Business of the House

Deidre Brock Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I am sorry for the losses expressed by the Leader of the House, and we send our deepest condolences to all those affected, particularly the family and friends of Eilidh MacLeod.

I am not sure where to go with my business questions today. I could ask the Leader of the House about the £74 billion wasted in last year’s reckless September Budget and the resulting pain for householders, the questions hanging over the UK Government’s flagship freeport project and why the National Audit Office has not been asked to investigate it, the 4 million children living in poverty in the UK today because of Tory austerity, or the catastrophe of Brexit, which, of course, Scotland did not vote for. The truth is that it will not matter as the Leader of the House will once again ignore my question and instead read a pre-prepared script for the latest of her routine videos attacking Scotland’s elected Government, rather than answering for the actions of her own. So, I am afraid that it is in the spirit of hope rather than of conviction that I ask her this: can we have a debate in Government time in this Chamber on the infected blood scandal, so that the terrible accounts that those of us on the all-party group have heard from victims and their families might be told again and, hopefully, finally shame this Government into taking action now before it is too late for many of them. It is too late for Randolph Peter Gordon-Smith, the late father of my constituents, Justine and Rachel, but it is not too late for them to be treated equitably as the executors of his estate, and to be given proper compensation for all the traumas that they suffered as carers during the dreadful and distressing decline of their father until death finally overcame him.

In the light of the second interim report, Justine cannot understand—and neither can I—why registration of the estates of the unrecognised infected deceased cannot be completed through existing support schemes now, using the same mechanism as the first interim payment, without further complicating and prolonging matters through the establishment of an arm’s length body, as the report proposes. Do not these families deserve justice now where it can be delivered? I would be most grateful to the Leader of the House if she addressed that question before reading out the video script written for her.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind remarks about Karen and the other remarks she made.

I admire the hon. Lady’s consistency in her lack of situational awareness. She mentioned management of budgets, and I remind the House that the SNP Government have mismanaged their budget; despite cutting £1.2 billion of spending on public services, they had a £100 million overspend. I remind her to compare our record on caring for children, where we have 400,000 fewer children in absolute poverty than when we took office in 2010.

As I mentioned in my remarks to the shadow Leader of the House, we have also had good news of improving life opportunities for children in England, with the good news that English schools have dramatically improved our reading performance for nine and 10-year-olds. We are fourth best in the world, having inherited a situation where, in 2012, only 58% of six-year-olds were able to read fluently.

In contrast, in Scotland, both on health and education the SNP is letting the children of Scotland down. We have the worst-ever gap between the richest and poorest pupils, thanks to botched reform; literacy rates were falling before the pandemic and they have dropped dramatically further still. The only thing the SNP has managed to increase in education is the tax burden on teachers.

The hon. Lady raises the very serious matter of the infected blood inquiry. I have had the privilege of meeting many of those who were infected and affected by that appalling scandal, and I went to hear some of the evidence that they gave at the inquiry. It may fall to us in this place, on our shift, to put that right, but we must put it right. There is not just the original injustice that was done to those people, many of whom were children at the time, but the further layers of injustice that have happened with regard to their financial resilience, as many of them lost their homes and were not able to work, facing the appalling stigma and hardship that came with that. We have to put that right. That is why this Government set up the compensation scheme review to run concurrently with that inquiry, because we very much wanted, when that inquiry reported, to be able to make amends for that scandal. It would be an excellent topic for debate and I know that many Members in this House would want to attend if a debate was secured.