Currency in Scotland after 2014

Debate between Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Ian Murray]

Mrs Riordan, I apologise again for wasting another intervention through the nationalists not telling us what plan B would be. Let me tell them what the currency will be in England and Wales. It will be the pound sterling. That is what they will keep.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

The former deputy leader of the SNP, Jim Sillars, said that the SNP’s currency union plans were “stupidity on stilts”. After listening to the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), does my hon. Friend think that Mr Sillars might have been speaking about him?

[Ian Murray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is stupidity on stilts. Economist after economist, academic after academic, politician after politician and business after business has said that the SNP’s currency union plans are completely barking on stilts.

Scotland and the Union

Debate between Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar

Thursday 29th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar]

It is untrue to say that health inequalities widened under the Labour Government, but it is factually correct to say that inequalities are increasing in Scotland under the watch of Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government. Health inequalities are increasing and educational opportunities are decreasing. People from working class backgrounds in Scotland are less likely to go to college or university than people from working class backgrounds in England and Wales. That is happening on the watch of the Scottish National party, not of the Tories or Labour, so will the hon. Lady please not lecture Labour Members on our record? She should focus more on her party’s record in government.

What Scotland do we want to create for future generations? We want it to be a successful country in which to bring up our children, but what role do we want Scotland to play in the world? I want Scotland not to isolate itself, but to engage with its partners in the UK to take on the big challenges of global poverty, to fight climate change, and to fight for justice and fairness in the world. What differentiates Labour Members and SNP Members? Labour Members did not come into politics because we wanted to fight poverty only in our constituencies or our country. We want to fight poverty and create opportunity not only in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but in Manchester, Birmingham and around the world. I do not believe we will do that by creating a border between Scotland and England. There is a vote on a UN resolution today on enhanced status for the Palestinian people, which will hopefully work towards a positive resolution by which we have an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. I came into politics to fight for an independent Palestinian state and for self-determination for the people of Kashmir, not to break up my own country. I want to fight injustice in other parts of the world.

One big point is that we can make the positive case for Scotland economically, emotionally, socially and politically. The most successful aid agency in the world is headquartered in Scotland. It employs hundreds of people, has a budget of £7 billion, helps to save hundreds of thousands of lives every year, and lifts hundreds of thousands of people out of poverty every year, which demonstrates the collective strength of Scotland working in partnership. We are a key member of the UN Security Council not for power or prestige, but to fight tyranny and oppression around the world. I want Scotland to have its full voice in that process. We are a leading economy and country in the G8. A Scottish leader as Prime Minister worked with the G8 to stop a global recession becoming a global depression. Those are positive arguments for Scotland remaining part of the UK, not the negative arguments we get from the SNP.

On the quality of the debate, we will have heated debates and the usual Scottish politics spats between Labour and the SNP and others between now and the referendum—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire wants to make an intervention, I am more than happy to take it. We are divided politically, but we do not want our country to be divided in the process. Whatever happens in the referendum and whatever decision Scotland makes, we must ensure that we come together in the best interests of Scotland and ensure that we fight and create a fairer, more equal country.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being in the Chamber at the start of the debate; I was in a Bill Committee.

My hon. Friend mentions the quality of the debate. Will that not be enhanced if the First Minister is straight with the Scottish people and if his arguments stay on the same track? The arc of prosperity used to mean Ireland and Iceland, but now it has moved on to the Scandinavian countries. Until we have a consistent and honest debate, we will not have a fair playing field.

[Anas Sarwar]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend. When the Minister systematically destroyed the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire on Britishness, he reminded me that, throughout the SNP’s existence, it has claimed it wants independence because England has never treated Scotland fairly, and because Scotland has never had a fair deal within the UK, but SNP Members imagine that everyone will treat Scotland fairly and work together to create a better country when it separates from the UK. That just does not stack up.

SNP Members make assertions on NATO and EU membership. The hon. Gentleman said today that the biggest threat to Scotland remaining part of the EU was from the UK, but he cannot guarantee that Scotland will remain a member of the EU if it chooses independence. We need facts rather than assertion. SNP Members say that Scotland will keep the pound and automatically have a seat on the Monetary Policy Committee; that the BBC will break up and Scotland will have better quality programmes; and that our credit rating and Royal Mail services will remain the same. They are assertions—not one of them is based on fact. The people of Scotland deserve better. Throughout the SNP’s existence, the answer to any question has always been “independence”, but now that the question is independence, it does not have the answers for the people of Scotland.

Scotland deserves a transparent and open debate. It deserves to know what Scotland will look like if it chooses independence. It deserves better than a First Minister and a Scottish Government simply asserting that independence will be whatever people want it to be. That is not good enough. The SNP cannot say to one audience that Scotland will have the Monaco taxes, but then say to another audience that we will have Scandinavian public services. It cannot say that Scotland will have none of the horrible welfare changes and reforms, but that it will have similar corporation taxes to Ireland. That does not add up and is not credible, and disrespects the people of Scotland.

Scottish Separation (BBC)

Debate between Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank my hon. Friend for that. He implied that he was not being serious when he made the point about “Strictly Come Dancing”, but he did look rather serious. In a moment, I will reveal the figures that illustrate how popular the programme is in Scotland. Even though I do not watch it, I am sure that many others do. He also makes an important point about “The Culture Show”. We are proud of the fact that the British Broadcasting Corporation celebrates the history of Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and we would like to see that strength continued and not put under threat by the Scottish National party’s proposals.

It is also asserted that licence fee income will be used to support Scotland’s media and creative industries to a greater extent than is the case now. That means more spent on programmes such as “River City” and still all the UK content.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that I am asking him to give way and not to dance. Let me unpack that bit about the BBC’s input in Scotland. As a public sector broadcaster, the BBC supports independent production companies. Has he had any indication of what the impact will be on that? BBC shows that are produced in Scotland, which inject money and skills into the Scottish economy, can only be supported by that national level.

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. Scotland’s creative industries support more than 60,000 jobs and contribute £5 billion to the Scottish economy. Across the whole UK, 43% of all commissions for independent television producers come from the BBC. In Scotland, the network commissions are the main source of revenues for independent production companies, and that will be put under threat by these proposals.

In Scotland, we are used to the SNP making things up as it goes along, but from this evidence it is not even good at that anymore. It is inconceivable that the quality, quantity and breadth of output could be maintained with just 10% of the current available resource. In the First Minister’s speech to the Edinburgh international festival in August, he laid out his plans for the SBC. He gave the example of Denmark and Norway. Let us compare their licence fee rates. For Denmark, it is £264.27; Norway is £277.94; and the UK is £145.50. That is 40p per day across all formats. Radio costs 6p per day for all programmes and all channels. TV costs 24p per day for all channels and all programmes.

The SBC proposals include commercials and a higher licence fee. Some might ask whether there is any evidence of interest from Scottish viewers in the programmes that I set out earlier. I am happy to set the record straight. The figures show that Scots take a keen interest in UK output. Despite the dislike of “Strictly Come Dancing” expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), some 910,000 people in Scotland watch the programme every week. That is 39% of the audience share in Scotland. Some 750,000 people watched “Frozen Planet”, which is 28% of the audience share. “Match of the Day” English premiership highlights pull in 262,000 viewers, compared with 186,000 for “Sportscene” highlights. Perhaps that is because the Rangers fans are not able to watch their great team in the premiership, which is a source of great pain for me personally. However, we should not worry because the First Minister told Jeremy Paxman in an interview recently that SBC will purchase from the BBC the likes of “Newsnight”. In that very statement, he actually makes the case for the BBC—we Scots already purchase “Newsnight”, and every other TV and radio programme, and it is called the licence fee. Why on earth would we want to break up the BBC then spend money buying the exact same programmes back again? Is that just because it is called the British Broadcasting Corporation?

Sadly, the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is not in the Chamber today. In fact, there is not a single SNP representative present. Perhaps they are too busy thinking about 16 and 17-year-olds being able to vote or about how to gerrymander the Electoral Commission proposals. What they should be doing is engaging in the debate about the future of the country.

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman, the SNP’s broadcasting spokesperson, exposed the true face of the Yes Scotland’s positivity when he said in March this year that the BBC is the institutional enemy of the party’s drive for separation. “Institutional enemy” are his words, not mine.

The hon. Gentleman went on to claim that the SBC would spend £75 million a year importing popular UK programmes, which viewers could then view for free in Scotland. However, the ability to purchase is yet another assertion, not a fact. It is another statement rooted in myth, not in reality.

Setting aside my concerns about any Minister—especially Alex Salmond—dictating the schedule of a broadcaster, he will simply not have the funding to do so. When he makes the assertion on “Newsnight” that we would purchase output from the rest of the BBC, he does so on the basis that the funding would be available to do that and that an independent, free-from-Government-control broadcaster would choose to do so. Both assertions are false.

It is also ridiculous and fanciful to make the claim that nothing would change. Let us examine the claim that the SBC would be able to use the money that it had to purchase programmes. Is there any indication of what it would cost to provide, say, the current package of sports or news for Scottish viewers? This year alone, the BBC will spend £479 million on sport, so we would have no British Open or Grand National and—I can see the SNP breaking out in a cold sweat at the mention of the word—no Olympics in Scotland, and certainly no red button coverage.

The BBC will spend £390 million on news, so there would be no coverage of the US elections or the Arab spring. It will spend £116 million on children’s programmes, so no CBBC, no CBeebies and—I understand of particular relevance to the Minister— no “Nina and the Neurons”. The BBC will spend £336 million on factual programmes, so no “Frozen Planet” and no David Attenborough in Scotland.

The Scottish Broadcasting Corporation’s budget would be, at best, £300 million. The BBC spend on sport is £479 million a year; on news, it is £390 million a year; children’s programmes, £116 million a year; and factual programmes, £336 million a year. So, after spending on buying the BBC programmes that it wants, the claim is that that would leave at least £100 million to produce quality programmes in Scotland. That is roughly equivalent to a single HBO mini-series: a series of “Game of Thrones” costs $60 million to make; “John Adams” cost $100 million; and “The Pacific” cost $200 million. Even then, that is one hour on one night a week. What about the other 167 hours that the SBC would need to fill? That exposes the quality gap of the proposals.

The impact also spreads to the BBC website and the iPlayer. Internet users in the Republic of Ireland, France, Germany and the US do not have access to the website output and iPlayer that the Scots do, for one simple reason: they are not part of the United Kingdom. So Scots would have no access to the existing output: no radio, no iPlayer. Scots would have access to the international iPlayer, but when we compare the two, a quick glance shows what is missing. Also, the international iPlayer has a subscription fee—an additional cost to Scots. Of course, there is no mention of that in the separatists’ proposals.

Web content would be geo-blocked, as it is in every other foreign country, but there would also be other losers from the SNP proposition: Scotland’s creative industries. There are 100 TV production companies based in Scotland, and 15,000 people are employed in the industry. “Waterloo Road” alone, a fantastic production for the BBC, represents a £10 million a year investment and 200 jobs.

Let us consider the current spend in Scotland: it has 8.4% of the population, 8.7% of total licences, and the SNP’s Scottish Broadcasting Commission recommended 8.6% of spend should be local. However, 9% of BBC TV production spend is now in Scotland. High-profile productions such as “Question Time” and “The Culture Show” already happen in Scotland. Scotland has a proud record in the cultural and creative sector, fantastic festivals and world renowned actors. I must mention the tremendous regeneration in my constituency in Glasgow on the Clyde. The BBC capital investment in its Pacific quay headquarters is approaching £200 million. That is a real success story for Scotland, but it is all at risk from the SNP’s plans.

Not only Scots would lose out; the rest of the UK would lose out, too. There is a licence fee freeze until 2016. On top of that pressure on BBC income, losing Scottish licence fee income would mean an off-the-top cut of almost 10% in BBC income. That risks decimating the organisation. The position put forward by the SNP is not only not credible, but downright misleading.

In summary, the proposals mean a higher licence fee; loss of the iPlayer; more adverts; fewer popular programmes; and fewer channels. It is yet another gulf between the rhetoric of the SNP and the reality of what their proposals mean for Scottish viewers, producers and the wider creative industry. Instead, what we need in Scotland is to look beyond the narrow constitutional debate and to continuing to use the collective strength of the United Kingdom and the BBC to support the industry, attract investment, create jobs and wealth, invest in both our present and future talents, and develop the quality programmes that we can enjoy here in Britain and also export around the world.

STV

Debate between Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to speak about an issue that is of great importance to the city of Glasgow and to Scotland. The challenge of jobs and growth will be a defining political issue in the coming year. People want to know where new jobs and future prosperity will come from. Those in the private sector, who must create the jobs and wealth that Britain needs, will want to know whether everything that could be done is being done to support their efforts. They will want to know whether our Government are making the right choices on jobs and growth, and the right choices for the future of Britain.

One such company already asking those questions is STV Productions in my constituency. STV Productions is one of the few businesses of scale in the Scottish television production sector. It is a hugely important part of the Scottish creative industries cluster and a key employer in Glasgow’s thriving media hub on the banks of the River Clyde. The growth of STV Productions can help to secure and develop a thriving, sustainable television production sector in Glasgow and throughout Scotland, delivering significant economic, social and cultural benefits. The growth of STV Productions will also secure and create much-needed private sector jobs.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development says that the impact of Government spending plans will mean a 200,000 drop in employment this year. Under those headlines are larger numbers of job losses. PricewaterhouseCoopers calculates that public sector cuts will lead directly to around 500,000 private sector job losses over the spending review period. The CIPD has previously said that 1.6 million jobs could be lost, with the increase in VAT estimated to cost 250,000 jobs. Jobs will be created in the recovery, but the challenge to replace all the jobs lost through public spending cuts, as well as those lost as a result of the unemployment remaining after the global banking crisis and the impact of VAT, will be huge. The jobs that Britain needs can be created only by successful and growing private companies. They need the confidence and certainty that will justify their investing. Public policy must be focused relentlessly on creating the conditions for growth. Today the Government are making a series of wrong choices that will hamper the ability of private companies to grow.

Last November, the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport made a choice that denied STV Productions the independent status that it sought. Officially classifying STV as an independent television production company would have allowed it to compete for programme commissions under production quotas reserved for independents by broadcasters such as the BBC and Channel 4. In short, independent status would have offered STV Productions the chance to create employment opportunities in Glasgow. Ofcom broadly welcomed STV’s aspirations, saying that independent status would encourage greater access to network commissioning by external producers. Meanwhile, Ofcom’s advisory committee for Scotland endorsed the broad policy position of ensuring that television production be enhanced in the nations. The Secretary of State decided to overlook that advice and to deny STV independent status.

STV Productions currently supports 305 full-time equivalent jobs. The company’s combined direct, supplier and income impacts stand at £15.3 million of gross value added in the Scottish economy. If STV Productions maintains its current market share in 2016, its economic impact will increase to 317 jobs and £15.9 million in GVA.

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate on Scottish television. It is a shame that we could not have a motion of no confidence in the Government right now, given that there is nobody on the Government Benches, but I know that that is not the way procedure works. My hon. Friend is eloquently outlining STV’s contribution to the economy. Independent producer status would allow that contribution to grow even further, leading not just to STV’s growth, but to the growth of the entire production sector in Scotland, helping it to branch out from its hub in Glasgow to many other parts, including my constituency.

[Anas Sarwar]

I thank my hon. Friend for staying for the debate. I agree wholeheartedly with his comments. Independent status would not only benefit STV, create jobs in the company and create growth in the city of Glasgow, but help other independent production companies in Glasgow and throughout Scotland to branch out in many of the sectors involved.

Had STV Productions gained independent status, its competitiveness would have increased in the BBC market and other domestic and international markets. By 2016, such an increase in competitiveness could have increased its economic impact by 30% to 396 jobs and £19.8 million in gross value added. However, as a result of the Secretary of State’s decision, the economic impact of STV Productions in 2016 is expected to be £3.9 million less than it could have been.

The provision of 79 full-time equivalent jobs would have been great in itself, but as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray), independent status for STV Productions would also have had an effect on the economic impact of the wider production sector in Scotland. The growth of a company of scale would have led to an increase in the competitiveness of the sector as a whole., and that increased competitiveness could have allowed independents with Scottish headquarters to compete against international production companies with a presence in Scotland. By 2016, the resulting growth could have increased the economic impact of the sector as a whole to £98 million and supported 1,847 jobs. That is private sector growth on a scale that the Government cannot afford to ignore.

The Secretary of State could have secured a bright future for the independent production sector in my constituency and beyond. Instead, his decision will allow independents with headquarters outside Scotland to gain at the expense of the growth of STV Productions and those with headquarters in Scotland. The overall effect will be a reduction in the future economic impact of the television production sector in Scotland. The decision fails to recognise that STV is perhaps the only Scottish company with sufficient capacity to take on such large-scale productions. It fails to show a full understanding of the measures needed to secure a viable and sustainable broadcasting industry in Scotland. Above all, it fails to encourage private sector job creation in my constituency and throughout Scotland.

The creation of a strong and competitive private sector must be central to the society that we are trying to build. We must support people who are in business and leading businesses. We need growth and job creation over the next year, but we also need to lay the foundations for a stronger, better balanced economy in the future.

I recognise the concerns of smaller independent production companies in Glasgow and in Scotland as a whole, and I accept that STV Productions will have to address many of those concerns if it wants independent status, but I genuinely believe that all independent production companies—including STV, if it could acquire its licence—would benefit from the resulting growth in the sector.

I want to see companies such as STV Productions grow, create more profits and create more jobs. With that in mind, I invite the Secretary of State, along with his colleagues, to visit STV Productions in the beautiful city of Glasgow, on the banks of the River Clyde, and to review his decision. That would benefit my constituency, the city of Glasgow and Scotland as a whole.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Ian Murray and Anas Sarwar

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

rose—

[Anas Sarwar]

rose—