Cost of Living

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Many of my constituents, like many across the country, are struggling—struggling to pay their energy bills, struggling to put food on the table, struggling to keep their head above the financial flood waters that threaten them and their families. Energy bills are up 300% or so in the last two years, food prices are up 17% in the latest Which? survey—the prices of the cheapest and most essential foods have soared the most—and mortgages are up by 61% in just the past year. That, of course, was caused by the disastrous seven-week reign of the previous Prime Minister and her Chancellor.

The excuse frequently trotted out by those on the Conservative Benches—we have heard it again today—to justify the inflationary attack on us all, which hits the lowest paid the hardest, is Ukraine. The problem with that argument is that it shows just how short-sighted and backward-thinking UK energy and economic policy has been for decades. I am no geopolitical expert, but it seems to me that pegging our electricity prices to the wholesale cost of gas, putting so many of our eggs in a basket controlled by Putin and murderous oligarchs, and relying on a region that has never been renowned for its stability was nonsense on stilts.

Instead of using past decades to invest in our energy sector, build a green industrial base and begin the process of decarbonising our grid—thereby reducing our dependence on the likes of Putin—the Labour Governments of the past put their weight behind the dash for gas, while the Tories paid lip service to the very idea of industrial strategy. It is their economic strategy, exemplified by the previous Prime Minister and those catastrophic seven weeks, that has caused mortgage rates to skyrocket and left our economy in the mire, wrecking any ability to recover from the kind of shocks to the system we have seen over recent years, whether from covid or from Putin’s warmongering. Most of all, it is their kamikaze Brexit unleashed on our society that has destroyed what was left of the UK’s capacity to invest in its own recovery and future.

In 2016, my constituency voted two to one to remain in the EU. My constituents knew and know that our economic prosperity and our wider society are inextricably linked to our European allies. From the airport, which delivers the largest cargo exports by value in Scotland, to the whisky bonds and warehouses that slake the thirst of millions of Europeans, through to the universities and colleges with links to their contemporaries on the continent, and the hauliers based in my constituency who experience at first hand every day the Kafkaesque world created by the current Government—they have all been hit hard by Brexit, and so have their staff. They and we have lost a huge amount since Brexit.

But then, so has the Labour party. Many of us can remember the savage criticism that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) received from those on his own Benches because he, in their view, was a secret Brexiteer. Now everyone in the new model Labour party is a Brexiteer, including the current branch office manager in Scotland, elected after the previous democratically elected leader was booted from office by the big boss here. It is no surprise that they are getting very excited about their small increase in the opinion polls in Scotland, because—let’s face it—what else do they really have to get excited about? Their boss down here has declared that he does not care if he sounds like a Conservative, while the shadow Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), tells his radio listeners that the Labour party cannot be

“picking through all the Conservative legislation and repealing it”

if it ever got back into office.

The Leader of the Opposition promised the abolition of tuition fees for higher education—abandoned in England but maintained by a Scottish Government trying to ensure that education and learning is not the preserve of a wealthy elite. The Leader of the Opposition promised common ownership of the mail, energy and water—abandoned in England but maintained in Scotland, where it has jurisdiction, with water bills in Scotland being substantially lower and 35% more per capita invested in infrastructure. He also resigned from the Labour Front Bench after what he said was a “catastrophic” result in the Brexit referendum, but he is now happy for the UK to wallow in that catastrophe, while Scottish Government plan for a future within Europe and alongside our friends and allies.

Mr Deputy Speaker, the sad truth is that you could not put a fag paper between the two Front Benches in this place. They are both set on policies that will exacerbate and extend the cost of living crisis; both hellbent on ignoring reality and ploughing on with exclusion from the single market; and both sticking their head in the sand as to the damage that their ultra-free market economic policies are costing and will continue to cost ordinary households across these isles, regardless of who sits on the Treasury Bench.

[Ian Murray]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Newlands]

I wish the recently selected Labour candidate in Paisley and Renfrewshire North all the best in the next election, because she will need it, going round the doors with a Tory manifesto coloured in red and a leader who would sell his granny for a few hundred votes in a midlands marginal—and on that, I will give way.

[Ian Murray]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree with his colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow South (Stewart Malcolm McDonald), who said:

“‘Labour are just the same as the Tories’ is not a strategy, it’s the absence of a strategy”

and that telling people Labour and the Conservatives are the same “won’t get us far”?

[Gavin Newlands]

Who said it was a strategy? It is a fact. All I am doing is pointing out facts. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to read out all the examples of his leader going back on his word in terms of nationalising various industries, I am more than happy to do that, but I am not sure we have time for it. Everyone here and everyone in Scotland knows that his manifesto will be Tory lite at the next election. It might work in Edinburgh South, but it is not going to work in many places across the central belt of Scotland.

[Dave Doogan]

Does my hon. Friend see the delicious irony that the electoral fortunes of Scottish Labour are hinged entirely on the electoral ambitions of middle England?

[Gavin Newlands]

It is as if my hon. Friend has read my speech—I was sitting beside him, so maybe he did—because I am making the very same point; indeed, I just made the same point about the midlands marginal. The Labour leader is betting the entire future of the UK on winning a few votes in English marginals, and Scottish Labour had better wake up to the reality that that is not going to cut it when they are out campaigning at the doors in the next election.

At the same time, the Labour candidate in Paisley and Renfrewshire North will be campaigning against a Scottish Government who have rolled out 1,140 hours a year of free, high-quality childcare, delivered over a quarter of a million baby boxes to new parents, scrapped prescription charges, extended free bus travel to under-22s, maintained free eye tests and provided free school meals for pupils in primary 1 to 5—all measures that are putting money back in the pockets of people where it is needed most—and against an utter rejection of the fallacy that the state should be rolled back, a fantasy that has afflicted the UK for the past 13 years. For the Labour party to turn its back on reversing the lunacy of the previous 13 years is a complete abdication of responsibility—responsibility that should be focused on those who need the state’s help the most.

To give just one example, the First Steps Nutrition Trust’s report this month on the impact of the cost of living crisis on child diets found that the cost of infant formulas had increased by an average of 24%, while the cheapest formula went up by 45%. The average tin of formula now costs just over £14, while the Healthy Start grant in England, Wales and Northern Ireland was frozen this year, and less than two thirds of eligible families are successful in applying for a grant. At the same time, the Scottish Government have uprated our Best Start package by over 10% this year—that package has an 88% uptake rate—as well as rolled out and expanded the Scottish child payment, getting support to households who desperately need it. It is utterly shameful that we have babies in this country with parents who cannot afford to feed them even the basics. Infants are crying with hunger because the pittance that the UK Government have decided is enough to feed them does not cut it in the real world. The chances of those infants getting a healthy diet once they get older have also decreased, with fresh food inflation sitting at 17%—that is where shops have fruit and veg at all.

There will be Members on the Government Benches who have the gall to tell us that empty fridge shelves and rocketing prices of imported produce are nothing to do with Brexit. They are all someone else’s fault—the hauliers, the farmers, the shops, the workers, the parents, the children—anything to avoid responsibility for the catastrophic mess they have created. They wanted to take back control; instead, they have taken us back to the 1970s, with inflation through the roof, industrial action across the economy, living standards falling continually and food shortages in our shops.

Just this week, the zoomers and zealots who pushed the Brexit campaign in the first place are gathered for a festival of delusion up the road from this place. The influence that these cranks and charlatans have had on the body politic and the direction of these isles is surely the most revealing piece of evidence that the UK is a busted flush. They have succeeded in isolating us from our allies and continuing the harmful economic policies that their great leader Thatcher imposed in the past.

Those who promised that Brexit would mean taking back control should explain exactly what control they think they have taken back. Is it control over an energy market that is rigged against consumers and profits the middleman? Is it control over the tens of thousands of skilled workers who have fled this country in recent years to their former homes in EU countries, so disturbed and dispirited were they by the hostile environment and bureaucratic nonsense cooked up by Members on the Government Benches—now with the connivance of Labour Members, too—leaving our health service without skilled and dedicated staff when we need them most, and virtually every bus company in the country cancelling services because so many drivers have moved to Poland?

Is it control over an economy that even the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility says will end up 4% smaller than it would have been without Brexit—wealth and productivity that will never come back while the UK sits in unsplendid isolation? This is an economic crisis that is not going to go away. It is permanently embedded in the fundamental structure of how the UK operates and the way in which the UK governing class and both parties have turned their backs on the rest of Europe. What is equally shameful is that we have a Labour party that is fully signed up to that Brexit agenda—signed up to policies that will continue to take us down that failed road.

At least Scotland has a way out. At least Scotland has a Government who are taking action, despite the fiscal restrictions imposed by the UK, to tackle child poverty through the Scottish child payment and Best Start; to create a social security system that puts dignity and respect at its heart; and to invest in decarbonisation and a just transition to net zero. At least Scotland has a party that takes seriously its responsibility to its citizens to do better, and at least Scotland has a Government who want to rejoin the world and be part of the mainstream of Europe, rather than sit in self-imposed exile. At least Scotland has a Government who want us to fully harness the wealth and resources of our country, natural and human, as an independent sovereign nation. It is time that Members on both Front Benches got out of the way of that democratic mandate and allowed the people of Scotland the chance to escape a Union that is costing them more than ever.