Points of Order

Debate between Jamie Stone and Brendan O'Hara

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Further to those points of order, Mr Speaker. It may come as a surprise to Members that I have a photograph of Alex Salmond in my back hall. That is because a long time ago, he, the right hon. Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) and I were all members of the Students’ Representative Council of St Andrews University. It was a sleepy organisation in which we debated this and that. Then, with a flash and a bang, like Mephistopheles appearing in “Doctor Faustus”, he was there from nowhere—a fully equipped, fully armed, formidable young politician, still in his late teens. That came as a shock to us all.

Having debated with him in student debates, I can tell the House that if he turned that laser eye on you and fired a verbal sally, it went straight through you, and then straight through the wall behind. He was a superb debater—I have never seen his like. What was fascinating about him was that he was a fully developed politician so early in life. He knew exactly what he was about and was determined to achieve his end.

I was also briefly in the Scottish Parliament, as the hon. Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) alluded to. In 2007, at a reception at the Signet library in Edinburgh, he said, “Jamie, I want a word with you.” He cornered me in one of those half-moon-shaped alcoves and told me very forcibly how supporting the SNP Government in 2007 would lead to a revival of the Liberal party in the Scottish Parliament.

Mention has rightly been made of his widow, Moira, whom I found to be a very nice person indeed. She once stopped me in the Royal Mile, shortly after Alex had become First Minister, to say that she had got that dreadful upright piano out of the drawing room at Bute House. She just wanted me to know that. My thoughts are not only with Alex’s family but with his circle of friends, to whom he meant a very great deal. Our condolences should go to his family and to his friends as well.

Charles Stewart Parnell made his name in history, and I believe that Alex Salmond will do so in exactly the same way, for many years to come.

[Brendan O’Hara (Argyll, Bute and South Lochaber) (SNP)]

Further to those points of order, Mr Speaker. I associate myself with so many of the comments from Members across the House. I first encountered Alex Salmond as a star-struck teenager, and a member of the 79 group attending a particularly fractious SNP conference in Ayr in 1982. So fractious was the conference that Alex was subsequently expelled from the party, albeit briefly. At the meetings that followed, even though he was less than 10 years older than me, I listened to the spellbinding oratory of this young man. He was destined for greatness then.

Alec and I became close allies in the late 1980s. I was part of the campaign team that saw him elected as SNP leader in 1990. Our paths took wildly different trajectories, clearly, but we kept in touch on and off over the decades. I would not be here today were it not for Alec having arranged for me to go through to Edinburgh so that he could persuade me to put my hat in the ring for the SNP in Argyll and Bute in the 2015 election. I am far from alone in being an SNP politician who owes a huge debt to Alec Salmond. He was a titan of our movement, an irreplaceable force without whom our independence, when it does come—which it surely will—would never have been achieved.

My thoughts are with Moira, as are those of so many in this House. My experience of Moira is that she is a very quiet but absolutely formidable force. I learned very quickly that if we wanted to get Alec to change his mind, we should go not to him but to Moira. She is an incredible force in herself. My deepest condolences and sympathies are with Moira and Alec’s immediate family. I do wonder when we will see his like again.

Lobbying of Government Committee

Debate between Jamie Stone and Brendan O'Hara

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O’Hara]

What I would love to happen is for the Committee, when it meets, to examine that in detail to find out exactly whether it is true. What is inescapable is that a company is 10 times more likely to receive a Government contract through a political contact. That deserves careful scrutiny and has to be smoked out to the nth degree.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

However we collectively as the body politic got into this situation, may I suggest that it is damaging public trust in elected representatives? The one good thing about this Committee, if it were seen to be put in place, would be that it could restore some of that trust and repair some of the damage to democracy in the UK.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The hon. Gentleman is right. I think we all know from our postbags that, regardless of which side of the House we are on in this debate, we are all tainted by this. Anything that can shine a light on this —admittedly where some might not want it to be shone—would be a very good thing, and I wholeheartedly support it.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Jamie Stone and Brendan O'Hara

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to the commission’s report and advise him to read it, rather than simply taking the crib sheet handed out by his party.

Much has been made of the Chancellor’s announcement that £20 billion of new funding would be made available to the NHS over the next five years. We are told that that funding will be transformational for the national health service, but let us put it into perspective. The new money, which we welcome, averages out at a 3.4% increase per annum for the next five years. That is actually still less than the average funding increases received by the NHS in the first 60 years of its existence. All the Chancellor announced is that NHS funding, having been squeezed mercilessly by the Tories in the past decade, is returning to a position that is a little below its historical average. The reality is that in releasing this money, the Chancellor has simply removed the Treasury’s heavy boot from the neck of the national health service. If the Chancellor had had the good manners to remain in the Chamber until my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) had spoken yesterday, he would have heard him ask why the Scottish national health service is being short-changed in the Budget to the tune of £50 million a year, which makes a cumulative shortfall of £250 million over the five-year period. That £50 million is enough money to pay for 1,200 nurses in Scotland.

In his Budget, the Chancellor had the perfect opportunity to do the right thing: stop the roll-out of universal credit dead in its tracks until the well-publicised faults in the system, which are hurting the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, have been fixed properly, once and for all.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Further to that point, is it not a scandal that the Highland Council has to fork out £2.5 million of its carefully hained resources to pay for the roll-out of universal credit? What might that £2.5 million have done for some of the poorest people in areas such as Argyllshire and my constituency?

[Brendan O’Hara]

I could not agree more. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the cost to councils and individuals of the appalling roll-out of universal credit. The Government know that it is wrong, but they are pigheadedly determined to see it roll out. The Budget was the Chancellor’s perfect opportunity to stop it, but he refused. For reasons best known to himself, he decided instead to tinker around at the edges, with the promised money coming nowhere close to meeting the shortfall that was created by his predecessor. The Chancellor has decided to do almost nothing for those who are currently on universal credit and are struggling under the work allowance, the two-child cap and the benefit freeze.

As Gillian McInnes, the manager of the citizens advice bureau in my Argyll and Bute constituency, said:

“The Government has still not done enough to address the real problems of universal credit, which are causing serious hardship for many families. Without further support for families, many parents and children will be left in a desperate situation, with many”—

indeed, many more—

“forced into using food banks.”

This was the Chancellor’s opportunity to end austerity—he chose not to. This was his opportunity to stop and fix universal credit—he chose not to. Instead, he and the UK Government chose to hand out tax cuts to the wealthy while continuing to try to balance the country’s books on the backs of the poorest in our society. Heaven help us all if this was the Chancellor’s “good guy Budget”—the one that was based on the Government securing a half-decent Brexit deal. One shudders to think what he has up his sleeve when we are all forced to reconvene in this place early next year for his fiscal event, if and when the Brexit negotiations go totally pear-shaped.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Jamie Stone and Brendan O'Hara

Committee: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)]

I begin by echoing the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), because clause 11 is an unashamed power grab; it is undermining the devolution settlement, and it drives a coach and horses through devolution across these islands. In the time that I have to speak, I will talk about the impact it will have on farming, particularly in my Argyll and Bute community.

It is generally accepted that Scottish farmers, particularly farmers and crofters working the land on the west coast, face vastly different challenges from farmers in the rest of the UK. Not only do Scottish hill farmers toil with some of the poorest land, but they face additional challenges from climate, geography and topography, and so much so that 85% of Scottish agricultural land is classed “a less favoured area” compared with just 17% of English agricultural land.

Given that Scottish farmers face specific challenges, surely it stands to reason that they need a bespoke solution that recognises the vast differences that exist across these islands. It is understandable that the Scottish Government and the Scottish farming community are demanding confirmation that all powers relating to agriculture post-Brexit will automatically be passed to the relevant legislature—in this case, the Scottish Parliament. I fear that this Government are taking us down a dangerous road. They are deliberately proposing fundamentally to alter the basic principles of devolution.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned the word “road”, which prompts me to intervene on him. When the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) and I—and indeed the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara)—drive to the west, we see big signs telling us that the road was built with the assistance of the EU. One of the biggest questions in the minds of my constituents is: what will replace that funding stream? This relates to the ability of farmers and crofters to access their beasts.

[Brendan O’Hara]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is why my constituency, his constituency and the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber all voted to remain in the European Union. As things stand, all the powers connected to agriculture will go to London post-Brexit. It will be London that decides what happens.