Backing Business to Create Economic Growth

Daisy Cooper Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Daisy Cooper (St Albans) (LD)]

For too many people, the promise that hard work would help them get on in life is broken. The promise that each generation would do better than the last is broken. The expectation that big corporations would be made to play by the rules and pay fair taxes like the rest of us is broken. It is hardly surprising that so many people feel that the whole system is broken and that nothing works, and that they are now demanding action to fix it. The King’s Speech was another chance for this Government to be bold, for them to tell us what they stand for and why, but sadly they failed.

On Europe, Ministers once again talk about pursuing a closer partnership through gradual regulatory alignment, but if the Government are serious about repairing the damage caused by Brexit, they must go further and faster. Brexit has left us poorer and more isolated, in what is now a more dangerous and volatile world. At home we must build real sovereignty in energy and food independence, but our economic and national security will only come from a much deeper relationship with our closest neighbours in Europe. The tax revenue lost every year due to Brexit is estimated to have reached £90 billion—that is equivalent to three mini-Budgets in a year.

We Liberal Democrats have a road map to rebuild our relationship with the EU and to reach full membership again, starting now with a customs union to cut red tape, support exporters, strengthen supply chains and grow our economy. Going for growth with Europe would end the cost of living crisis. At a time when businesses are crying out for certainty, when our economy desperately needs a shot in the arm and when families and businesses are paralysed with a never-ending cost of living crisis, the Government’s approach is timid when what is needed is bold action.

Small businesses are the backbone of our local economies in my St Albans constituency and across the country, but they were offered little more than a Bill aimed at tackling late payments. The Bill is welcome but it barely scratches the surface of the challenges facing businesses every single day. Businesses are asking: where is the action on soaring energy costs, where is the relief from the Government’s damaging jobs tax and where is the meaningful reform of business rates?

New Liberal Democrat analysis reveals that 40,000 businesses are still waiting on decisions after appealing their business rates revaluations from 2023, with average waits now hitting nearly a year. When those cases are finally heard, more than half are overturned. Business owners just want to get on with running their businesses, but instead they are stuck in a slow, broken, expensive, impenetrable business rates system. The Conservatives promised reform in 2015 and Labour promised it at the last election, but after a decade of inaction, businesses are still paying the price.

In my constituency of St Albans, 11 pubs now have rateable values of more than £100,000 because of the revaluation, even though they cannot all be considered to be large business premises. One of those, the Beech House, on our main high street, St Peters Street, saw its rateable value soar from £97,000 to £125,000, and just last week took the decision to shut up shop for the final time. Hotels have been particularly hard hit as well. Staff at the Samuel Ryder hotel in St Albans told me in January that its bill will increase by 157% this year.

Play centres have been penalised too. DJ’s Play Jungle, a soft play centre, has been frozen out of the 15% U-turn discount offered to pubs and music venues. The rates bills of many play centres will quadruple over the next few years, and what will be the result? Children will be priced out of indoor play.

The Government are introducing a competition reform Bill, a regulating for growth Bill and an enhancing financial services Bill. Taken together, those Bills aim to improve regulation. As Liberals, we recognise that regulation has an important role to play. We believe that good regulation can be a win-win-win: protecting consumers, promoting innovation and competition, and delivering economic growth. However, regulation works only when it is effective, proportionate and responsive. Too often compliance costs are high, regulation is focused on process not outcome, and our regulators are far too slow, lagging far behind the industries they are supposed to oversee.

That is especially true in financial services and fintech, where companies can spend months waiting for approvals and authorisations while investment dries up and opportunities disappear. For start-ups operating on tight funding runways, those delays can be devastating. If the Government are serious about growth, they must ensure that our regulatory system is agile, modern and capable of keeping pace with innovation, and that it delivers competition and growth without abandoning consumers. At a time when financial co-operation with Europe is more important than ever, it is deeply disappointing that stronger UK-EU financial services co-operation appears to have been overlooked in the Government’s so-called reset agenda.

We Liberal Democrats welcome the principle behind the electricity generator levy Bill. It is right that the excess profits of electricity generators are fairly taxed, and it is right to break the outdated link between electricity prices and wholesale gas prices. We Liberal Democrats were the only party at the last election to commit to that decoupling, but the Government must go further. The revenues raised should tackle the cost of living crisis head-on, with an emergency home insulation programme for low-income households, an energy security bank, action on heating oil and fuel costs, and stronger protections for small businesses struggling with energy bills.

Finally, let me turn to the overnight visitor levy Bill. In principle, Liberal Democrats support devolving more economic powers to local areas. Different communities face different challenges, and local leaders are often best placed to decide whether a visitor levy is appropriate for their area, but there is real concern that the Government will use this levy not as an additional source of local investment to boost tourism, but as a mechanism to quietly offset future cuts to local government funding. We have seen that approach before: the Government have already relied on council tax rises to compensate for reductions in central support to local authorities.

Will Ministers make it absolutely clear today and put it on the record that any revenue raised through a visitor levy will genuinely be additional funding for local communities, tourism infrastructure and public services, not a way for central Government sneakily to offset future cuts to local government funding? If the Government hand new powers to mayors in this area, they must go hand in glove with extra, proper support for the tourism and hospitality sector by exempting hospitality from the jobs tax, considering lower rates for part-time staff, introducing a temporary cut to VAT for the sector and launching a serious strategy to promote Britain’s tourism industry overseas.

The Labour leadership hopefuls say that they want a battle of ideas, not personalities—well, we Liberal Democrats are fizzing with ideas. We have the ideas to fix our broken social care system, which has been ignored by this Government for 18 months. We have the road map to fix our broken relationship with Europe. We have the plan to fix our broken voting system—something that Labour hopefuls said that they would fix and now say that they will not. We have the ideas to save our high streets, fix the broken business rates system and the broken energy market, tackle the cost of living, and unleash everything that this great country has to offer. I genuinely hope that the Labour leadership contenders are listening, because for our country’s sake, I flippin’ well hope they can match our level of ambition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me so early on the third day of five that we are investing in scrutinising the Government’s programme, at a time when the party of government is abandoning its unique selling point of bringing political stability to our economy after a time of so much churn, with so many Prime Ministers in such a short space of years.

[Daisy Cooper]

And who was responsible for that?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Irrespective of who was responsible, the question is: what is happening now? The reality is that we are facing a danger, notwithstanding the investment of time we are putting into scrutinising the Government’s programme, that it will not remain the Government’s programme for very much longer, such are the very different priorities of those who are lining up to take the Prime Minister’s job.

When the Prime Minister warned his party last week that unleashing a leadership election would bring about chaos, he was quite right, but that chaos also comes with a cost. Such is their horror at the prospect of those lining up to take the Prime Minister’s job, the markets that fund our gargantuan and growing appetite for borrowing are charging a risk premium higher than was charged for the Truss regime, and higher than is charged for Greece when it seeks to borrow. I am not a particular fan of the current Prime Minister, but I urge Labour Members—and, indeed, the voters of Makerfield, who will apparently have a rather more significant input in the settling of this matter—to take account of Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary verses, and, in particular, the tale of poor Jim, who ran away from nurse and was eaten by a lion:

“And always keep a-hold of Nurse

For fear of finding something worse.”

His Majesty told us that the legislative programme would include a Bill to strengthen our relationship with the European Union, but it is far from clear what that actually means. Do the Prime Minister’s red lines—no return to a customs union, or to free movement, or to the single market—still hold firm, and do they hold firm in the view of those who have expressed a much more enthusiastic agenda for returning to closeness with the European Union, among those candidates who are lining up behind him, seeking his job? Labour said in its manifesto that it was going to make Brexit work, but it has made it the excuse for the lacklustre performance of the British economy.

There is a measure of cakeism going on whereby Ministers, including the Secretary of State, tell us how wonderfully they have been doing. They have delivered the fastest economic growth in the G7, much faster than the countries that the Secretary of State identified in the European Union. They have delivered a reduction in inflation. They have delivered—

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Quite right: interest rate reductions. They have done all these wonderful things, but at the same time they languish because we are not a member of the European Union. We have heard that criticism several times already today: we would be doing so much better if we were a member of the European Union. The reality is, however, that the European Union is not doing as well as Ministers are trumpeting that we are doing.

[Daisy Cooper]

On that point, will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

No. The hon. Lady has had her turn.