Exiting the European Union
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
We do indeed want to deliver on leaving the European Union, but in doing that, I want to ensure that there will be no hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. I believe that that is important, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman does, for his constituents and for the future of Northern Ireland. That is one of the commitments we have given, and it is one that I intend to deliver on.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Over the weekend, hundreds of constituents have got in touch with me asking me to vote down this terrible, woeful deal that the Prime Minister has come back with. There is no—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I say to the Government Minister standing at the Bar: be quiet. I have not the slightest interest in hearing you yelling in the background. Sit down, be quiet and listen, and if you are not able or inclined to do that—[Interruption.] Order. Do not look at me and tell me what’s what or imply that you can. Be quiet and do not be discourteous to the Member on her feet. If you cannot be quiet, Mr Stuart, you are most welcome to leave the Chamber, and we are perfectly capable of coping without you.
Alison Thewliss
There is no confidence in this Prime Minister’s deal. She does not have the confidence of her Back Benchers, my constituents or the majority of Members of this House. She cannot even tell us the date when the vote will return to the House. Is it not the case that this Prime Minister has bottled it and should go?
The Prime Minister
If I was bottling it, I would not have come to the Chamber and been on my feet for nearly two and a half hours answering questions.
G20 Summit
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
The funds are not being held back, and Departments will receive notification of the allocation of the funds in the next few days.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Yemen data project has reported that 42 airstrikes happened over the course of 10 days, of which 62% hit civilian targets. Did the Prime Minister discuss with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman how the bombs she sold him will be used in the coming months?
The Prime Minister
What I discussed with the crown prince was the need to find a political solution to what is happening in the conflict in Yemen. This is very important, and talks are due to take place in Stockholm. I have encouraged all parties to take part in those talks. The way to resolve the issue in Yemen is through a long-term political solution.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alistair Burt
We have always been clear, first, that there is no military solution in Yemen, and secondly, that the port has to be kept open. There should not be action in relation to the port, either by those who might have mined the approaches to it or those who might seek to attack it, because humanitarian access remains crucial. Yemen is a tragedy of significant proportions, as the right hon. Gentleman knows. We are doing everything we can to find the political solution to end the conflict.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
One of the major issues is access to finance and the soaring cost of basic commodities in Yemen. The UN special envoy, Martin Griffiths, has said that the best way to resolve Yemen’s humanitarian crisis is to fix the economy and stem a slide in the riyal. Are the UK Government participating in action on that matter?
Alistair Burt
Since July, the riyal has depreciated by some 20%. That, as the hon. Lady says, is putting up the prices of basic foodstuffs, which had already increased in recent years. Of course, in a war economy, people have made money: the Houthi have taxed goods and taken money from people instead of supplying goods. We are doing what we can to support the riyal, because some stability in the currency is essential. The UK is supporting that process, too.
Salisbury Update
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. It is important that we now specifically look at the actions of the GRU and take action in relation to the GRU. That is about sharing our experience and understanding of the GRU with our allies, and it is about the threat potentially posed to other countries. It is not just about what happened here, heinous though that crime was, as my right hon. Friend has said; it is about ensuring a level of protection and security for everybody across Europe.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
Global Witness has found that 43% of Scottish limited partnerships are controlled by persons with either a correspondence address in or citizenship of a former Soviet state. However, there are still huge issues with compliance, and many SLPs have not even provided a person of significant control. Will the Prime Minister give more detail on future legislation to combat dirty money laundered through SLPs, and say whether resources and priority will be given to enforcing existing laws through Companies House, which remains a huge loophole in all of this?
The Prime Minister
As I said in response to the question this afternoon from the hon. Lady’s party leader, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), the Home Office and the Business Department have been working on this issue in relation to SLPs; they have been looking at some of these areas of abuse. We have as a general point stepped up our ability to deal with economic crime through the establishment within the National Crime Agency of the national economic crime centre, and we are continuing to build up that ability to deal with economic crime. I am sure the Minister for Security and Economic Crime will be happy to speak to the right hon. Gentleman as leader of the Scottish National party here about the action being taken and the work being done. There is an intention to legislate in this area, but obviously we need to ensure we get this right; SLPs are not the only issue raised in this regard and we need to look at a range of abuses.
Pairing
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend gives good advice that I am sure my colleagues in the Whips Office will wish to follow.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
If the Government are prepared to take advantage of pregnant women and women who have recently had babies, surely we can have very little trust in their integrity. Would a good way to restore integrity not be to circulate something before the recess so that we can have a votable motion when we come back in September to allow baby leave and proxy voting to go ahead?
Mr Lidington
As I have repeatedly said, what happened last week was a genuine error. It ought not to have happened. The Whips Office is taking steps through its internal procedures to try to prevent a repetition, and the Leader of the House is eager to talk to Members from all parties in the House about the way forward to address the points the hon. Lady refers to.
Strengthening the Union
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lesley Laird
The hon. Gentleman has just illustrated his own point, which is that the basis of evolution allows different parties in different countries to reach different solutions. [Interruption.] Where has the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) been all these years?
The charge sheet includes the catastrophe that is universal credit, the degrading of the terminally ill with ongoing work assessments, the rising reliance on food banks, the increase in child and pensioner poverty, and the repulsive rape clause.
Lesley Laird
I did. It was worth repeating. While these policies continue to have a cruel impact on the lives of ordinary people the length and breadth of the UK, it is clear that the Tories are guilty of laying the foundations of a policy of division that the nationalists will exploit. They will promote their holy grail, no matter the turbo-charged austerity that it would unleash on the Scottish people.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
I am grateful to the Government for giving us this debate, because it has given me the opportunity to wear this skirt, which I had given up wearing after my colleagues reckoned that it was a Unionist skirt and that I should not take it out of the wardrobe anymore. I am very disappointed that the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) is not here in his suit, so that we could be matching. I have not seen that suit since the referendum campaign—
Alison Thewliss
He knows the suit I mean! If we are talking about clothing, the Union is more like a fur coat, nae knickers type of deal. It is funny how far we have come since the independence referendum and the scare stories that we were given. Lord Robertson said that it would have a “cataclysmic” effect on world security —well, look at where the world is now anyway. There was George Osborne and his currency bluff. There was Alistair Darling and his scares about pensions—tell that to the WASPI women who have not received their pension because of the UK Government’s actions, and that includes parties on both sides of this House. We had talk about border posts between Scotland and England and all the scare stories that went along with it—tell that to those in the island of Ireland who now face that real prospect. I have spoken to people who tell me that the border runs through their kitchen. They cannot even get to their cake to eat it because it will be on the other side of the kitchen if the Government have their way.
I draw the House’s attention to the excellent report by Chartered Institute of Environmental Health on Brexit and food security. It says that there are significant risks to food flow in the United Kingdom, including that the failure to keep food central to the Brexit negotiations could have a catastrophic impact on our food security and for those whose jobs rely on it. It says that UK food resilience is fragile and dependent on “just in time” delivery systems that could quickly grind to a halt if border controls were reimposed. It says that the Government are ambiguous at best on the question of migrant workers and how essential they are to the current working of the UK’s food system and that the current approach is imbalanced, with the specific needs of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, whose economies are highly food-dependent, being repeatedly sidelined. It also criticises the UK Government for their fundamental mistake in aiming only for alignment in farming and manufacturing but not for retail or food service, which are both absolutely huge.
All these concerns fall on deaf ears. These are not scare stories, but legitimate concerns that we never got anywhere close to in the independence debate. The biggest scare story, however, was the prospect of being forced out of the EU. Famously, Better Together tweeted:
“What is process for removing our EU citizenship? Voting yes. #scotdecides”
Scotland decided then, but it is in a very different position now.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald
Will my hon. Friend enlighten the House as to why she thinks that account has deleted that tweet?
Alison Thewliss
I think that the account has perhaps deleted the tweet because it was getting so many retweets from people pointing out the utter hypocrisy of that position. It is entirely in our gift now as a nation to revisit that decision, given what has changed. Just yesterday, I had an email from a constituent who said:
“though I am not a Nat, I am coming to the conclusion that an independent Scotland within the EU would be the best outcome, at least for Scotland, from all this mess.”
Lots of people feel that same way and have reserved the right to change their mind when the circumstances have fundamentally changed.
Chris Stephens
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. One of the people who have now said publicly that they have changed their mind is Mike Dailly, director of the Govan Law Centre, who during the referendum campaign was on platforms for Better Together.
Alison Thewliss
Absolutely. He joins Murray Foote, one of the authors of “The Vow”, who has come round to the other point of view, having seen where this ridiculous Tory Government have taken us.
I want to turn to a few issues where I feel that Scotland—Scotland’s views and Scotland’s voice—has not been respected. One of the issues that I have campaigned on is the two-child policy and the rape clause. Scotland’s women’s organisations—all of them—and Scotland’s Government spoke out against this policy, but the UK Government have implemented it anyway, in the full and certain knowledge that it would push people into poverty. That policy is not finished now, because from February 2019, regardless of the date of a child’s birth, new claimants will not be able to receive the child amount for three or more children unless an exemption for the third or subsequent child applies. We do not even know what the impact of that policy is yet. The research has not yet been done, but we know that 73,530 households have been affected so far by the two-child policy, and we are only one year in.
What do the demented Unionist Daleks say about this? “Mitigate! Mitigate!” They say “mitigate” for a policy that we did not want, did not vote for and we will not have, but we are having it imposed because child tax credits are a UK Government policy. That ignores the evidence of organisations such as Turn2us, who say that women feel pressured into having abortions because of the two-child limit. It has evidence to suggest that this has actually happened. Government Members sigh and roll their eyes, but this is actually happening in the UK today. It is no Union dividend. This also ignores the fact that no claims under the rape clause have been made in Northern Ireland, probably due not least to the fact that the Attorney General started issuing guidance only a year after the policy came into effect. That was a whole year in which women and organisations were liable to prosecution under the Criminal Law Act (Northern Ireland) 1967 as a result of this policy.
Luke Graham
The hon. Lady is making a point about a very sensitive policy area, on which we have had a lot of debates in this House. Does she not realise that when it comes to policies such as this, they are for the entire United Kingdom? I take issue with her divisive tone and her saying that it is Scotland’s problem, not England’s. These policies affect all the United Kingdom, so if there is an issue, it is an issue with the policy, not the nation.
Alison Thewliss
I have campaigned solidly in favour of getting rid of the policy throughout the UK. All that the Scottish Tories have said—all that those Daleks have said—is “mitigate, and mitigate”, but I want to get rid of it for everyone.
There is another area in which the UK is not doing its part. We want the drug laws to be changed in Scotland. Last year there were 934 drug-related deaths in Scotland, and the vast majority were in the city that I represent. Glasgow City Council and the local health and social care partnership have a plan—a policy. They want to introduce drug consumption rooms, so that we can mitigate the worst of this terrible scourge of society.
There are drug consumption rooms now, but they are in back courts, bin sheds and dirty lanes all over the city. That does not serve anyone well. We have a public health emergency in the city of Glasgow, but all that the Prime Minister could say last week was, “Oh, that is too bad. It is really sad that that people die from drugs.” We have a policy and we want to get on with it, but the UK Government will not devolve that policy. They see fit to allow people in Scotland to go on dying as a result of drug overdoses, when we have a public health solution that could have an impact on their lives.
Then there is the issue of immigration. Scotland needs immigration. We need people to come to our country and participate in our economy, but what do the UK do? They say, “No, you cannot have those powers. Those powers will stay with us.” Constituents of mine who made a minor, legitimate change to their tax returns find themselves, under paragraph 322.5 of the Immigration Rules, branded a threat to national security and told to leave. They are highly skilled migrants who could bring many skills to this country. We should be valuing and thanking them, but what do the UK Government give them? They give them a hostile environment. They give them a policy that Scotland does not want.
When Glasgow City Council was a Labour administration, it put a sign over the door saying, “We welcome refugees”, and I am proud of it for doing so. That is the nation that we ought to have. We want nothing to do with the hostile environment, but while immigration law stays at Westminster, we have no say over this issue. The UK Government should hang their heads in shame.
As for Labour Members, they talk about employment law and low wages, but what did they do? They refused to devolve employment law to Scotland. We want to make those changes. We want to give our people better conditions. In the areas where we do have control, we have encouraged people to take up the real living wage—not the Chancellor’s “pretendy” living wage, which is not available to young people. There has been a high uptake, but we do not have the full control over employment law—over zero-hours contracts, for instance—that we would like to have.
The Labour party did not even deign to give us part of its World cup bid. Immediately after the World cup, Labour Front Benchers were saying, “We should have a World cup bid for England.” It is some Union if Scotland is not even involved in the football. That is literally taking the ball and going away.
I must finish my speech now, and let other Members speak. Let me end with the great words of the White Stripes, in a song that they took from “Citizen Kane”. You will have to forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, because it is a direct quotation, and there will be a “you” in it.
“You said, the union forever
You said, the union forever
You cried, the union forever
But that was untrue, girl.”
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)
Today marks 100 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela. I am sure that the whole House will want to join me in paying tribute to his extraordinary life and agree that his message of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation is as relevant today as it ever has been.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
Alison Thewliss
I am proud to have Nelson Mandela Place in my constituency, and we celebrate that today as well.
There were 934 drug-related deaths in Scotland last year. Each one of those deaths is a tragedy, and a preventable one at that. Drug laws are reserved to Westminster. How many more families is the Prime Minister willing to devastate before she will allow Glasgow to get on with the work of building a drug consumption room to save lives?
The Prime Minister
I agree with the hon. Lady that each death due to drugs is a tragedy, and I am sure that every Member of this House will have known people in their own constituency who have gone through that terrible suffering when they have lost members of their family. There is no legal framework for the provision of drug consumption rooms in the UK and we have no plans to introduce them. A range of offences is likely to be committed in the operation of drug consumption rooms. It is for local police forces to enforce the law in such circumstances and we would expect them to do so, but our approach on drugs remains very clear: we must prevent drug use in our communities and support people dependent on drugs through treatment and recovery.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Penny Mordaunt
I thank my hon. Friend for that question. UK assistance to Somaliland includes support for critical economic infrastructure, humanitarian assistance, police and justice support, and engagement in counter-terrorism and security. We provided rapid response in the aftermath of the tropical storm, and we will also support Somaliland’s National Electoral Commission to plan and prepare to deliver elections next year.
Alison Thewliss
Alistair Burt
We are giving every support to the work of the UN special envoy, Martin Griffiths, who, almost as we speak, is in Sana’a and talking to the coalition parties. Only through this UN negotiation might we get a resolution of the conflict.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Prime Minister
I thank my right hon. Friend for the service that he has given to the Government over the past seven years, most recently in an important role on the very topic that he has just raised—as Minister of State at the Department for International Trade—and also in his time as Minister for London. He conducted all these jobs with great ability and distinction, and I thank him for all the work that he has done.
My right hon. Friend is right that we want to ensure that we can negotiate independent trade deals around the rest of the world. We will be leaving the single market and the customs union so that we can do exactly that—have an independent trade policy and negotiate our own trade deals with the rest of the world.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
This was a terrible fire, damaging one of Glasgow’s iconic landmarks, which was rightly regarded as a building of great architectural significance.
The Prime Minister
Yes, I am coming to the issue that the hon. Lady has raised. I just wanted to take this opportunity to give my heartfelt thanks to the work of the emergency services, which did their best in addressing the fire. The hon. Lady has raised a specific issue about insurance and ensuring that others can return to their buildings that are close by. I will ensure that the Secretary of State for Scotland is aware of that question, and we will look at what can be done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Alison Thewliss Excerpts(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The benefits charity helpline Turn2us has evidence that women are choosing to abort and terminate their pregnancies as a result of this Government’s despicable two-child cap. The Northern Ireland Association of Social Workers says, despite the Minister’s assurances, that the law is the law and that women and those who support them in their applications could find themselves prosecuted under section 5 of the Criminal Law (Northern Ireland) Act 1967. Will he accept that the two-child policy, and the rape clause of which it stands part, is abhorrent and unacceptable, and will he support its abolition?
Mr Vara
I repeat what I said earlier: this is a devolved matter. We have to respect—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady in particular, given that she is a Scottish National party Member, will want to respect the rights of the devolved Assemblies. Criminal law is a devolved issue in Northern Ireland. I say again that there have been no prosecutions at all as regards the rape issue in the 50 years since 1967 when section 5 was introduced, and that the outgoing Director of Public Prosecutions has said that it is highly unlikely that there will be any.