Oral Answers to Questions

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

3. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the European Commission’s proposal for a youth mobility scheme on young people in Scotland.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

7. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the European Commission’s proposal for a youth mobility scheme on young people in Scotland.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

9. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential impact of the European Commission’s proposal for a youth mobility scheme on young people in Scotland.

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[John Lamont]

The hon. Member and the SNP continue to obsess about Brexit and the decision of the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. This Government are absolutely committed to offering young people opportunities to travel around the world during their education, as demonstrated through our association with the Horizon scheme and through the Government’s Turing scheme.

[Anne McLaughlin]

The youth mobility scheme would allow young people in my constituency of Glasgow North East and across Scotland to participate in youth exchanges, work, study and travel across Europe. The Minister got to do that. Is his message to my constituents that this freedom was for the likes of him, but not for the likes of them?

[John Lamont]

The UK Government currently operate 13 successful bilateral youth mobility schemes with international parties. The countries with which we already have arrangements include Andorra, Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Iceland, India, Japan, Monaco, New Zealand, San Marino, South Korea, Taiwan and Uruguay. [Interruption.] SNP Members may scoff at these countries, but these countries are offering unique opportunities for Scots to travel internationally and to learn, as many of us did as well.

Cost of Living in Scotland

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[David Linden]

Absolutely. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who I know does a power of work on this issue and is an active member of the Lanarkshire forum on poverty. She is right. We know that there is evidence suggesting that people with a disability experience £950 a month more living costs, not to mention the fact that the UK Government so cruelly overlooked the 2.5 million legacy benefit claimants during the pandemic, who did not get their £20 uplift.

I know that my hon. Friend did not see my speech in advance, but she touched on a point that I want to come to next, which is about the impact on physical and mental health. That is an issue that impacts people across all of these islands. Indeed, the Mental Health Foundation found that almost one third of Scottish adults reported feeling anxious about their financial situation in the last month, with one in 10 feeling hopeless about it. I guess that that goes back to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross: in one of the richest economies in the world, people feeling hopeless due to financial precarity is simply unacceptable.

These statistics are only reinforced by the findings of the charity Pregnant Then Screwed, who revealed in their recent survey that over half of parents reported experiencing high levels of anxiety relating to money. That is in addition to the almost two thirds of mothers with a child under 12 months who reported that they either have cut short or will cut short their maternity leave due to cost of living pressures. From the Scottish Women’s Budget Group, we know that women are the shock absorbers of poverty; during a cost of living crisis, I am afraid that that problem is only exacerbated.

If we take a look at the impact across demographics in Scotland, we also know, from Age Scotland, that 43% of over-50s identified as living in fuel poverty, with 9% of over-50s skipping meals. The very fact that so many people are living in fuel poverty and that that has an impact on many constituents in the Easterhouse area of my constituency is, I know, a huge area of concern for my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North East (Anne McLaughlin), who I think was seeking to catch my eye to make an intervention on this point.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I was waiting for the appropriate moment. I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, but also for allowing me to make a couple of points. I wonder whether my hon. Friend shares my absolute horror at the yesterday’s news that Ofgem has said that Scottish Power are fit and proper persons to force-fit prepayment meters once again. We know that there was a consultation and that Ofgem said, “Well, okay, you can all do it if you meet these criteria and follow these rules”—one of the rules being that you cannot do it to somebody over the age of 75. My hon. Friend and I both represent the east end of Glasgow, where in some areas the life expectancy is considerably lower than that, so that is a real concern. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is never a reason to force somebody onto a prepayment meter simply because they are poor?

[David Linden]

Absolutely, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her work on this particular issue. She and I have the privilege of representing the community of Carntyne, both north and south. It will be bittersweet for me, but after the boundary changes, I very much hope that she will be able to take on the south Carntyne part of the constituency. We should be aware that it is an area with a lot of older residents. The forced fitting of prepayment meters was in the news yesterday, which I know is an issue of huge concern for constituents there. The only thing I would say is that they should take heart that in my hon. Friend they will have a doughty champion to continue campaigning on that.

It cannot be the case that so many people are affected to the point of hunger, anxiety and destitution, when the Government hold the power to shield people from those very things. The most recent report from the Scottish Federation of Housing Associations, titled, “It’s Your Life’s Opportunities”, makes a number of recommendations. It talks about how this cost of living crisis is impacting social tenants in Scotland, who are amongst the very hardest hit by this crisis. Due to the nature of the social housing sector, people on the lowest incomes, with varying needs—for example, refugees or those who were previously homeless—came into the cost of living crisis already struggling. I regularly seek to make the point to Ministers that for many of my constituents the cost of living crisis is not necessarily a new thing. It is a continuation of an already challenging circumstance that they found themselves in.

As of September last year, less than one in 10 social tenants felt as though the cost of living crisis was easing, as we headed into the winter period. Looking particularly at West of Scotland Housing Association tenants, some of whom are my own constituents, 44% reported missing meals because of the crisis, with 65% stating that the price of food limits the extent to which they can buy healthy foods for their households.

Scottish Referendum Legislation: Supreme Court Decision

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack]

First, there were also many other votes cast for other Unionist parties. It is a matter of consensus between the two Governments, political parties and civic Scotland—the answer I gave earlier.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

The Supreme Court today did not rule that Scotland should not be independent or that Scotland should not be able to have a referendum; it ruled that the existing legislation written by Unionist politicians does not allow the Scottish Government to make that decision, unless the UK Government are willing to amend it, as they did in 2014. That is the legal argument.

I want to know what the democratic argument is against Scotland being able to do that. In the Scottish Parliament elections—one of the eight elections we have won since 2014—not only did the SNP leaflets say, “Vote SNP for a referendum on independence”, but the Tory leaflets, the Labour leaflets and the Liberal Democrat leaflets all said it. What is the democratic argument against Scotland and the people of Scotland being able to simply answer that question?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. It is important, if we are to get everybody in, that the questions are short.

Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy

Anne McLaughlin Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

While we hold this debate, a cost of living crisis continues to hit people the length and breadth of these four nations. Scotland has a chance to shelter our people from facing the brunt of Tory mismanagement of fiscal responsibility, and from the Tories’ disregard for people. I say that with confidence, because Scotland does not and will not vote Tory.

I need not lay bare the many merits of independence for our nation in this speech. Successive Governments in this place have been covering that for us more than adequately, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) covered a number of those merits in his usual fashion—at great length. I will, however, outline a vision—my vision for an independent Scotland. I see our role in this as being to win over the hearts and minds of those who are still undecided, but that happens on doorsteps and in our communities, not through a speech from these Benches.

Like, I am sure, many of my colleagues, I am often asked why an independent Scotland will be better, fairer, and why it will make us happier. A straightforward answer is: we will get what we vote for—so, not the Tories. We have not chosen market upheaval; to close our borders; to ask women whether they have been raped before they can access welfare; to cut energy support; to crash the pound with unexpected borrowing; or to ship people—our people—off to Rwanda without considering the ramifications. It was mere days ago that the Home Secretary referred to groups of refugees who have come to our coast in search of a better life as an “invasion”.

[Anne McLaughlin (Glasgow North East) (SNP)]

I do not whether my hon. Friend, like me, has been contacted by many constituents about that. If she has, she will know that it is not just us, and that the people of Scotland are utterly horrified and ashamed about words such as “invasion” and “scourge” being used to describe vulnerable human beings who are fleeing conflict in other parts of the world. Does she agree that independence would give us a massive benefit as we would no longer have to be even partly responsible for shameful policies that treat human beings like they were worse than the dirt on the bottom of our shoe and that, once we are free of the UK, we can treat them like the human beings that they are?

[Amy Callaghan]

I welcome that intervention and agree that the language used by the Home Secretary is shameful. I think that my constituents agree as well.

Every single one of those wounds has been inflicted on us by Tory leadership—leadership that the people of Scotland did not choose. We have a chance to be a much bigger player on the world stage. We have a chance yet again to stand shoulder to shoulder with a multitude of our closest allies at a time when the world has rarely seemed so unstable. But as usual, it is ordinary people who pay the price for decisions made by a Tory Government we did not vote for.

The cost of living crisis continues to spiral out of control. The Trussell Trust handed out 2.1 million food parcels across the UK in 2021-22, yet the SNP must continue to call on the UK Government to develop comprehensive child poverty targets. The Government would clearly rather spend their efforts on protecting bankers’ bonuses than on investing in people.

We can think about austerity no longer being imposed, poverty being no longer a political choice forced on our communities and Scotland having a Government—its only Government—elected by its people, for its people. Every child in an independent Scotland should go to school with food in their tummy because their family could afford that from a true living wage, not at the expense of their parent or guardian not eating—and definitely not from accessing a food bank. There should be no need for food banks in an independent Scotland. We are endlessly grateful for the service that they provide in our communities, but they are a by-product of the first round of austerity, not a long-term, sustainable solution to ending poverty. I dread to think what is coming with the Prime Minister’s and Chancellor’s austerity 2.0. That is why our vision for a better, different Scotland is so crucial at this time.

We need only take one look at the legislation coming out of this place—the single market Bill, the Public Order Bill and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022—to see why people across the political spectrum are talking about another independence referendum. The majority of Scotland’s MPs are outvoted at every turn while the Government make up legislation as casually as if it were a shopping list. With an independent Scotland, we will get the Governments that we vote for and we will be rid of the economically irresponsible Tories for good. We have a bright future. We have the opportunity to gain powers that will allow us to rescue many Scottish children from a life of poverty. Very soon, I know that Scotland will grasp that opportunity.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

If my maths is correct, about five Members still want to speak. The winding-up speeches will begin no later than 20 to 7, so Members can do the maths on how many minutes they have. Anne McLaughlin, do you intend to speak?

[Anne McLaughlin]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

In that case, four Members want to speak; I call Chris Stephens.