Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Businesses of all sizes are struggling with Brexit, import costs, material costs, the weak pound against the dollar and the euro and increased wage and energy costs, and they still do not know what will happen when the Chancellor’s temporary reprieve ends in March. The clock is ticking. Calder Millerfield, a food manufacturing business in my constituency, has come back to me with its latest quote, with the relief applied. It is £944,000 per year, up from £160,000 last year. What will the Chancellor do to support manufacturing businesses now, because they will not survive those increases?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As I have stated, the energy price guarantee does help businesses in a large measure. Also, I am not going to take lectures from the SNP about growth. In Scotland, for every year from 2010 to 2019, growth was lower than in the rest of the United Kingdom. I will not take any lessons about supporting business from the hon. Lady.

The Growth Plan

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Friday 23rd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The Chancellor comes here today—the sixth Chancellor in seven years—asking us to believe that the things that he voted for and supported just a few months ago were all fine at the time, but need to be completely reversed now. This is a new era, but the Conservatives have been in government for 12 years. He stretches credibility beyond breaking point in saying that tax cuts for the rich, whopping bonuses for the bankers and low corporation tax for companies will somehow refloat magically Britain’s sinking economy. He has no evidence and this is no plan for growth. These are Budget measures with no OBR assessment. They are ducking scrutiny time and again. It is a plan for recession, for debt on an unsustainable trajectory and, almost inevitably, for public sector cuts to come.

Actively choosing to cut taxes permanently and spend eye-watering sums to patch up a failed energy market while inflation soars, interest rates are hiked and recession looms will not create growth; it will create economic chaos. Nothing the Chancellor has said today will provide any reassurance or give hope to ordinary people—folks who are struggling to get by in broke, broken Britain.

Families are unable to put food on the table and heat their homes, punished by the Tory benefit cap and the two-child limit. Those policies are driving up child poverty and the Chancellor should be scrapping them, not the bankers’ bonus cap. For indebted households already struggling to pay their mortgages and debt, a stamp duty cut will not help; it will overheat the housing market even more.

Disabled people and carers are terrified that the electricity will run out. Pensioners are scared to turn on the heating. The energy price cap should not go up; it is already too high and people must get more help now. Asylum seekers and people stuck on no recourse to public funds are forced to get by on a pittance, and there is nothing whatsoever for them from this Chancellor.

Community organisations such as Glasgow Central Mosque face additional energy bills of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which, as a charity, the mosque just cannot afford. People depend on community organisations like the mosque and they are being asked to be on the frontline this winter. Even with a six-month reprieve on energy prices, the bills will not go away. Would the Chancellor have the mosque close its elderly daycare service, the counselling provision, the mother and toddler group, the poverty reduction work or the vaccination centre that has been running in the community hall? These are very real choices that communities are already having to make.

The businesses that I have been listening to over the past months are incredibly worried for the future. They were already facing severe pressure through supply chain costs, input costs, labour costs, covid debts and Brexit woes before energy prices soared. Now they do not know how they will survive. Six months will go by in a flash and the question remains: what then? What then from the Chancellor? Companies cannot wish away these bills or the eye-wateringly unaffordable contracts they are being forced to sign right now. What happens to those businesses that just miss the arbitrary cut-off, and what of the increase in standing charges, which we know are disproportionately high in Scotland?

Scotland is an energy-rich country, but we do not have the power. Scotland’s renewable sector is booming, but in off-gas grid rural Scotland, surround by the wind turbines generating clean, green energy, people have to spend an absolute fortune on heating oil. In Argyll and Bute, Angus, the highlands and islands, and across our rural communities, households have faced increases of more than 230% in the past two years alone. The UK Government’s offer of £100 is nothing short of an insult as people turn to credit cards to fill up their fuel tanks.

The Scottish Government are doing all in their power to support people through this crisis: strengthening the safety net by increasing the Scottish child payment to £25 a week, doubling the fuel insecurity fund to £20 million and freezing rents, because renters are also facing pressures. We have the highest rate of the real living wage in Scotland, and we have invested in tackling fuel poverty and energy efficiency, but we could do so much more with more budget and more powers. At the back of the Blue Book today, there is still no carbon capture and storage for the north-east of Scotland. It is a game changer for renewables in Scotland. Where is it in the Chancellor’s plans? Nowhere, again. We could have growth by investing in skills, in net zero and in productivity, but the Chancellor’s plans will not achieve that.

People do not freeze to death in our Nordic neighbour countries, and people there are not living in one of the most unequal countries in the world. And it is only getting worse: this right-wing, Thatcher-cosplaying shambles of a Government are making choices of which they will never feel the consequences. I beg of this Chancellor that he listen to those on the edge—to those who are desperately looking to him right now for a lifeline. No one should have to beg for a decent standard of living.

The people of Scotland see a Scottish Government doing their best to mitigate the worst, but stymied by the broken politics of this Union and the economic madness that we heard from the Chancellor today. Scotland is looking for a different path. Scotland needs independence.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

What Scotland does not need is reheated socialism from the SNP. The hon. Lady mentions energy; I am always staggered when people in her party mention energy but do not countenance nuclear power, which is a great, clean form of energy.

While we are speaking about energy, the hon. Lady will know that we have, indeed, listened. We have implemented a limit on energy prices: my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, who is no longer in her place, made the announcement within two days of taking office. It is something that I am very proud of, and we have extended it to supporting businesses—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It was really interesting to hear the Secretary of State palm off the detail of the tax on electricity generators to the Chancellor, because the Chancellor could not answer many questions on that at the Treasury Committee yesterday, such as defining excess profits or saying exactly when it will start or what the impact would be on renewables generators in Scotland. Will he publish a full impact assessment on this policy and investment in the renewables sector in Scotland, which is a key sector in getting to net zero?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am very happy to speak to the hon. Lady about the details of that fiscal change. The energy profits levy was announced by the Chancellor and the details will be worked out in consultation with us, but they are ultimately a responsibility for the Treasury. However, I am very happy to talk to her about those details.

Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As my right hon. Friend appreciates, this legislation is timely. We are grateful that it seems to have elicited huge support across the House, and we are pleased to be able to expedite it.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I also thank the small Business Minister—the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully)—for giving me and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) his time earlier, which was appreciated.

I put on record the concerns that many of my Glasgow Central constituents have expressed over the weekend for the people of Ukraine. They call on the Government to do more. Like me, they will welcome action on sanctions and on the flow of dirty money through the City of London, so I am glad that there will be reform of Companies House. It is long overdue, and SNP Members have not been holding it back; we have been calling for it constantly for years. The Government have had multiple chances to deal with it.

As an interim step to action on Companies House, will the Government use the Verify scheme to ensure that people cannot fill the register with absolute guff, as happens now? Will they give Companies House interim anti-money laundering responsibility until the new Bill comes into force? When it does, will it be retrospective? Will it go back to the register and root out all the nonsense, or will it start again from scratch?

I am glad to hear about the register of overseas entities in the Bill, but I would like to know how it will differ from the draft Registration of Overseas Entities Bill. I sat on the Joint Committee on the draft Bill; our report came out in May 2019. How will the new Bill differ? Will it pick up on issues around definitions of legal entities, the use of trusts and the loopholes that they create? Will it take action on Scottish limited partnerships, which have legal personality and can hold property? Tackling them in the Bill is crucial.

Will we look at the cost to land registries of working on the Bill? In Scotland, the register of persons holding a controlled interest in land will come into force on 1 April 2022 and will include overseas entities, so the Scottish Government are moving on the issue in just over a month’s time. What conversations has the Secretary of State had with the Scottish Government on how the Scottish register will interact with the UK register?

Will the Government go after the enablers—the estate agents, the lawyers and the accountants who have facilitated so much of the kleptocracy in this country? They have to be held to account, too. I am glad to see that unexplained wealth orders, which have not been working properly—I understand that there have only been nine since their inception—are being fixed. I look forward with interest to that happening.

Finally, what will the Government do about enforcement? They can have the finest laws in the land, but if there is no action and no investment in enforcement, there is little point in having them at all.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s remarks. As far as the enablers are concerned, we have legislation already on the statute book. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said in her statement, we are looking at other measures to tighten the regime.

We work with DA Ministers constantly. The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), has engaged ably and directly with DA Ministers, and we look forward to doing so.

This set of measures is only the beginning of the much tighter regime that we want to bring in. [Interruption.] People are chuntering from a sedentary position, but I would like to point out that these matters, particularly those regarding cryptocurrencies and cyber-crime, are complicated. We are trying to expedite legislation on those fronts as quickly as possible.

Bulb Energy: Administration

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Kwasi Kwarteng

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Supporting the most vulnerable is exactly what we are doing through the warm home discount and the extension to it. That is exactly why we have maintained the energy price cap, which many of the companies have protested against. We are always mindful to protect consumers and to protect the most vulnerable.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The Federation of Small Businesses has found that 77% of Scottish businesses have seen an increase in their overheads since this time last year, and fuel costs make up a huge proportion of that. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the likelihood of these costs being passed on to consumers, who are also paying higher prices at the tills because of inflation and Brexit?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

One word that the hon. Lady did not mention was covid. As a consequence of covid, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has put £400 billion into the economy to support the very businesses that she refers to. Many, many of the businesses in Scotland have been supported by that.