Oral Answers to Questions
Neil Gray Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
Neil Gray
The Secretary of State’s performance thus far highlights just how untenable the Government’s position is on this matter. He has completely failed to answer my colleagues’ questions, so I remind him that his party enjoys 43% of the vote to deliver Brexit yet denies the SNP, with its 45% of the vote in Scotland, its right to give the people of Scotland their say. What is his democratic case for denying the people of Scotland their right to choose their own future?
Mr Jack
The First Minister has asked for the right to set and decide the context for future referendums. We are very clear that constitutional matters are reserved. It would be completely wrong for us to hand over those powers to the Scottish Parliament because we would end up with a series of neverendums, which would be bad for the Scottish economy and bad for Scottish jobs. It would reduce tax income and therefore damage already failing public services.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
Yes, of course. I make a general point that we have done a huge amount to lift the burden of taxation on the low-paid, and we are lifting the living wage by the biggest ever increase, but I know that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor will welcome the opportunity to discuss the particular matter that the hon. Gentleman raises in person.
Debate on the Address
Neil Gray Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Mrs May
Indeed. That Bill has cross-party support and it will genuinely improve the lives of victims and survivors of domestic abuse.
I also welcome the reference to reforming the Mental Health Act, although, yet again, I am bound to say that I would have preferred a more full-blooded commitment to a new Mental Health Act. The review of the current Mental Health Act raised many issues about how we deal with and treat people with mental health problems. It is not just about resources; it is also about the attitude and the way in which people are treated. If we put those changes into place in a new Mental Health Act, we will bring genuine and significant improvements to people in this country who have mental health problems.
There are other social injustices we need to look at. Often, social injustice is underpinned by a feeling among the powerful that there are others in our society whom they can treat as second-class citizens. One of the worst examples and what really brought that home to me was the way in which the young girls and boys being sexually abused and groomed in Rotherham were treated by the authorities in that place. It was as if they were people who did not count. But they did count, and we must always remember that every member of our society, every resident of the UK, counts. It is that spirit of ensuring equality that lay behind the work done on social housing, and I note the commitment the Government have made to produce a social housing White Paper. It is important that we continue that work to ensure that the voice of those in social housing is heard.
Another injustice we need to tackle was highlighted by the race disparity audit—groundbreaking work by a Conservative Government that shone a light on injustice that too many experience and too few are willing to acknowledge. We cannot address all the issues raised and all the findings immediately, but we must ensure that the Government do not abandon the work on the race disparity audit. If we take action across the board, we will truly be creating one nation.
Speaking of one nation, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has, on a number of occasions, expressed his desire to unite the country. Of course, that will not happen if the United Kingdom is torn asunder by those who want to ignore the ties of family, of history, of shared endeavour, of shared purpose, that we have formed together over the years. My view is simple: breaking up the United Kingdom is to the benefit of no one and the detriment of all. I am grateful to him for the reference in the Queen’s Speech to the importance the Government attach to the integrity of the United Kingdom, and I look forward to the work that I know the Government will do to ensure that that is demonstrated.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
The former Prime Minister has spent a lot of her speech talking about the debt that her party and her successor owe to those who lent her party their support, but she will know better than anyone that a true leader, a true statesman, acknowledges those who did not vote for them. In Scotland, the Scottish National party secured 45% of the vote. Nobody denies the current Prime Minister’s right to govern on 43% of the vote, so how can she turn round to the people of Scotland and say that we cannot have our say on our own future, after the general election results that we just had in Scotland?
Mrs May
As the hon. Gentleman will have heard from my excellent hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), 55% of people in Scotland voted for parties that support the Union of the United Kingdom. At the end of his speech, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) made a great plea about how an independent Scotland would be in the European Union. We all know that an independent Scotland will not be in the European Union—it will not be allowed to be in the European Union. So what the Scottish nationalists are saying to people in Scotland is simply not true.
The Queen’s Speech refers to the UK’s place and influence in the world. I note that there is to be a full review of international policy, no doubt building on a number of reviews that have taken place and work done in recent years. It is important that we look at this issue now. Of course, global Britain has never gone away; we have always been a global Britain. In recent years, we have continued to play an important role in international fora on matters such as climate change; we have played a key role in dealing with terrorism, modern slavery and people smuggling; and we have enhanced our presence in key areas east of Suez and in the Asia-Pacific region. We brought together action across the world when we found that a chemical weapon had been used on the streets of the UK by Russia.
At the same time, we have seen the international fora and the rules-based international order on which we have depended for decades coming under significant threat. At the same time as we have seen the atmosphere and discourse of politics in the UK become more acrimonious. Across the world we have seen a change, too. We have seen an emphasis on absolutism and confrontation rather than compromise. We have a decision to take as to where we sit in that: whether we side with the absolutists or continue to be a country that believes it is right that big countries come together internationally and restrain their own demands in order to seek agreement for the greater good of all.
We have also seen from some an interest in stepping back from a defence of democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We have to decide whether to look inward or to continue to play a role in defending those values; I believe we should, because that is what global Britain is all about. It is important that we continue to uphold those values around the world. Of course, that may bring into the spotlight our relationship with the United States of America. It is a special relationship that we must nurture and preserve. It is in the interests not only of us and the United States but of the world that that special relationship is maintained. But it is not a one-way relationship. We do not just accept every position that the US takes; we consider our own interests and, when we disagree with the US, we tell them clearly that we disagree with them.
Over the past three years, we have seen this House focusing so much on Brexit and on so much internally, but we now have an opportunity: we can set that to one side and move on to being the global Britain that the Prime Minister has spoken about and that every Conservative Member on the Government Benches espouses. We can be a Britain that takes its place in the world; a Britain that recognises the need to reform the international rules-based order, playing not just a role but a leading role in that reform; and a United Kingdom that stands up for the values that we share—the values of democracy, the rule of law and human rights. A United Kingdom standing proud in the world. I believe the world needs the United Kingdom to take that role. I know that, under my right hon. Friend, we will do just that.
Neil Gray (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)
As this is my first opportunity in this new Parliament, I put on record my thanks to the people of Airdrie and Shotts for placing their faith in me for a third time and for doing me the honour of representing them in this place. I will work for them and listen to them, regardless of which way they voted.
Although I welcome my party’s much-swelled numbers, I echo the tribute of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) to Stephen Gethins, who sadly lost his seat. He is the best of us—there is no doubt about that—and I wish him and his young family well for the future.
Today’s programme for government in the Queen’s Speech is thin gruel for those who have been hammered by austerity for almost 10 years, but that is hardly a surprise when we look at the Tory party manifesto, which makes just four mentions of universal credit and none of disability support such as personal independence payments. I can find absolutely nothing new on work and pensions. In fact, all the Tory manifesto does for social security is conflate universal credit as only being for people who are out of work when, in fact, more than a third of recipients are in work.
The Tories have nothing new in their manifesto and, again, nothing new in today’s programme for government for people on low incomes. It seems that the Brexit bonanza predicted by the Prime Minister will not reach those on low incomes—quelle surprise.
In fact, yesterday the Department for Work and Pensions removed the right of disabled people to choose whether to have the results of their work capability assessment sent to their GP. That will make it harder for those who fail these notoriously unfair and inaccurate assessments, but who simply cannot work, to get signed off with a sickness line by their GP. The Tories wasted no time in hurting the rights of disabled people.
Today, we have seen the announcement of the statistic of the year, which has been covered widely. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that 58% of all those living in poverty in the UK are in work, which is shameful. A wee national insurance tax break will do nothing to solve this and, unless there is radical change, it will become an even greater social crisis during this Parliament. Whatever time I have left here, however long it is, I will do what I can to fight for people who deserve so much better from this UK Government.
Also conspicuous in its absence from today’s programme for government is any meaningful mention of Scotland, or indeed any legislative plans for Scotland’s future. The First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has written to the Prime Minister today with a clear democratic and constitutional case for Scotland being given the right to choose our own future. The Referendums (Scotland) Bill has been passed by Holyrood this evening.
Scotland is not a region questioning its place in a larger unitary state. We are a country in a voluntary Union of nations. Our friends in the rest of the UK will always be our closest allies and neighbours but, in line with the principle of self-determination, people in Scotland have the right to determine whether the time has come for a new, better relationship in which we can thrive as a genuine partnership of equals. That is the Scottish Government’s very reasonable assessment. The response of the Prime Minister and the Tory party means that democracy stopped for the people in Scotland in 2014 and that means that, right now, Scotland’s membership of this Union, according to the Prime Minister, is involuntary.
I know many of my constituents disagree with me about whether Scotland should be independent. I speak to them. I listen to them. I hear what they have to say. I would never deny them the right to have their say, and my vote counts equally, in equal weight as theirs. What the Prime Minister is suggesting is that what he has to say is more important and carries more weight than what we have to say in Scotland, and that people who both agree and disagree with him in Scotland matter not to him. He puts himself above the people in Scotland. Taking back control indeed.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
Can my hon. Friend imagine the howls of indignation from Conservative Members if a scenario were to arise in which the First Minister of Scotland prevented the rest of the United Kingdom from having a referendum on whether to stay in or leave the European Union? Heaven and Earth would be moved by a Government in London to make sure it happened.
Neil Gray
Absolutely. I am about to make the point that what is good for the goose is good for the gander, and my hon. Friend makes that point well.
Our case is made stronger because of the nature of the election campaign we just had in Scotland. Jackson Carlaw, the acting Tory leader in Scotland, said the Union was on the ballot paper. Annie Wells MSP said that if Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP win, “they get their referendum.” I am yet to see a Tory leaflet in Scotland that did not have opposition to a second referendum at the heart of it. The SNP manifesto and all my literature talked about Scotland’s right to choose. I was clear, even with prospective voters who were undecided on voting for me but opposed to independence, that I would campaign for a second referendum if I was re-elected.
The result in Scotland was clear—even clearer than here in the rest of the UK. The Tories lost half their seats in Scotland. Their share of the vote went down and the SNP won more than 80% of the seats we contested. We have a higher share of the vote than the Prime Minister enjoys. In response to my intervention, the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), suggested that because we achieved only—only!—45% of the vote in Scotland our mandate can be ignored. She has not really thought that through, has she? Extend that logic to the fact that the Prime Minister achieved only 43% of the vote in the rest of the UK. Nobody is denying the Prime Minister his democratic right to govern, and they should not be denying Scotland’s right to choose any longer.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
The fact is that nobody in Scotland can possibly have voted without the knowledge that the Government of the United Kingdom were not going to agree to a referendum, so they could vote for whichever protest party they liked in the full knowledge that the hon. Gentleman’s promise would not be delivered in any case. Also, as was pointed out earlier, the SNP got fewer seats than it got in 2015. Why this result is regarded as a great triumph when the SNP has been going backwards, I do not know.
Neil Gray
The Union was on the ballot paper. No clearer campaign message came from the Scottish Conservatives than that, and it was wholeheartedly and comprehensively rejected by the people of Scotland. It would be wise of a so-called leader—one who aspires to statesmanship—to listen not just to those who voted for him, but those who voted against him, and to listen to the second largest member of this Union, which whole- heartedly rejected the manifesto that he put forward at the general election.
In her entertaining speech, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch) suggested that the Prime Minister was oven ready. Well, I say that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Tory Members and the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) say that the SNP does not respect the results of democratic events. Well, in 2014 we respected the result of the referendum. Scotland did not become independent against the wishes of the people of Scotland. In spite of the even greater victory in 2015—the general election that saw us return 56 SNP MPs—we did not push in the first part of that Parliament for a second referendum. Then Brexit completely changed the offer of the Union voted on in 2014. In 2017, we lost seats, although we still held a majority of seats in Scotland. We won the election in Scotland, but there was contrition and our campaign for a second referendum after the 2017 general election took a step back.
It is the Tories now who wish to ignore the people and ignore the people of Scotland, but make no mistake: we now have a mandate from four consecutive parliamentary elections, and the result last week is unarguable by any democrat. It is for the Prime Minister to explain in a reasoned way why he would deny Scotland the right to have our say. It is he who now has to justify his unsustainable position. If he continues to refuse our right as the second largest nation in the Union to choose, he will be judged as the one nation Prime Minister he so desperately craves to be. He will continue to be judged as the vote leave, little Englander Prime Minister, and that will not serve him well in Scotland.