Debate on the Address

Ian Blackford Excerpts

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I thank Her Majesty for coming to the Houses of Parliament today to deliver the Queen’s Speech. Our thoughts remain with her, given the sad passing of her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, some weeks ago. I also welcome the new hon. Member for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer) to her place.

It was a joy to hear the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Shailesh Vara) proposing the motion. I have some friendship with him: he and I served together when he was the Pensions Minister six years ago and I was the SNP pensions spokesperson. I remember, at the first meeting that we had in his office, the look of horror on his face when we were met by Baroness Altmann. He said, “Good grief. Are the two of you friends?” And, of course, we were. I am delighted to say that we had a very warm and cordial relationship when he was the Minister, and we worked together over a number of matters. He delivered a typically erudite, humorous and passionate speech this afternoon, and I cannot help thinking that it was an application for a job in Government again, if the Prime Minister was listening to him.

I also thank the hon. Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) for what was a tour de force and a ramble round the Tory Benches. I am sure that she, too, will have an outstanding career as a Member of Parliament on the Tory Benches.

This new Session of the Westminster Parliament comes at a time of huge challenge and crisis, but equally a time of fundamental choice for people right across these islands. The covid pandemic has seen our world rapidly change over the course of the past year. This year and into the future, people’s clear desire and demand is that we change things profoundly and for the better. That is exactly why the electoral results of the past week represent such a historic and defining moment. Last Thursday, the people of Scotland turned out in record numbers—the highest turnout at a Scottish parliamentary election—to re-elect the SNP Government for a fourth consecutive term. They turned out to support the message of hope and change so brilliantly characterised by our First Minister. It was an election that broke nearly every record in the book, and the result will continue to reverberate.

That electoral earthquake opens the democratic path that will shape Scotland’s future. Let us be clear: that future will be in Scotland’s hands, and it will be the choice of the people and nobody else.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman mentions the record-breaking election, but he did not mention that it was the Scottish Conservatives’ record-breaking election: there were more votes for the Scottish Conservatives than at any time in the history of devolution, making us the definite party of the main Opposition in Scotland. He talks about Scotland’s choice, but four days before the election on Thursday, the First Minister of Scotland was on the BBC saying that it was not an election about independence. Barely hours after the polls closed, she was calling for another referendum. Why did she mislead the Scottish people four days before we went to the polls?

[Ian Blackford]

I have to say that I am disappointed in the hon. Gentleman. It is going to be important over the coming weeks and months that we can debate properly the choices for the future of Scotland. I make this offer to him: all of us who have Scotland’s interests at heart should be able to debate rationally and honestly what those choices are. Let us respect the electorate in doing that.

Everybody knows that the Scottish National party is the party of independence, and everybody knows—without prevarication, without doubt—that the SNP stood on a very clear manifesto commitment of giving the people of Scotland the choice to have that debate and to have a say in their future. It was clearly contained in our manifesto. We said to the people of Scotland, “Put us back into government again and allow us to lead the country through the pandemic,” but the promise that we made to the people of Scotland was that if they voted for us in that election and delivered a majority for independence in that Parliament, nobody—not the Prime Minister and certainly not the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie)—would stop them having their democratic choice.

The hon. Gentleman has to recognise what happened. Let us look at this in the context that Westminster looks at it—on the basis of the first-past-the-post system. Now, we do not support that system; we support proportional representation. But there are 73 first-past-the-post constituencies in the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish National party won 62 of them. We won 85% of the constituencies on 48% of the vote—the highest number of constituencies ever won by any party and the highest share of the vote ever won by any party. For the Conservatives to try to argue that black is white and they won the election, if we listen to the hon. Gentleman—frankly, nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that the ambition of the Conservative party in Scotland is to be in opposition. The ambition of the Scottish National party is to govern and to take our people to independence.

[Chris Bryant]

If we are talking about victories, could the right hon. Gentleman add to his speech a little bit of a reference to Wales, in particular the 19% swing to Labour from Plaid Cymru in the Rhondda and the fact that Adam Price completely overplayed his hand? Nationalism is a false chimera—I suppose every chimera is false—and he should not put all his trust in one line.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

I believe that the people in Wales should determine their own destiny, and of course I congratulate the Labour party in Wales on going back into government because that is the right thing to do.

We were told when we had the independence referendum in 2014 that we would be respected in this House and we were to lead the United Kingdom. I say to the Prime Minister and everybody else in this House that they cannot deny democracy; they cannot deny the right of the people of Scotland, who have voted in 72 Members of the Scottish Parliament who have a commitment of delivering an independence referendum. [Interruption.] I hear people saying “2014”, but the point is that we were told in 2014 that if we stayed in the United Kingdom our rights as EU citizens would be respected. We were told that Scotland was to be respected. And we know what happened.

In the Brexit referendum in 2016, Scotland voted by 62% to stay in the European Union and we were simply told by this House, “Well, tough; there is nothing that we are going to do for you. You’re going to lose that access to the single market that you have craved. You’re going to lose that right that you have had to work, live and get an education in Europe, because the Prime Minister and the Conservative Government are going to decide for the people of Scotland.” Well, the people of Scotland have given their verdict on that, because the message is very clear: there is a mandate for an independence referendum. Let me put this House on notice that it is the people of Scotland and our Parliament who will determine when that independence referendum will take place. [Interruption.] I hear the mocking that is going on.

[Katherine Fletcher]

You didn’t win!

[Ian Blackford]

“We didn’t win”—can you believe it? We have just taken two seats from the Conservatives in the election: Edinburgh Central and Ayr. I do not know what the hon. Member calls winning when, by the Westminster rules, we win 62 of the 73 seats, and by the warped logic of Conservative Back Benchers, we have not won. The hon. Member lives in a parallel universe if that is what she believes.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will join me in wondering how the House will hold Welsh Labour to account, which has moved its manifesto so much that it can talk about parking its tanks on Plaid Cymru’s lawn, but Plaid Cymru made that lawn.

[Ian Blackford]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. Hopefully the light that we have shone in Scotland gives an example to the people of Wales and Plaid Cymru that they should follow us and find their way back into Europe as an independent country.

Putting on the record the scale of the SNP victory and achievement and the verdict of the Scottish people is especially important given today’s context, because today this Tory Government put forward their policy programme for the new Session. The Prime Minister gained the authority and the mandate to do so when his party was re-elected to office in 2019—re-elected, I might add, with a significantly smaller vote share than was achieved by the SNP in Scotland last week. In that election, the Prime Minister put forward a manifesto with the policies that he said he and his party would implement. Those of us on the Opposition Benches have the right to oppose many of those policies, and we will do so and do so forcibly, but if the Prime Minister secures a majority in this House, that mandate from the manifesto will be legally implemented. It is a pretty fundamental principle and should be a simple concept—it is called parliamentary democracy.

Yet, a few short days after a landslide victory in Scotland, it is that very basic principle of democracy—that right of Governments to propose and implement their manifesto commitments—that this Tory Government are threatening to undermine. By doing so, they are threatening a new low level of hypocrisy and disrespect. The defeated Scottish Tory leader has said that the SNP seeking to implement a fundamental manifesto promise—a commitment to give our people a choice on their own future—should be treated as illegal. Before the results had even been completed, the Prime Minister himself told his favourite newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, that he would try to block a post-pandemic independence referendum.

On today of all days, I genuinely urge the Prime Minister and his Government to think again. He is looking away and looking disinterested, but this is important, because it is about democracy. It is about the rights of people. [Interruption.] People will be watching this, and they can hear Conservative MPs laughing about our desire to make sure that democracy is delivered. That is the contempt that I have talked about.

Let me say to the Prime Minister that any confrontation will not be with the SNP. If the Government seek to deny Scottish democracy, their confrontation will be with the people of Scotland. Secondly, the Prime Minister needs to reflect on this reality: a fight with democracy is a fight he will never, not ever win. I know that the Prime Minister does not want to hear this, but he might try to show some interest in what is going on, because what we are seeing is this Government’s contempt for Scotland.

Today’s Queen’s Speech and this Tory policy programme emphasise another important point. Last week’s elections brought into stark focus the chasm in the political choices being made in different parts of the United Kingdom. The differing values in leadership between the Prime Minister and our First Minister and the tale of two Governments in London and Edinburgh have crystallised the choice of two futures. Time and again, the majority of people in Scotland back a progressive, inclusive, outward-looking vision for the future of our nation. This has been our direction of travel since we gained some powers through devolution, yet in this Westminster Parliament we are facing many more years of right-wing, Brexit-obsessed Tory Governments we did not vote for taking us in a direction we have not chosen. That clear divergence in political direction is simply not sustainable: Scotland has chosen a different path.

As we look beyond the pandemic and build the recovery, our alternative to these Tory values and their vision is set out in our manifesto. Unlike this Tory Government, the SNP manifesto has the support of the Scottish people. The policy programme the SNP put before the people of Scotland will move our country forward, making it fairer, greener and more prosperous. The First Minister is already back at work and getting on with the job. Our alternative to this Queen’s Speech is already in action.

With health and social care services being won on the frontline of the pandemic, this new elected SNP Government will now deliver a 20% increase in frontline NHS spending, a total of £2.5 billion. While this Tory Government dither and delay on reforms to social care, the new SNP Government will move to establish a national care service, backed by a 25% increase in social care investment. While the Conservatives dither, the SNP Government in Edinburgh act. This will include significant investment in the staff themselves. The Tories continue to laugh while we talk about investment in the NHS. Unlike the insult of the 1% offered by the Tories, in Scotland NHS staff have been offered an average—an average, Prime Minister—of a 4% pay increase. The new national care service, backed by £800 million, will enable the Government to offer a national living wage to all care staff. It is little wonder that the Prime Minister hangs his head in shame, and so he should.

To invest in the next generation, the SNP Government will invest over £1 billion over the next Parliament to close the school attainment gap and to recruit 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants. [Interruption.] I do not think that if the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine was back in school he would behave the way he is behaving in this House. He really ought to calm down.

This Tory Government have to be shamed by a professional footballer into providing free school meals. In contrast, the Scottish Government will get on with providing free school breakfasts and lunches to every primary school pupil year round and a device for every child in Scotland to get online. For families, the SNP Scottish Government will build a wraparound childcare system to help support working parents, with the least well-off families paying nothing. While this Tory Government threaten to rip away the lifeline of the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit, the new SNP Government will double the game-changing Scottish child payment over the lifetime of their Parliament. That is a Scottish Government delivering on the people’s priorities.

The context of the covid crisis makes the choices made now all the more critical, because in seeking to build economic recovery in the aftermath of this pandemic, it is vital that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. But the Budget in March and this Queen’s Speech are clearly laying the grounds for more Tory austerity and more Tory cuts. It is also important to point out that no party and no Government who forced through a job-destroying Brexit in the middle of a pandemic can credibly claim to be focused on recovery.

With the powers we have, the SNP Scottish Government are doing everything they can to mitigate this damage and seeking to protect our businesses. We believe a fair recovery should follow the example of the Biden Administration: it must be investment-led. At the centre of the SNP’s recovery plans is an economic transformation that would have fair work and the climate emergency at its heart. This will include an investment of £500 million to support new jobs and to retrain people for the jobs of the future, as well as funding the young person’s guarantee of a university, college, apprenticeship or training place or a job for every young person who wants it. The SNP Government will also embark on a massive programme of capital investment. Over £33 billion will be invested over the next five years in our national infrastructure, directly supporting 45,000 jobs. An SNP Government will deliver a further 100,000 homes by 2032, with investment of £3.5 billion over this Parliament, which will support 14,000 jobs a year.

Ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, enhancing and expanding our world-leading climate action policies will be a key priority. The SNP Government will deliver a green transport revolution by providing free bikes to all school-age children who cannot afford them, removing the majority of fossil-fuel buses from public transport, ramping up investment in active travel, and bringing ScotRail into public ownership with the aim of decarbonising the rail network by 2035. There is also a commitment to decarbonising the heating of 1 million homes by 2030.

This is the vision and these are the values that we will use to fuel the recovery with the limited powers of devolution we now hold. However, the covid crisis has laid bare the need to equip our Parliament with the full powers that are needed to drive our long-term recovery. If we are to fully build the kind of country we want to see, it is clearer than ever before that we need the full powers that we can only deliver with independence—powers to borrow and invest in our economy and in our people. Only then can we build the country that truly and fully reflects our choices, our values and our priorities: a country that lifts children out of poverty instead of wasting sums of money on yet more nuclear warheads; a country that gives our young people the ability to travel, instead of stopping their freedom of movement across the European continent; a country that welcomes the world instead of imposing a hostile immigration policy that damages our economy; and a country that respects and values refugees—refugees who were allowed to vote in our elections of last week—instead of proposing a law in this Queen’s Speech that will rip up the refugee convention.

Just as it is right to point out the opportunity before us, it is also right that we are honest about the risks to recovery if we remain trapped in a broken Westminster system—because hidden in this new legislative programme from the Tories lies a familiar threat. Just as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 was a blatant assault on devolution, this Queen’s Speech doubles down on that agenda with further power grabs on state aid and other aspects of devolved spending and powers. Only yesterday there were more media reports of the UK Government seeking to spend money directly in devolved areas in a desperate attempt to shore up support for the Union. The Tory plan has now been obvious for some time: it is to hand this Prime Minister and his Government more powers to control our choices and dictate our future. It is one more powerful reason for Scotland to choose a very different future.

Post Brexit and post pandemic, Scotland now has the choice of two futures. We know the past Westminster has imposed and we now know the future that it will inflict. Westminster has chosen its future: a job-destroying Brexit, a return to austerity cuts, and more attacks on devolution. Today’s legislative agenda confirms and cements that choice. For Scotland, the choice over our own future is now ever clearer and ever closer. We have repeatedly said that our immediate priority is to steer people safely through this pandemic and to kick-start the recovery. We remain true to that commitment. But when this crisis has passed, there is now a fresh democratic commitment to give the Scottish people the right to choose an independent future. The Prime Minister would do well to listen to the First Minister: an independence referendum is now a question of when and not if. On the SNP Benches, we relish the opportunity for debate and democratic decision that that now-inevitability awakes, and we look forward to Scotland rejoining the independent nations of the European Union.

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the Father of the House, Sir Peter Bottomley.

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

On Advent Sunday 1978, I asked Archbishop Óscar Romero what he thought about the prospect of being killed standing up for the victims of human rights atrocities. With a half-smile, he said: “We can agree that worse things have happened to better people than me.” His death date, 24 March, is now International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims.

I think today we ought to recognise the 10 people who were killed between 9 and 11 August 1971 at Ballymurphy. They were Father Hugh Mullan, Frank Quinn, Noel Phillips, Joseph Murphy, Joan Connolly, Daniel Teggart, Eddie Doherty, Joseph Corr, John Laverty and John McKerr. The inquest was held after the Attorney General in 2011 said that the fresh evidence justified it. The coroner’s inquest started about three years ago and has now reported, and I hope that at some stage this House will have the opportunity to consider what lessons can be learned and how to treat the various other inquiries going on regarding those who died at the hands of all sorts of people, whether authorities or the paramilitaries —the disloyalists or the IRA.

Turning to the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), who spoke for the SNP, my job is to try to make him smile, but with him wearing a mask, I cannot be sure whether I will succeed. He has taken one of my lines by saying himself that the separation parties got 48% of the vote. Some 51% or 52% said that they wanted the Union to continue, and it is worth remembering that in the 2017 general election, the SNP got a smaller share of the vote in Scotland than the Conservatives got in the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Ian Blackford]

rose—

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

I give way to the right hon. Gentleman. It is nice to see that the smile is there.

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful. I am very fond of the Father of the House, as he well knows, but for the purposes of being accurate, the SNP achieved 48% under first past the post. In the list votes, independence-supporting parties actually had a very small majority.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

It shows that we can go on having these exchanges. Sometimes I will speak before the right hon. Gentleman, sometimes afterwards. He has now done both, so I congratulate him on that.

I turn to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and congratulate him on the general success of the elections on Thursday. In trying to deliver the sorts of things that people want, we should recognise that there is good on all sides, and where the parties can overlap for progress it is best. If there is a contest of ideas, let the people decide.

In my constituency, the Labour party did better than some people expected. It is our job to try to find out what we can do to match it, although we took seats from other people, as well as Labour taking some seats from us. It is the kind of contest where if the Liberals are on the up in my area, Labour is down, and if Labour is on the up, the Liberals are down. Conservatives have control and responsibility for most of the decisions made for the quiet, undramatic provision of local services, which is what most of the local elections were about. They were not national elections. They were across the country, but they were about providing services to local people.

In this Queen’s Speech, there are many points to welcome. If I may say to the Prime Minister, one thing is not in the Queen’s Speech, and I am glad it is not there. When the Chancellor had to come to the House and announce he was cutting the official overseas aid budget, he said there would be legislation. I am glad that has changed. One of the points of leadership is being prepared to change one’s mind.

Will my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister lead his Government in re-establishing that target of 0.7% on aid and getting there as soon as possible? We know that the coronavirus epidemic has hurt us. It has hurt other parts of the world and hit the poorer people much, much harder, and our job is to try to help them to raise their standards.

Turning to building safety, there was a major fire at the end of last week. Three storeys caught fire. The builders who two years ago should have taken the dangerous Grenfell-style cladding off the building—that work actually started two weeks ago—said that the affected cladding did not catch fire. I think that was by chance, not design. The only people who have got no absolute right to sue the builders, the regulators and the component suppliers are the residential leaseholders themselves.

The only people who are being asked to pay the extra £10 billion—that is on top of the £5 billion that the Government have rightly started as their contribution towards the costs—are the leaseholders. They are left carrying £10 billion, with no right to sue those who are responsible. Will the Prime Minister kindly have a summit on fire safety with the affected groups—the cladding groups, the National Leasehold Campaign, the Leasehold Knowledge Partnership and the officers of the all-party group on leasehold and commonhold reform—and then put to the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, together with the Chancellor, this simple point: provide all the money that is needed, whether the building is above or below 18 metres, and then find out who can sue those who are actually responsible?

What the Government are doing with levy and taxes is one thing, but that £10 billion outstanding makes people’s lives impossible. They have homes that are not safe, that are not saleable, that cannot be funded and that they cannot afford. If we want to know the effectiveness of the waking watch, we should remember that for a fire in daylight it was not effective. The Government have to step in, although not necessarily to say that the taxpayer will pay the money in the end—it can come from those who were responsible. It is partly a public responsibility on regulation, but it is mostly the responsibility of those who designed, built and went on selling components that were known not to be safe, or were not known to be safe.

I say to media people, “Do appoint a housing editor,” because when housing stories come up, it is too bad when each individual producer or reporter has to learn from scratch what is happening. This is as important an issue as health, so it needs an approach that is consistent, effective and fast, and that works.

I turn to some small issues. One is the VAT treatment of yachts that are being brought back to this country—it may be a small point, but I think that the Treasury or VAT people should look at it. If VAT is paid on a yacht that is then kept abroad for more than three years, it has to be paid again when the yacht is brought back. That will not produce any revenue, because no one will bring their boats back.

All our important nautical brokerage in this country depends on those yachts being here, so we should either bring in a marine passport or lower the rates that are above 5%. We should have talks with the Royal Yachting Association and get on with finding a solution, not just say, “It is the way the thing has to be.” It is not the way the thing has to be; it is not right, and it will not work. I confess an interest, but my boat is an open canoe, not a boat that is affected by the 5% rate or the 20% suggestion.

I know that many hon. Members want to speak, but I turn briefly to the importance of the Government’s approach to levelling up. More and more young families and households are coming to the south coast and living there as happily as those in more mature households, who may be of retirement age but are not inactive. All of them need the kinds of things that I think are now being provided with the support of all parties.

Education is now much better than it was. The prospects of people getting training and apprenticeships and moving on to further and higher education are good; I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), who has been doing the media round today and putting forward the Government’s approach.