Budget Resolutions

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

Owing to the extensive trailing that went on in the press beforehand, this Budget contained far fewer surprises than it properly ought to have had. At the outset, I want to take a moment to salute the bravery of the Treasury spin doctor who allowed the Chancellor to be pictured wearing a pair of flip flops in the Evening Standard the day before delivering a Budget. If we had had rather more flip flops in the Budget than we had in the Evening Standard, we might be having a different discussion and one in which I could be more favourable towards it.

The Chancellor posed the question whether we want to be a country where in every crisis people ask, “What are the Government going to do about it?” To put it bluntly, that is the wrong question entirely. The question that we should be asking, particularly of this Chancellor and this Prime Minister, is “How can we stop them making it worse?” Across a range of issues, of which I will concentrate on three—the cost of living, supply and the environment—the Budget is doing nowhere near as much as it should to tackle the crises that we face.

It is a Budget that appears to be marked by short-termism, with a conceit that it is boosting working family incomes, while still imposing levies. I am careful about treading into the friendly fire that has been exchanged, but there is certainly no arguing with the fact that, even with the reduction in the taper rate, anyone who earns an additional £1 will still lose more than if they were paying the higher rate of income tax on it. That is a marginal rate, if you like, but there is also a very high marginal rate of tax on some of the youngest and lowest earners in society, which this Budget does nothing to tackle in the face of the worst cost-of-living crisis in memory.

I know that we have all been busy gathering external reaction from our various electronic devices as best we can, but I draw hon. Members’ attention to an IFS finding:

“Over the next 5 years real household disposable income is expected to grow by 0.8% per year, well below the historical average.”

The director of the IFS, Paul Johnson, has said:

“This is actually awful. Yet more years of real incomes barely growing. High inflation, rising taxes, poor growth keeping living standards virtually stagnant for another half a decade”.

The Chancellor spoke about the importance of the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. I heartily concur, which makes it all the more extraordinary that in each year of a child’s first 1,000 days on this earth, the Government will potentially be taking £1,000 away from its family by withdrawing the universal credit uplift. In Scotland, that will mean 20,000 children drawn into poverty and thousands more drawn into hardship, undermining the impact of the Scottish Government’s Scottish child payment to families. Those who are earning at the taper will still lose out to a far greater extent for every additional £1 than any objective analysis would suggest they should.

The costs of energy are soaring, the triple lock on pensions has been removed and—lest we forget—we have seen a 1% hike in national insurance, which breaks a Conservative party manifesto commitment and will bake in geographical and generational inequalities for many years to come, but it has all been made many, many times worse by the rising inflationary pressures as Brexit shortages begin to bite. We are seeing what I believe is the most concerted attack on living standards and hard-working, hard-pressed families.

The rising growth that the Chancellor has been relying on reflects a hoped-for return to trend, rather than anything beneficial that has been happening in the Budget, but it is a return to a trend that was very sluggish before covid and is even more so as Brexit continues to bite. On covid, we clearly could not do a great deal to prevent the impact as it hit us, but Brexit is an entirely self-inflicted wound. That has not acted as an existential shock to the economy, stimulating new ways of doing things and jolting the Government into action to counteract the immediate damage. The Chancellor or the Government could have announced measures, and not necessarily even fiscal or economic measures; simply allowing more immigration to fill the shortages that we are seeing in certain sectors would have been hugely beneficial in counteracting the adverse impacts that we are seeing in our supply crisis.

The Chancellor has announced measures to increase R&D funding, which may or may not compensate—we will find out when we delve into the figures—for loss of access to European funding streams for research and innovation, but investment in research and development is a marathon rather than a sprint. The UK’s R&D spending of 1.7% of GDP is still languishing well below the OECD average of 2.5%, while Germany is way out in front with 3.2%. It remains to be seen whether or not the modest changes that the Chancellor has announced—even if they were not announced with a huge amount of modesty—will close that gap.

As I have said, we are seeing significant labour shortages, especially in the haulage and agriculture sectors. Of particular concern to me, as a Member representing a rural constituency, is the fact that an animal and potentially human welfare crisis is looming in the pig industry because there are not enough butchers and abattoir workers to deal with the capacity issues. While this Government may not class those jobs as being particularly highly skilled, they are certainly in high demand at present, and it is in no one’s interest for the demand to be as high as it is now. We are also seeing significant shortages in shops, and I do not think that anyone could reasonably be convinced by the Chancellor’s plea in mitigation that they are a result of “global inflation”. We have already seen a CO₂ crisis; it seems that we have far too much CO₂ where we do not want it and not enough where we do want it. As supply chains continue to be stretched to breaking point, this is a crisis that can only worsen and lead us into a winter of discontent.

The most pressing crisis of all is the environmental crisis. The Scottish Government are set to invest more than half a billion pounds in a “just transition fund” to benefit the north-east of Scotland, and have challenged the UK Government to match that, but I am sorry to say that nothing I have seen in the Budget so far suggests that the UK Government are doing so. In fact, what they have done this week is scupper the Acorn project in Peterhead for carbon capture and underground storage, which was the only scheme in the mix that was scalable and deliverable, using an existing infrastructure, and which could have benefited clusters in south Wales and around the Solent because of its ability to accept imports of carbon dioxide. The contrast is striking, and my constituents will see it very clearly: the UK Government roll out the pork barrel for the north-east of England, while sticking two fingers up to the north-east of Scotland.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

What has happened with the Acorn project is doubly galling, given that Scotland’s carbon assets have already been taken and now this carbon-capture asset is not being placed in Scotland, after all that has been taken from it over the decades.

[Richard Thomson]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. There has been £350 billion from the North sea since oil began to be extracted, and when it comes to dealing with the environmental consequences of fossil fuel use, we are potentially not even going to be in the pole position that we ought to be in, and will not be able to take full advantage of our geological, geographical, sectoral and intellectual advantages in that field.

This afternoon we have heard a blizzard of spending commitments, un-baselined, some of them doubtless reheating previous announcements. Together with the new fiscal rules, it put me in mind of another Chancellor who for a long time coveted the role of the gentleman next door, and of his desire to mark his own homework. We are told that today’s announcements will be Barnettised, but experience leads me to say that I need to wait, and that the Scottish Government and people in Scotland would be also be wise to wait and see what actually does come through to the Scottish Government.

This Government have demonstrated eloquently, today and in the days leading up to it, that they have no interest in working with the Scottish Government, or working with the grain of Scottish opinion to respect the democratic choices of the Scottish people. Scotland can do better than this, and shall do better, with independence.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

What I have heard from several Members, particularly Opposition Members, suggests that they do not really know what levelling up is. I think it is actually very straightforward. It is about spreading opportunity more fairly and evenly across the country, so that all children, whichever part of the country they live in—in fact, not just all children, but all adults—have the same opportunity to reach their full potential. I do not think that that is very complicated to explain, but it is of course more challenging to deliver.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Surely levelling up should be something very simple, and simply understood. It is a product of UK misgovernance over the years—of governance that has meant only policies for the south-east of England, specifically ignoring much of the rest of the UK. That is why, on our side, we want to do things ourselves in the future.

[Mr Harper]

I took an intervention from the hon. Gentleman because I anticipated what he might say. I listened carefully to the Chancellor, and he set out a Budget that delivers not just for every part of England but for every part of our United Kingdom. We on this side of the House—and I think, to be fair, those on the Labour Benches—want to ensure that we keep our country together. We are spreading opportunity to every part of the United Kingdom. I listened carefully to the Chancellor, and this Budget delivers a significant increase in resources to the Scottish Government. I hope that they spend those resources wisely, although given their track record, I am pretty confident that they will not.

Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

Happy St Patrick’s day, Mr Deputy Speaker. Latha Fhèill Pàdraig sona dhut. That completes the triple crown of senior languages of these islands here today. I believe that Welsh and Irish Gaelic have already been used. I just thought I would make that remark, given that St Patrick, celebrated and publicised by Ireland around the world, is the world’s most famous Scotsman. I note that today was a day when the House of Commons celebrated independent Ireland at the same time as it decried the chance for Scotland to be independent. I have to wonder what it is about the people who go to the House of Commons and respect independent countries while talking down the countries that remain in the UK. There might be a lesson for Scotland in that.

These two debates today, on independence and Brexit, work hand in hand. They are perhaps either side of the same coin, and it is important that they should both be looked at and discussed. It is good that we have this second one on Brexit, which more of us can participate in than managed to get into the oversubscribed earlier debate, such is the keenness to talk about independence—particularly, I noted, among Tory MPs. Perhaps that is a sign of things to come. There will be a lot more talk on independence as time goes on.

I want to reflect on what is really happening with Brexit. I noted the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) condemning the idea of independence at this moment. Independence at this moment would, of course, be the escape from the Brexit that he foisted on us in the middle of a pandemic—a pandemic that he used as a pretext for not launching the lifeboat in Scotland, which is something that we need to do with great urgency. It would be far better being in the club of 28 equal nations than being talked down to at Westminster in the way we were today, but such is life. I say to the hon. Member for Moray: let the people choose, and if his party wins the election in May, we will accept that the Scottish people do not want independence, but if we win the election in May, I hope he will have the democratic grace to realise that, with an SNP victory, that is exactly what the people have in mind.

We know where we are at the moment. We have no new trade deals adding to GDP, and we have a Brexit that is going to take away 4.9% of UK GDP over the next 10 years. The trade deals that have been signed are merely roll-over trade deals. On this St Patrick’s day, it is interesting to look at where Ireland was at one time. In 1940, 90% of Irish trade went to the UK. Now, 11% of Irish trade goes to the UK. It has not that Ireland has stopped trading with the UK; it is just that it has discovered the rest of the world, through independence and through being part of the European Union. In fact, there are more jobs in the UK dependent on Ireland than ever there were when Ireland was part of the UK. That goes to show not only the benefits that independence have brought to Ireland, but those it is bringing to people in the UK who are finding that their own jobs and prosperity are dependent on a successful neighbour next door. When we make Scotland independent and as successful as Ireland, there will be even more jobs in England dependent on that success of Scotland, so it will be a win-win situation. Ireland’s GDP was once 80% of the UK’s, and now it is 172% of the UK’s.

In my constituency, we are seeing the problems with Brexit. Salmon going to Austria is getting returned. Shellfish problems are legion, as we all know. From islands, ferries have to leave earlier and the admin costs are going up. Arts organisations such as Ceòlas in Uist, which had European structural funds, are unsure if they are going to get UK prosperity funds. The reality is that there are difficulties every step of the way.

In truth, Scotland, in the referendum of 2014, said that we will stay in the UK if it is in the EU—that was supported by 55%—but in 2016, 62% of Scotland went for the EU alone. The EU is more popular than the UK. Let us have our next say, and let Scotland decide which way it is going.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Happy St Patrick’s Day to you, Angus, and I know where we would have been celebrating later on this evening, had these been normal times, but they are not.

Future Relationship with the EU

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for that well put point. The EU’s proposals would bind us into EU law and impose controls over our domestic legal regimes, which cannot be acceptable. It is not in the political declaration and it is certainly not in any free trade agreement that I know of.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

Tapadh leibh, Mr Speaker, and thank you for enabling this. During the covid crisis, people are getting a taste of border restrictions and they do not like it. Leaving the customs union and the single market would give businesses more significant Brexit borders. Anybody worth their salt in business and trade negotiations knows the numbers. Given that there is no good Brexit for the economy and that the damage to the economy was reckoned by the UK Government at one stage to be between 6% and 8% of GDP, does the Minister have updated figures for the damage, deal or no deal, to the UK economy, jobs and business, or are we still looking at 6% to 8%?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The Government’s policy is that, over the medium to long term, our approach to Brexit will maximise the economic benefits to the United Kingdom. That needs to be our focus in not just our negotiations with the EU but the work we are doing on rest-of-world trade. There are massive benefits for every part of the UK from that, and that is what we should all be working together to achieve.

Covid-19

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 11th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

Thank you, indeed, Mr Deputy Speaker, and a special hello from the Hebrides. I wish all Members overseas who are partaking in the debate well. It is of course an important debate that is taking place in a Parliament of the Union, although virtually for some of us who are not there. It is the UK Union Parliament but it is certainly not for our nation. That is a term that is often lazily used at Westminster, but last night when the Prime Minister spoke, the region in question was certainly England. In our nation, the First Minister of Scotland was very clear: stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives. Just what the Prime Minister of Westminster meant when he said that we should stay alert for a virus that is measured in nanometres is quite another matter altogether. Certainly there seemed to be confusion, listening in, and this has given Scots a real, tangible taste of the benefits of independence. We see that independence today in our health policy.

The truth of the matter, however, is that we should be continuing with lockdown because we have to continue with lockdown. Unfortunately, the seven weeks of lockdown have to a large extent been wasted, because the testing policy, instead of being one of test, trace and isolate has been one of test, find and ignore. It has been obsessed with daily targets and the media have not questioned the why. It is a policy that has spurned many opportunities to track and stop the virus. We should have been hunting the virus, not waiting for it to come among us all. The policy was to test the symptomatic, but only those who had been symptomatic for 48 hours. It has been clear from many other countries, especially those such as Iceland and the Faroes, which have a great record in fighting the virus, that 80% to 85% of covid-19 carriers are asymptomatic. They are the ones who will unwittingly be spreading covid-19 among the population. I am grateful to the Faroese Health Minister—the former Prime Minister, the esteemed Kaj Leo Holm Johannesen—for his information, support and offers of testing to the Scottish islands to help us to get test, trace and isolate on the go a number of weeks ago, rather than the situation that we were in, with seven weeks of lockdown during which we found people but did not go on to test others in their household. That has been a wasted opportunity.

The other important area we need to consider is finance, especially given the divergence within the United Kingdom due to English politicians taking an independent approach. Of course, I support the independence of England—the sooner it happens, the better—but only wish that in this instance it had been done with greater thought. The Treasury, which has underpinned health policy up to now, should continue to underpin the health policies of all the nations of the UK. Treasury support should not be kicked away when the health policy of England dictates that it is no longer required in England. Treasury support should be there to help the health policies of all across the UK. That is what Unionism should mean, and I would expect Unionists to support that and not to be followerists, taking instructions without making representation. We have to make sure that the welfare of everyone is looked after, especially when Governments are having to make choices and take steps for public health.

In Na h-Eileanan an Iar, test, trace and isolate has begun, but with so few cases it has not got properly started yet. Surely we should be using our new capacity, which is underutilised, to search for the asymptomatic. Thankfully, we have had no cases for a number of weeks, but we have to remain in lockdown due to a lack of knowledge and having to make decisions based on the lack of a proper testing system.

I hope that the UK has learned a lot. The UK has certainly learned that it is not exceptional and that it can be as vulnerable as anywhere else—more so when not following best practice and trying to reinvent the wheel. In contrast to what is commonly viewed as a debacle south of the border, we in Scotland have tasted what an independent health policy is like. We just need to taste independence in every other policy area. As Iceland, the Faroes and smaller nations such as Scotland have shown, smaller nations fight epidemics better. Incidentally, they do economic recoveries better as well—and that, of course, will be the next step.

The Economy

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 27th April 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

My hon. Friend is right. When I say that we are all in this together, I mean every part of our Union. The Government are steadfast in their support and are determined to get through this crisis by supporting and working very closely with all members of our Union. I can tell him that from the Budget onwards £4 billion in Barnett consequentials have been provided to Scotland, £3.5 billion of which relates specifically to the range of announcements in response to the coronavirus. Those numbers are in addition to the UK-wide measures that support business, such as the jobs retention scheme.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP) [V]]

I hope you are all doing well overseas in London.

Last week, a member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee said that monetary financing for financial fiscal spend with central bank money rather than Government bonds is something that central banks are always doing. Direct funding of Governments by their own central banks is therefore a fact. Can we remember the words of the late American economist J. K. Galbraith, who said that the process by which money is created is so simple, the mind is repelled? Will the Chancellor take this opportunity not to repeat the socially divisive policy of austerity? Coming out of this crisis, the last thing any of us needs is another round of austerity.

[Rishi Sunak]

Rather than commenting on monetary policy, which it is obviously not my place to do, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that we are determined, as I have said, to preserve as much of the productive capacity of the UK economy as we can throughout this crisis. Such interventions will ensure that we can bounce back as strongly as possible and recover as much of our potential output as possible. Hopefully, that will put us in a strong position to carry on delivering on the agenda that we set out at the Budget: spreading opportunity to every part of the country and levelling up through investments in education, infrastructure and ideas.

European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The Chancellor is being very candid. According to his recently published long-term economic analysis, the Government’s two scenarios would result in a hit to GDP, or a lowering of the growth rate, of between 3.4% and 6.4% if there is a deal, and of between 6.3% and 9% if there is no deal. Will he confirm that this is indeed the choice the UK are putting before Parliament?

[Mr Hammond]

The hon. Gentleman is misinterpreting the analysis. These are not rates of GDP growth; this is an estimate of the relative size of the economy at a 15-year horizon under different scenarios. In all scenarios, we expect that GDP growth will recover and continue.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the Chancellor put on the record what he thinks the hits will be? He said in response to a Labour Member that there would be a lower growth rate. What are the percentage differences in the two scenarios—deal and no deal—versus staying in the EU?

[Mr Hammond]

I am sorry but the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I did not talk about a lower growth rate. I am talking about a smaller overall size of the economy. It is our central view that, once the economy has moved to a new equilibrium, growth will resume in all these scenarios and that our economy will go on getting larger.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

What are the numbers?

[Mr Hammond]

This is not an economic forecast. It is a modelling of five different scenarios. Our economic growth rate in 2033 will depend on a raft of other issues, not only on the outcome of this debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

Next week, we will make one of the most significant decisions that most hon. Members will ever make in this House, and it will impact on current and future generations. So far, hon. Members have ensured that we approach the debate leading to that decision with the seriousness of tone that it warrants—indeed, I think we have seen some of the best of the House over the past few days—and we have to find a way through.

On Wednesday, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) said:

“My final plea to the House is as follows. Now is the moment to tell each other the truth… No one is going to get everything they thought they would get. No one is going to receive all the things they were told they would receive. All of us are going to have to compromise, and we are going to have to find a way forward that a majority can agree upon.”—[Official Report, 4 December 2018; Vol. 650, c. 802.]

I fully concur with those sentiments, and that is what we are about in this coming period.

I wish to focus on four points—I recognise that a large number of Members wish to speak, so I will be as succinct as possible. My first point, on which I hope we can find widespread majority and common ground across the House, is that we must seek to prevent a no-deal situation occurring by either imposition or default. Secondly—and I say this in as straight a way as possible—it is increasingly obvious that the Prime Minister’s deal is neither politically nor economically acceptable, and neither is it capable of bringing the House or country together.

Thirdly, as the House looks for an alternative, Labour has proposed a plan that we believe could unite the country, by addressing the concerns raised in the referendum campaign while securing the benefits of a close and collaborative relationship with our European partners. That is what we are about. My fourth point is an expression of a worrying concern, given the current state of our economy, about the impact of a bad deal on our communities.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

As we know, next week the Government’s deal will go down in flames, whatever putative deal is in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman will get nowhere, and the UK will look down the barrel of no deal or no Brexit. When looking down the barrel of no deal or no Brexit, will he also pick up a microphone, look at the camera and tell the people what he would choose: no deal, or no Brexit?

[John McDonnell]

I would choose what the House is seeking—in good will, I believe—which is a compromise that secures the will of the people while at the same time protecting jobs and the economy. [Interruption.] Government Members shout that that is the current deal, but at some stage in the next few days reality will dawn on people that it is highly unlikely that that deal will secure a majority position in the House. We have to be honest with each other and take this opportunity for an honest expression of views. Not only will the deal not secure a majority in this House, but it is certainly not bringing the country together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I rise to speak today on what is the United Kingdom’s 96th birthday. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland started 96 years ago. When I think back to John Major talking in the ’80s about 1,000 years of British history, I have longed to utter those words and make people realise that the UK is not as old as he thought.

On this 96th birthday of the United Kingdom, we are in what I would call a Laurel-and-Hardy situation with Brexit. It is clear that Brexit is crazy, silly, nuts, wacky, cuckoo, potty, daft, cracked, dippy, bonkers—the list goes on. In Gaelic, I could say that it is gòrach, faoin, amaideach, caoicheil, air bhoil—the list again goes on. We are seeing that the UK will struggle to see its 100th birthday as a result of this nonsense. As the Chancellor laid out in his speech earlier, Brexit will have opportunity costs. He gave us five scenarios, but we are down to two scenarios from the Government. The Prime Minister has given the UK a choice between a deal or no deal, leading to economic damage of between 3.4% and 6.4% of GDP or 6.3% to 9% of GDP respectively. Each percentage point of GDP equates to up to £26 billion. By way of contrast, the 2008 crash was a 2% event. Those percentage points mean a loss of jobs, wages, prosperity, housing, infrastructure, taxation for health and education funding and so on.

How does all that happen? Well, there are a few examples. For instance, Toyota takes 50 lorries a day across the channel to factories in Derbyshire, with a four-hour lead-in time. If there are snarl-ups at the border, that will not happen. Honda takes 200 lorries. It is no wonder that the Japanese Prime Minister, Japanese companies and Japanese diplomats here in the UK are concerned, and we should be worried, too. The situation will affect our lamb, shellfish, cattle and many of our other exports, and chemical companies, such as BASF in my constituency, are well aware of that. Some people suggest that we should use ports such as Zeebrugge rather than Calais, but that would take longer to do the same thing. The UK is already laggard in productivity, so to take longer to do the same thing will make matters worse.

Why are we in this situation? The Prime Minister made contradictory promises. She said, “We will be out of the customs union and the single market,” but she also said, “There will be no border in Ireland.” Something had to give and, as we know now from the loss of the DUP’s support, she reneged on those promises. She had to, because there was a catastrophe coming down the way. One of the funny things about the Brexiteers is that they all want Brexit, but they do not want it in March, because they know full well the damage that Brexit is about to do. While they want Brexit in their wild abstractions, they do not want it coming this March, because they know what Brexit will do. Brexit will be economically damaging to everybody in the United Kingdom, and as a result, it is a folly for us that we are stuck in the United Kingdom.

In this crazy fantasy, 96 years later, the Irish are delighted that they have left. For those who voted no in Scotland in 2014, there is an awakening going on, and that is without a campaign—incidentally, people can visit SNP.org/join if they want. People are seeing the two unions differently. One is a union of independent nations of Europe meeting as equals, and the UK now knows the muscle of independent Ireland and Varadkar, with 26 behind them in a regional trade agreement. Leaving that union is tearing up trade arrangements. By contrast, when Scotland leaves the United Kingdom, we will merely be completing devolution to move political powers from here to Edinburgh, closer to the people.

Had we left in 2014, this folly and nonsense of Brexit would not have happened. Brexit, in actual fact, overturns the will of the Scottish people. It does not respect Scotland or the result of the votes of the Scottish people. Brexit shows the epic misgovernance of England, so what chance is there for Scotland when England cannot govern itself well? The escaped Irish have belly laughs, and their biggest wind-up is to go on television at various points of crisis and tell the UK to stay calm. Back in Tipperary, Waterford and Galway they are laughing, because they know exactly what it means to tell London to stay calm. The UK has many problems, and they are of its own making. The UK has crashed the Rolls-Royce, and the Prime Minister is trying to tell us that the choice now is to go down the second-hand car shop to choose a second-hand car or a moped. It is an absolute mess.

David Schneider, the comedian, tweeted today that in 2016 the Brexiteers said “‘Take back control! Make Parliament sovereign again!’”, which he contrasted with Lord Digby Jones, who said on Twitter yesterday, “Beware the tyranny of Parliament!” As Laurel and Hardy said, what a fine mess they have got themselves into.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

I have just given some examples of how broken the UK social security system is. If the hon. Gentleman seriously believes that any devolved Government could address the mess of the social security system in the UK within weeks, he is kidding himself on.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) is clearly unaware that there are 4,000 people, not 400, chasing rather than helping. I heard Gaelic mentioned today, and he should know that the word “Tory” comes from the Irish Gaelic “Air an Toir”—pursuers. That is what they are doing in the DWP—pursuing people mercilessly, rather than helping them, as my hon. Friend pointed out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. Hon. Members can read Hansard tomorrow and come to their own conclusions.

Scottish Conservatives were complaining earlier about office closures. I find that fascinating from a political party that has put a meat cleaver to the jobcentre network and a meat cleaver to HMRC offices across the UK. You really could not make it up.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

My hon. Friend makes an absolutely fascinating point about the Conservatives calling for the richest to relocate to avoid tax. Continuing that logic, they should say that those earning less than £33,000 in England should register in Scotland. We know that the many get the deal in Scotland, but they speak for the few, as ever.

[Chris Stephens]

My hon. Friend makes a fascinating observation, but I think he will be disappointed by the response from the Scottish Conservatives. It will not be on their crib sheet, so I am sure they will not agree.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

rose—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

No, no, no. Bishop Auckland and Na h-Eileanan an Iar are both admirable places, but last time I looked neither was situated in the east midlands, to which this question is devoted.

Scottish Economy

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Drew Hendry]

I certainly do not support fracking. I do not believe that a country as rich in natural resources and renewable energy as we are—and indeed one with the oil and gas industry that we have at the moment—needs to go for fracking. I absolutely support the ban on fracking in Scotland. [Hon. Members: “There is no ban!”] There is a ban in Scotland. As to an effective ban, a court ruled in the past week that that is the case: fracking cannot go ahead in Scotland under the current situation.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Unfortunately I am a bit late to the debate, but I have been paying attention. I am amazed by the efforts of Conservative Members, in relation to thinking of Scotland as a country. They are the people who want to see Scotland as a region. [Interruption.] They should remember that the Norwegians have an oil fund, whereas they have squandered Scotland’s oil.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman should resume his seat. He was not making an intervention, but engaging in a debate with the Opposition. He attended the debate very late.

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[Douglas Ross]

The hon. Gentleman spoke for 10 minutes; I cannot take an intervention from him.

SNP Members sat on their hands and abstained, despite talking in the debate about all the positive interventions that would come to Scotland as a result of Heathrow’s expansion.

It is good that some SNP MSPs can speak out against their party. My hon. Friends have quoted a report, “Scotland’s Economic Performance”, by a cross-party committee of the Scottish Parliament and supported by SNP MSPs, which says:

“Levels of GDP growth are marginal; productivity is low and wages are stagnant.”

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Customs and Borders

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Lady is exactly right. Where we currently have good free trading arrangements we should cherish them, because the truth is that it is getting harder to negotiate new trade deals. The politics of trade deals has become more complex, as communities across different countries become more worried about the losers and winners of big changes to trade arrangements. At a time when it could take very many years to negotiate new trade arrangements, if we pursue the idea of ripping up our existing ones before the conclusion of such negotiations it will be deeply damaging to many of our jobs and communities.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

In answer to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), I am struggling to think of a country that we have a ro-ro ferry arrangement with that is not in the single market—which we are going to have very soon, if we follow his direction.

[Yvette Cooper]

Unfortunately, I did not catch the beginning of the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. May I ask him to repeat it?

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

In answer to the right hon. Gentleman, I am struggling to think of a trading partner that we have, outside of the single market and customs union, that we have a ro-ro arrangement with, and I think that would be the answer to his question.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is exactly right. Not only that, but those other countries that we might seek to get alternative trade arrangements with are further away, and when it comes to manufacturing industry in particular, geography matters—gravity matters. The best opportunities and the greatest markets will be those that are closest, especially in a world of just-in-time production where you might need to get supplies very rapidly into your factories or into your retailers.

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[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. and learned Gentleman is right: in the end, any agreement has obligations attached to it, as well as enforcement mechanisms.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will make this one of the final interventions. I want to deal with the objections that people have raised to a customs union, because it is important to respond to those.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

I am very grateful. To build on the point that the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) made, a free trade agreement in this context is highly misleading. The UK would not have a free trade agreement, but a “less trade” agreement, and when we talk about free trade agreements with the rest of the world, we mean bits of trade agreements. Trade will not be as free as it currently is in the European Union.

[Yvette Cooper]

There is no doubt about that. If we have no customs union, there will be less free trade than we currently have, and that is where the manufacturing industry is at risk.

Manufacturing is very important in my constituency, and we are very proud of having Haribo there. I have been to visit, and I particularly enjoyed doing the quality-control checks on the Starmix—we made sure that they were particularly rigorous and tried many times to make sure that the Starmix was very top quality that day. The chief executive of Haribo said clearly to me:

“If a truck loaded with materials that we desperately need to make a product is held up or not released at border control for a day or two, the worst case scenario would be production grinding to a halt”.

That is the reality.

We know, too, that this issue is particularly important for the Northern Ireland border. Ministers have rightly said that there should be no hard border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic or between Northern Ireland and Britain. Parliament has a responsibility to make sure that that happens.

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[Mr Clarke]

In essence, not having a veto is not having control on the outcome. An agreement would be negotiated for us that we would either have to live with or reject. There is no sensible outcome we could live with over which we have no control.

It gets worse. Turkey can sign free trade agreements with other non-European Union countries only if she has the EU’s permission—we would have to get clarity on whether that would apply in this instance. I suspect Turkey only subjects herself to such a humiliating state of affairs because she continues to hold out the hope of becoming a full member of the European Union.

The state of affairs for Britain would be far worse, infinitely worse, than remaining a member state of the European Union, where we at least have a seat at the table when it comes to our trade deals.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

Has the hon. Gentleman considered that Turkey might be staying in the customs union for economic advantage? Has he thought about the economics of the situation?

[Mr Clarke]

I do not believe that it is to our economic advantage. Turkey has long prized EU membership as a status symbol, but I do not believe the economics add up.

Those lobbying for a customs union know that staying in the customs union without a voice at the table would be worse than being a fully signed-up member, as was made more or less explicit by the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) when he said that we would need to stay in the single market as well as the customs union, which goes a long way towards revealing the true motivation of many who make this argument—they see it as a stepping-stone to undoing the people’s vote to leave.

We need to remind ourselves of why the leave campaign lobbied to leave the customs union in the first place. The EU has been slow at negotiating trade deals on our behalf, not least because there are 28 members states on one side of the negotiating table. The EU’s trade talks with Japan have taken 61 months and are still awaiting ratification. By contrast, it took Switzerland 28 months to settle its deal with Japan. EU trade talks with the US have been ongoing for 64 months now, with no sign of progress, whereas the US managed to negotiate trade deals with Canada in 20 months, Australia in 14 months and South Korea in 13 months. At the time of the referendum, the EU had managed to negotiate trade agreements with only two of the UK’s 10 largest non-EU trading partners.

Not leaving the customs union would also fatally damage the prospects for the idea that, more than any other, has captured the imagination of the Teesside public since our vote to leave. A free port at Teesport, which is a project championed by Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen and me, would be an enormous boost to local industry and provide a great incentive to reshore jobs to the South Tees mayoral development corporation site. That goes directly to the point that the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) made about north-east jobs. There has been enormous buy-in from local people and businesses to this idea, and people are genuinely excited about what it would mean. However, a free port will not be possible if we do not leave the customs union.

Some people try to maintain the argument that free ports are possible within the EU. The reality is that those zones that exist are glorified bonded warehouses—places where people can defer tax, duty and VAT. What Ben and I are saying is that within the Tees free port there will be the potential for significant tax and regulatory divergences, but that will be stymied if we remain in a customs union.

Outside a customs union there are other significant advantages.

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[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) on securing the debate. I was one of the original signatories to the motion, but I had to leave that behind when I was asked to do this job of speaking for my party—I was wearing many hats at one stage.

I am sure that a lot of us have learned many things during this important debate, and that underlines what has been happening during the Brexit process. In the beginning, people did not know about or pay attention to the ins and outs. It was like a motorist who gets in a car and drives down the road happy and oblivious to the difference between a camshaft, a crankshaft and a tappet, or whatever components are in the engine, because the car works and is fine.

We now have to drill down and understand what happens at borders, which essentially do three things: tariffs, VAT checks and regulatory alignment. A customs union helps only the first of those, but it also goes some way towards helping with paperwork and rules of origin. For those who knock the idea of a customs union, I point out that there are 12 of them in the world, comprising 103 of the 193 United Nations countries. Customs unions are therefore more the norm than the abnorm.

If the UK insists on being out of the customs union and the single market, it will inevitably face barriers to trade. For those who do not believe that, a cursory glance at Google Earth will show them the barrier between Norway and Sweden, both of which are in the single market but only one of which is in the customs union. If they look at the south-east corner of the European Union between Turkey and Bulgaria, or between Turkey and Greece, they will see further barriers, because Turkey is in the customs union but not in the single market. We need to be in both.

Why are we trying to do this? We have seen analysis by the Scottish Government, which was dismissed as politicking; by the Treasury, which was dismissed as mere forecasts; and by the Irish Government, which was met with silence. Analysis shows that the damage to GDP will be 2%, 6% or 8%. To give an idea of what that means, the crash of 2008 was a 2% event for GDP. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) said that such things had not happened deliberately in the past. He was, I think, hinting that this is being done very deliberately—damage is being done to the UK economy in the full knowledge of what will happen.

The Prime Minister has not chosen the option of membership of the customs union and the single market outside the European Union, which would result in 2% damage. She has gone for the middle option of 6% damage, or three times the economic crash of 2008 over 12 years. We have to be absolutely certain that that is fully understood and communicated more widely among the public, because there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth when it happens. As someone who was once poor said, “I have tried poverty and it is not very good.”

The Brexiteer line that I heard from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) was that we are not in control of our trade, but nobody, by definition, is in control of their trade, because they have to deal with another partner. We certainly will not be in control when 27 other countries put up barriers to our goods, and we will have a lot less control over our trade at that point.

The right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry) made a number of excellent points. She talked about the idea of global Britain. May I let the House in on a secret? There is a thing called global Ireland, global Germany, global France, global Australia, global Argentina —everywhere, ladies and gentlemen, is global. On global Japan in particular, diplomats are going into offices explaining that they have put 40% of their investment into one basket in the EU, namely the UK, and they are very nervous indeed about what will happen to that investment. Outside the UK, global Japan has the biggest worry of all about exactly which direction the UK is taking.

In an intervention, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) gave the example of avionics and Specsavers. Who knew about these things? I knew about shellfish. People say that they want fantastic trade agreements with many other countries across the world, but lorries currently take shellfish from my constituency in the Hebrides to France or Spain on a journey that is uninterrupted by borders. If borders are put at the ro-ro facilities, the lorries’ journeys out and back will be delayed. We might get free trade with Paraguay, but there is no way that anyone could drive a heavy goods vehicle from the Outer Hebrides to Paraguay and back in a week. People sometimes lose sight of exactly what they are talking about. Trade does not happen on bits of paper. Trade happens because a person on my island, Donald Maclean, phones somebody in Spain and they make a deal between themselves. That is how trade works, but the Government are now putting themselves right in the middle of the trade that is happening between the Outer Hebrides and the continent of Europe, and that is going to be very damaging.

I get frustrated when I hear the Prime Minister, who has led the charge on this, saying that the European Court of Justice is not our court, but an external court. The ECJ is our court, your court and everybody else’s court. It is every European’s court, in fact. The idea that the UK and the EU are two separate entities is wrong as well. The UK is one of 28 members, and we have full access to the ECJ, just as everywhere else does.

We should also be mindful of the words of Simon Coveney, the Tánaiste and Irish Foreign Minister, because the moment might be approaching faster than we think. He said last week that if there was no agreement on the Irish border by June, everything could be off the table. The UK could crash out of the European Union a lot sooner than it thinks, because if the border issue is not sorted, no other issue will be sorted and there will be no deal. We know that the hard Brexiteers have abandoned the WTO idea because they have accepted a transition, but they might not get that transition. That could be a problem for them, but they have not yet woken up to it. Indeed, they might wake up to it too late, because the cliff edge is closer than we think. It has not been delayed as a result of the Prime Minister begging the European Union for two extra years but walking away with only 21 months.

It is absolutely incredible that the United Kingdom is taking the steps that it is taking. The right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) has tried to shout to warn people and wake them up to the economic damage that is being done to the people who live in our islands. It will be worse for those in the north of England and in Scotland than it will be for those in London, but there is still going to be bad news for London. But I fear that people are not listening. They are on their ideological high horses, ignoring the facts that are staring them in the face. They are grabbing platitudes in the great hope that something will come up. The reality is that nothing is going to come up unless we climb down from a position of trying to square unsquareable circles. The UK is in a very difficult position of its own making. From my point of view as a Scottish National party member and a Scottish nationalist, we have to be referendum-ready in Scotland, because that is the only lifeboat I can see that could take us out of the economic calamity that the UK is about to force on itself.