Cost of Living

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan]

I think that would be quite interesting. I am not suggesting for one minute that the hon. Member for Moray was saying one thing in 2019 and another thing now, but it would be interesting to see any clash of rhetoric.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

On that point, would the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dave Doogan]

In a minute.

It is not just the fishers, because Angus is the garden of Scotland and its farmers are subject to the real constraints of Brexit. People talk about farmers as though they are just a guy with a tractor, but modern agricultural enterprise is a vast undertaking involving plant and seed suppliers, as well as any amount of different subcontractors and small businesses, so when I talk about agriculture I am talking about hundreds of small businesses across Scotland, and thousands across the United Kingdom.

My farmers in Scotland are subject to the UK Internal Market Act 2020, for which my colleagues in the Scottish Government would not give legislative consent, because it is so damaging to Scottish agriculture, even before the introduction of the Australia trade deal on top of it, which undercuts with lower standards. That has created a market in which we cannot possibly compete, where they do volume and we do quality. Scottish agriculture is different to English agriculture, which is much bigger. We do not do bulk in Scotland, which gets to the heart of how broken the Union is. Did the UK Government try to construct that system to promote enterprise, jobs and prosperity in agriculture in Scotland? No, they did not. They did it on the basis of their ideology.

Turning back to business investment, where there is a thriving business community, there are jobs and upward pressure on wages. That is what we need to get people out of poverty—

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[Christine Jardine]

I was intrigued to hear the hon. Member talking about fishing policy. What is his view on the fact that his own party of government in Scotland has not seemed able to agree since the former Minister criticised the Government’s policy? I am fascinated that he is talking about supporting businesses when every business in my community tells me that they have nothing but complaints about the business rates imposed by the Scottish Government.

[Dave Doogan]

I thank the hon. Member for her intervention, but I would love to see the evidence that every single business in Edinburgh West is critical of the Scottish Government, but that is not what she said, is it? Let us not forget that the business environment of Scotland is far preferable, particularly for small, independent traders, to the rest of the United Kingdom, because we have the small business bonus and rates do not kick in for small businesses until they have a rateable value of £15,000, unlike a rateable value of £12,000 in England. So I will not be taking any lectures from any Unionist about the business environment that we have created in Scotland.

Business investment grew in real terms steadily between 2009 and the Brexit vote. It then failed to grow at all between the Brexit vote and the pandemic, and has not returned to pre-Brexit levels. It fell off a cliff after the pandemic and has increased barely to where it was 10 years ago. As I said earlier on, when it comes to the nature of the United Kingdom, this is now a poor country. I do not know if that comes as news to anybody on the Government or Opposition Benches: this is now a poor country, irrespective of the GDP that gives a false prospectus of what it is to live in this country. Comparisons for 2021, in pounds rather than dollars, show that the UK is 14th, behind Ireland, Australia, Iceland, Denmark, and Norway. In terms of OECD countries, the United Kingdom finds itself in a very poor position, with an average salary of £37,500. I appreciate that many people listening to the debate will think, “Well, I wish I was on £37,500,” but that is an average salary, which is pushed up by a few colossal salaries. What is far more interesting and compelling is the median salary, which is down in the low £30,000s.

It is helpful in demonstrating how poor the United Kingdom is to compare like-for-like occupations. Nurses are paid more in Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, Belgium, Iceland and Luxembourg. The average salary of a nurse in the United States from 2016 to 2019 was £54,900; in Belgium it was £55,000; and in the Netherlands it was £46,000. However, in the UK it was £33,000. That is a directly comparable job and gives an interesting perspective on where we are.

When adjusted by purchasing power, salaries are even worse. Not only are the salaries lower, but the cost of living, thanks to the Tory party, is even higher. The purchasing power of a nurse’s salary is lower in the UK than the OECD average and lower than in Slovenia, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

Current estimates of an average nurse’s salary in the UK are that they will go up to £35,600, but the salary pay scale for new nurses in band 5 in Scotland tops out at £37,664, which is probably why the health spend per person is £3,490 in Scotland as opposed to £3,192 in England. The number of staff in the NHS in Scotland per 100,000 people is 2,845, compared with 2,224 in England. We value our nurses even when they are training, by making sure they get a £10,000 bursary in Scotland, rather than a £5,000 bursary. These are the best jobs in many of our communities. Teachers are very much in the same position.

The hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) mentioned the Government’s amendment to the motion, but what I have said and what some of my colleagues are about to say lays bare the myth within it. The amendment reads that this House

“welcomes the Government’s action to halve inflation, grow the economy and reduce debt”.

Well, inflation has not halved, and the Government are not acting but hoping. The economy is shrinking, but even it is was not—sorry, the economy is not shrinking; it is growing. The Government are saying that we have the highest growth in the G7, but we are starting from the lowest base. Growth is relative to where it starts from, and the Government are not too keen to talk about that. They are saying that they are taking action to reduce debt. When they took over, there was £0.8 trillion of debt in this country, but that is now getting on for £2.5 trillion of debt. They have completely lost control of debt, and they have obviously lost control of reality as well if they are suggesting that this is a measure of their doing really well. We have already mentioned the obscurity of the Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Act 2023 as a measure of how good Brexit has been. If that is what we have to show for Brexit, a lot of people up and down these islands will be scratching their heads and wondering whether it was all worth it.

The Government go on to note in their amendment that

“the SNP and Labour would fail to grip inflation or boost economic growth with their plans for the economy”.

Well, they are half right, because Labour would wreck the economy. It would certainly fail to get a grip on inflation or improve growth, for when has it ever done anything else? Show me a time when Labour was put out of office without leaving the economy in tatters—and it will be the same every time for the UK population. Scotland is subject to the electoral will of the UK—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) challenging me to be a Tory? That is a good one.

We need to educate our people well, and ensure that they can use that education in their employment environment so that they can have well-paid jobs enabling them to pay their way and do better than their parents. Even with the limited powers that we have in Scotland, we have a higher level of foreign direct investment than any other part of the United Kingdom; we have the best small business environment in the UK, with the most attractive small business bonus; our level of research and development is enviable according to UK standards; we have the most universities per head, with incredible research and innovation taking place in them; and our median wage income tax rate is lower.

The hon. Member for Moray, who said a lot earlier, talked of the scandal of paying for services, which he calls tax. It is tax, obviously, but he looks at only one side of the equation. People under a social contract in Scotland have elected a Government who support funded interventions in, for instance, eye tests, better-paid nurses, tuition fees, pupil equity funding, and all manner of other social contract interventions. The hon. Gentleman is supposed to be a Tory, and the Tories are supposed to be the party of business. They are supposed to be, at the very least, fiscally and economically literate; although I would respectfully suggest that the evidence implies otherwise. The hon. Gentleman must know that there is nothing for nothing. Although we rhetorically describe these things as free, they are not free; they need to be paid for, and I suggest to him that the people of Scotland know that very well.

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[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I have to say that my wee heart skipped a beat with delight when I saw that finally, in an Opposition day debate, the Scottish National party was going to talk about something that mattered to the people of Scotland: the cost of living crisis and the problems our constituents face. Surely few of us would dispute that the cost of living crisis being faced by our constituents is a constant and overriding concern for far too many households in this country.

I have often stood here and criticised the Conservative Government, on their energy price hike; inflation; interest rates; and the situation that faces our young people throughout the UK, where too many of them live with the fear that they will never be able to own the house of their own that they would like or that the ever-increasing rent rates in this country, which in my city of Edinburgh are outrageous, put too many options beyond their reach. We must then consider the fact that the Chancellor did not listen when the Liberal Democrats asked him to cut energy bills by £500 per household, which would have made a significant difference to so many families; that the growth in the economy in the first three months of this year was only 0.1%; that, according to the Office for National Statistics, average pay, after taking inflation into account, fell by 3%; and that the take-home salary fell by more than £1,400.

I was delighted when I saw this motion, because our economy in the UK is on its knees and so are far too many families, and not just in Scotland. My disappointment is that SNP Members do not seem to appreciate that they in a unique position, of which I, like many other Members, are jealous, as their party can do something about it in Scotland. By that, I do not mean independence, which it turns out this debate is actually about after all.

[Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)]

rose—

[Christine Jardine]

I will give way in a moment. In Scotland, and particularly in Edinburgh West, I hear every week from my constituents. I hear from business people who managed to make it through the pandemic but are struggling with energy costs and with the burden of business taxes, which the Scottish Government could alleviate but choose not to—

[Amy Callaghan (East Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I wonder whether the hon. Lady would associate herself with the comments made by the Scottish leader of the Liberal Democrats that Scotland is an ancient nation, and it should and would never exist again.

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the hon. Lady for her petty and irrelevant—[Interruption.] She is taking a comment out of context, when we are speaking about the lives and livelihoods of people in this country who cannot afford to feed their children; so we have to have a petty debate about a comment made in February, which was been taken out of context. I thought that her contributions were normally better than that.

Let me return to the issue at hand and the problems facing our constituents.

[Amy Callaghan]

Has that made you a wee bit angry?

[Christine Jardine]

Yes, the hon. Lady has made me quite angry, because this is far more important than that.

Surely the cost of living for so many people in Scotland, our constituents, could be alleviated if we did not now pay more tax than anywhere else in the UK. The situation is so bad that the Scottish newspapers today are reporting that the SNP-Green Government are concerned that the ever-increasing taxation burden may now encourage people to move elsewhere. Is that not dreadful?

[Dave Doogan]

When the hon. Lady speaks about the financial pressures and burdens on families and communities, she hits the nail on the head. How important for her constituents is not having to worry about the cost of a prescription, rather than finding £9.65; being certain that their children will get to university if they make their grades, without having fears about funding; or having any other benefit that they enjoy in Scotland but not in England? How grateful are her constituents?

[Christine Jardine]

When my constituents come to me, what they complain about is not that they might have to pay that amount for prescriptions were it not for the Scottish Government; they complain about the burden they face every day at the moment. Businesses complain to me about the Scottish Government. Constituents regularly complain to me that they do not understand why the Scottish Government are not doing something about the state of our NHS and not doing something to provide a better education for their children to give them a better chance in life. That is what my constituents complain about.

As for Brexit, I agree with the SNP that it is doing immense damage to our economy, making life incredibly difficult for business and increasing the burden on families. What surprises me is that the SNP fails to recognise that to take Scotland out of the UK would be to repeat and amplify that damage to Scotland’s economy, income and households. Why does the SNP want to inflict the same damage again? Of course independence is its solution to everything—

[Dr Whitford]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Christine Jardine]

Not at the moment, thank you.

When the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black) was talking about bad Governments making bad decisions, I had to bow to her expertise as a member of the SNP, because when it comes to bad Governments making bad decisions, it is in a class of its own. One has only to look at the mounting bill for the ferries, at the burden of business rates, which I have mentioned, at the state of our NHS, and at the state of our education.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Lady keeps referring to the NHS and education. Public funding is required to support those. It is common in this place to talk about failing on health and on education. All four health services are struggling after the pandemic, but A&E waiting times and cancer waiting times in Scotland are still significantly better than in the other three health services. Closing the attainment gap helps young people have a better future, and both at highers and in positive destinations, that gap has closed by two thirds while the SNP has been in power. As for this nonsense that somehow she expects public services to be better but with less taxation, she needs the same reality check as those on the Government Benches.

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention because, like the rest of SNP, she talks a good game but often forgets that those of us on these Benches live and have constituency surgeries in Scotland, and we know the reality of the queues of people every week complaining about the public services in Scotland. I know that the SNP blames Westminster for that, but SNP Members always overlook the fact that the Scottish Government have had record amounts of money. I do not for one moment believe that the UK’s economic stewardship at the moment is the best it could be—it falls far short, as I have mentioned—but it is rich of the SNP not to recognise the mistakes it has made.

I do not believe anyone in this House, in any party, is not concerned about the cost of living crisis, inflation or the energy prices we all face. Where we differ is in our solutions. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South offered us the “I” word, which I am not surprised came up in this debate. I suspected that might have been what it was about all along. I offer three alternative “I” words: incompetence, inability and ineffectiveness. The voters will take all of them into account the next time they go to the ballot box in a general election. They will apply those words to both Governments and their stewardship of our economic wellbeing. At that point, we will see change, because the people of Scotland have had enough and they want a Government—two Governments—who are competent, able and effective.

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[Marion Fellows]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government do not take into account real lived experiences and people with multiple differences, such as being a woman, being disabled and being a single parent. It just is not good enough.

Disabled people often face higher costs for their gas and electricity. Many disabled people say that they need more heating to stay warm—most of us here can recognise that—and others say that they have to use extra electricity to charge up items of assistive technology. My parliamentary assistant went to a drop-in session and came back to my office almost in tears, having spoken to a parent who requires three separate machines to keep their child alive overnight, but who could not afford to pay the associated electricity costs. Even with the cap that the Government have tried to put on electricity prices, the extra £150 does not help.

Disabled people have been suffering for years, and if we give someone a percentage of a very small amount, it is still a very small increase. According to the professional association for social work and social workers, 7 million people—almost half of those living in poverty in the UK—are either disabled or live with someone with a disability. The Trussell Trust says that half of those using food banks are disabled.

I know that the Government do make some effort—I congratulate the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, whom I spoke to this morning—but they do not get the bigger picture. When something like this cost of living crisis rears its ugly head, it drives the most vulnerable in our society into further debt and further difficulty. Something that I have not yet mentioned is that anyone with a food allergy or anyone who requires special food is in an even worse state during this cost of living crisis.

The SNP has consistently called on the Government to uplift universal credit—to increase it by £25 per week—and extend it to all means-tested legacy benefits. I refer to those people who went through the covid-19 pandemic and got no additional costs. That is just not right and we need to look at it. The Government need to do their job properly and actually help people.

The Scottish Government are trying to make things better. Our adult disability payment and the child payment, which has recently been doubled and will hopefully be increased even more, help families and disabled people much more than what is happening in the rest of the UK. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) has said, there is a cost to this, which is that folk like me pay more tax. I have yet to meet a constituent who tells me that they object to paying more tax to help folk less well off than themselves. It may just be that Motherwell and Wishaw is a beacon of light, but I do not think so. The Motherwell and Wishaw constituency is built on old mining communities—coal and steel communities—and the people there tend to know what it is like to be in poverty, but they also know that helping each other is the sign of a civilised society.

The health and disability White Paper raises the spectre of more disabled people facing sanctions. Can we really believe that, in the 21st century, we are going to sanction disabled people? They will have to move on to universal credit, and then not only will they not get what they are entitled to, but any increases will be barred under that punitive regime. This Government are also very bad at signposting. Let me cite as an example pension credit, the uptake of which has been disgraceful.

I am watching my time carefully, but I will briefly reflect on what the Prime Minister was doing today with the Farm to Fork summit at No. 10. That seems to me a lamentable effort to mitigate the disaster that has been Brexit for the economy and for the food supply chain. The Government were warned often during the Brexit debates, many of which I was able to attend.

It is not good enough. Scotland needs and wants to go back into the European Union. Many people in Scotland still believe that is the best way forward for this country and we want to follow the example of countries such as France that put blocks on prices to keep things cheaper for people during a cost of living crisis. This country is in a terrible state. Scotland is in a terrible state in terms of people suffering with the cost of living.

It is almost inconceivable that the Lib Dems and the Labour party are backing a hard Tory Brexit. They do not want to say how awful it has been for people right across the UK and what it has done for food prices—

[Christine Jardine]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Marion Fellows]

I am about to finish. Sorry, no. My time is up.

[Christine Jardine]

The hon. Lady is factually incorrect.

[Marion Fellows]

I will leave it to the hon. Lady to correct me later, when she finds time.

Lastly, it is really important that this Government reflect on the fact that a society is judged on how it treats its most vulnerable people. On that measure, this Government are failing.

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[Drew Hendry]

No, I am about to conclude.

The supports that I have laid out are the kinds of policies that we put in place in Scotland to try to help and to mitigate measures such as the bedroom tax.

[Christine Jardine]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Drew Hendry]

No, I am going to finish in just a second.

Those are the things that we try to do in Scotland to help to mitigate the harms from this place, but we could do so much more. We could do things very differently, but we need the powers of independence in order to do that.

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[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish National party. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mhairi Black), who opened the debate and laid bare the sheer scale of the cost of living crisis for people across these islands. It has been remarked on that there have been a number of contributions mainly from the SNP Benches, but I do want to single out the one Conservative party contribution, from the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). He started off by expressing almost a degree of frustration that the motion before the House touched on the big issues. He then spent the rest of his speech complaining about other issues that he wished he could debate, most of which were under the competence of the Scottish Parliament—of which, of course, he is a Member. It was none the less good of him to grace us with his presence.

We had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson), who spoke eloquently about the challenge for businesses in Midlothian as a result of the cost of living crisis. He was followed by my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan), who expertly rebutted many of the points made by the hon. Member for Moray about comparisons with education policy in England.

My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) spoke about food and drink. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) spoke about the impact of the ice arena energy costs in Kirkcaldy. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) was right to open his speech by painting a picture. At first, most of us thought that he was talking about Brexit, but actually it was a reminder of all the scare stories we were told in the run-up to the referendum in 2014. He was right to do so, because every single one of them has come to pass while Scotland remains a member of the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) was her usual cheery self; a ray of sunshine every single day. What was noticeable was that, as a member of the party of the people’s vote, she almost avoided any mention of Brexit. The Liberal Democrats have gone from being the party of the people’s vote to the party of “Don’t mention Brexit.”

[Christine Jardine]

rose—

[David Linden]

She is about to do it now.

[Christine Jardine]

I respectfully point out that perhaps the hon. Member was not in the Chamber or did not hear when I talked about Brexit. My party is more than happy to point out the damage that Brexit is doing to the economy, as I did when I spoke. Perhaps he would like to go back and check the record.

[David Linden]

I was in the Chamber—I may have lapsed into a coma. The hon. Lady talks an awful lot about Brexit and the damage of Brexit. The reality is that the Liberal Democrats were advocating a people’s vote knowing that Brexit was a disaster. I ask her to reflect on her party’s hypocrisy on the idea that, when the facts change, people should have the opportunity to change their minds. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.