Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Debate between Hywel Williams and Peter Grant

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant]

Is it not remarkable how—in this great global superpower, this global leader of the free world, this super global economy—every time that anything goes wrong it is global’s fault? “It was not me. A big global done it and ran away.”

I did see one figure at the weekend—that the price of energy in France is going up by about 4%. Here it is going up by 10 times that, even more than 10 times that for many people. Going back to the hon. Gentleman, I am only quoting figures from the Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility. If the Government do not trust the OBR, perhaps it is because the number of people trusted by the Government is as few as those who trust the Government.

Let us not forget what promises were made before the Brexit referendum—I know that some people want to say that that is all water under the bridge and that we can forget about it. The present Prime Minister told us in 2016 that an upside of Brexit would be the freedom to scrap the unfair VAT on fuels. Now he says that removing VAT would be a “blunt instrument” that would not direct help towards those in most dire need. The Leader of the House, who I gather has just been promoted to the Cabinet, promised us in 2016 that the price of food would go down if we left the European Union. What has happened to those promises now, and where are the people who made them? Why are they not here to explain themselves to us and more importantly to our constituents?

[Hywel Williams]

Earlier the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) seemed at least to imply that the policy after Brexit was self-sufficiency in home-produced foods, whereas I had thought that, bestriding the world stage, we would import whatever we needed.

[Peter Grant]

Again, the hon. Member has got it absolutely spot on. Tory Back Benchers have been given quotes to read out by their Whips, and they routinely read them out regardless of whether they bear any relation to reality or whether they completely cut the feet from the argument presented in an earlier quote. They sometimes forget, especially these days, that what the Whips tell them to say today might well contradict what they told them to say yesterday, because the truth may have had to change.

Labour is absolutely right to condemn the record of this Tory Government, but Scotland will not forget that in previous incarnations the Labour party has played its part in creating this crisis. I know that it will not make comfortable listening for Labour Members to be reminded of that. One of the reasons we have been worse hit than a lot of other European countries is that even before the pandemic we were already one of the most unequal societies in Europe. The hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton mentioned that in his speech, but previous Labour Governments did nothing to address it. The Blair-Brown Government managed to preside over an increase in inequalities in Fife, Gordon Brown’s home county, during a period of economic growth.

Although I have no doubt that Labour in Scotland will demand that the SNP Scottish Government fix the whole problem, Labour has repeatedly voted against giving Scotland the powers to allow us to do just that. Employment law, minimum wage legislation, banning exploitative zero-hours contracts, banning fire and rehire, and the proper provision of sick pay could all have been put into the Scotland Act in 2015. Labour voted to keep all that within the hands of the Tories. Energy; the energy price cap; discriminatory charges for access to the national grid for Scottish producers; a decades-long obsession with nuclear power, whose true costs the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy admitted to the Public Accounts Committee yesterday we still do not even know—Labour’s policy on all these has been almost identical to the Tories’. Labour’s policy has been that Scotland should trust this Government on all of them.

Pensions—reserved to Westminster; income-related benefits—almost entirely reserved to Westminster; the national insurance increase, which everybody in this House opposes—reserved to Westminster. In fact, on pensions, during my time as an MP we have seen this British Government betray their promises to millions of WASPI women, betray their promises on the pensions triple lock and free TV licences, and underpay more than £1 billion in pensions to over 130,000 pensioners. Last year they also failed to pay tens of thousands of pensioners their pensions at all after they had reached state pension age.

It is quite clear that we cannot trust this Government with pensions, any more than we can trust them to look after anyone else living on a low income, but Scotland will never forget who did a tour of pensioners clubs in 2014 and told the people of Scotland: “Your pensions will be safe under a British Government.” My message to Gordon Brown is this: our pensions will never be safe under any British Government. If he thinks that the people of Scotland will be fooled by the same myth next time, as they were in 2014, he has another think coming.

Although we will support the motion if it is put to a vote, and although the recent crisis has been made infinitely worse by the British Conservative party, we will not allow the Scottish Labour party, or the UK Labour party, to forget that the reason why Scotland is still part of this mess is the unholy coalition that Labour chose to enter into with the Conservative party at the last independence referendum. I urge Labour Members to consider very seriously indeed whether it is in the interests of their voters in Scotland or the rest of the UK for them to form a similar coalition with the Tories at the next independence referendum.

Royal Assent

Catalan Independence Referendum

Debate between Hywel Williams and Peter Grant

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Hywel Williams]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. He makes a fair point. In fact, someone remarked to me that had events such as those in Catalonia occurred further away—perhaps not in an EU member state, perhaps in a poorer country—politicians throughout Europe would have been on their feet preaching democratic values. The silence from so many EU leaders is extremely concerning.

In the European Parliament, the European Commission’s First Vice-President, Frans Timmermans, condemned the efforts to hold an independence referendum as a violation of the Spanish constitution and therefore, significantly, as a threat to the rule of law in all EU countries. He said:

“violence does not solve anything in politics”,

and I agree. He continued:

“However, it is of course a duty of any government to uphold the rule of law and this does sometimes require the proportionate use of force”.

Those of us who witnessed the actions of the police on 1 October, could scarcely believe that he used the word “proportionate”. What we saw was far from proportionate.

President Juncker said that the vote in Catalonia was not legal and that the matter was an internal one for Spain, and he called on all the relevant players to move to dialogue. Those statements are just not good enough. They do not address the political reality, which is that 90% of those who voted were for independence. This is, essentially, a political question, and the fact that the Spanish Government resort to the law—which is, in many ways, feasible—but do not address the political issue other than, of course, their seeming move towards taking control in Catalonia again, is extremely concerning. The echoes from Spain’s history are very troubling.

Belatedly, Enric Millo, the Spanish Government’s representative in Catalonia, said in a television interview:

“When I see these images, and more so when I know people have been hit, pushed and even one person hospitalised, I can’t help but regret it and apologise on behalf of the officers that intervened.”

There is a great deal in that statement with which I could take issue, including the word “intervened”, because it was much more than an intervention. I welcome the fact that the Spanish Government’s representative said that, but it is belated, because we have waited many days for that sort of response. The Spanish Prime Minister initially said a great number of things, such as that there was no referendum in Catalonia on Sunday—a denial of reality that took my breath away. He also asserted—I paraphrase—that the actions of the Spanish police were a model to be admired throughout the world. There is a huge reluctance on his part and the part of his minority Government to face up to the political reality of what is happening in Catalonia.

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman was genuinely prescient in applying for the debate when he did. Does he agree that the job of politicians is to talk to people they disagree with, to try to find ways of agreeing without resorting to violence? Given that Catalonia has submitted 19 formal requests to the Spanish state for talks on the constitution and to date 19 of them have been rejected, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the honourable and courageous thing for the Spanish state to do now would be to offer to talk to Catalonia, to find a solution that respects the will of the people of Catalonia but also respects the desire of the rest of Spain to maintain its constitutional integrity?

[Hywel Williams]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The impression has been given, not least in the UK press, that Catalonia has moved to this position almost on a whim; that it is being deliberately obstructive and destructive. There is no time to go into the constitutional history of the matter, and I would probably not be in order if I did so, but suffice it to say that the status of Catalonia appeared to have been settled in 2006 with an agreement between Barcelona and Madrid. However, that agreement was overturned and then significantly eroded by the judgments of the constitutional court in 2010. A series of events led the Catalonian Government, almost in desperation, to move to a referendum.

European Union (Finance) Bill

Debate between Hywel Williams and Peter Grant

Tuesday 23rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Temporary Chair (Hywel Williams)]

I call Peter Grant.

[Peter Grant]

Tapadh leibh—thank you, Mr Williams. I apologise for not being able to say that in Welsh despite your attempts at tuition last night. I will keep practising.

It struck me after hearing the first two speakers in the debate that we had spent an hour and 45 minutes discussing the Bill and the only point of contention appeared to be whether the Government should write letters, and, if so, how many. If we are serious about sorting out great European institutions that are inefficient and have a lot of waste, I suspect that many of the audience of millions watching live on television will ask us to hold a mirror up to our own face. A debate such as this surely cannot be what this place was designed for.