Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper has warned the UK’s economic growth is being held back by a “computer says no” approach.
She unveiled a 30-page growth plan aimed at removing barriers to business as part of her speech to the Lib Dem conference in Brighton.
Cooper, who is also the party’s Treasury spokesperson, said too many ideas, start-ups and research started in Britain but ended up being taken overseas.
She also outlined a new Growth and Defence Partnership with the EU to reverse the economic damage of Brexit, that she claimed is currently costing the UK £90bn a year in lost tax revenue.
Speaking on stage in Brighton, she said: “We build brilliant start-ups, and watch too many leave to scale somewhere else. We produce world-class research, and too little of it becomes a British product.”
“Britain has the potential,” she went on. “The system holds it back. The computer says no.
“This plan tears down the barriers to investment, to innovation, and to skills.”
Cooper called for the creation of a digital one-stop-shop service for businesses and investors, combining tax, regulatory, legal, Companies House, and general business services.
Creating this within a new Department for Growth would simplify red tape and help small and medium-sized businesses compete and grow, she said.
Cooper said a new Growth and Defence Partnership with the EU, would be the “single biggest growth lever we could pull” by deepening ties with Europe.
“It could turbo-charge our economy and start to reverse the economic damage of Brexit which is currently costing us £90bn a year in lost tax revenue,” she said.
“In power, we will strike the deal on the single market, we will strike the deal on a customs union, we will strike the deal on defence.”
She claimed the Lib Dems would say “what no other party dares to say” that Britain “belongs at the heart of Europe, and we will take her there”.
Speaking to journalists after her speech, she added she believed re-joining the EU single market and customs union could be done “within a year”.
“We are very clear we want to join the single market and have a customs union and we think we can get there within a year,” she said.
Asked whether associate partnership could be an option for the UK, following the EU offer of a potential deal for Canada, she said: “I don’t see why we need to wait – Canada is a long way away, the geography is different, it’s a different relationship.
“We are just a few miles away from the EU, our closest, biggest trading partner, we’ve got that historical relationship, we think we could get into the single market and have a customs union within 12 months.”
Before becoming prime minister, Andy Burnham said he would like to see the UK re-join the EU in his lifetime but he respected the result of the 2016 referendum and had no plans to “re-run” Brexit arguments.
On Friday, Chancellor John Healey met EU ministers and asked them to let the UK into its Made in Europe scheme, aimed at protecting industries from unfair Chinese competition.
Healey also pushed for closer UK-EU partnerships on tech, defence, and manufacturing at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin the same day, as Burnham held his first official meeting with Taoiseach (Irish prime minister) Micheál Martin in No 10 North.
Seeking to differentiate the Liberal Democrats from rival parties, she said her party would avoid “more punishing tax hikes from Labour or painful spending cuts by the Conservatives and Reform UK”.
She attacked Healey for his speech earlier this month, which “contained no vision, no ideas, and absolutely no mention of Europe”.
Cooper also attacked Reform and the Conservatives for being “locked in a race to the bottom without a single credible costing between them”.
She highlighted how the new Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith had helped to deliver and defend the Liz Truss mini-budget, which she said “crashed the pound, it spiked your mortgage, it cost the country billions”, and Nigel Farage defended the move.
“But the worst could be yet to come: Farage is modelling himself on Trump,” she said.
“A President who has used the presidency to enrich himself, dismantled anti-corruption safeguards and pardoned crypto criminals.
“We cannot allow that kind of politics to take hold in our country — We cannot afford to allow Nigel Farage to win the keys to No 10 or let the Tories put him there.”
