Cost of Living and Brexit

Debate between David Linden and Ian Murray

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I love it when the SNP quote my own words in debates, because I am very proud of what I and my party did in trying to resolve the savages of Brexit. I am delighted with the way that we pushed the Government all the way in trying to ensure that the country was put first and not their party. Let us not forget that when the Division Bell rang on 19 December 2019, we backed a deal that we knew was thin, but we saw that as the floor not the ceiling. The SNP decided that no deal was the best way forward. Let me put that into context. If it is the case that Brexit under the current deal is having an impact on the cost of living crisis—I have just said we agree with that—surely that would be magnified by many multitudes by having no deal at all. The record shows that the SNP supported and backed no deal.

The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire spoke, rightly, about the history of this place when we debated the Brexit process, but when the House had the opportunity to back a customs union that would give us frictionless trade with the European Union, SNP Members decided that was not for them and the vote was lost by six. That is on the record as well as my own words, which I stand by 100%. [Interruption.] I will give way to the SNP again. Perhaps they can try to explain why they preferred no deal over any deal.

[David Linden]

Will the hon. Gentleman outline, for the importance of context and the record, how many Labour MPs also abstained on that vote on 19 December?

[Ian Murray]

I do not agree with the hon. Member—he is justifying his abstention on the basis that other people abstained as well. I did not agree with them at the time, and I still do not. No deal would have been an unmitigated disaster for the country.

Again, I go back to the point—SNP Members might want to reflect on this—that if, as is the case, Brexit with the deal that we have got is a contributor to the cost of living crisis, surely having no deal with the European Union would have magnified the cost of living crisis even more. They cannot say one without the other, and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) just confirmed, they backed no deal when the deal came to the House.

Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy

Debate between David Linden and Ian Murray

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I agree. I will be happy to correct the record if I am wrong, but I think the highest poverty rates among children in Scotland are in the First Minister’s constituency, Glasgow Southside. If its rate is not the highest, it is certainly very close to the top.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Ian Murray]

I am happy to give way. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us about the poverty rates in Glasgow.

[David Linden]

The poverty rates in Glasgow are far too high, but that is because of the Tory Government who are controlling the economy: 85% of welfare spending is controlled by this place.

The shadow Secretary of State talks about the turgid record of the Conservative party. As we approach a general election, people will want to see the big difference that Scottish Labour MPs would make. What would be the biggest difference in immigration policy and Brexit policy, for example?

Employment Law: Devolution to Scotland

Debate between David Linden and Ian Murray

Tuesday 6th September 2022 Westminster Hall

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

It is great to have you in the Chair for this debate, Sir Edward. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for securing the debate. At the start of her contribution, she said she wanted the devolution of employment law, to get it away from the Tories. That has been the thrust of the debate.

If we look at the context of where we are since 2010—a long 12 years ago—we can see that in-work poverty, low pay and financial insecurity are up for workers across the country. Incomes have stagnated for over a decade and real-terms pay today is equal to, if not lower than, 2008 levels. Wages have suffered a decade of stagnation, and will continue to do so. It is the worst it has been in over a century. The latest figures show that the level of taxation for working people in this country is at its highest in 70 years, which will result in the largest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s—who knows when that goes back to? The Living Wage Foundation, one of the great organisations of this country, estimates that over 1 key million workers are in insecure work, lacking basic rights and protections, and that across the whole of the economy, one in nine workers is in insecure work and lacking basic rights.

This is a great debate in which to pay tribute to our trade union colleagues, particularly the Trades Union Congress general secretary Frances O’Grady, for driving a lot of the issues forward. One thing the Government tend to forget is that the most successful companies in this country are those that have good relations with the trade unions and with their employees, where Government, the trade unions, employees and employers work together as partners to create an environment that provides high-quality jobs and pay. It can be done; I say it can be done because the Labour Government that came in in 1997 transformed workers’ rights in this country. I was not in this place at the time, but many of my colleagues who were tell stories of sitting through the night, overnight—maybe you did this yourself, Sir Edward—two, three or four nights in a row, trying to get national minimum wage legislation on to the statute book. That legislation took security guards in this country, who were on the equivalent of 30p an hour, up to a national minimum wage. Of course, now, the difficulty with the national minimum wage is that for too many, it has become a national maximum wage. That is why we need to move on to something much more progressive, and we have committed to do so in the next Labour Government.

All that, alongside the cost of living squeeze—the cost of living crisis—means that things are only getting worse for working people and for the vast majority of the population. Inequality is rising, not just for the individual but across the nations and regions of the UK. When the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), spoke in Downing Street this morning, he did not even mention levelling up; maybe that was because it was always a slogan, and levelling up does not actually exist. The new Prime Minister, as we have heard already in many of today’s contributions, has promised to outlaw the ability to strike and to break strikes by bringing in agency workers. She has called workers lazy and said that they need to graft more. A new Prime Minister is supposed to come in with a fresh broom to resolve some of the problems in our economy, but it looks like she will make them considerably worse for working people everywhere in the UK, wherever they live.

Some of today’s contributions have been absolutely correct about the consequences of those problems for working people. Everybody in the Government—including, I am sure, the Minister—said with consternation that the P&O fire and rehire was a total disgrace. They were calling in chief executives; they were in the House of Commons at the Dispatch Box. The Secretary of State for Transport derided P&O for what it was doing, yet nothing has happened on the back of that. It is correct that the private Member’s Bill on banning fire and rehire was talked out by this Government. Any reasonable Government would have done what always happens with private Members’ Bills: talk it out because they do not want it to be anyone else’s idea, and then take it on themselves and bring forward something that they could live with. However, there has been nothing on fire and rehire.

As we come out of the covid pandemic, if we set aside all the big issues around the cost of living and insecure work and look at employees and workers themselves, we see something really stark in our economy. I will not give away any confidences, but I know a lot of the British Airways staff quite well because we Members from Scotland travel up and down to London regularly. BA treated its staff abysmally—not just over covid, but for the decade before, whether it be on pension rights, pay and conditions, moving their centres of employment from Edinburgh and Glasgow to London, or consolidating all that by banning them from flying home on commercial flights.

When covid came and BA got rid of a lot of those staff, they went and got other jobs. Some have been re-employed in the industry, and when I speak to them, they tell me that they are now having a much better time working for a different employer. When covid finished and BA was desperate for staff, it went back to ask those people if they would like to be re-employed, and every single one of them said no, as we would expect. Those loyal BA staff had made that company the great British product that it is—employees always drive great products, services and businesses—but they were treated so abysmally that when the company came calling and said, “The proverbial has hit the fan. Will you come and help us?”, they said that they would not. That is partly why our airline industry is in such a bad state at the moment.

British Gas did the same with fire and rehire, so there is a litany of issues for the Government to consider.

[David Linden]

It is absolutely right that we give BA and British Gas an absolute bashing, but one organisation that started using fire and rehire quite early on was Asda, a number of years ago. In considering that litany of employers who have indulged in fire and rehire, it would be remiss of us not to call Asda out on that shameful practice, too.

[Ian Murray]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned Asda. We could probably spend the rest of the debate coming up with other companies that have done it. There is an argument to be had about whether we should criticise the companies directly, but they are operating within the legislation. If we do not want employers to use fire and rehire—they are looking after a different set of circumstances—we need to change the legislation to stop them doing so. That is why fire and rehire should have been banned.

This a similar debate to one we had maybe five or 10 years ago about zero-hours contracts. I remember when I was in the shadow team for Business, Innovation and Skills back in 2012, we commissioned Norman Pickavance, who had been the HR director at Morrisons—the supermarkets—to write a report on zero-hours contracts. His report said quite clearly that there were ways to ban zero-hours contracts in their entirety without affecting all the issues that the Government hid behind as excuses for not doing so. Ten years later, zero-hours contracts, the gig economy and forced self-employment are rampant, and there is no employment Bill to deal with them.

Will the Minister address the Government’s objection to the Taylor review? What is their objection? Why is there no Bill to enact its recommendations, and why is the new Prime Minister not introducing one? During a cost of living crisis, workers should not be sacked; they should be made more secure, because people should have confidence that a wage will come in so that they can at least partially pay their energy bills and other bills. We will see what happens on Thursday with the cost of living crisis and energy bills, but I suspect that the responsibility for paying energy bill debt will be passed from the Government to the consumer, which is certainly not something that we support.

I agree with the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill), who said that there are inconsistencies in devolution. Nobody ever said that devolution was perfect; it was never going to be perfect. Asymmetric devolution is, by its very nature, imperfect, but we have to find mechanisms to run through some of those issues. Devolution has always been a journey, as the hon. Gentleman himself admitted in mentioning Calman, Smith and others, and it will continue to be a journey, particularly for those who are committed to devolution—I am not sure that many in this Chamber are committed to it, with the exception perhaps of myself.

[David Linden]

And your colleague.

[Ian Murray]

Maybe. Well, I am not so sure if the Minister is—maybe she will tell us.

I do not want to get into the issue of bin strikes and so on—the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) mentioned the strikes—but they go to the heart of something that is infecting our politics at the moment. Our refuse collectors worked all through covid and did a marvellous job, but decided—quite rightly—to strike on the basis that they had been offered a 2% pay rise. People need fair pay rises, particularly the lowest paid. In all our councils across Scotland—it might be the same across England—we have probably the lowest-paid public sector workers out there. They are striking on the basis of pay rates.

We then had an unholy argument in Scotland about who was responsible for the strikes. Then, a few weeks later—one might reflect on adding one and one and getting maybe four, five or two—the First Minister put a funded deal on the table and the strikes were lifted. How can that not be the responsibility of the Scottish Government rather than of the Labour party in Edinburgh? That is beyond my comprehension. That is the kind of debate that we have had, rather than a sensible debate about whether employment law should be devolved to Scotland.

I know that the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Amy Callaghan) has been back a while, but I have not had the opportunity to welcome her back. I wish her well in her continued recovery. Her speech showed that less is more, because she hit the nail on the head with regard to what we should be doing in employment law and getting it away from the Tories. My contention is that the best way to get it away from the Tories is to vote for a UK Labour Government, because it would be better to have a Labour Minister sitting on that side of the Chamber and putting forward Labour policies for workers’ rights.

Can I directly address the hon. Member for Glasgow East? I may misquote him here, but he said that the Scottish Labour party will have to explain why they oppose the devolution of employment law. We do not. The Scottish Labour party’s policy is to devolve employment law. I am not sure if the hon. Member for East Lothian was on the Smith Commission or whether it was his former colleague John Swinney, however, the reason employment law was not devolved was because the UK trade unions did not want that. They were concerned about devolving it without thinking through—

[David Linden]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Ian Murray]

If the hon. Member will let me finish the point. This is the fact of the Smith Commission. They did not think through the consequences of cross-border employment and cross-border companies and whether it would make at that particular time a much more difficult framework to operate on.

[David Linden]

Can I confirm on the record that the manifesto from the British Labour party for the next general election will have a clear, cast-iron commitment to devolve employment law to the Scottish Parliament?

[Ian Murray]

It will have a clear commitment to implement what we are currently doing in terms of the Labour party’s commission. I am not going to discuss what is in the commission in a Westminster Hall debate because it is being finalised and will be launched in the early part of November. However, the hon. Gentleman will not be disappointed with some of the outcomes of that detailed work.

The commission is not about Scotland as such; it is about all the nations and regions that come under the umbrella of the UK. I know the hon. Gentleman does not believe in the UK, but we do and some of that is in there on devolution. That is the reason the Scottish Labour party, of which I am a member, is entitled to have a different set of policy perspectives from the UK party on a whole host of issues. Gordon Brown’s commission, which will be launched in November, will do some of that.

[Ian Murray]

I cannot recall who was and who was not, but the conversations that went on through the conduit of the TUC, which was responsible for taking those conversations forward, had come to the conclusion by speaking to their members that the UK trade unions would not want to devolve. Those positions may have moved since; in fact, I think the GMB’s position has moved since, which is hardly unsurprising given the state we have.

I am sorry the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) is not here after that rather difficult and strange intervention. In the time that I was the shadow Minister responsible for employment law, I sat across from the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, Jo Swinson, who was a predecessor, successor and then predecessor again to the Scottish National party in East Dunbartonshire. She was the Minister at the time and took that Bill through the House of Commons, which not only did a whole host of anti-trade union things but extended the qualifying period for employment rights from one to two years. The Liberal Democrats are not sitting on the fence; they are quite clearly on the other side and trying desperately to climb back across the right side. I am disappointed that the hon. Lady came out with that because it undermines her arguments about what she needs to do.

I conclude with a canter through the question of what the Labour party would do. Our deputy leader, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), launched our fair work policies at conference last year for a new deal for working people. Launching that, she said it was an attempt to make Britain the best place in the world to work. I think it is an attempt to do that. We did not develop those policies in a vacuum of ideology, which is essentially what the previous Government have operated on—I hope the new Government will be slightly better—but by working with our trade union colleagues and employers, and working together to come up with something that can be implemented for the benefit of the economy and workers.

We would strengthen workers’ rights from day one. We would take away that two-year qualifying period and take it down to day one. That is the right thing to do and it gives people security. It cannot be right to be able to sack someone without a reason at one year and 364 days. In fact, the argument I have always made on that is that if we wait until one year and 364 days to find out if someone is good enough, the manager should be sacked for not doing their job properly. They could find out much earlier in the process if someone is good enough for the job they have been employed to do.

We would ban fire and rehire; that is a fairly straightforward thing to do, which would protect workers in this country and create good businesses. I went on holiday by ferry this year, but I just could not travel on P&O; I used another ferry company. When I saw that big P&O sign as I approached Dover, I just felt disgusted that a firm would do what P&O did to its employees at a time when they require their jobs and their wages more than at any time in the past.

Banning fire and rehire would also make work more family-friendly by helping to balance home, community and family life. We have done that before, through the maternity and paternity pay brought in during the last Labour Government. We would extend statutory maternity and paternity pay now that we are out of the European Union. Shared parental leave is a big issue. In fact, I agree with the hon. Member for Arfon (Hywel Williams) regarding the uptake of shared parental leave, but I do not think it is a legal thing. I think it is a cultural thing and also about equal pay, because all the analysis shows that there is such a low uptake of shared parental leave because it is still the father who is the main or highest earner in a family, and sharing parental leave may be a cultural thing in terms of employers and employees asking for it. Those are some of the cultural barriers that we have to break down.

We would ban zero-hours contracts. All workers have the right to regular contracts and predictable hours, reasonable notice of changes in shifts, and wages paid in full for cancelled shifts. We would strengthen trade union rights, raising pay and conditions, and—crucially—we would use fair pay agreements to drive up the pay and conditions of all workers.

I did not want to be political in this debate, but some of my colleagues from the Scottish National party could not resist being political earlier, so I cannot resist now. One of the key things that a Government can use to drive up standards is procurement, and one of the biggest levers that the Scottish Government could pull, given the powers of the Scottish Parliament, is procurement, using it to drive up standards.

However, we have just seen £700 million of licences for ScotWind being issued to companies with no procurement specifications on wages, local employment, apprenticeships and all those kinds of workers’ rights. So, yes, devolving these matters might be the right thing to do, but my challenge to the SNP is not about the principle of devolution but to tell us what it would with it.

[David Linden]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman missed the point made in a number of our speeches when we talked precisely about the Scottish Government’s business pledge, which has baked within it various levers regarding how we use procurement. Which parts of the Scottish business pledge does he object to that the Scottish Government have already got in place?

[Ian Murray]

The main thing that I object to about the Scottish Government’s pledges and strategies and documents is that they tend to be launched with huge fanfare, including big front pages in the newspapers and pictures of the First Minister plastered all over the television, and then those pledges and documents go on to some shelf somewhere and sit there until they are relaunched again, about one or two years later. The proof is always in the pudding, but I am not sure that the Scottish Government even attempt to make the pudding; they just bring the recipe out now and again. That is my biggest criticism, because it happens on climate, on procurement and in other areas. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to answer the question directly, that is my objection.

There is no objection from Labour to the principle of the devolution of employment law. However, there are lots of issues to work through regarding what it would be like in practice. I want to hear what the Minister has to say about the employment practices of this country, her objection to the Taylor review and bringing its recommendations forward in a piece of legislation, and what the Government—the new Government—will do. Who knows? The Minister might be in the new Government. I see she has her phone on the table; perhaps it will ring shortly and she will have to excuse herself to run away and take a call.

Whatever the Minister’s answer to such a call is, the Government really have to look at what is happening now in the country—with the low growth, high inflation, high tax and stagnation that we have—and find a way to break out of that real problem in the economy. The best way to do that is to have a highly skilled, highly productive, highly stable workforce with career progression. Otherwise, we will end up in 20 years’ time still having the same arguments about why we have a problem in this country with productivity and why we also have a problem in this country with low pay and insecure work.

Cost of Living Increases

Debate between David Linden and Ian Murray

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

It is a strange thing that over the past five minutes we have heard SNP MP after SNP MP justify why they cannot lift 80,000 children out of poverty. If that does not show how this country is stuck between two bad Governments, nothing will.

[David Linden]

Unfortunately, we on the SNP Benches have to turn our guns everywhere because there are very few guns behind the hon. Gentleman. He is focusing on social security and what we can do—I agree with him about how we can alleviate poverty and inequality—so will he tell us from the Dispatch Box that the next Labour manifesto will commit to the abolition of the welfare cap, about which Labour had nothing to say two weeks ago?

[Ian Murray]

There was not a vote on the welfare cap a few weeks ago. It was about giving more money to the poorest people in this country and SNP Members know that. I take umbrage with what the hon. Gentleman said about the number of people on the Labour Benches, because the criticism we always hear during SNP Opposition day debates is that the Labour party takes up too much time. We leave most of the time for SNP Members to speak and that has always been the case. SNP Members constantly complain that they do not get enough time in this place; they will get as much time as they like today.

I was delighted by that intervention; let me repeat my paragraph. Young children and families in Scotland might be wondering why the Scottish Government will not listen to charities or, indeed, to Scottish Labour’s policy and increase the Scottish child payment to £40 a week. SNP Members cry, “Where would we get the money from?” Such a move would lift 80,000 Scottish children out of poverty and could be done tomorrow under the powers of the Scottish Government. They are wasting money on ferries, Prestwick and vanity projects. The underwriting of the Gupta organisation puts half a billion pounds on to the taxpayer of Scotland. That is what we should focus on.

The Scottish Government passed their budget last month and pushed incredible cuts on to local authorities. They then turned round to those local authorities and said, “If you want the money to run local services, put it on council tax.” Nothing affects Scottish people more than their having to pay massively increased council tax bills because the Scottish Government are slashing the budgets of local government.

There is no better example of dither and delay than the devolution of welfare powers. In 2016, we agreed on a cross-party basis to the devolution of a whole host of welfare powers to the Scottish Parliament. Indeed, in essence the Scottish Parliament could now create its own welfare system if it implemented the policies. Six years on, the Scottish Government still delay the full implementation of the policies. In fact, they will take until 2025 to take full control of the devolved powers. It is important because with skyrocketing energy bills and increasing child poverty, the powers could be used to give, for example, a supplement to the winter fuel payment to help pensioners who are stretched by increased fuel bills. That is what should happen in respect of the changes to welfare powers in Scotland, but it cannot, because the welfare powers have not yet gone through as they should have.

We know that the best way out of poverty is the creation of highly skilled, highly paid jobs, so I must give credit to the SNP Scottish Government because over the past 15 years they have created a host of highly skilled jobs in turbine development, in the construction of ferries and in steel manufacturing. But none of those jobs have been in Scotland: they have been in China, Turkey, Poland and elsewhere. The decisions that the Government make have a fundamental impact on the way we deal with things in Scotland. The newly announced Scotland projects could generate billions of pounds of economic activity in Scotland, so every single job created should be in Scotland, with fabrication plants, British Steel and others.

Of course, as the cost of living crisis develops, the Prime Minister faces some difficulties of his own. Although much of the country is about to spend all their income from their jobs on energy, the Prime Minister is spending all his energy on saving his job. It seems that the choice in No. 10 is not so much about heating or eating but about whether it should be red or white. Little does the Prime Minister know that the cost of living crisis will affect him as well as everyone else in the country. Will the Minister tell us how much more a suitcase of wine from the Co-op will cost next year than it did this year?

As the Government party through the night, Labour offers a serious solution and leadership on the crisis. While the Government are hopelessly distracted by the chaos of their own making and more focused on infighting than on tackling people’s energy bills, we are calling on the Government to address the situation now. They could bring in a motion now to sort out this problem, with fully funded measures to reduce the expected price rise in people’s energy bills in April through a VAT cut on home energy bills that would save most households £200 or more, and targeted extra support for the squeezed middle, pensioners and the lowest earners, who would receive £600 off their bills, paid for by a one-off windfall tax on the North sea oil and gas producers who have profited from the price rises. Under Labour’s plan, every household in Scotland would save more than £180 off their energy bills, and 800,000 households in Scotland struggling with the cost of living would get an extra £400 in additional support. That is nearly £600 for those hardest hit by the energy price rises—critical money into the pockets of hard-pressed Scots now.

While everyone is dithering and delaying as we talk about new referendum Bills and why the Prime Minister is more concerned about his job, Labour proposes genuine action that would help families pay their bills over this most difficult year. That is the difference that Labour and leadership can make, and we will make it in power. With the support of the people of Scotland and those across the United Kingdom, that is exactly what we plan to do at the next election.

Scotland: General Election and Constitutional Future

Debate between David Linden and Ian Murray

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Just for the record, there are Members for Edinburgh East and for Edinburgh South. The hon. Member for Edinburgh East does not represent the whole city, despite the fact that the SNP thinks that it represents the whole of Scotland.

Let me go back to what we could be debating today. We could have debated the dreadful picture that everyone will have seen on social media from George Square in Glasgow last month, where 220 people were queuing up in sub-zero temperatures in the snow to get food from the soup kitchen. A photo says a thousand words, and those words were that both the UK and Scottish Governments are failing the people of Scotland who need their Governments the most. But, no, we are not debating that.

We could have debated universal credit and the £20 uplift becoming permanent, extending it to legacy benefits, removing the rape clause and helping those most in need.

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I will come back to the hon. Gentleman in a second.

We could have debated the First Minister’s so-called top priority: education. But the SNP cannot defend the widening educational attainment gap, thousands fewer teachers, a lower spend per pupil than in 2007, Scotland plummeting down the international rankings, or Scotland’s education system being behind England for the first time ever—behind Tory England for the first time ever. They will not even publish the OECD report into Scottish education before the election—I wonder why. We could have debated education and our children’s future, but no.

We could have debated why, even before covid, the SNP Scottish Government had not met their own legal NHS waiting times targets since 2012. They have broken their own law 360,000 times in the process, but no.

How about international issues? We could have debated Myanmar and the atrocities in the coup, Yemen and the worst humanitarian disaster the world has ever seen, or Scotland’s wonderful partnership with Malawi, but no.

We could have debated how Scottish businesses recover from covid and how we can support those sectors in hospitality, tourism and culture that will take longer to recover and have been hardest hit. What about the 3 million excluded from any Government support? We could have debated that, but no.

We could have debated how Scottish taxpayers are on the hook for over half a billion pounds to fund a 25-year guarantee for a failing business that owned an aluminium smelter and a hydropower plant in Scotland, but no.

We could have debated last month’s Audit Scotland report, which says that billions of pounds of covid support funds are unspent by the Scottish Government and audited what they are spending them on, but no.

We could have been having a debate about COP26 and climate change, but no.

We could have celebrated the success of the vaccine roll-out—all the nations of the UK working together with our wonderful science and research and development sectors—but no.

We could have even debated how the Tories are a bigger threat to the Union than any nationalist. They got us into this mess by playing fast and loose with the UK constitution in the first place, bringing us Brexit, English votes for English laws, cronyism, wasting £37 billion on Test and Trace. We could have debated how they have nothing to offer Scotland but waving their own flag, but no.

We could even have debated how to eradicate child poverty, but no. The SNP uses its precious parliamentary time to debate another referendum—quelle surprise. Surely if SNP Members want to turn May’s election into a referendum on having another referendum, they could at least put their cards on the table and be straight with the Scottish people. Even the hon. Member for Edinburgh East said on several occasions during his speech, “Let us be honest with each other,” so let us make this a great opportunity for them to use their speeches to tell us what their separation proposition means. Let us be honest with each other.

On EU accession, how, when, why? How will they meet the criteria? On borders, will this be determined by the trade and co-operation agreement that has just been signed between the UK and the EU? The Health Secretary said on “Question Time” two weeks ago that it would not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Murray]

I will when I have finished this point.

Mike Russell, the SNP Constitutional Minister and President of the SNP, said before Christmas, and the SNP leader in this place, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, said just a few weeks ago, that the referendum could happen this year. Does anyone honestly believe, whether they are yes or no, that it would be in Scotland’s interests to have a referendum on separation instead of a laser-like focus on covid recovery? But that is SNP Members’ only priority. If it were not their priority, they would not put it on the ballot paper. If it were not their priority, they would not be using the valuable four days until the Scottish Parliament goes into recess for the election to bring forward another referendum Bill. The First Minister says she wants to be judged on her covid record, so which one is it? While most Scots are worried about their jobs and livelihoods, about their health and that of their family and friends, about the future for their children’s education, and about how the NHS will catch up with cancer and other treatments that have been paused during covid, the SNP goes on about the constitution.

We cannot rely on the UK Government to deliver a recovery that works for everyone. We have seen that already. They just want business as usual, looking after their neighbours and friends rather than the country. They want to defend a broken status quo, rather than trying to fix it for the future. That is why the Scottish election must be about what the new Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, is proposing: delivering a national recovery plan that at its heart is about creating jobs, catching up on education and rebuilding our NHS, so that we never again have to choose between treating a virus and treating cancer. That is what we will be putting forward: a jobs and economic recovery plan; an NHS recovery plan; an education recovery plan; a climate recovery plan; and a communities recovery plan. These are the priorities of the Scottish people, far and above all else.

[David Linden]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Ian Murray]

I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, as I have mentioned him during my speech.

[David Linden]

I sit on the Back Benches, watch the hon. Gentleman, the lonely Scottish Labour MP at Westminster, and find myself reflecting every now and again about his once great party. I was party campaigning in a Labour seat in 2001, when it took 65% of the vote. Has he ever reflected on why his party is represented as it is at Westminster, given its intransigent policy against independence and against Scotland having the right to choose?

[Ian Murray]

It is called having principles. The hon. Gentleman ought to try it sometime. We are against independence because it would be bad for the Scottish people, and that is why SNP Members have to answer these questions. They cannot just decide that they are going to move their principles and damage the Scottish economy, Scottish society and Scottish culture on the basis of what the hon. Gentleman has just said. Anas Sarwar will get Scottish Labour back on track with his optimism and his positivity.

As we come out of this pandemic, we must focus on solutions that ensure that Scotland comes back a better, stronger and fairer nation than the one that went into lockdown last year. The SNP wants to go back to the same old divisive discussions, while Labour in Scotland is looking to the future, not separation and not defending the broken status quo. In just a few short weeks, Anas Sarwar, together with my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), has shown that we can be a credible alternative. Scots do not have to choose between the divisive politics of the SNP—[Interruption.]—the divisive, arrogant politics of the SNP that I hear behind me and the Scottish Tories’ status quo.

Not one vote has been cast yet. Now more than ever, Scotland needs its powerful Parliament to deliver a strong NHS, take action on the jobs crisis, deliver a national care service and treat poverty as the health and economic emergency that it is. Scotland needs a Government who do not just say that education is a priority but really show our children and young people that we are committed to giving them the future they deserve.