Exiting the EU: Costs

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Wednesday 29th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The amounts of money we have read about in the press are speculation. The negotiations are ongoing and we want to secure value for money for the British taxpayer. It is in our interest to secure a long-term economic partnership with the European Union, but we will not pay over money until everything is agreed.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Page 25 of the Government’s brand new industrial strategy document states that the Government are seeking a transition—sorry, an implementation period—of “around two years”. Does the reported deal include provision to pay for an extended deal beyond two years?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The negotiations are taking place at the moment. We want to secure a reasonable transition deal, but we have to know what the future relationship will be like before we enter into the transition deal. The British public will not accept the can being kicked down the road. They want to know that we are leaving the European Union.

Budget Resolutions

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I will try to rush through my speech as quickly as I possibly can. We in the SNP called for a Budget that put people and prosperity at its heart. I am afraid that we have not seen that, and the Chancellor’s tinkering around the edges will not cut it.

We have heard nothing today about renewable energy. Despite Ministers’ recent warm words, years on from George Osborne’s betrayal over Peterhead there is still nothing on carbon capture and storage, which are vital for the future. There was very little on oil and gas. Although we welcome, at long last, the move on transferrable tax history, nowhere to be seen is the oil and gas ambassador that was promised. This is a phantom appointment—two years in the waiting—but such an ambassador could have been doing good for the North sea industry.

There was no acknowledgment of the monumental error of judgment that is the Hinkley C nuclear investment. The Public Accounts Committee said yesterday that there were “grave strategic errors”, and that no thought was given to consumers before becoming locked into a 35-year deal. That follows the National Audit Office’s judgment that this was “risky and expensive”. With a strike price twice the cost of new offshore, consumers will be paying the price. As the Public Accounts Committee said, the poor have been hit the hardest. This is not a Budget for people, let alone for prosperity.

We did find out that £3.7 billion will be spent on the Brexit process. Let us take that and spend it on the NHS instead. There was nothing for the rural businesses that will be affected, and nothing to end the uncertainty. We could have heard about support for our farmers, who urgently need a clear explanation of the nature and timetable of the process for guaranteeing all EU funding programmes—and not just to 2020, but for the period beyond. There was nothing to deal with the skills and labour shortages that are now being caused by the Brexit shambles and uncertainty. There was nothing about the crisis that Brexit is causing for our NHS, or for the fish processing, food and drink or tourism sectors—to name just a few—because we do not yet know what is happening with our EU nationals, and we are already seeing people leaving those industries.

Much was made earlier about technology, but there was nothing about broadband. No increase in ambition has been shown in this Budget to match the 100% coverage to every premises promised in Scotland. Broadband is a reserved matter, but if this had been left to the UK Government, only 21% of the highlands would have had access to fibre. It took the Scottish Government to step up with £400 million to bring that figure up to 84% and be on track toward 100%. While I am on Scotland, the £2.9 billion cut we have seen is not assuaged by the £2 billion announced today. By the way, £1.1 billion of that is in the form of financial transactions that have to be repaid to the UK Treasury, and it is over three years. That means there is a real-terms cut of £239 million.

Where was the movement on the WASPI campaign? These women have been waiting far too long to get something from the Chancellor to sort out this issue. He said that

“we are all in politics to make people’s lives better”.

He had a big opportunity to do that today, but he missed it. He could have halted universal credit and started the process of fixing it. For four years, since the pilot in my constituency in 2013, we have been telling the UK Government the things they could do to sort it out. I welcome the small steps, but let us not get dazzled because they are not going to change much. The £1.5 billion intervention that has been announced sounds good, but if we look at the Blue Book, we can see that it means £20 million this year and it goes up to 2023. Freezing alcohol duty is good, but the amount to deal with all that harm is less than the cost of freezing alcohol duty. The reduction of one week to five weeks is also welcome in that it is at least something, but again, it will be of little help to many. Some 25% of claimants are already waiting longer, and the cuts are pushing people into crisis.

The Chancellor could have reduced rent arrear burdens, and helped councils and housing societies, by decoupling housing benefit, which would have helped enormously. He could have helped to ease such burdens. As the Women’s Budget Group has pointed out, employed individuals claiming universal credit will be £1,200 a year worse off by April 2021, and 57% of that is due to a cut in the in-work allowance. His failure to halt universal credit means that he has done nothing to help families waiting for months without payments, and nothing to sort out the systemic failures. He has done nothing to help the disabled, and he has given no help or guarantees to those facing eviction or those with no money this Christmas.

Finally, the Chancellor has made no attempt to remove the cruellest features, such as the wait for cancer patients or the terminally ill. Today he could have done something that would cost absolutely nothing: he could have removed the new universal credit requirement for self-certification for people facing terminal illness. This is not a Budget for people, nor for prosperity.

Oral Answers to Questions

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)]

As I said earlier, we have cut corporation tax dramatically and as a consequence we raise 50% more in corporation tax today than we did in 2010.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

T2. The Chancellor will be aware that the Office for National Statistics has revised downwards the UK positive net international investment position from £470 billion to minus £20 billion. What further shocks of this magnitude does he expect as a result of his Government’s handling of the EU negotiations?

[Mr Philip Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman will see, if he looks at that revision, that the cause is lower-than-anticipated returns on UK investment stocks held overseas, principally returns on mining and petroleum-related activities.

Economy and Jobs

Drew Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. We demand that this Government stop pursuing austerity—the electorate gave them that message and we again reiterate it. We also asked in our amendments that proper transitional arrangements be put in place for WASPI women and that the UK take the action it should take to contribute to reducing the refugee crisis across Europe. The SNP will support the amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Streatham (Chuka Umunna) and we will also vote in favour of the amendment standing in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, but I wish to stress that we believe the only way we can get the exact same benefits of being in the single market and the customs union is by being in them.

This is my first opportunity to speak as the SNP’s economic spokesperson, and it is a huge honour to hold this position. This is the third Queen’s Speech debate that I have seen in my time as an MP, and I want to take Members back two years, to my first Queen’s Speech debate, when the then Chancellor, George Osborne, said that

“the latest forecast is that the UK will be the fastest growing of any of the G7 economies”.—[Official Report, 4 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 797.]

He also took the opportunity to reflect that everyone had predicted a hung Parliament, yet the Conservatives had won a comfortable majority—how things have changed. After seven years of ideological and callous cuts, in the first three months of 2017 the UK’s growth was lowest of the G7 economies, joint with Italy—so much for this “long-term economic plan”.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Today, the Chancellor made great play of productivity in the UK, but a London School of Economics growth commission report pointed out that the lack of a comprehensive, coherent, long-term industrial strategy from the UK Government had contributed to “poor productivity performance”, harming the nations of the UK. Is it not time that the UK Government and this Chancellor got to work on actually doing something to correct the problems they have caused for the economies of the nations of the UK?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I agree with my colleague that this is too little, too late. In the time that a British worker makes £1, a German worker makes £1.35, and not enough has been done. I understand that the industrial strategy is being consulted on, but it has not received very favourable responses compared with previous things that have been done in relation to industrial strategy. I hope to see major changes in the industrial strategy as it goes forward, so that it becomes more fit for purpose.

At this election, the Conservatives failed to bolster their majority and have had to sign a grubby deal with the DUP in order to get a majority. It was so grubby that it did not meet the tests that the Secretary of State for Scotland set out for it. It is back-door funding for Northern Ireland, and it was so grubby that the Prime Minister refused to even sign it.

The Conservatives like to portray themselves as being good with the economy and trusted with it. It is therefore distinctly irony that, after they have had seven years in government, if we ask people in the street, they will tell us that they are feeling the pain of a decade of wage stagnation; they are feeling the effects of rising inflation—rising faster than the Chancellor predicted in his spring Budget; and they are looking at how they can make ends meet in their household budgets. That is the reality for people, but the Conservatives fail repeatedly to understand this. They stand there and talk about the just about managings, the long-term economic plan and how great the economy is, but people are not feeling those things—that is not the real-life, lived experience of people in the UK.