Christmas Adjournment

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)]

It is always a pleasure to respond for the SNP to this type of debate, which is officially called “Matters to be raised before the forthcoming Adjournment” but has, as I had to explain to the Chief Whip, the nickname “Whinge-fest”—that seemed to have passed him and me by. This has not been a whinge-fest at all; I think it has been a wide-ranging and excellent debate. I pay particular tribute to the right hon. and gallant Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) for his contribution, and to my good friend, the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for her excellent contribution.

Of course, the debate was opened by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who made pertinent criticisms of the Home Office. I know that he has raised those issues before, and I join him in doing so. I was particularly taken with his view that, as a member of the 1922 committee executive, he wishes to keep a low profile for the next year, and no wonder! In 2022, we have had three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors, three Secretaries of State for the Department for Work and Pensions, three Leaders of the House, a mini-Budget bombshell that crashed the economy, and an ongoing cost of living crisis, which is, of course, a Tory-made failing of the nations and regions of this United Kingdom and these islands. Of course, the Prime Minister lost the first ballot, did he not? He then secured the job when it was accepted that what he was looking for was inevitable. Thinking about it, that is a bit like the Scottish constitutional question. Six polls in a row have shown that Scottish independence is now in the lead.

I will concentrate on what many others have touched on: the cost of living crisis and who has been asked to pay the price. On that, I was very much taken with the contribution from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), who quite rightly spoke about the number of workers across public services and elsewhere who are taking industrial action. I have to say that I have no problem with being on a picket line. First, because those strikers are constituents, we go to picket lines to understand the problems and see how we can help to resolve a dispute. I do not see any particular problem in that. My message to people who criticise those of us who are on picket lines is, “Why don’t you talk to your constituents? Why don’t you try to find out where the problems are? Why don’t you try to fix these issues?”

The simple fact is that we have some of the most restrictive trade union laws in the world. Given that trade unions have to go through all these hurdles to take industrial action in the first place, there has to be some acknowledgment that people are on strike for very real reasons. They are not on strike because somebody told them to do it, or because some trade union official or steward has Jedi-like powers and can wave their hand to say, “This is the strike you are looking for.” It just does not work that way.

The worry for the Government is the number of civil service workers who have started striking and will strike in the next few weeks, including in the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, Border Force, the outsourced services of the Disclosure and Barring Service, and the justice sector. As a Government of small government, why do they not sort out this peculiar nonsense of there being more than 200 negotiating positions for 200 different pay negotiations in the civil service? That seems a completely nonsensical position.

People tell me that one of the reasons they are having to take industrial action at the moment is the price of food. Food inflation is at 16%—that is incredible when I think about it. It is incredible to think about the number of people who have to use food banks. One of the things that I have tried to do since being elected as a Member is to help people step up from food banks through affordable projects. I am thinking, for example, of the Threehills Larder; the Linthouse Larder, which was opened last week; the larders and pantries that will be opening in Cardonald, and Scotland’s first community supermarket, which will also be opening.



These are very real issues, and it is not just working people who are having to use these sorts of services. We are now seeing the return of sanctions as an aggressive policy instigated by the Department for Work and Pensions. In August this year, £36 million was recouped in DWP sanctions—that is in one month in England, Wales and Scotland. That is an incredible figure. The month before it was £35 million and the month before it was £34 million. There is certainly an increase in the use of sanctions, which we will have to debate in this House in the next year.

To back up the hon. Member for Harrow East, the Home Office needs to start corresponding with Members of Parliament when we raise issues. The number of outstanding pieces of correspondence I have with the Home Office is utterly incredible, and I hope the Leader of the House will take that back to the Home Office. The issue of Afghans has been raised, but there are many other constituent cases with the Home Office on which I am not getting any answers at all, and the number of delays is ridiculous.

I hope in the coming year we will see an end to some of the more aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric that we sometimes hear in this place and elsewhere. Glasgow led the way, of course. In Scotland, we elected the first refugee councillor: the great Roza Salih, who was an office manager in the Glasgow South West constituency office, but has been retained as a part-time caseworker.

I end by saying that some people will suggest we are all going on holiday after today; it is not a holiday, but a recess. Some of us might get Christmas day off if we are lucky, but it is a recess. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we could not do it were it not for the staff of this House and, more importantly, the great constituency office staff we all have. I pay tribute to and thank Scott McFarlane, Roza Salih, Keith Gibb, Alistair Shaw, Tony McCue, Dominique Ucbas, Raz Salih, Linsey Wilson and Greg McCarra for their outstanding work in the past year. I wish them and all other Members’ constituency office staff a happy and peaceful Christmas, and a good new year when it comes.