Employers

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Wednesday 11th November 2026 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

It has been a tough decade for businesses. It all started with Brexit, which unleashed uncertainty, red tape and form-filling, pushing up prices for all of us. Following that was the covid pandemic. Notwithstanding the furlough scheme, it unleashed on business a boom and bust cycle of lockdowns and opening back up, all because the then Conservative Government did not buy an off-the-shelf app that might have prevented that boom and bust cycle by tracking the impact.

[Stuart Andrew (Daventry) (Con)]

I recall that when I was sat on the Government Benches, the Liberal Democrats were calling for more stringent measures.

[Daisy Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman will perhaps remember more correctly that during that time we called for a lockdown initially, but the public had already decided to go into lockdown. He will also remember that the then Prime Minister announced that pubs, high streets and a whole load of businesses should be closing down, without covering their insurance. The right hon. Gentleman will remember that.

Following covid, we had the mini-Budget, which I am sure the Conservatives will deny, too. The mini-Budget was incredibly painful and unleashed huge panic in the financial markets. It drove up the cost of living and the cost of commercial loans. On top of all that, we then had two anti-growth Budgets from the Labour Government that have pushed up costs on businesses. For many, it is too much to bear. Small businesses, the backbone of our high streets and our communities, have borne the brunt. It is the cumulative impact that small businesses have expressed concern about. They tell me that if it had been just one tax, they might just have been able to manage it, but they have had the national insurance contributions rise, the business rates changes and the Employment Rights Act 2025, which got the balance wrong between protections for workers and the burden on business. Businesses that have put in blood, sweat and tears and financial investment are now struggling and do not know whether they can survive.

[Dave Doogan]

The hon. Lady has given a comprehensive list of the impediments that this Government have put the way of business in just 24 months, but I hope she will not forget that we have the highest commercial energy prices anywhere in the developed world under this Labour Government. Those are similarly threatening to put businesses under.

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise the fact that we have some of the highest energy costs for business. We have called on the Government to extend their scheme for energy-intensive businesses. We have made it clear that we want to see further action on decoupling the link between gas and electricity. I have had meetings with Ofgem about making sure that there is better regulation for small businesses, particularly when they are looking to brokers for their energy deals. There needs to be far more action, not just for energy-intensive businesses, but for the small businesses on our high streets.

As I was saying, the impact on businesses of all these higher taxes has exacerbated the youth unemployment problem. That is why we now see vacancies at a five-year low. It is wrong to blame young people for not applying for or getting jobs when there simply are not jobs for them to apply for. That is why we Liberal Democrats have talked about growing our economy and pulling the biggest single growth lever that we can by joining the single market, which would reduce costs for businesses.

[Dr Luke Evans]

Have the Liberal Democrats done any modelling of what the impact would be on those young people who are not employed if we rejoined the European Union and had free movement or if we had a youth mobility approach and there was an influx of young people into this country?

[Daisy Cooper]

If there are no jobs in the UK, there will not be people coming to the UK to take jobs that do not exist. If we could join the single market, it would reduce red tape, reduce form-filling, and make it cheaper for businesses in the UK to grow. They would create more jobs, and there would be more jobs for young people. I simply cannot believe that the Conservative party, despite all the evidence and all the studies, will still not accept that having a stronger relationship with Europe is the single biggest way in which we can grow our economy—and it is only if we grow our economy that we can cut taxes and cut bills. For as long as the Conservatives refuse to acknowledge the damage of their Brexit deal, they will remain an out-of-touch, anti-growth, anti-business party.

[Gareth Snell]

The hon. Lady has made the argument here eloquently, many times, about joining the single market and the customs union. However, on 1 April 2019, the House came within three votes of a Brexit deal that would have allowed the retention of membership of the customs union. I voted for it, and others who were Labour Members at the time voted for it. Six Liberal Democrats, including the current leader of the hon. Lady’s party, voted against it. They walked into the Lobby with the Conservatives—with those of the right—to veto a Brexit deal that included membership of the customs union. Why did they do that?

[Daisy Cooper]

I will not apologise for the fact that we fought tooth and nail—we were the only large party that fought tooth and nail—to stop the damage of the Brexit deal in any shape or form.

[Dave Doogan]

In the last Parliament, the SNP was a substantially bigger party than the Liberal Democrats, and we fought tooth and nail to maintain membership of the EU as well. I am sure the hon. Lady will acknowledge that.

[Daisy Cooper]

I do indeed acknowledge that. It was a slip of the tongue. Many parties were fighting tooth and nail to stop the damage of the Conservatives’ botched Brexit deal. I hope very much that at the EU summit, the Labour Government will move a great deal further than the timid approach they appear to be taking now.

[Paul Holmes (Hamble Valley) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Daisy Cooper]

I will happily give way, all day long.

[Paul Holmes]

Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that economic growth in Europe is lower than the economic growth in this country? Perhaps she could also tell the House how much her party, under its policy proposal, would be willing to pay to join the single market. Would that not take money out of the economy that we could be using to increase growth domestically?

[Daisy Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will, I hope, accept that growth in one country is not equivalent to growth in another country. When we tear down barriers between countries, we increase growth. Plenty of modelling has been done by the national economic social research unit in America, and by other bodies in this country. I am not sure, but I believe it is PwC that has talked about the amount of growth we would gain from the single market. We believe that joining the single market and the customs union would bring in about £29 billion and that the cost would probably be about £2 billion, so the growth that we would gain would massively exceed the cost of joining.

[Graham Stuart]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the Liberal Democrats are a singularly special party in this place, because they can believe passionately in something and then not vote for it?

[Daisy Cooper]

I am sure that if I had more time to speak in this debate, I could point to a number of examples of the Conservative party saying one thing and doing another. It is, of course, a party that is trying to claim, after the mini-Budget, that it is reclaiming the brand of fiscal responsibility, but even in the Conservatives’ recent spending plans there is, according to my calculation, a £33 billion hole between their funding pledges—or the things they want to fund—and the tax cuts that they want to make. It looks like Trussonomics 2.0.

[Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)]

May I bring the hon. Lady back to the point about the opportunity presented by opening up greater access to the European single market? She has cited various reports suggesting that that would be good. Is she aware of the winners of the Nobel prize for economics last year, who demonstrated that what has driven growth across the world, but particularly in the United Kingdom, has not been access to wider markets, but innovation and technology? That is about the growth that we receive from supporting businesses to develop new products and services. It is not access to global markets that does that; it is our own industry and services economy here in the UK. Will the hon. Lady please return to the original liberal principles that helped to develop the prosperity of this country in the 19th and 20th centuries, which are about low tax and low regulation?

[Daisy Cooper]

I have made it very clear in my speech that the single biggest lever for growth is a much better deal with Europe. I have never said that it is the only lever for growth. I absolutely believe that we need to invest in innovation, and I wish that the Government would go further in fixing the entire pipeline, from ideas and start-ups to scale-ups and commercialisation. We should be the best place in the world for a business to start up, to scale up and to stay, and I hope that the hon. Gentleman shares that vision.

I return to the motion. I was saying that the rise in national insurance contributions has exacerbated youth unemployment. We want growth with Europe; we want NICs cut; we want 100 hours of guaranteed work experience for young people before they reach the age of 18; and we want the cliff edges in universal credit tackled as well. We are pleased that the Labour Government have finally looked at putting a tax on the banks, but they will be aware that we have pointed out other ways in which they could have raised taxes on the banks—for example, through a windfall tax on unearned income, which would not deter any further investment. When it comes to our economy and supporting employers, the only long-term solution is to get growth back into our country and get Britain growing again. That is the only way that we can cut taxes and bills.

[Several hon. Members rose—]