Income Tax (Charge)

Debate between Jamie Stone and Alison Thewliss

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

This Budget may have fallen a few days short of Hallowe’en, but for many of my constituents and people across these islands, it represents a real horror show. The past 18 months have been difficult for many people, but yesterday we saw that this Government are prepared to continue to heap misery upon misery by balancing their spending on the backs of the most vulnerable. Not even the most cynical among us could have imagined tax breaks on sparkling wine and short flights just weeks after universal credit payments were cut.

We have all seen the headlines over the last few weeks about monetary tightening, but the self-enforced fiscal tightening in this Budget is much more worrying. The Chancellor tried to fend off criticism and evade proper scrutiny by trailing Budget announcements in the press before presenting them to this House—and his sleight of hand did not stop there. He instructed the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to produce its Budget forecasts using out-of-date figures to increase his chances of being able to cut taxes before the next election. That is a cheap trick, and people should not fall for it.

It was an illusion, too, to try to make out that the Chancellor’s actions yesterday do not come on the back of 11 years of Tory austerity—11 years of the same Government on those Benches, albeit in different guises—of cuts to public spending that this Budget does not come close to reinstating, and of assumptions predicated on some iffy figures peppered through the Budget Red Book. On this Chancellor’s watch, the public are facing a Tory cost of living crisis—an energy crisis, a poverty crisis, an inflation crisis—and the people who can afford it the least are bearing the brunt of it.

The furlough scheme has now ended, and while we do not yet know the full impact of the withdrawal of that support, economists expect that there will be a rise in under-employment and a subsequent squeeze on wages. When the UK Government should be stepping up to tackle the challenge of this cost of living crisis, they are compounding matters with this spending review. It is difficult to remember a bleaker outlook.

IFS director Paul Johnson said on Twitter:

“This is actually awful. Yet more years of real incomes barely growing. High inflation, rising taxes, poor growth keeping living standards virtually stagnant for another half a decade”.

The OBR has said that since it closed its forecast, its analysis is consistent with

“inflation peaking at close to 5% next year,”

even higher than the 4% the Chancellor alluded to yesterday. That is further evidence that high inflation may not be temporary, as the Prime Minister has previously said, and that even those families who are relatively well off will feel the impact of it.

We must not be misled by this UK Tory Government. When the Tories talk of a living wage, it is not a real living wage, determined by the Living Wage Foundation; it is a pretendy living wage, and it is not enough to live on. The Government may claim that the increase to £9.50 matches the real living wage as it stands today, but in reality that is yet a further deceit, because the increase in the minimum wage will not match the real living wage by the time it is implemented. We are three weeks away from Living Wage Week, which will see the most up-to-date real living wage for the UK announced. It will almost certainly increase from £9.50, because the real cost of living pressures we face are taken into account and folded into that figure.

That pretendy living wage has age discrimination baked in, with workers who start the same job on the same day legally entitled to less if they just so happen to be younger. There is a £5,000 gap between an 18-year-old and a 25-year-old. House of Commons Library figures lay bare the difference between the wage paid to the youngest and that paid to older workers, which has grown from 20% at the establishment of the minimum wage to a staggering 97.5% in this Budget. There is absolutely no justification for that. Rent is not cheaper for young people, electricity is not cheaper, childcare is not cheaper, nor is food and nor is travel, so why have this Government decided that their labour should be?

I commend the more than 2,000 real living wage employers in Scotland and I hope that many more will join them. Of course, the minimum wage increase will be gobbled up by the Chancellor’s other monstrous policy choices—the £20 cut to universal credit and the increase in national insurance. People who are out of work or not earning very much will see no overall benefit to these changes, and those on legacy benefits, including people with disabilities and carers, are again forgotten about altogether by this UK Tory Government. Of course, some people are not even entitled to support in the first place, including those with no recourse to public funds—and the many who were excluded from support schemes completely during the course of the pandemic found that they were not entitled to support either.

Those out of work are a big and varied group, including people who have cancer; people who have disabilities; people who care for their children who have disabilities; veterans; people who have been injured at work, and people who are struggling to find a job. All of them are now flung into the Chancellor’s pile of “undeserving” universal credit claimants. That is not good enough, and he should hang his head in shame. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has estimated that that particular group of people—those the Government think are undeserving—now has the lowest main rate of out-of-work support in real terms since 1990.

Let us look in a little more detail at the situation for those who are working. The Chancellor said that the annual increase resulting from the minimum wage increase is £1,000, but overnight analysis from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation puts that figure at an absolute maximum of £364 when the taper rate and cost of living increases are factored in. Some people on universal credit will be nearly £700 worse off. On top of that, every person on universal credit is, of course, £1,000 worse off from the scrapping of the uplift. My back-of-a-Twix-wrapper calculation says that these measures mean that the Chancellor is cutting incomes for those on universal credit by between £600 and £1,700 a year. And it is clear from page 136 of the Red Book that the Chancellor’s giveaways are being funded from the pockets of pensioners, who have lost their protections under the triple lock.

These are policy choices. They are not an inevitability of the situation in which we find ourselves. This spending review is a chance to show the UK Government’s priorities, and unfortunately, it seems that their priority is to give their friends in the City a tax cut, paid for by ravaging universal credit. It is a political choice to cut the tax surcharge on bank profits from 8% to 3%. It is a political choice for the Chancellor to tie his own hands with fiscal rules while our economy is still reeling from a pandemic that has not yet ended. It is a political choice to take food out of the mouths of children by removing the £20-a-week universal credit lifeline, to keep the appalling two-child limit and the rape clause and to maintain a five-week wait for new claimants. It is a political choice to refuse to increase statutory sick pay in line with international standards. And it has been a political choice to press ahead with Brexit in the middle of a pandemic, in the face of all reason.

The Chancellor barely mentioned Brexit in his speech yesterday, even though it is the single biggest policy change the UK has made for generations. Scotland did not vote for Brexit, yet our businesses are having to adjust and absorb the costs of this Government’s mistakes. The OBR says that the evidence so far shows that the impact of Brexit will be a 4% hit to GDP, with knock-on effects on living standards. That is bigger than the expected long-run effect of the pandemic. The OBR’s own analysis cites migration and trading issues as driving factors of the supply chain issues currently hitting our businesses, on top of debt through covid and soaring energy prices that businesses also face and will pass on to consumers.

While the EU is giving Ireland €1.05 billion to mitigate the damage of Brexit, Scotland has yet to receive a single penny piece from Westminster. We need urgent clarity that the £4.6 billion annual increase to the Scottish Budget will be new money, rather than giving with one hand and taking away with the other, as this Government so often do. The £150 million small business fund for Scotland, like the rest of the funding, should be disbursed by the Scottish Government and their agencies, not by Westminster—or, in this case, the British Business Bank, whose good work should not be politicised through this brazen Tory power grab. It is little wonder that more and more people are coming to believe that Scotland’s future will be best served by its becoming an independent European country.

The OBR also said in its outlook report that labour supply constraints are likely to suppress productivity, and it cited constraints on immigration as an example of that. It is very likely that the Government’s restrictive and arbitrary immigration rules are having a long-term negative fiscal impact. That will be of no surprise to Members across the House who proudly represent, as I do, communities with high levels of immigration. As MPs, we see daily the impact of the hostile environment—the widespread misery and harm that it causes, but also the economic impact—and it is only going to get worse. The Refugee Council, for example, says it will cost the Government £400 million more in prison costs to implement the provisions of the new Nationality and Borders Bill. That is an awful lot of taxpayers’ money to treat people so badly. Removing the right of people to work as they wait, sometimes for years, for the outcome of an asylum claim is as dehumanising as it is senseless. My constituent, Sandra, is studying adult nursing at university and is on track for first class honours. She desperately wants to work and contribute to the NHS in Scotland, but has been waiting over a year for contact from the Home Office. She does not have any faith that it will happen before she graduates. That is a shameful waste of her talent and skills, and there are many, many more like her.

Members of this Government will stand and applaud the NHS, but they fail public sector workers at every opportunity. The Chancellor talked about unfreezing public sector pay, but that is a previously announced change that will not generate Barnett consequentials and so will have no impact on the Scottish budget. It is also worth noting that ending the freeze during this period of high inflation does not go far enough. It is effectively a pay cut. If the Government are serious about levelling up, they should commit to public spending and pay public sector workers a fair wage.

The Chancellor should take a leaf out of Scotland’s book and deliver a national care service, creating jobs and increasing the quality of public services for years to come. This Government should stop talking about care as if it is a burden. The Women’s Budget Group says that a high-quality care service requires investment of £28 billion per year over and above current spending, but that that would produce 2.7 times as many jobs as an equivalent investment in construction.

The Tories promised £500 million for family hubs in England to support parents and children, including breastfeeding and mental health advice. That is welcome, no doubt, but the anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe perhaps put it best when she said:

“for every £1 the Tories have taken out of local council funding…in the last decade, Sunak’s budget announcement is putting 0.5p of it back and expecting us to all jump for joy at his largesse and conveniently forget about that 99.5%”.

Now, I try not to get too deeply into matters relating to England and I do not intend to do so, but in my capacity as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on infant feeding and inequalities, I congratulate the Secretary of State on his new arrival. I hope the services his family needs have been there for him. Health visiting and support services in England were lost in the pandemic in many areas, with new parents left unsupported. I urge him to put a figure on breastfeeding support specifically. An expert in this field, Dr Natalie Shenker, suggests a figure of at least £30 million to be truly transformational, covering: additional training, Baby Feeding Initiative community service accreditation, ramped up peer support, integrated specialist lactation support, and comprehensive hospital-only milk bank services. I look forward to engaging with Ministers on that and invite them to present their detailed plans to the all-party group.

In the run up to the spending review, I met business representatives from all sorts of industries, as I am sure the Treasury team did. I was impressed by the well thought out proportionate policy ideas that would have genuinely helped both individual firms and the wider economy in this difficult time, such as: the call from the Federation of Small Businesses to increase to the employment allowance to encourage firms to hire more staff and to take action on increasing energy prices; the Finance and Leasing Association’s call to extend the super deduction to those who lease equipment, which is particularly important as firms face increased costs and increased debt repayments in the coming year; the call from Scope and employers such as 4ICG in my constituency to expand the restrictive eligibility to the Kickstart scheme to support more disabled and young people to apply, because at the moment many lose out to their great loss and frustration; and an online sales tax to encourage people back to the high street.

This UK Government chose none of those things. Instead, they chose: an increase to national insurance, which is a tax on jobs; yet more Brexit red tape; and an industrial strategy that was scrapped before it could be implemented, leaving creative industries in particular without any clarity on the support they are entitled to. There is a lot of talk about science, but there is much that comes from the arts and they have been lost in that conversation. For example, the Glasgow School of Art produces exceptional graduates who should be a part of the strategy, but they do not see their place within it. The Chancellor will say that he has offered cuts to business rates, but, of course, that does not apply to businesses in Scotland, who have already benefited from the Scottish Government’s action. The Scottish Government offer 100% rates relief to retail and hospitality for a full year, the only part of the UK to do so. That was done without consequential funding from the UK Government.

I welcome the review of alcohol duty and hope it will lead to better outcomes on public health. I am concerned, however, that the measures trumpeted yesterday fail to support hospitality and tourism more widely. A few pence off a pint, sooked up by the large breweries, does nothing to support a sector hard hit by the pandemic. Retaining the reduced 12.5% VAT rate for the hospitality industry would make a significant difference as supply chain costs and prices for fuel and labour increase, and it would increase the sector’s attractiveness and global competitiveness. It baffles me that the Chancellor would ignore that call from UKHospitality. I urge those on the Treasury Bench to reconsider and see what more they can do in that regard.

All eyes are on my constituency of Glasgow Central this month for COP26. This Budget and spending review fell woefully short of the ambition required to tackle the global climate challenge: nothing for carbon capture in Scotland and nothing on our need to grow and scale up the renewables industry in Scotland, not just wind farms but tidal and wave.

[Jamie Stone]

Further to my intervention on the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), it is all about delay. One of the terrifying aspects of delay is that we have the skills in Scotland—welders, fabricators, pipe fitters—but the people with those skills are ageing. Every year that goes by, we are missing the opportunity to educate the next generation, the young people who came to the reception on UK renewables in the Commons yesterday. That is another reason why we cannot countenance delay at any price.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. This is an industry with a future. Climate change is the most significant challenge we face and investing in those industries now will set us up for the future. Carbon capture and storage in Scotland would have employed 20,000 people, a pipeline of jobs in an area that much needs it and a transition from the old to the new. The Government ought to be investing in that or giving us the powers in Scotland to do it in our own right.

There should have been measures to tackle energy inefficiency, such as cutting VAT on insulation and solar panels for houses. Such measures encourage people to play their own part in that effort. What do we have instead? We are cutting air passenger duty on internal flights. Manchester United were roundly condemned for taking a 10-minute flight to Leicester recently, but the Chancellor wants to encourage this! He wants more climate profligacy and that is utterly irresponsible. He could have put the money from the scrapped £20 billion Boris bridge through the Beaufort’s Dyke munitions dump into green infrastructure, but he has failed to do so.

The Tories have cut Scotland’s budget when we need to be investing more to stimulate the economy and have undercut the devolution settlement, taking powers from the democratically elected Parliaments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Budget is great news for the 1%, but bad news for equality, inclusive growth and the environment. Time and time again, the people of Scotland are seeing a tale of two Governments with divergent priorities: this Westminster Tory Government providing tax cuts for short-haul flights, sparkling wine and their pals at the banks; and a Holyrood SNP Government determined to stand up for people and businesses, and deliver a fairer, greener Scotland.

I look forward to the day when we do not have to live with the choices made by a UK Government that Scotland did not elect, but have a Government chosen by the people of Scotland with our people’s priorities at their heart.

Protection of Jobs and Businesses

Debate between Jamie Stone and Alison Thewliss

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Member makes a very good and well-considered point. There are lots of opportunities the Government have not considered for how we might spread around the limited and reducing number of jobs we have in order to keep people in employment.

The Federation of Small Businesses has noted that tourism and retail account for nearly half a million jobs in Scotland, many of them seasonal and rural, and many of them now facing the furlough scheme’s winding down at the very time business is at its quietest. As we have seen from local lockdowns, such as those in Leicester, Aberdeen and Greater Manchester, there is an urgent need to put in place more flexible and enduring support—exactly the type of further action the Chancellor promised he would take. Aberdeen, for example, only managed to raise £232,000 via the “eat out to help out” scheme because of the local lockdown imposed on hospitality there. That compares with over £1 million each in Glasgow and Edinburgh. We need to look at whether the schemes in place are flexible enough when local lockdowns happen.

A further spike and further local restrictions seem inevitable, so ending support now is incredibly short-sighted. Until public health grounds for closure are removed, the SNP believes that the Government have a clear responsibility to assist and support wherever they can. The Chief Secretary to the Treasury mentioned some additional schemes at the tail end of his remarks, but I would ask him to think very carefully: could he live on the money he proposes for those asked to self-isolate? If he ran a business, could he survive and pay wages, pay for stock, the rent and all the bills on the grants he has announced? He probably could not, and many businesses cannot and will fold as a result without support.

The Chief Secretary to the Treasury talked about phases of this crisis. The coronavirus is not done with us yet. Life is not going back to normal any time soon. The British Chambers of Commerce’s quarterly recruitment outlook revealed that 29% of firms expect to axe jobs over the third quarter—a record high. At the same time, the number of new job opportunities is also depressed across almost all sectors, as is reflected in the various vacancies data. For example, the Office for National Statistics and Adzuna data show the number of online job vacancies for Scotland for the week to 21 August to be almost half the 2019 average—down 49 percentage points—and the Office for Budget Responsibility has warned that UK unemployment could surpass the peaks of the 1980s after weaker than expected economic growth. The Chancellor and his Treasury team have a duty to prevent this kind of economic scarring. The devastation of the 1980s still haunts many communities, and I urge them not to gamble with the life chances of the people we are here to represent.

[Jamie Stone]

I give credit where it is due to the Government: the assistance afforded to the tourism industry has saved it in my constituency, which relies hugely on tourism. God forbid that the second spike gets worse than it is, but if it does and we have to close things down again, frankly that will ruin some of those businesses permanently. I make a plea to the Scottish Government and Her Majesty’s Government in Westminster to work together as closely as possible. I hope that this eventuality does not happen, but if it does, we will all need to put our shoulder to the wheel.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Member is absolutely correct. A second spike does not seem to be on the Government’s agenda, and it should be. The measures put in place were put in place at speed, at haste, and the Government should be learning from this and preparing for that second spike now. I would be incredibly grateful if at some point a Minister confirmed that they are doing that, because it is absolutely necessary. We cannot ignore the risk of a second spike, given how the figures have been creeping up in recent days.

The IPPR has said that ending the furlough scheme will lead to unemployment

“not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s”,

with the loss of 3 million jobs, 2 million of which would be viable in the longer term if it were continued. The furlough scheme should be continued for at least two years, or for as long as we need it—perhaps we will not need it for two years, which would be a good eventuality—as is being done in Germany and France. Independent Ireland is keeping its scheme going for a year. No employee or employer should be forced to decide between their health and their income.

The self-employment support scheme should also have been continued. In addition, a basic temporary income scheme should have been introduced to protect anyone falling through the gaps in support. There is still time for the Treasury to step in and make that commitment, because the lack of parity between those in the different schemes is completely unjustifiable. I remain deeply disappointed that the recommendations of the Treasury Committee to address the gaps in support have not been taken up by the Treasury. The ExcludedUK group, representing at the least 3 million people who have been denied any UK Government support—these include the newly self-employed, freelancers, limited company directors, those on short-term PAYE contracts and many others—is still being ignored by the Chancellor, despite having presented the Treasury with viable solutions.

The situation facing women requiring maternity leave has also been incredibly stressful and unfair, with many finding themselves ineligible and some who were forced to take maternity leave early now struggling to get the childcare they need to even attempt to go back to work. It is hugely disappointing to hear that the UK Government have rejected the very reasonable request by the 226,000 maternity petitioners to extend maternity leave for three months. I hope the Government will reconsider that. I am led to wonder whether different decisions might be made if there were more women on the UK Government Benches.

When we see Jim Harra, head of HMRC, admit this week that £3.5 billion of furlough cash has been lost in fraudulent claims or error, it is even more galling to those who have no support whatsoever. There have also been errors in my constituency on HMRC’s part. Its inflexibility and inability to deal with MP requests on this issue has also been hugely frustrating for those whose businesses are on the brink.

The take-up of the coronavirus job retention scheme has been significant, as has been said, with 9.6 million workers furloughed by 1.2 million employers since March. Those employers had made £34.7 billion of furlough claims by 9 August. The scheme will cost the UK Government an estimated £80 billion in total, but we should not forget that this cost is an investment in people and in public health. The cost of not acting would be far greater.

The figures published by the Treasury demonstrating the sectoral impact of the furlough scheme are interesting. They show only 2% of employees in public administration and defence and 7% of those in finance and insurance being placed on furlough, compared with 77% of those in accommodation and food services—some 1,693,600 employees—and 70% of those working in the arts, entertainment, recreation and other services, amounting to 474,300 employees across the UK. This of course reflects the different nature of the jobs in those sectors and whether it has been possible for people to work.

The sectors in which furlough take-up has been high are not suddenly going to be able to return to pre-covid business, and there is a real argument for sectoral extensions if the Government will not consider a wholesale extension. The ability of these businesses and organisations to generate income will continue to be hampered by the need to impose public health restrictions. For example, how would a national arts company or a full-scale production be able to get a theatre performance up and running? How would that theatre be able to turn a profit at 40% capacity? What about the restaurant next door, which theatre goers might usually have gone to for a pre-theatre meal, or the pub they might have gone to afterwards, where nobody will be allowed to stand at the bar and that will not have outdoor seating in the depths of a Scottish winter, or even a Scottish autumn?

How does the Chancellor expect such firms to bear the cost of staffing, rent and other outgoings when they will not see a corresponding increase in income? The short answer is that those costs cannot be borne. The CBI’s head, Carolyn Fairbairn, has warned that

“it’s too soon to pull business support away at the end of October”.

The Fraser of Allander Scottish business monitor for quarter 2 this year reported that 55% of businesses that have made use of the job retention scheme expect to decrease their staffing numbers when the scheme is phased out.

Migration and Scotland

Debate between Jamie Stone and Alison Thewliss

Tuesday 11th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I am glad to follow the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), because he makes some interesting points. Although we disagree on how these issues might be resolved, it is interesting to hear his views.

Of all the constituencies in Scotland, Glasgow Central has the most constituents who were not born in the UK. I have been totting up the Library’s figures from the 2011 census and, with 21,283, I have more people in my constituency who were not born in the UK than the five previous Conservative speakers put together, so I will take no lessons on the value of immigration to my constituency from people who have so little immigration and, I am sure, so few concerns raised at their surgeries.

Week in and week out, I have people in tears at my surgeries because of how this UK Government and the Home Office have treated them. They have been treated without respect, they have been treated arbitrarily and they have been treated cruelly for many years. Something has to change, and this is a small proposal from the Scottish Government to mitigate some of that damage. One of my reasons for supporting independence is that I do not want people to go through what my constituents have been through at the hands of the UK Government.

Have no doubt, the SNP believes immigration is a good thing. As the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said, we are a country that has suffered from emigration over many years, with our people leaving and going to other countries. We have no right to deny people the chance to come and make their home in Scotland, and to do us the privilege of making their lives here.

Not only is the UK Government’s policy on immigration immoral in many ways, but it makes no economic sense. As we are all aware, Scotland has an ageing population. We need to grow our population to keep our economy afloat and to help people have a decent standard of living in old age. The Tories have decimated support for families and, through policies such as the two-child limit and the rape clause, they have actively discouraged people from having more children. The only remaining option is to encourage migration, but they have not done that, either. Instead, they have imposed arbitrary targets on migration over the years, which is sheer economic illiteracy. It is completely unsustainable.

Conservative Members have talked about attractiveness, but we are fighting that battle with one hand behind our back because of the hostile environment, the “Go Home” vans and the Home Office’s policies. We can only do our best to try to mitigate that. We can only do our best to say that Scotland is a welcoming country, that we want people to come and we want them to stay.

For the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who has 3,014 non-UK citizens, to tell me that my constituency and my country are unattractive is, frankly, insulting. Unless substantial changes are made to Scotland’s ability to encourage immigration, we are looking at a ticking demographic time bomb. Average earnings in Scotland are less than £24,000 a year, but the immigration salary threshold is £30,000. What is that a measure of? It is certainly not a measure of how much a person is valued. How precious are the workers and care nurses in hospitals to a family? How valuable are social care workers to our future? It is shameful that any arbitrary value has been put on people who choose to come to build their lives here. That arbitrary target is above what can be reasonably earned by skilled worker.

Recently, a constituent came to my surgery who worked by day as a mortgage adviser in a bank—one would imagine that is a fairly good, high-profile, skilled job—and by night as a shelf stacker in a supermarket. He was working all the hours he could get so that his wife and son could come to live in Scotland. He should not be absolutely wearing himself down to do that. He is doing a good job that is valuable. We think it is important to society, but that is not how he felt. He felt as though he was doing everything he could against a system that did not even care—that did not even value him. I get this time and time again at my surgeries.

[Jamie Stone]

I am listening with great interest to a well thought out speech. Members will recall that some months ago I unwittingly invited the former Prime Minister to accompany me to a hotel in the highlands and laughter overtook the Chamber. The point I was making was that the hotel and tourism businesses in the highlands depend on migrant workers. That was a problem then and I suspect it will be a problem now. I want to put that on the record, because we need to remember it.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Gentleman is correct about that. As a member of the all-party group on hospitality, I agree very much that that sector needs to have people coming in here to do those jobs and that we value them as well, because they bring not only their skills to our restaurants and catering services, but their food, which we enjoy. We should thank them, rather than making them feel unwelcome.

Let me move on to people in the care sector and the issues they face. A couple came to see me on 16 December 2015, having worked in care homes and been very much valued there. They were then at the point of working in their care home voluntarily because the Home Office had rescinded their right to work. They had a son they are putting through school. They came to see me at my surgery on 13 January to say that finally, after five years, they had been granted their status. They were looking forward to going back to work in the care home, because that care home had kept the faith that they would eventually get the chance to work and be paid for it. During that period of many years they were hosted by volunteers from Positive Action in Housing, and they were supported by the British Red Cross, their solicitors McGlashan MacKay and a range of services that provided them with food for free, with food banks and with other things. They had to come to my office to get school uniforms for their growing son. During that time they were destitute. What does that say to that family? They want to come here and work hard, they are in a valuable role, but the Home Office says, “No, actually, we don’t need you.” We know that we do. We know that we need people in the care sector, yet a couple who have dedicated their lives to caring are being told that they cannot do that. So I have no confidence in the UK Government to make the required changes that will allow constituents such as these to manage their lives, to be a success and to feel welcome in this country.

Public Services

Debate between Jamie Stone and Alison Thewliss

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there is a lot to be learned from that. We should be in the business of closing prisons down, not building more. We should look at the reasons people are driven into the criminal justice system—at the causes of poverty and inequality, which drive so many people into it.

I look with interest and some despair at the immigration and social security Bill. We see immigration as positive. It is a good thing for our country and it is very good for public services in our country. Brexit will have a huge and damaging effect on our public services, because often the people who provide them have done us the huge honour of coming to our country.

The NHS in particular will suffer as a result of Brexit. Recently, The Independent quoted research by Medbelle that said that EU doctors and nurses have been worth more than £3 billion to the UK economy over the past five years. There has already been a 91% fall in EU registrations to the Nursing & Midwifery Council since 2016, and more than 7,000 nurses have left that register. What impact do the Government think that will have on the most vulnerable? How do they expect our NHS to cope with the shock of that sudden drop? According to Medbelle’s analysis, educating more than 30,000 British nurses to replace EU nationals would cost £1.2 billion. If and when we finally see a Budget, how will the Chancellor provide for that?

Age UK has raised concerns about the adult social care Bill. From the announcements so far, it thinks that the Bill is too restricted in being just for the elderly and that it should be extended right across the board. I urge the Minister to look at Scotland, where there is already free personal care and where we are moving towards making non-residential social care free as well, because it is desperately important to people. EU nationals are at the forefront of providing that service.

[Jamie Stone]

Thinking of social care and care of the elderly, I give the Scottish Government credit for their good work on tackling fuel poverty. Altnaharra in my constituency is the coldest place in the UK every year, and I therefore have many good people who simply cannot afford their fuel bills. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be a good move for the UK Government, or possibly the Scottish Government, to consider some form of social security system whereby additional payments are made to the most needy to help meet those extra big bills?

[Alison Thewliss]

I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman on that notion. It is interesting to look at how other European countries treat people. Other countries can be colder than or as cold as Scotland, but I am not aware of pensioners in Sweden or Finland freezing to death in the winter. What he proposes is a good quick fix, but we need more fundamental reform to how we make our homes, how we insulate our homes and how we ensure that people are kept warm and safe in colder weather.

The prospects for restricting immigration are grim. It is an existential threat to Scotland’s public services, as well as to businesses, and it will impoverish us as a society. Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead pointed out the myth of the points-based immigration system, and I am glad that she did. It was taken apart by Fergus Peace in the i earlier this month, when he pointed out that we already have a points-based immigration system to an extent, and it is harsher and less flexible than the one in Australia.

There are significant problems with the UK’s immigration system. It is arbitrary and damaging. The hostile environment leaves people in tears at my surgeries week in and week out. For example, visitor visas cannot be appealed. I see many people who fill out the application forms for visitor visas diligently and correctly, only to find them refused because Home Office officials cannot distinguish between the opening and closing balance of a bank account, because they use the wrong means of calculating the foreign exchange rates for a currency or because they do not believe that somebody who has been to visit half a dozen times before will go back to their country. All people want to do is to come and visit somebody, whether it is a mum whose child is dying or an elderly relative. Some people simply want to visit during the school holidays and see around the country their family call home.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Thewliss]

I very much agree with that. A lot more needs to be done to ensure that people who have been victims do not end up being blamed for having been trafficked into the country or for being party to that. Those people should get some leniency and help from the Home Office, rather than it trying to remove them at the first instance.

On post-study work visas, the Government need to consider the fact that the Scottish education system has four-year degrees as standard and that many other degrees, such as engineering, architecture and medicine, are longer than three years. It should not be the case that people get three years into a degree and have to reapply, with no certainty that they will finish it. Those courses will be deeply unattractive to people if they do not know whether they can finish them. Perhaps each type of course should carry a visa with it, rather than there being an arbitrary three-year cut-off.

[Jamie Stone]

Obviously, I am in Scottish form today. Is not another strength of the Scottish degree that it has a much broader base in terms of first-year subjects, one of which people carry on in the second year?

[Alison Thewliss]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman on that.

The way in which entrepreneurs and highly skilled migrants have been treated by the Home Office has been despicable. I have had people at my surgery who have been brought here by the UK Government as part of entrepreneurial schemes and then told that they cannot stay. They have been chucked out after having sought all the investment for their companies and having established themselves. The Home Office whips all that out from underneath them. Highly skilled migrants are still waiting for an apology from the UK Government, after they were found in the courts to be incorrect. Those people deserve an apology and deserve to have their cases resolved and their leave to remain progressed. The Government are looking at a Windrush compensation scheme. I would like to see compensation for everybody the Home Office has done wrong and made incorrect decisions on, because their life chances have been seriously diminished and they have gone into debt in order to fight the Home Office, only to be proved right at the end of the day.

I also call on the UK Government to do more to end the scandal of indefinite immigration detention, which leaves so many people with no certainty as to how long they will be stuck in that system. I have had many constituents who have gone into Dungavel only to be sent out not having had to be there in the first place. All the stuff in the immigration Bill and all the cases that I have seen tell me that the shoddy treatment that the UK Government dish out to non-EU migrants should not be dished out to EU nationals as well. We should be removing this unfairness, not extending it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) will speak more on settled status and its limitations later, but I highlight from my own casework people who have been left upset and baffled by being refused settled status, despite having been here for decades in some cases. In addition, the Department for Work and Pensions has regularly been refusing EU nationals access to universal credit. There appears to me to be a concerted, underhand effort to remove the rights of EU nationals even before Brexit. That is utterly unacceptable and it must stop.

Scottish Government economic modelling shows that each EU worker in Scotland adds, on average, £34,400 to GDP and £10,400 to Government revenue. The Migration Advisory Committee has found that people coming to this country contribute more in UK taxes than they take out of the system. It makes absolutely zero sense, on any level, to turn them away and to make them feel unwelcome, as this UK Government are determined to do. We have found so far that people have found Scotland more welcoming. The words of the First Minister and others have been instrumental in making sure that people do feel welcome in Scotland and stay, but there is only so much that we can do under the hostile environment of this Government, the way in which they treat people, and the way the media in this country have been treating people. We will do our very best. We hope that it will make a difference to people.

Scotland needs a tailored system to meet our needs. Our challenge has long been emigration, not immigration. The thresholds and targets that prioritise the south-east of England, not our more varied economy in Scotland, do us no favours whatever. For example, tonnes of fruit and veg have been rotting in the fields. Apparently 87,000 punnets of raspberries remain unpicked on one farm alone while people in this country are driven to food banks. Across these islands we are seeing the uncertainty of Brexit and the impact of that on people’s lives—people who would have come here but have been made unwelcome by this UK Government. The seasonal workers scheme is woefully inadequate if we see food rotting in the fields.

We also have uncertainty for the university sector with regard to funding through Horizon, Erasmus+ and the research development fund. We have the uncertainty about the future of research collaboration. We must see some progress on this. I would also question the logic of 12-month visas, although I suppose that is typical of a UK Government who clearly want to discourage people from coming here. The low-skilled jobs that they talk about are actually the ones that are the most vital to our country; they are done by people working in care homes and other public services who we desperately need. This UK Government continue to see people for the value of their salary rather than the contribution that they make to our society and our communities. We on the SNP Benches thank those people for their endeavours. If immigration was in the control of the Scottish Parliament, we would be treating people with dignity and respect.