics from the Office for National Statistics showing that vacancies among small businesses alone have dropped by 18%. This proves that the jobs tax is not only crushing growth but crushing opportunity, especially in hospitality. Have Treasury Ministers commissioned their officials to look at any of the fairer revenue raisers that we Liberal Democrats have put forward—such as taxes on the banks, the tech companies or the gambling companies—in order that the Treasury could scrap the jobs tax at the next Budget?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Neurodivergent People: Employment · Hansard source

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  We would all welcome a framework for monitoring the outcomes and the results, but we have heard today that people face many barriers in trying to access these kinds of schemes. Will the Government consider requiring service level agreements, so that when people apply to the schemes or engage with them, they know what they are going to get, how they are going to get it, and how quickly they are going to get it?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Neurodivergent People: Employment · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) on securing this incredibly important and well-attended debate. In my years of campaigning for disability rights, I have found that people are very interested in the difference between the medical system and the social system. The medical model sees people as having an impairment, whereas the social model sees the barriers as the disabling factor to people’s lives. One of the things that I have found so fascinating, inspiring and encouraging about this debate is that so many colleagues have identified that it is the very barriers that are disabling to people who are neurodivergent. We started the debate with a very eager intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance), who made the strong point that this issue starts in schools. I know that he is tabling a ten-minute rule Bill tomorrow to call for universal screening in schools. I hope that the Government take that Bill very seriously. I put on record my admiration for my hon. Friend for speaking with such courage about his own experience of growing up with dyslexia, and for inspiring people young and old by doing so. I also put on record my admiration for the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for talking about his experiences. My hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) spoke passionately about the SEND system. My own area of Hertfordshire is also in the f40—the 40 worst funded councils for special educational needs. We see the barriers that that poses to young people, who have huge potential but cannot reach it because there is not the support in place to help them tackle those barriers. Throughout the debate we have heard from hon. Members from a number of political parties about the work of their local colleges, self-employment initiatives, job centres, businesses and so many other places that are actively going above and beyond to tackle those disabling barriers. It was wonderful to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) about Foxes hotel in Minehead, which is regarded as the Oxbridge of employing people with neurodiversity. If one thing that has come out from all hon. Members’ contributions, it is that the Access to Work scheme is anything but; it could be considered the “barriers to work” scheme by many people. The phones and the forms themselves are barriers, but delays are also a huge problem. In answer to a written parliamentary question that I tabled a few months ago, it was revealed that one person had waited 393 days—more than a year—for a response to an Access to Work application. How on earth will an individual get into a job or stay in their job, and how on earth can an employer offer a job with confidence, if it takes that long for the Access to Work scheme to work? I hope that the Minister will answer that question in his response to the debate. We often hear the saying, “All politics is personal,” and that is more relevant to this debate than to many others. I imagine that many of us who have spoken in or attended the debate are here because our loved ones—our friends, family or relatives—our neighbours, or perhaps we ourselves have experienced neurodiversity. Given the age of many of us in this room, it is possible that some grew up in an age in which they were told that they were stupid and they grew up with the stigma, and they are now form-phobic, because they are still struggling with what they were told. I hope that what people young and old will have taken from the debate is that we in this House consider those people to have superpowers. We recognise that neurodiversity is about creativity and ingenuity. People see the world in a different way, and their way of looking at the world in a different way actually will help businesses to make different, and better, decisions. On that note, I will finish. There have been a number of questions and suggestions, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief: Impact on Farming · Hansard source

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  We Liberal Democrats oppose the family farm tax, but in the spirit of constructive opposition, last November I recommended and requested that Ministers look at the idea of a family farm test, such as the ones used in France and Ireland. Such a test would ensure that they could close the loophole on big equity companies exploiting land, but it would not cover family farms in the process. Since I raised that suggestion last November, have Treasury Ministers asked officials to look at it?

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  Again, I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I recall—as I am sure he does—that in the previous Parliament, we Liberal Democrats tabled a number of amendments to legislation introduced by the Conservatives, to try to make that happen. Unfortunately, those amendments were not accepted by the now official Opposition. In principle, a land value tax could help address land banking. All of us in this House say that we want to build on brownfield first, but of course, part of the problem is that big developers can land bank. We Liberal Democrats have repeatedly tried to table amendments to ensure that local authorities could buy that land at land value, rather than hope value. In principle, there are some merits to at least considering a land value tax, but the devil will be in the detail. If the Government bring forward any such proposals, we will scrutinise them closely. There are a couple of major omissions from the official Opposition’s motion, one of which—as I have already outlined—is business rates. Business rates are a property tax facing small businesses, and the business rates system is broken. We have heard repeated promises, both from the previous Government and this one, that business rates will be fixed, so it is incredibly disappointing that as yet, we have not seen an ambition to replace the business rates system. Instead, we have seen tinkering around the edges, and the Government’s proposals will potentially make business rates a little bit worse, particularly as they will target hospitality. There is another major omission: the motion should refer to giving local authorities real power to regulate the location and number of short-term lets, particularly in the south-west and Cumbria, but also in many other areas.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He will know, as I do from my constituency of St Albans, that many people have spent decades and decades living in their property, which they might have bought for a few thousand pounds. It might now be worth a huge amount, but they might be asset-rich and cash-poor. People in that situation are incredibly scared by the reports they have seen in newspapers of a potential tax of the kind that has been described. There are parts of the Conservatives’ motion we agree with, however we are open in principle to the idea of a land value tax. In principle, land value taxes can create more fairness in the system and produce a more efficient use of land, but of course, the devil is always in the detail. It would depend on the design of any land value tax and any exemptions that might be introduced. We Liberal Democrats have previously set out policies for how we would replace the broken business rates system with a commercial landowner levy. That is an example of how the principle of land value could be applied to commercial land.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  I agree. We are discussing property taxation, but of course, taxation on its own without a broader vision for property may well lead us towards the kind of fiasco we had with the jobs tax. There absolutely should be a community-led planning system, rather than the top-down planning system we had under the previous Government, and have under this one, too. In my constituency of St Albans, Airbnbs are a real problem. A previous Conservative Housing Secretary gave approval for offices to be turned into blocks of flats, but local authorities were given no power to control how that happened. That means that many young people who get a job in my constituency cannot afford to take it up unless they live with mum and dad. They cannot even afford to rent a place, let alone get on the housing ladder. It is absolutely essential that the Government not only come forward with a registration scheme for short-term rentals, but give local authorities real power to regulate the number and location of Airbnbs, so that we can get the balance right between tourism and homes for young people and others who want to live where they work.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  I begin by adding my voice and that of my party to the others who have welcomed the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) to the Front Bench. Like so many other things, property taxes in this country are broken and hopelessly out of date. Council tax is regressive; stamp duty is a transaction tax that slows growth; and business rates are a tax on bricks and mortar that bear no relationship whatever to the amount of money a business might make. It is quite extraordinary that the official Opposition have chosen to debate property taxes, given that I can barely remember any discussion at all in the last Parliament about things that they wanted to tackle in that area. In particular, they did not tackle any of the three things I have mentioned. If it is true that the Labour Government are now thinking about biting the bullet and bringing forward fairer alternatives to those things, I commend them for looking at the issue. However, I caution the Government not to repeat the jobs tax fiasco. Going after property simply as a Treasury tax grab will be a disaster if the Government do not set out a broader vision for property taxation and for housing as a whole. We agree with parts of the Conservatives’ motion today. We agree with their call to rule out capital gains tax on primary residences. In the general election, we Liberal Democrats set out a way of reforming capital gains tax to make it fairer, one that would reduce that tax for two thirds of people already paying it and increase it for the super-wealthy. That would have raised more revenue than the carte blanche measures that the Labour Government have pursued, so we agree with that part of the motion. We also agree with the Conservatives that the property levy that has been described in newspapers would be a disaster. It would choke up the housing market, stop people from downsizing and slow economic growth, so I hope that if Ministers are considering any of these things, they look at the reaction there has been.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Property Taxes · Hansard source

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  I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I would love to see that registration programme, although we Liberal Democrats have repeatedly said that it is only the first step. Registration is something that the Airbnb-type platforms actually want, because it enables them to pinch properties from other platforms. It does not solve the problem we have of lots of additional homes being used as Airbnbs, not by young people—or, in fact, by anybody who wants to be able to rent a property in their area. It is important that local authorities have the power to strike the right balance between tourism and enabling the people they need in their local area to afford to live there.

• 16 Jul 2025 · Financial Services Reform · Hansard source

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  There is much to welcome in the statement. I hope that it sends a strong signal to the fintech sector and sustainable finance that UK plc is open for business, but it is important to get the balance right between growth and risk. We Liberal Democrats welcome the announcement of a scale-up unit. Will it have a mandate to look at liquidity and valuation, which are two of the challenges that prevent British start-ups from scaling up here at home? On the retail investment culture, we welcome plans to reform financial advice and guidance and to launch a national advertising campaign. We believe that we should trust people to weigh up the risk and rewards of investment, if they are properly informed. But we also know that money habits are formed at a young age. Will the Minister advise whether the Government have any plans to introduce financial literacy as part of the school curriculum—indeed, from cradle to grave? Will the Government confirm when they will bring forward any reforms at all to cash ISAs? The uncertainty around the issue is undermining their own goal of incentivising more investment. On mortgages, many renters have been crowded out of getting on to the housing ladder, so this announcement will sound exciting to them, but what reassurance can the Minister provide that this additional lending will not result in boom and bust? With inflation jumping today, how many of those up to 36,000 first-time homeowners will realistically get on the housing ladder in the next year? We welcome the streamlining of checks on senior managers, but will the Government confirm that those changes will not expose financial firms and their customers to greater risk? If the Government want a step change in economic growth, this is a start, but they must go further and faster by having a better trading deal with the EU.

• 9 Jul 2025 · Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman will recognise that the housing debate is about not just the number of homes but who determines where they should be built. He continues to point to the Liberal Democrats, but I gently remind him that our policy is not just about numbers, but about having a bottom-up approach whereby local authorities work out the homes they need in their local area, in contrast to the top-down approach pursued by his former Government and the current Labour Government.

• 9 Jul 2025 · Neighbourhood Plans: Planning Decisions · Hansard source

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  The village of London Colney in my constituency is under siege from top-down housing targets, with a huge development being dumped on the border by the neighbouring local authority and an enormous rail freight terminal the size of 480 football pitches. My local residents in London Colney want their voice to be heard on the location and type of homes, but after three years of having access to the locality budget in developing a neighbourhood plan, the parish council has been told that there is no funding left to finish that plan. Does the hon. Member agree that where local parishes have made significant progress, funding should be reinstated so that they can complete those plans?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can the Government confirm that they will not raid capital budgets to fix crumbling hospitals and to pay for day-to-day spending, and will the Minister confirm the date for the autumn Budget?

• 7 Jul 2025 · Government Performance against Fiscal Rules · Hansard source

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  We all know the Government had a terrible inheritance from the previous Government, whether it was the incompetence of covid contracts, the mini-Budget or the botched Brexit deal. But at the same time, last year’s Labour Budget was a Treasury tax grab with no vision for the economy and no regard to the impact on small and medium-sized businesses and key sectors like hospitality and social care. We Liberal Democrats want to see things getting better in this country for our constituents and for the country. In the spirit of constructive opposition, I will ask the Minister a number of questions. When will the Government get serious about growth through a much deeper trading deal with Europe? Will Ministers look at fairer revenue raisers, such as reversing the Conservatives’ tax cuts for the big banks and raising revenue from tech giants and online gaming and gambling companies? Will the Prime Minister make a public statement to calm the markets and avoid four months of speculation about what might be in the next Budget? Will the Government commission an interim Office for Budget Responsibility report now?