Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 18th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I am aware of the good work that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth was doing with the hon. Lady; I am aware of the campaign and how important it is, and I will be delighted to meet the hon. Lady to see how we can move it forward.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

My constituent received a UC sanction for accompanying her younger sister, who has severe cerebral palsy and for whom my constituent cares, to an appointment at the children’s hospice at Loch Lomond. Surely that is an inhumane way to treat young carers under the UC system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 11th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

T4. The three-year benefit freeze, on top of three years of capped increases, has caused financial hardship for too many and for too long. Surely enough is enough, and the benefit freeze must be brought to an end in the forthcoming financial year.

[Amber Rudd]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s approach to this, but I must remind him of the terrible financial inheritance that we took on, which required belt-tightening, from which we are now getting some of the benefit. I also point out to him that now wages are rising faster than inflation, this is a significant change for people in receipt of it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We will, of course, be bringing forward a White Paper later this year and an immigration Bill as soon as possible after that.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

When will the Home Office fix the disastrous mess that is being caused by the tier 2 work visa cap being exceeded for four months on the trot? Is it not time to scrap the cap?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we keep the tier 2 visa route constantly under review. We are looking very carefully at the issue that he raises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 29th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I would say that there is sufficient peer pressure to make sure that producers and manufacturers of gender-specific toys are increasingly being encouraged to think again about that, so that we can encourage young women to make sure they take seriously their career options.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

2. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on the effect of universal credit on women.

Online Hate Speech

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 30th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is true that we all listen more carefully to criticism from our friends than from people with whom we do not have a relationship. I hope that the Prime Minister’s comments will have some impact on the President. It is interesting to note my hon. Friend’s advice regarding Twitter accounts; I am sure that many of us share his view.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

The Scottish National party has long taken the view that the current President of the United States should not be afforded a state visit to the United Kingdom, and yesterday’s actions have reinforced that absolutely. We respect the office of the President of the United States, which is a fantastic country and ally. However, the sharing of tweets by an extremist, offensive and racist organisation is not fitting of someone holding such high office and must be condemned unequivocally. We welcome Downing Street’s suggestion that the tweets were wrong, but we call for the Government to go further because is not one of the key dangers of a state visit that we have absolutely no idea what the President will say or tweet next and before he visits? What does he actually need to say or tweet before the idea of a state visit is ditched once and for all?

Unaccompanied Child Refugees

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is not the same. Perhaps the one comparison one might make is the condition, sometimes, of the camps out in the region, some of which are in a terrible situation. We should put all our effort there to make sure that we take the children that we can from that most vulnerable area.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Tens of thousands of refugees stranded in Greece, including hundreds of unaccompanied children, are living in appalling conditions and face immense and avoidable suffering. Yet last year the Government took only five Dublin children from the area and none under Dubs. What will the Home Secretary do proactively to seek out those who could benefit from Dublin transfers?

[Amber Rudd]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we have staff in the region who are looking to see which children might qualify under the Dubs amendment and which children might qualify under the Dublin regulations. We are actively looking to make sure that we do assist the children in Greece and Italy that we can.

Calais

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 24th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The only reassurance that I can give my hon. Friend is the reassurance that I have been given by the French. We have particularly asked them to ensure that the children are kept in a secure area, and our request was that it should be, potentially, outside the camp. They chose to keep the children inside the camp, reassuring us that they could keep them secure there. We are in close contact: we now have a large number of Home Office representatives in the camp, as well as the hundreds of Border Force staff who are in the area. We are hopeful that we will be able to work closely with them to keep the children safe. Ultimately, however, this is a French responsibility, although we are giving the French all the support that we can.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I very much welcome what the Home Secretary has said today about children, but we should remind ourselves that it is not only children who require international protection. When I visited Calais with colleagues at Easter, we met Afghans who had interpreted for members of our armed forces and Kurds who had previously been granted asylum in the United Kingdom before returning home, who had had to flee for a second time and ended up at Calais. Will the Home Office look at cases such as theirs when considering who it is appropriate for the UK to take responsibility for?

[Amber Rudd]

In this case, while the camps are being demolished, we have made a commitment to take the most vulnerable children, and within that cohort of children, the ones who are youngest and those who are vulnerable to sexual exploitation. On the question of other people who might be vulnerable, there might be one or two who qualify under the Dublin amendment, but otherwise people will need to apply for asylum in the normal way in France. We must stick to the generally accepted principle, which the UK supports, of applying for asylum in the first country of safety.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend raises a personal case, and it is important for us all to bear such cases in mind when we think about the scale of this inquiry and people bringing forward criticisms. There are always these independent stories that remind us how important it is to get truth and justice for these people, and to learn from those stories so that we can ensure that institutions make improvements. Of course I will look at what she has suggested.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

Every MP in the Chamber is anxious for the inquiry to succeed, but before we can draw a line under recent difficult problems and move on, we need honesty and transparency from the Home Office. When the Home Secretary appeared before the Home Affairs Committee in September alongside the permanent secretary, she left Members with the impression that Justice Goddard resigned because, in short, she was “lonely”. There was no mention of concerns about conduct then or, indeed, in her subsequent letter to the acting Chair of the Committee. For clarity’s sake, did she know before giving evidence that day, or before writing the letter, about the concerns that had been raised? Will she confirm that only she could remove the inquiry chair from office and that the limited grounds for doing so included misconduct? Is that not why all these questions about the state of her knowledge are so important?

Will the Home Secretary confirm that the secretary to the inquiry, to whom she has already referred, is a lifelong Home Office staffer and that that secretary regularly meets the permanent secretary to provide progress updates? Is she categorically stating that these issues were not raised before July? If they were not raised before July, why on earth were they not raised before then? When did the permanent secretary or the special advisers first make either the current or previous Home Secretary aware?

When the Home Secretary gave evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, was she being economical about what she knew, or had she been badly briefed by the permanent secretary—it has to be one or the other? Finally, does she accept that, by sticking its head in the sand, the Home Office hierarchy allowed the inquiry to descend into a state of paralysis, which we must never see again?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I fear it is rather discourteous for the hon. Gentleman to suggest or imply that the Home Secretary might be “economical” with what she knew. That comes fairly close to crossing the line. Given that he has a prepared text, and therefore had full knowledge of what he was going to say, may I suggest that, for the future, he ought to phrase things rather differently?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Amber Rudd and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

15. What estimate she has made of the number of jobs in Scotland supported by the renewable energy industry.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)]

Renewable energy supported around 23,200 jobs in Scotland in 2013. As green energy is not about having wind farms

“any time, any place, anywhere”,

which is how the Scottish Minister for Business, Energy and Tourism once criticised the approach in Scotland, it is important to note that these jobs were supported across a variety of renewable energy technologies, and by supply chains.

--- Later in debate ---

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to hear me say that job creation and job support are incredibly important in Scotland, and in the UK overall. Renewable energy remains a growth area, with high employment and investment. Scotland has a number of employees in the offshore wind sector, which continues to grow. I attended a conference on the sector yesterday. It is beginning to have a serious impact on exports.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Of course, it is not only existing jobs that will be affected by the Government’s short-sighted policy on onshore wind; the opportunity to create further highly skilled and well-paid jobs will also be affected, perhaps even more so. As the Minister of State said, around 19,000 people owe their livelihoods to the UK’s onshore wind industry, but according to RenewableUK, that figure could have increased to as many as 37,000 by 2023 if Government policies had remained supportive. Is it not nonsense for the Government to turn their back on an industry with such enormous jobs potential?

[Amber Rudd]

As my hon. Friend the Minister of State pointed out, onshore wind has been a great success. If we continued to support it at the level that we had done over the past few years, there would be an impact on everybody’s bills, because we already have an aim for 2020 of getting between 11 GW to 13 GW from onshore wind; if onshore wind continues to be deployed at the level it has been over the past few years, that will contribute to an additional cost on people’s bills. I urge the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) to think about his constituents, who would not welcome another £10 or £15 on their bills.