Petitions

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The petition states:

The petition of residents of Glasgow North,

Declares that the Department for Work and Pensions' plan to close Maryhill Jobcentre and half of all Jobcentre Plus offices in Glasgow is morally outrageous; express our concerns that the city is being used as the testing ground for more devastating cuts across the UK; further that the proposals to close eight of the 16 Jobcentre offices across Glasgow, will impact on tens of thousands of people in receipt of Jobseeker's Allowance, Employment Support Allowance and Universal Credit; further that the UK Government has already indicated that 20% of the Jobcentre estate will see closures, and Glasgow has been handpicked to take a disproportionate hit of 50% closures; further that it will result in the poorest communities not being serviced by a Jobcentre and make it even harder for those seeking employment to get support; further that thousands of people could also have to travel further at additional cost to attend their appointments; further that the UK Government have brought forward these proposals without carrying out an Equality Impact Assessment and without consulting the Scottish Government; and further that any Jobcentre closures in Glasgow will see one of the most deprived parts of the UK starved of a vital service that should be available in communities; impacting both on Scottish workers at these centres and also those most disadvantaged in need of benefits.

The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to halt any moves to close Maryhill Jobcentre, or at the very least carry out an Equality Impact Assessment immediately prior to a full public consultation across Scotland.

And the petitioners remain, etc.

[P002005]

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The petition states:

Following is the full text of the petition:

[The petition of residents of Glasgow Central,

Declares that the Department for Work and Pensions’ plan to close Bridgeton Jobcentre and half of all Jobcentre Plus offices in Glasgow is morally outrageous; express our concerns that the city is being used as the testing ground for more devastating cuts across the UK; further that the proposals to close eight of the 16 Jobcentre offices across Glasgow, will impact on tens of thousands of people in receipt of Jobseeker’s Allowance, Employment Support Allowance and Universal Credit; further that the UK Government has already indicated that 20% of the Jobcentre estate will see closures, and Glasgow has been handpicked to take a disproportionate hit of 50% closures; further that it will result in the poorest communities not being serviced by a Jobcentre and make it even harder for those seeking employment to get support; further that thousands of people could also have to travel further at additional cost to attend their appointments; further that the UK Government have brought forward these proposals without carrying out an Equality Impact Assessment and without consulting the Scottish Government; and further that any Jobcentre closures in Glasgow will see one of the most deprived parts of the UK starved of a vital service that should be available in communities; impacting both on Scottish workers at these centres and also those most disadvantaged in need of benefits.

The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to halt any moves to close Bridgeton Jobcentre, or at the very least carry out an Equality Impact Assessment immediately prior to a full public consultation across Scotland.

And the petitioners remain, etc.]

[P002006]

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Patrick Grady

Committee: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady]

Absolutely; indeed, an entire new schedule on workers’ rights has been tabled.

Amendment 75 calls on the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to publish an impact assessment on his Department’s responsibilities. Local government throughout the UK receives a host of funding from the European Union, not least the structural funds that we have heard about many times.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that with so many regulations being implemented by local government in areas such as food protection and waste disposal, local government needs to know what form those will take once we leave the EU?

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that is why we have tabled amendments calling for impact assessments.

Amendment 76 calls on the Secretary of State for International Development to publish an impact assessment on her Department’s responsibilities. Again, we need clarity and a full commitment to 0.7% of gross national income going to overseas development. That is similar to the amendment in my name, amendment 58, which I have already spoken about.

Amendment 77 calls on the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport to publish an impact assessment.

Creative Industries

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Patrick Grady

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I congratulate the Members who secured the debate, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Dundee West (Chris Law) and for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson). As other Members have said, it has come at quite a timely moment, given the other debates that have taken place in Westminster Hall this week and the fact that a number of the industry bodies have been holding their annual receptions on the Terrace, in the function rooms or elsewhere.

On Monday, the Creative Industries Council held a reception in the Members’ Dining Room. Last night, my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West and several other Members here today were in the National Liberal Club for the UK interactive entertainment reception—the National Liberal Club perhaps being slightly less interactive surroundings than the video games that were on display. Of course, as other Members have said, the festival season is well under way across the country.

I have a large number of personal and constituency interests that I will probably cover in my speech. I want to look at the vast scope of what we mean by the creative industries. I want to look particularly at how they play out in my constituency and the wider city of Glasgow and look at some of the policy challenges and opportunities, which have been covered in quite a bit of detail. By definition, creative industries are forever changing and renewing themselves and adapting and evolving. It is important to consider the impact of the traditional areas—music, art, writing and dance and so on—but as a number of Members have said, online and digital forums are growing in importance for accessing creativity and as a source of creativity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West has spoken about the huge importance of the computer gaming industry. The number of games companies operating in Scotland has increased by 600% in the past five years. Yesterday, at the UK reception, I was fascinated to learn more about the increasing importance of what some people call e-sports, which were just called computer games in my day. Essentially, the industry covers professional or competitive computer gaming.

In July, the Scottish exhibition and conference centre in Glasgow will welcome the Resonate festival, when thousands of people from across Scotland and, indeed, Europe and probably the world will come together to watch other people—leaders in their fields and really talented people who have invested an awful lot of time in this—demonstrating their skills in a whole range of different e-sports or interactive computer games. My hon. Friend mentioned “Lemmings”. Of course, we do not need to pay money to watch other people play the computer game, “Lemmings”, when we can we watch a live action version taking place in front of us over there on the Labour Benches, but I recognise that this is supposed to be a consensual debate, so I will not go too far down that line.

E-sports are attracting more than 256 million unique viewers a year. By 2018, that figures is expected to overtake the number of people who watch the US national football league, which is the largest watched sport or entertainment in the world.

If I can be creative with the definition of creative industries, I want to make a pitch for Scotland’s No. 1 craft product—the water of life, uisce beatha—because the new and experimental distillers that we see coming on line, especially those who are producing gin, are involved in a unique and creative process. Glasgow has its own distiller company, and Makar gin is named after the Scots word for a creator or poet, so I thought that that was worth noting as well.

Glasgow is, as I mentioned in my maiden speech, the home and the focus of so many of these industries. Now, there is nothing in Glasgow quite on the scale of the Edinburgh international festival, but it has benefited over the years from a range of different designations. In that respect, I wish all the cities bidding for the title of city of culture the very best, because when Glasgow became the European capital of culture in 1990, it began something of a cultural renaissance, the benefits of which are still being felt today. The roots of that can be traced to the empire exhibition in 1938 and the garden festival in 1988, but we also went on to be the city of architecture and design in 1999, and we were designated as a UNESCO city of music in 2008—one of only nine in the world.

The city is a real musical melting pot. It has produced countless artists. We should not read out lists in the House, and that is just as well, because I could use up the rest of my time simply reeling off the names of the bands that have formed in Glasgow or emerged directly from the Glasgow music scene. It has also provided the stage, as has been said, that has allowed bands to break out into the Scottish, the UK and the wider European scenes.

King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who also has the Hydro—

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

And the Barrowland.

[Patrick Grady]

My hon. Friend could perhaps intervene and list some of the venues in her constituency. However, the Canadian band the Barenaked Ladies, for example, had their break in King Tut’s, and I saw my brother-in-law’s band, Tallahassee Falls, there just a few weeks ago.

In Glasgow North, we have the likes of Cottiers, the Oran Mor and the Kelvingrove bandstand—my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central has most of the Kelvingrove Park, but I have the bandstand, and I am looking forward to seeing Tom Jones there in a few weeks’ time. Cottiers has just finished its excellent dance and chamber projects, and I was delighted to get a little light relief by going to one of the performances there just before the EU referendum.

Glasgow is also home to the annual Celtic Connections festival, which has global brand recognition now. It is a real contributor to some of the statistics mentioned earlier in UK Music’s “Wish You Were Here” report. Some 1.4 million people attended music events in Glasgow in 2015, with 450,000 tourists generating £105 million and sustaining more than 1,000 jobs in the city.

[Patrick Grady]

Those are very fair points, and the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) made similar points about the importance of European regulation. In terms of online and digital expansion—I am aware there was a debate about some of this in Westminster Hall—these are all issues that are being challenged. The hon. Gentleman’s Committee is welcome to visit Glasgow, and if it would like such some suggestions of where they can sample the cultural scene or indeed some of the craft products I mentioned earlier, we would be happy to provide some.

There are also things that we as individual parliamentarians can do. In my office, I make space on the wall for a rotating display of works by local artists. In the past year, I have had Chris Stephens—not the one who represents Glasgow South West, but a street artist and designer from Nautilus Inkworks; Michelle Campbell, who does geometric renderings; Andy Peutherer, who does landscapes; Frances Corr, who depicts everyday items; and John Martin, who captures characters, including our current and former First Ministers. There is therefore a range of ways in which we can sport a creative industries.

It is important as well that local authorities do the same. This year, the West End Festival in Glasgow was sadly curtailed because of a lack of funding and support, and the famous parade that goes down the Byers Road was unable to take place. However, I was pleased that the Scottish Government agreed that an area of land in my constituency, Kelvin meadow and the Children’s wood, should not be designated for housing because one Member made a point about its importance for children and young people. This is a space where they can have creative and wild play. It is very important that we protect those open spaces, especially in urban areas, so that young people can nurture their creative talent.

There is also responsibility for the devolved Governments in supporting education and tackling the skills gap, as was mentioned earlier. The Scottish Government are also putting money into a film studio in Scotland.

The greatest unknown is Brexit, which many Members have touched on. I agree wholeheartedly with almost every word that the hon. Member for Bristol East said, and so do not feel the need to repeat it.

[Alison Thewliss]

Does my hon. Friend agree that for specialist institutions in Glasgow, such as the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Conservatoire, there is a great deal of risk for their students from Brexit? At the moment, the Conservatoire offers a unique melting pot of trad, jazz and classical, with pipers playing alongside ballerinas—there are all kinds of things in the mix. However, all that is under threat if the Conservatoire can no longer be the international institution that it would like to be.

[Patrick Grady]

That is absolutely correct. The artistic and musical communities are very concerned about the impact that Brexit will have, especially on the free movement of people and their ability to travel to festivals, either as artists or participants.

I am aware that other Members are very keen to speak and so will conclude. It is hugely important to nurture future generations, especially in the context of the Brexit result. We have a duty to open and expand our cultural horizons, and I hope that today’s debate goes some way towards that.

Automatic Registration: UK Elections

Debate between Alison Thewliss and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It is an unexpected pleasure to serve under your chairmanship quite so soon, Mr Howarth, but I see that the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) also has speaking notes. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) on securing the debate. I will offer a few reflections that are similar to his, and emphasise some points he made.

The debate is taking place in a political scenario where everything has “changed, changed utterly”—words written by W.B. Yeats 100 years ago about a slightly different kind of political upheaval, but political upheaval none the less. That is what we are undergoing here. The debate comes at the end of, unfortunately, a shambles of a referendum process.

The Government had the opportunity throughout the passage of the European Union Referendum Bill to take on board constructive proposals made by the Scottish National party and others, not least to extend to the franchise to 16 and 17-year-olds and to put in place a four-nation lock so that no part of the UK would be taken out of the EU against its will. Now we face the prospect of Scotland, Northern Ireland, Gibraltar and London being taken out of the EU against their will.

The refusal to give ground when the Bill was passing through Parliament seemed to carry on throughout the dreadfully negative campaign—on both sides—south of the border, despite the best efforts of those of us in Scotland to raise the tone and raise the positive aspects. Perhaps that culminated in the website crash on 7 June, which led to this debate. There are lessons to be learnt from the referendum campaign in the round, but the difficulties that were faced by people trying to register to vote and to have their say gives us the opportunity to reflect on that particular bourach.

I will look in a little bit more detail at the problems with individual electoral registration and the case for automatic registration, and I will perhaps give some brief reflections on how that fits in with wider electoral reform to improve turnout and voter engagement.

Individual election is not necessarily a bad thing in itself. In fact, we could probably argue that a system of automatic registration is just an automated or enhanced version of that. We probably all agree that that is preferable to the household registration where everyone in a household is vouched for by one elector under the previous canvass system. The idea of individuals being registered is not necessarily at stake; it is the process by which they end up on the register.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian clearly demonstrated, the roll-out of the process has been botched massively by the Government, leading to significant confusion for many voters in the Scottish and European referendums about whether they were registered in the first place. The Minister admitted, during the emergency legislation and the statements after the website crash, that a lot of the registrations that came in at the last minute were duplicates because people were already on the electoral register but feared somehow that they were not because of the confusion and misunderstanding. That was undoubtedly compounded by the decision to bring forward the transition deadline to December 2015.

Of course, that may well have had an effect—[Interruption.] The Minister is asking me how. Well, not giving people enough time to consider and double check their registration status might have had the effect of making it more difficult for poorer and younger people to vote.

The Smith Institute reckons that up to 10 million people—perhaps 2.5 million dropping off the register and 7.5 million absent from any register at all—are not on the electoral register. That might have seemed like a good idea when the Conservative Government were worried about the mayoral and local government elections, but was perhaps less of a good idea when we look at the Brexit result, especially given that younger people, who will have to live with the decision much longer than any of us here, voted overwhelmingly to remain.

The Government really should have seen the website crash coming. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we had exactly the same situation in Scotland—it was just in a slightly more analogue form. On the day that voter registration closed before the European referendum, there were queues outside local authority registration offices until midnight. In fact, there was a wonderful party atmosphere as people wanted to ensure that they could have their say in that great exercise in democracy. Sadly, that once again stands in contrast with the way in which things were handled south of the border.

That brings us on to the case for auto-registration, which means a method that is simple and consistent. That does not conflict with the idea that people have the right not to vote—of course people have that right, and they could easily opt out if they were automatically registered—but it provides a level playing field at the one moment when we are all genuinely equal: when we cast our single ballot in the ballot box. That is a great social leveller, and a level playing field should therefore be provided for registration.

My hon. Friend looked at a whole range of different pilots and options. In preparation for the debate I read about motor voting in Oregon—when someone applies for a driving licence, they register to vote. The point is well made that the vast numbers of people who are on the council tax register think that they are therefore on the register to vote, and it stands to reason that there should be no taxation without representation. That is another possibility. Of course, in Scotland in days gone by people took themselves off the electoral register in order to avoid the unjust and punitive poll tax implemented by Thatcher and her Government—another democratic deficit that Scotland had to live with for so long.

[Alison Thewliss]

I am sure my hon. Friend shared my experience during the independence referendum that people were afraid to go and register because they thought that that would catch up with them and tax would be found from them. That did dissuade a lot of people. We need to look at the reasons why people are declining to register as well.

[Patrick Grady]

That is a well-made point. Of course, the Scottish Government moved to reassure people that they would not be hounded for their poll tax because they were registering to vote in the Scottish independence referendum.

The case for auto-registration is well made. It must be placed in the context of wider and further electoral reform and the need to find a range of ways that can improve voter turnout and engagement, and younger people’s engagement in particular. Voting early leads to voting often, which has been borne out in the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish experience now that the franchise has been extended to 16 and 17-year-olds. Of course, 16-year-olds who voted in the Scottish election in May were denied a vote in the European referendum, but they will have another vote in a year’s time in the Scottish local authority elections. They might be 18 by the time of the next general election—who knows?

That also relates to the introduction of proportional representation, especially as it is clear that we have a five-party—at least—system here in the Houses of Parliament. We have the pro-Brexit and anti-Brexit Conservatives, the pro-Corbyn and anti-Corbyn Labour people and then the SNP as a voice of consistency, unity and leadership. We are possibly bigger than some of those groups, so we may or may not be the official Government or Opposition by the end of the week.

On the dates of elections, and the referendum in particular, one of the experiences of the Scottish independence referendum was that, because it took place in the autumn, we had the entire, glorious summer of 2014—admittedly rare in terms of the weather—with long days and good weather when people could really get out on to the streets and knock on the doors. That is something we ought to consider both north and south of the border. Rather than elections in May, which means that campaigns take place in damp, cold winter months, an autumn election cycle could help increase participation. Those are my reflections. I am trying to stick as closely as possible to voter auto-registration and the time available, so I will leave my remarks at that.