Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Ian Murray and Ben Lake

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

Apart from chairing the debate wonderfully, of course.

Let us make the serious point. We are debating the motion in front of us and we cannot get clarity from its mover about whether it includes a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies that would give every single household in Scotland £200 off their bills and the poorest 815,000 households £600 off their bills. That is what we are talking about. That is the substantive point that I am making.

Children will be going to bed cold or hungry—or both—and the best that the Chancellor can do is put up their parents’ taxes and lend them their own money to take a tiny amount off their energy bills. It is simply not good enough. The Trussell Trust says that two out of five people on universal credit are forced into a spiral of uncontrolled debt. Labour’s plan to tackle the cost of living crisis would put money in the pockets of Scottish families, helping them to make ends meet, and take worry out of receiving that unaffordable direct debit increase from their energy supplier. Across the UK—I repeat this again, because the right hon. Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) wants a substantive point—we would introduce a fully costed, worked out plan for a windfall tax on oil and gas companies through which every single household in Scotland would get £200 off their bills and the 815,000 hardest hit households would get £600.

In Scotland, the Scottish National party has the power in its hands to do more than just bring Opposition day motions; it can change lives, too. That is what Labour would do. We would use the Barnett consequentials that the SNP has spent on replicating the Chancellor’s unfair policies to give a Scottish fuel payment of £400 to nearly 600,000 households facing the brunt of the crisis. We would top up the Scottish welfare fund so that local authorities could use their discretionary offer further to support households.

[Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)]

I am interested to hear about the shadow Secretary of State’s proposals for Scotland. Has he had an opportunity to raise them with his colleagues in the Welsh Government, who have done exactly the same as the Scottish Government, whom he has criticised so heavily?

[Ian Murray]

The bottom line is that I should not be getting £150 off my council tax bill. That seems fair, and I think that we agree on that. We need much more imagination in how to get money into the pockets of the poorest who require it. The best way is to ask those with the broadest shoulders to put a little more into the pot. It is certainly not the whole host of Ponzi schemes reeled off by the Minister whereby people are lent their own money and will have to pay it back later. We need to implement long-term solutions to keep bills low such as improving the energy efficiency of Scottish homes and, as was mentioned, dealing with off-grid, which is a huge issue in Scotland.

That is a proper plan to tackle the cost of living crisis, unlike this back-of-a-cigarette-packet plan designed to help solve a political problem for the Scottish nationalists—who do not want to back a windfall tax on oil and gas but will not even tell us in public if that is what their motion is intended to do—or the Chancellor who is not only doing little to help but is costing people much, much more and making it worse. That is the difference Labour can and would make in power. We do not want just to oppose the Government in Opposition day debates; we want to replace them altogether, which the Scottish National party can never do.