Cost of Living and Brexit

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I have not even got through the first page of my speech, so if hon. Members do not mind I will take no further interventions for now.

The cost of living crisis is loading unbearable stress and anxiety on to millions of people. Just last week, a woman came to my surgery with her family. Her mortgage is up for renewal on 31 August this year. Her current two-part mortgage is on a 1.29% fixed rate, and a 2.15% fixed rate, which are both up on 31 August. Those two parts look as though they will be renewed at around or above 5%, alongside large product fees. Her monthly mortgage becomes unaffordable, and with the cost of everything else increasing, including the weekly shop, she does not know how she will keep her family home. They have a Tory premium on their mortgage running to thousands and thousands of pounds.

I genuinely ask the Minister, who I know personally cares about those issues, what advice he would give to my constituent, and to the millions of other mortgage holders who are coming off fixed rates and being met with interest rates that are eye-watering in comparison with their family budgets. He voted for the former Prime Minister’s Budget, which crashed the economy and left mortgage holders and rent payers with that Tory premium. He voted for all the measures that the Government proposed in that Budget that made the situation worse. What does he now say to people who will be sitting around dinner tables tonight worried about losing their homes? Those are the family and real-life scenarios of this Government’s decisions.

We should never forget that this crisis, which impacts on millions across the country, was created and made worse in Downing Street. This is a Government-made crisis where political choices are having a direct impact on people’s mortgages—and subsequently on rents, as the mortgages of landlords also become unaffordable. The Prime Minister is absolutely culpable.

This crisis is not just the result of one disastrous mini-Budget that the Government backed; it is the result of 13 years of this Government’s decisions—13 years of little to no growth in the economy, 13 years of stagnation, 13 years of party before country, and 13 years of appeasing Tory Back Benchers rather than looking after the country. Thirteen years of failure—unless, of course, you are looking for a seat in the House of Lords. Even now, this Government are more interested in protecting the profits of the oil and gas giants than in helping ordinary families with their energy bills. At the same time, this Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor, imposed the highest tax burden for 80 years on those very same people, taking more money out of their pockets when they need as much as they can get. We have the highest inflation in 40 years.

I agree with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who I thought was fair to suggest that part of the blame is down to Ukraine and other factors, but in the UK we have stubbornly high inflation, higher than most of our peers, and certainly much higher than in the United States and the European Union. Food inflation is more than 15% and shows no sign of falling any time soon. Some food inflation on the most basic of goods bought by the poorest in society is touching 20%, and it is all compounded by the disastrous 13 years of policies on energy that have left us exposed to shock and crisis in the energy sector.

The SNP motion talks about the damage caused by the Tories’ Brexit, and on that we agree. The Government have failed to negotiate a good deal with the European Union, despite their promises at the last election, and instead they have left the country with a deal that is only marginally better than no deal at all. It is a deal to ensure that the Prime Minister’s party was happy, rather than in the national interest, and every month that goes by, the Government continue to undermine the relationship with our European neighbours and friends, which is having dire consequences on jobs, businesses and this country’s place in the world. That has to stop.

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

I know the hon. Gentleman cares passionately about Brexit—so much so that he nearly left the Labour party for Change UK but cancelled the press conference. In the debate on article 50, and the vote against triggering it, he said:

“I will do so in the knowledge that I will be able to walk down the streets of Edinburgh South, look my constituents in the eye and say to them that I have done everything I possibly can to protect their jobs, their livelihoods and the future of their families.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2017; Vol. 620, c. 1052.]

With the chaos unravelling just as he feared back in that debate, and Labour’s current position on Brexit, can he still look those same voters in the eye?

[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.