Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I draw the House’s attention to early-day motion 204 and my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The industrial dispute in the Pensions Regulator has now reached its 50th day because the regulator is offering a pay rise lower than the UK Government’s pay guidance. May we have a statement or a debate on the Government’s pay review guidance and what actions can be taken against agencies that do not comply with it?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the next chance to question the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on this issue will be on 5 February. I encourage him to attend those questions.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

First, let me say that the hon. Lady will understand more than anyone in this place the comments about Sir David Amess and those sad events. I thank the Jo Cox Foundation, one of the many legacies her sister left, for all the work it is doing on this matter and the tributes it has paid in recent days to Sir David.

The hon. Lady is the second Member today to raise the grave situation at Kirklees Council, which will lead to the potential loss of much-loved public services— I know that leisure services are a particularly great concern there. The Government have always maintained strong funding for local government. In times of great stress, particularly in recent years, we have increased that massively. What we have not done is allow councils over the past 13 years to raise council tax by enormous sums. In the timeframe we have been in government, councils have raised council tax by about 36%, whereas the last Labour Government, over the same period, raised it by 104%. We always have to bear it in mind that there is no such thing as government money—it is taxpayers’ money. We need to protect people, particularly those on fixed incomes, from unlimited increases in the taxes they pay.

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

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as I have been contacted in my capacity as chair of the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary group on behalf of low-paid, outsourced facilities management staff across 10 different Government sites. As a result of a retendering process, I am advised that those workers will shift from Mitie to either ISS or OCS Group. That means workers will face seven weeks without a wage because of changing pay dates. I am sure the Leader of the House will understand the impact that will have on universal credit, for example, so can we have a debate in Government time about the outsourcing of facilities management workers? In the light of prorogation, will the Leader of the House contact Cabinet Office colleagues so that we can pause the arrangements and there can be a meeting with the trade union, ensuring those workers are not left in financial hardship?

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 8th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

This is very important and is clearly a priority for both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education. My hon. Friend will know that they have convened an expert advisory group, and I think that the examples he gave would be of great interest to them. I shall make sure that the Secretary of State has heard of his particular interest, and I encourage him to raise the matter with her on 12 June.

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

First, let me join the Leader of the House in congratulating my many friends and relations who are supporters of West Ham United, which I note is another successful team with a Scottish manager.

What happened on Tuesday was obscene. The House rose less than three hours after proceedings commenced because the Government could not table enough legislation, yet there are dozens of private Members’ Bills scheduled for debate on 24 November—to name two, the Food Poverty Strategy Bill and the Workers (Rights and Definition) Bill. Will the Leader of the House take it into consideration that if the Government do not have enough legislation to put to the House, there is enough legislation proposed by Members to be debated and discussed in this Chamber?

[Penny Mordaunt]

With regard to West Ham, there are many successful Scottish managers, but, alas, not in the Scottish Government. There are also many good private Members’ Bills and topics for them, and I know that people are looking at the fourth Session as well. As I said in my opening remarks, we have introduced 40 Bills in this Session, and we continue to make progress. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, we have also made time for private Members’ Bills, and we have supported and backed many of them passing through this House.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 11th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sure the whole House will want to send our thanks and admiration to the hon. Lady’s constituents who have, out of unbearable tragedy, done something so positive to help others. She is also right, particularly as we head towards the warmer weather, that we remind people of the importance of water safety. If she were to apply for a debate, I am sure it would be well-attended.

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

rose—

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I did toss the coin, Mr Stephens, and you won.

[Chris Stephens]

Tails never fails, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The Leader of the House will be aware of the rocketing food price inflation, which is squeezing living standards across these islands. That includes, I am sad to say, many workers in the food industry itself, with a recent published survey of the Bakers Food & Allied Workers Union showing that 40% of workers in the food sector are skipping meals and that one in five are using food banks. Can we have a debate in Government time on how we can pay food workers fairly without price rises for consumers and rampant profiteering of some of the large supermarkets? Can she confirm whether trade union representatives of food workers will be invited to the Government’s national food summit next week?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that matter. He will know that the next relevant questions will be on 25 May, and he may like to raise those matters there, but, given the timeliness of the event next week, I shall ask the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to get in touch with his office to answer his question about delegates.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sorry to hear about the situation in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He knows that we very much want to support and enable modern and efficient bus services, hence our more than £3 billion investment in bus transformation. I congratulate him on making that call of his Mayor, and he will know how to apply for a debate in the usual way.

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

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Members will recall the large volume of correspondence we all received from constituents last summer relating to backlogs in the Passport Office. We now know that civil servants from the Public and Commercial Services Union will be taking five weeks of continuous industrial action from 3 April because their pay is so low. According to a recent survey, many working at the Passport Office are resorting to food banks. Can we have a debate in Government time on how Ministers intend to negotiate a settlement to avert the need for this industrial action and to end endemic poverty pay across the civil service?

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman will know that many Departments across Whitehall are in negotiations with unions, with some considerable success in recent weeks. We want to ensure that people have fair pay, but that that fair pay does not exacerbate the inflation situation we face. The next Home Office questions are not until 22 May, so I will write on the hon. Gentleman’s behalf to ensure that the Home Secretary has heard what he has said today.

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.

Replacement of the Chancellor of the Exchequer

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

The motivations for the Prime Minister taking the decisions she has have been about the national interest. The hon. Gentleman may not appreciate, and I am not asking him to, the courage and duty that she felt to do that, but that is why she has done it.

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

I want to get this clear. Can the Leader of the House confirm that the former Chancellor has been removed by the Prime Minister for acting on her instructions? Can the Leader of the House also confirm that the Prime Minister overruled the former Chancellor on the contents of the financial statement before it was made? If both things are true, the Prime Minister needs to resign, doesn’t she?

[Penny Mordaunt]

These are not matters for me. The hon. Gentleman may wish to raise matters with the Chancellor. I think that what our constituents want to hear about from us today are the issues that are affecting them, and that is what the Chancellor will be speaking about, whenever he gets to this Chamber.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I know that my hon. Friend is very concerned about this and has done a huge amount of work on education and understands its importance. A debate is an excellent idea, and I encourage him to apply for one in the usual way. That is a way of not only raising the issue but sharing good practice and what works.

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

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The Prime Minister indicated yesterday that there would be no cuts to public spending, which will be welcomed by the 150,000 civil servants currently balloting for strike action. Can we have a debate in Government time on how we value public servants and ensure that there are no compulsory redundancies, no cuts to redundancy payouts and decent wages for those who keep this country’s economic wheels turning?

[Penny Mordaunt]

We had a wonderful example earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), the former Deputy Leader of the House, appreciating the civil servants he worked for; I think we all do, whether we are in government or sat on the Opposition Benches. The hon. Gentleman will know that more information about the Government’s economic programme will be brought forward on 31 October, but I encourage Members who have representations to make to write to the Treasury.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I shall certainly make sure that the Secretary of State for Health hears what the hon. Lady has said. The Government have clearly done some things on this matter, in particular to try to raise awareness and give health advice, but I shall raise it with the relevant Department and ask the new Secretary of State to get in touch with the hon. Lady.

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

Another couple of weeks have elapsed, so can I ask the Leader of the House when the Government intend to lay a second remedial order on bereavement support payments for cohabiting couples? Given that the courts decided four years ago that these payments should happen, will that remedial order be laid before recess tomorrow?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I have raised this matter, from memory, with the relevant Department. I will follow that up and make sure that the Department is in touch with the hon. Gentleman’s office.

Business of the House

Chris Stephens Excerpts

Thursday 8th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I happily join the hon. Lady in her congratulations on the achievements in diving in her constituency. She will know that we have given many millions in aid money to help the situation in Pakistan. Our high commission there is doing all it can to assist the Pakistan Government with the very difficult circumstances they are facing. I encourage her and others to apply for debates in the usual manner.

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

A remedial order can take effect only 60 sitting days after it has been laid. We have been waiting far too long for a second remedial order to be laid for bereavement support payments for cohabiting couples. Will the Leader of the House tell us when the Government plan to lay that second remedial order?