St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs
Debate between Dave Doogan and Torcuil Crichton(4 days, 19 hours ago)
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Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for securing this debate on St Andrew’s day and for giving us the opportunity to take stock of the issues and challenges facing Scotland. I will not detain the House for long, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you caught me on the hop—I had hoped to be writing my speech while others made theirs.
I will plough on to discuss poor St Andrew. I have been checking in on Scotland’s patron saint, and he does not look very good. As a Scot, his average life expectancy would be just 77 years; his sister, Andrea, could expect to live to 81. Some 26 years into devolution and 18 years into an SNP Government who were meant to make things better, Scotland has the lowest life expectancy not just in the UK, but in the whole of western Europe.
But do not worry, because the SNP is coming to the rescue of Scotland’s ailing saint and ailing population—or it would do, if it could get ambulance waiting times in order. In January last year, one patient in Lothian on category red—that is a heart attack situation—had to wait more than 17 hours for an ambulance, and an individual in the highlands this year had to wait for 18 hours. It now takes a median wait of 22 minutes for NHS 24 to be answered in Scotland. The NHS app, which I have had for many years as a patient at the Royal London hospital, will not be available in Scotland until 2030. Why? Because the SNP Scottish Government refused the English NHS app, because the political optics of putting the St Andrew’s cross on an English app just would not look good, so Scots have to wait.
Scots are being ill-served. They have been waiting a long time through our revolving carousel of Health Ministers. A rotating carousel of 130 health strategies—one for every seven weeks of this SNP Government—has meant that 618,000 Scots are still waiting for specialist care in Scotland’s NHS. One figure is going up in Scotland’s health scene: the number of private health operations, which is up by 55% since 2019. Those are not just for those who can afford them, but those who need them because the waiting lists are so long that they have no alternative.
Scotland has a large number of health boards, with 14 health boards, 31 integration authorities and numerous quangos, all under tight Scottish Government control. Mike McKirdy, an eminent surgeon assigned by the Scottish Labour party to assess the future of Scotland’s health, has said it is a “complex structure”. He said that structure
“means reforms and improvements are difficult to roll out at scale or pace, while accountability and transparency are easier to avoid.”
Scotland is being ill-served in its health, and the ailing St Andrew is being ill-served by this SNP Government when it comes to health.
Torcuil Crichton
I do not think I will.
Of course, St Andrew was bilingual, or trilingual or quadrilingual—as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) pointed out, he is celebrated in Russia and Greece. He appears on the Basque flag, and Basque is the oldest language in Europe. If he and his children were living in Glasgow, they would make up that one third of Scottish schoolchildren in the “Dear Green Place” who speak more than one language—something that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), in his desperate attempt to divide Scotland, found so appalling. To allay your fears, Madam Deputy Speaker, I emailed the hon. Member for Clacton—I assume the email went to his constituency office. I saw that the email received no reply, because he is rarely seen in this place or in Clacton. But he has been informed.
The hon. Member for Clacton is appalled by the celebrated diversity of our great city, but I am not. I am very proud of the dozens of pupils at the Glasgow Gaelic school, and I am proud that dozens of pupils who speak Arabic, Urdu, Polish, Punjabi or Chinese are students as well, but these children—like St Andrew, ailing in his unhealthy bed on those waiting lists—are ill-served by Scotland’s SNP Government.
As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), a former Secretary of State for Scotland, there is a statistical fiction in education as well as in health. Professor Lindsay Paterson, the esteemed Scottish academic, has said that the attainment statistics for Scotland’s schools
“fail to capture the serious decline of attainment that has been picked up by PISA.”
Of course, the Scottish Government previously used international assessments to measure the gap between teachers’ appraisals and real attainment, but those surveys were abandoned in 2008. Now Professor Paterson says:
“What is euphemistically called pupils’ achievement of the curriculum levels is in fact teachers’ impressions of whether their own pupils have achieved the levels… They are simply hunches.”
In 2016 the then First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, promised that her Government’s priority would be to close the education attainment gap. On this week’s figures and at current rates, it would take 133 years to close the poverty rate attainment gap in Scotland—that is shameful. Scotland and St Andrew’s children are being let down again by this SNP Government.
Torcuil Crichton
I will, if only because the hon. Member displays the best budget cut I have seen this year.
Dave Doogan
The hon. Member is very concerned about St Andrew. We should focus on St Andrew today, but in parallel I am concerned for St David, and what he and his family might be enduring under the catastrophe of Labour-run Wales. I wish things were better in Scotland, and I know that my colleagues in the Scottish Government are working extremely hard to make things better under the egregious constraints of this Union, but the Labour Government in Wales are not so motivated. Can the hon. Member explain why it is only St Andrew’s bairns in Scotland who are getting elevated out of poverty on these islands, while child poverty is rising in Labour England and Labour Wales?
Torcuil Crichton
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, which allows me to highlight that some 95,000 children in Scotland are to be lifted out of poverty by our Chancellor’s Budget, which got rid of the two-child benefit cap.
It is not just in terms of education and health that St Andrew’s children are being failed. St Andrew was a fisherman and was used to boats, as are many of my constituents in the islands, but these modern-day St Andrews are being let down. They see thousands of pounds of shellfish exports rotting in the harbour, or having to be deep-frozen at extra cost, because of the failing SNP’s ferry fiasco. For that situation, Madam Deputy Speaker, I need no notes, because the ferry fiasco is writ large in the experience of all my constituents, who have suffered for years because this SNP Government did not manage to procure enough ferries and took their eye off the ball. This crisis, which they thought would affect a few hundred islanders, has become an international symbol of the failure of nationalism in Scotland.
This week I welcomed the extra £820 million that the Chancellor found to give to the Scottish Government this year. In my book—in anyone’s book—£820 million is eight CalMac ferries, but the SNP Scottish Government can only manage 2.5 ferries for £500 million. It is a shame and a scandal. People in the Western Isles know that the S in SNP stands for “stunt”—the portholes had to be painted on to the ship so that Nicola Sturgeon could have a pretendy launch. That £500 million means that the S in SNP stands for “squander”, with millions wasted, affecting the ability and confidence of my constituents to stay in their homes and be connected to the rest of the islands. I hope that S will also stand for “swept away”, because in May that is what Scotland needs.
Budget: Scotland
Debate between Dave Doogan and Torcuil Crichton(11 months, 1 week ago)
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Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz—we always have to say that, but in this instance, I genuinely mean it. I am grateful to speak on this issue. When I saw this coming up on the agenda for Westminster Hall, I thought, “Goodness me, who has brought this?” It turns out that it is the Government. I thought, “That is all right. Well, let’s see what the facts are because this Budget had precious little in it to be welcomed in Scotland.”
I will start with that which could be welcomed for Scotland. Thankfully, the Chancellor heeded the SNP’s manifesto call to change the fiscal rules to allow more investment in capital infrastructure. That was good and welcome, and it will be helpful. They also heeded the SNP’s pre-Budget call for greater investment in the NHS, which will be very welcome as we try to recover from covid and staffing challenges. But aside from those two things, on which the SNP gave the Government a menu, the Budget has been an unmitigated disaster for Scotland and Scotland’s economy. It has imposed billions of pounds of service cuts and tax rises that will hit working Scots in the pocket and do very little, if anything, to deliver on the promise that the people of the United Kingdom were offered as a prospectus in the run-up to the election.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
Would the hon. Gentleman describe £50 million for Argyll and the Isles and £20 million for the Western Isles as a “disaster”?
Dave Doogan
I hope that that money will be spent and make a great difference, but it will not compensate the Western Isles and the Northern Isles one bit for the money that they have lost as a consequence of Brexit. The hon. Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) and many of his colleagues herald this as the largest Budget settlement for the Scottish Government, as though Budget settlements go up and down. But they continually go up: every latest Budget settlement is the biggest Budget settlement since the last one.
As various Bills have passed through the Chamber, I have not run out of opportunities to point out to the Government how the basics of fiscal policy and economics work, and here we are again. All power to the communities of the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton). I hope they get great benefit from that money but it does not fully compensate them for what they have lost, and no mistake.
The tax rise of £40 billion represents the biggest since Norman Lamont in 1993. Do not forget that when this Government came in, they inherited the highest tax burden in living memory, or certainly since the end of the second world war at least—
Dave Doogan
Like the hon. Lady, I am very hopeful that we will see Berwick Bank approved and into the construction phase as quickly as possible, to cement Scotland’s enviable position as the renewable powerhouse of Europe. She shares that ambition with me, but what we are talking about is due process. It ill behoves elected Members of any stripe or any Parliament to meddle in the statutory process of a consenting major development; that will unwind in the way it unwinds, but I very much hope it is positive and expedient.
I turn to the Women Against State Pension Inequality—the WASPI women. They will absolutely have been left wondering what they have done to deserve such a catastrophic betrayal by the Labour party of their very modest and reasonable ambitions. During the debate on the autumn statement, I said that it was fantastic news that the Government, to be fair, had made sure that the money was there for the infected blood scandal and that the postmasters were properly compensated. Neither of those two scandals was of the UK Government’s making—well, not deliberately of their making; certainly not the infected blood scandal—but the WASPI women’s situation was. We now know the Government have turned their back on those people in the most reprehensible way possible.
The Chancellor promised a growth Budget and the hon. Member for Livingston says it is a growth Budget, but sadly it will
“leave GDP largely unchanged in five years”.
The inflation forecast will compound that. Inflation is set to rise to 2.6% and interest rates by 0.25% just; mortgage rates, after a brief period of respite, are on course to rise again. For years, people up and down these islands, especially in Scotland, have been hammered by the cost of living crisis. They, alongside small businesses, will be looking at this hatchet job by the Labour party and wondering what on earth will be coming next. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, no less, has pointed out that somebody will pay for these higher taxes; that somebody will be the ordinary working person. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that there is only a 54% chance that the Labour Government will meet their own fiscal rules through this Budget, raising the question of why the Chancellor thinks this amount of economic pain is worth such a low level of fiscal gain.
What about investors in the agricultural sector? Scotland’s agriculture is a very much larger part of its economy than overall UK agriculture is of the UK economy, but I am sure the Chancellor never bothered to speak to anybody in Scotland about her raid on farms through her farmers’ death tax. Labour could have done something progressive to stop outside investment and farmers disrupting that market, but they did not and they threatened the very existence of Scottish agriculture.
What would the SNP have done? We would certainly not have put this colossal fiscal drag on the economy of Scotland. We would have made sure that what we did was progressive and proportionate and that it would increase economic growth. I am sure Labour Members are not very supportive of an income tax in Scotland—
Torcuil Crichton
Can I ask the hon. Member which taxes the SNP would raise?
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the hon. Member for Angus and Perthshire Glens that he has spoken for 10 minutes already. If every other hon. Member takes that amount of time, we will not be able to hear from everybody.
Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) for securing this important debate. I join him in welcoming this record settlement of more than £4 billion for the Scottish Government, but I would not want Members to go away with the impression that the SNP Government are somehow benignly mismanaging the economy, carelessly not controlling the NHS or accidentally running down educational standards in Scotland. They are involved in nothing less than the wilful destruction of the pillars of public life and public services in Scotland, because they are neglecting to make difficult decisions. They are putting off the reckoning that there must be in education; we must leave educationalists to educate and teachers to teach. They are also wilfully neglecting transport in the Western Isles and the west coast, and the health needs of constituents like mine.
My hon. Friend the Member for Livingston said that one in six Scots are on waiting lists. My constituents in the Western Isles are not on waiting lists; they are waiting for the sound of a helicopter to take them to hospital, because the NHS does not properly function in the Western Isles thanks to the Scottish Government’s neglect and the lack of resources given to it. In the Western Isles, people do not take an ambulance or a taxi to hospital; they take a bus to an airport, to take a small flight to another airport, to take a flight to a mainland airport, to take a taxi to hospital to get chemotherapy. That is the state of the NHS in Scotland under the SNP.
Torcuil Crichton
I will give way. I would love to hear the hon. Gentleman’s excuses.
Dave Doogan
The hon. Gentleman mentions the litany of failures, as he sees them, in Scotland’s NHS. How then does he explain that spending per head is greater than it is the rest of the UK, that the number of doctors per 100,000 people is higher than it is the rest of the UK, that the number of nurses per 100,000—