26 Aug 2024
So much has changed since Daisy Cooper was first elected MP for St Albans, winning the seat from long-standing Tory incumbent Anne Main with a 6,273 majority and becoming the first Liberal (Democrat) to hold the constituency since 1904.
Earlier this year she successfully held onto St Albans with an increased majority of 19,834, and was then faced with a new Government taking the reins of power at Westminster, the impact of which has already been experienced.
“It does feel like we’re going into a brave new world, because for many of us the last time we had a Labour government was a very long time ago, and so there’s a bit of a sense of wait and see.
“But the one thing that has changed instantly is the mood in Parliament. I’m sure there will be policies from the new Government that I vehemently disagree with, but the tone of the debate has changed.
“Opposition MPs can ask a question and you get an answer rather than a soundbite or a jibe, which is incredibly refreshing. And some of the MPs in the Conservative Party who were saying quite outrageous things and would get cheered are now getting laughed at, and that’s quite a significant shift in terms of the tone of the debate.
“Hopefully it means that Parliament should be able to go back to the way it’s supposed to work.”
But it isn’t all positive is it? “I guess the downside so far is that the economic statement was pretty sobering. There’s clearly a bunch of experts who are poring over the claims by the Labour Government that there’s a way bigger hole in this year’s financial plans than anybody had realised, and as a result, they’ve made some pretty unpalatable decisions.
“I think we’re concerned about that taking away the winter fuel allowance for everybody except those on benefits is restricting it too tightly, because we know that fuel bills are probably going to go up again this autumn and that could be really catastrophic for many people.
“I’m very worried, from my own constituency casework, that there are many people who are entitled to pension credit who haven’t applied for it, and so I’m going to have a bit of a push on that in the next few months to make sure that anybody who is eligible for that signs up for it, and we will we try and persuade the Government that they need to expand the number of people who are going to be entitled to it.”
Arguably then, is much of this Parliament going to be caught up with the Labour Government digging themselves out of the hole that the Conservatives left behind, resulting in a more reactive as opposed to proactive policy strategy?
“Yes, although I do think it will be proactive in a very measured way. The impression I get is that this Parliament is going to be about fixing some pretty basic things.
“Trying to start fixing the justice system so you don’t have prisons that are overflowing and you don’t have a justice system that’s on the verge of breaking down.
“I’m hoping that there will be further announcements on the NHS and social care as that was our number one issue in the General Election. I really hope that as soon as Parliament comes back after the summer, there will be announcements about enabling people to see GPs and dentists and get social care and all the rest.
“I’m not saying it can be fixed quickly, but there are things that a new Government could do quite quickly like increasing carers allowance for example, so family carers are properly recompensed for the amazing work that they do and the money they save to stay.
“Having a higher salary for care workers so that they don’t desert the care sector to work for Amazon warehouses or supermarkets or hospitality or anything else.
“Of course there’s a much bigger question about how you fund social care longer term. And we’ve said we want to see cross-party talks to have that conversation. But those cross-party talks shouldn’t be at the expense of taking the actions that are necessary right now.”
As Lib Dem health and social care spokesperson, Daisy already enjoys a good relationship with the new Health Minister, Wes Streeting, having worked closely together on policy ideas before the General Election, and he spoke in Parliament about how those talks would continue even though they would be in power.
“I hope that is the case. The fact is that I have worked with Wes, and not just conversations about what we were doing in the Chamber, but behind the scenes at various events in Parliament. We would often speak side-by-side, and if we were on the same panel, on Politics Live for example or at a Royal College, we would be listening to what each other was saying and challenge each other on that.
“He would have heard me challenge the last Government about 20 times about funding for Watford Hospital and other hospitals, so we’ve got a very clear understanding of each other’s priorities and vision for the health service.
“We won’t always agree, but I think they’ve set the tone and said, ‘Anybody who wants to improve the country, who’s got good ideas, our door is open and we’ll have those conversations’.
“You go into politics for a reason right? You don’t go into politics to be competitive and have arguments, you do it because you want to make a difference. We want the Government to take our ideas, we’re very happy for them to do that if it improves things, particularly for the NHS.”
But all of these ideas cost money, so where does that come from?
“The major problem with the NHS is that it has become a treatment service, and we’re not actually trying to encourage people to live healthier lives. As a result, everybody ends up in A&E and it costs a lot of money to help people.
In Europe and across the world, we have one of the smallest percentages of preventative public health funding. There’s got to be an upfront investment now into GPs, dentists, social care and mental health, community care, but it will save money in the long term.
“Just the other day when the Labour Government said because of this financial black hole we’re going to review the New Hospitals Programme, my challenge was clear. Delaying isn’t cost free; if you have hospitals that are crumbling and falling down and being held up by stilts, the cost of delay is that you’re patching up a hospital that you’re eventually going to knock down.”
Has the redevelopment of Watford Hospital stalled then?
“Yes and no. They’ve got money for the enabling works, they’ve moved the car park, they’ve cleared the site and they’re ready to go with the rebuild of the hospital, but they need the funding to get on and do it.”
Despite former Prime Minister Boris Johnson promising the building of 40 new hospitals over the course of a decade – and of these many were actually refurbishments of existing facilities like Watford – the Tories did not deliver on this pledge, something Daisy puts down to basic incompetence on their part.
“If you think about it, about a year and a half into the last Parliament, the Government just started to implode. It started with Dominic Cummings, and then it was the drip-feed of Partygate stories, then it was the resignations en masse, then it was the leadership contest, and then it was Liz Truss and the mini-budget, then of course you had the cost of the living crisis, and then you had Rishi Sunak bending constantly to the right.
“It was the constant, constant infighting that meant that all of the oxygen in Parliament was just sucked up with that infighting and the Government just completely took their eye off the ball in terms of delivering basic things, like fixing prisons, building hospitals, recruiting GPs. They didn’t do any of it.
“It’s really quite extraordinary of how they squandered their time and their majority, but it’s communities across the country that have suffered. I keep saying, if there are two or three hospitals that are raring to go, just give them the green light. Let them start. We also had the RAAC crisis as well because that hadn’t been addressed either, but as always, the last Government didn’t even look at some of the easier solutions.
“We have these crazy, outdated rules where a hospital that’s got a lot of land might have sold some of it to a health charity so that they can provide support to patients, or to a pharma company so they can do research on site and be really close to the hospital to improve research and development into new drugs. But if they get that money from selling the land, the hospital is not actually allowed to spend it on improvements.
“You know, there are no quick fixes, but there are things that can be done now.”
So flashing back to the General Election campaign, could she see any signs that the Lib Dems would come away with so many MPs?
“We ran an incredibly meticulous and disciplined campaign, and as a party, we’ve been stung a number of times in previous elections where we had overstretched and under-delivered, so both the political and executive leadership of the party had agreed that we weren’t going to do that this time, so it was very data-driven.
“We were very open about our position. We said a million times that we were in second place to the Conservatives in 80 seats around the country and we wanted to win as many of those as possible, but we just didn’t know how many of them we could win.
“But the rumblings did start, probably about halfway through the campaign, and as the data started coming in, people were knocking on more doors, and as we could see that the Conservatives were retreating in some places and just not putting out any leaflets or their candidates weren’t even campaigning on the ground/
“Many people asked me whether I ever had a number in my head, and I didn’t for lots of the time, because I didn’t want to get carried away, but I think I was very cautious. I thought if we get 35, that’s a great result.
“I think my expectations had gone down during the course of the Parliament just because the Conservatives were such a big force. But I thought 35 was a solid number. Then other people started murmuring about larger numbers, and I just said, let’s see.
“Even on the night of the election, I saw the countdown to the exit poll, and I had no idea what that number was going to be. I knew it was going to be higher than 35, but I didn’t know what number it was going to be, and I didn’t expect it to be 61, that seemed kind of extraordinary, and then we ended up with 72.
“So all of those seats were within our list of 80, so there wasn’t a single seat that was a complete and utter curveball, but we hadn’t expected as many of them.”
So how do the Liberal Democrats build on that success going forwards? Obviously they want to hold onto those seats in future elections, but can they tap into other opportunities as well?
“Firstly we’ve got all these new MPs who are going to have to work incredibly hard to build up trust and support and to demonstrate that they are strong local champions and deserve to get re-elected.
“But there’s no doubt that the Conservatives are going to remain in a state of chaos in opposition, and as a result, I think there’s a big opportunity for us to make further gains at the next election.
“That said, I’m very conscious that the world could turn on its head in the length of a Parliament. If you’d asked me back in 2019 when the Conservatives came to power with an 80-seat majority whether we’d end up with a Labour government with such an enormous majority and 72 Lib Dem MPs, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. So, one step at a time, we want to get our new MPs up and running and then we’ll see what progress we can make.”
One of these new MPs is obviously her neighbour in Harpenden and Berkhamsted, Victoria Collins, someone she campaigned closely alongside during the election campaign.
“She’s hit the ground running straight away and she’ll be a fantastic MP in her own right, but for every new MP who is elected, when you start on day one you don’t have an office and you don’t have any staff, but as far as the public is concerned, you’re already an MP and they’re writing to you with their various concerns, and some of them are really very urgent.
“So you have people who maybe have their benefits cut off and they’ve got no money to feed their kids. You have people who are maybe on the brink of becoming homeless. You have people who have got visa problems where every family member is given a visa apart from one of the children or something like that and these things do happen.
“So we’ve just been giving a bit of administrative support to Victoria to help her get her team up and running.”
Having the same views on similar issues also offers the opportunity for joint initiatives, such as the letter they immediately wrote to the Government about the expansion of Luton Airport, and their fight against the continued dumping of sewage in the River Ver by Thames Water.
“It’s just great to have another person from Hertfordshire to talk to about these local issues!”
Does she think the Luton Airport expansion will go ahead? A decision following the public inquiry is expected in the autumn.
“I think this is going to be a really early test of the Labour Government’s commitment to tackling the climate emergency.
“Some of the decisions they took in the first few days in office were to do with rolling out solar energy and lifting the cap on onshore wind turbines, so they’re trying to flex their climate credentials and fundamentally the advice from the Government’s own climate advisors is really clear.
“They’ve said there needs to be a framework in place for managing the emissions from the aviation sector as a whole and there should be no net expansion. So if you reduce the flights and emissions from one airport, you can expand them at another one, that’s basically what that means.
“The last Government talked about wanting to move to sort of jet zero and having sustainable fuel, but that plan is nowhere near as advanced as some people might think or hope that it was.
“So in the meantime, I think it’s a pretty clear cut case that if you want to tackle the climate emergency, you just can’t have net expansion of airports at this point in time.
“If in a few years’ time, it can be demonstrated that there’s cleaner fuel and jets, and we can meet our climate commitments whilst having a different kind of aviation, then let’s revisit it. If they go ahead with the Luton expansion it will be flying in the face of climate change advice.”
One of her other campaign issues has been the provision of special education needs and disabilities (SEND) provision at Herts county council, something which ramped up further following their damning Ofsted report in January, which identified widespread failings from HCC.
“There were always two strands to my campaign. One was about the service from Hertfordshire County Council and frustration that I was seeing day in day out from parents who were just pushed to breaking point because the system wasn’t working.
“The other strand of the campaign was campaigning for fairer funding. I’ve already tabled a series of questions to press the new Government on whether they will meet with the F40 group – a group of poorest funded local education authorities of which Hertfordshire is one.
“I don’t want to get my hopes up too much, but I’ve had a sort of slightly encouraging response from the Government saying that they’re very aware of the problems with the funding formula and want to take some time to review it and look at how it impacts local areas. So let’s see what the outcome of that is. With regards improving SEND provision at HCC, it won’t surprise you to know that I continue to get casework from people who are frustrated that they’re not getting proper responses and are struggling to get the support that they need. I’ve actually got a meeting with Hertfordshire County Council lined up soon, where they will be giving me an update on where they’re up to.”
Even though Parliament is in recess, that does not mean Daisy’s workload is any less, but does she have any plans for the summer when she can take a break from the demands of being an MP?
“There are dates in my diary which say I should be going away, but I haven’t currently booked anything. But I’m a strong believer in work-life balance even if I don’t always achieve it myself, so there’s no doubt that I’ll need a few days away at some point. But I haven’t worked out when that’s going to be!”
