Scottish Independence and the Scottish Economy

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Ian Murray

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray]

I have a lot of respect for the hon. Gentleman—I genuinely have, and I say that with all sincerity—but I believe that comparisons between Scotland and Northern Ireland are not only unhelpful but, to some, offensive. The purpose of the Good Friday agreement is to create peace on the island of Ireland, and I think that trying to superimpose the Good Friday agreement on the issue of Scottish independence will be seen as it should be seen, as unhelpful and historically inaccurate. [Interruption.] All the SNP Members are shouting, but one of the Labour party’s proudest achievements in office was peace in Northern Ireland. If they think that the Labour party’s position is inconsistent with a position of wanting to keep the UK together, they are simply incorrect. We on the Labour Benches will do nothing—absolutely nothing—to undermine the Good Friday agreement.

As an adjunct and a footnote to that, what SNP Members are proposing in their proposition for an independent Scotland will create the same problems at the border at Berwick as we have in Northern Ireland with the Northern Ireland protocol, and they know that to be the case.

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

rose—

Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Ian Murray

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)]

May I say how pleased I am that we are having this incredibly important debate today? While Parliament has been hopelessly paralysed by the Prime Minister’s refusal to do the decent thing and resign, I hope that the debate allows us an opportunity to discuss the human reality of this Government’s cost of living crisis.

Up and down this country, people are facing the anxiety that comes from worrying about whether they can pay their bills and heat their homes. Having to decide whether to eat or heat is an awful indictment of Britain in the 2020s. If that decision has to be made by one person, that is one person too many, but, under this Government, millions of people are having to make that decision. Moreover, there is total inaction; there is nothing to say. There is also nothing in this light parliamentary timetable to help. The Minister himself, in the near 20 minutes that he spoke, gave nothing to help families in this country in the cost of living crisis. The Government could have tabled an amendment to the motion—I am sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) would have allowed it—for us all to vote for and back to help the people of this country with the cost of living crisis, but we have radio silence. Because of that inaction, more and more face hardship and worry.

Inflation stands at more than 5%, a 30-year high. Energy bills are to rise by 40%—on average by £700 per household—shortly. The average UK worker is still not any better off than they were when this Government took power more than a decade ago. The Chancellor is planning the largest tax hike in living memory, taking the tax burden on working people to its highest since 1950. What a record that is: a high-tax, high-inflation, low-growth Tory party. This weekend, we were led to believe that the entire Cabinet would get behind stopping the planned national insurance tax rise, but what did we hear today? We heard the Chancellor turning against his own national insurance hike by calling it the “Prime Minister’s tax”. That is a whole new definition—the Chancellor of tax-dodging. Nobody in the country is buying it. The Government should bring the question back to this House if they want to vote the national insurance rise down.

The human cost of the situation is stark. In the past year, Citizens Advice Scotland has seen a 38% increase in the number of people coming to it for advice about being unable to pay their mortgage. The figure is much higher for those unable to pay their rent. Polling conducted on behalf of the same organisation found half a million Scots cutting back on their food spending in order to pay their energy bills this winter—before those huge rises. What is worse is that official statistics on inflation do not capture the full extent of the difficulty facing families, especially those on low incomes. The food blogger, Jack Monroe, who rose to fame with recipes showing how to cook family meals for less than £10 a week, highlighted that on social media over the weekend. They gave examples of the cost of the cheapest pasta in the local supermarket rising by 141% in the past year, the cost of the cheapest bag of rice rising 344% and the cost of baked beans rising 45% year on year. At the same time, those on the lowest incomes have seen universal credit cut and their budgets tightened even further.

To make matters worse, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East mentioned, the costs of filling up the car have risen to their highest level ever and, while they rise like a rocket, they fall like a feather, needlessly costing families much more. Then we have Brexit infiltrating the supply chains, making it much more difficult to get food into the country, increasing costs in our supermarkets. That is the reality not of a global market, but of this Government’s decision making. Families are working every hour under the sun but are still unable to make ends meet, and the position is getting worse, not better.

[Joanna Cherry]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way. He is talking about the price of food in the supermarket. Earlier, he will have heard me put to the Minister the problems identified by the British Retail Consortium with labour shortages affecting the food supply chain. Unless we were watching the BBC, we will all have seen the queues at the Kent ports over the weekend. What assessment has the Labour party made of the impact of Brexit on food price increases, and what does the Labour party intend to do about the problems of labour shortages and supply shortages caused by Brexit?

[Ian Murray]

I thank my constituency neighbour for that question. I hope that she watched with great interest the speech of the leader of the Labour party just a few weeks ago, and, indeed, the other speech he made before Christmas about making Brexit work. The reality is that this Conservative Government have given us a position whereby Brexit does not work. We have a thin deal that we said would fall apart, and it is falling apart. What we have to do is to get into power to fix the problems with that and to build on that relationship. That is the reality of where we are.

I listened with interest to the Minister not answering the hon. and learned Lady’s question about HGV drivers and the cost of food and supply chains. He rightly said that there is an ageing workforce, but that shows that the Government have not planned for the medium to long term in that regard—it is as if everybody just got older overnight, rather than there being some plan. It sums up the Government that they have not had the foresight to see some of those problems coming. None of the promises that the Brexiteers opposite made to us about sunny uplands have come to pass; indeed, the opposite has come to pass, as we can see in the supermarkets and in prices themselves.

Those of us elected to this place owe it to the millions of people across the country who face such hardship to do everything we can to alleviate and change it. In the UK in 2022, nobody should have to choose between heating and eating. The Government have shown no compassion and not even pretended to care. Let us remember that they voted to cut the £20 a week universal credit uplift for the poorest in this country and refused to feed school kids in the holidays. The only response to the crisis from the Government so far, in all the noise of partygate and everything else, was when they snuck out a £4.3 billion fraud write-off from covid funds and business loans, which was branded “nothing less than woeful” by their very own anti-fraud Minister, Lord Agnew, shortly before he resigned at the Dispatch Box a few hours ago in the other place. Maybe the Minister would like to do the same this afternoon: get to the Dispatch Box, resign, grab his folder and suitcase full of wine, and head for the hills. Any Minister with any kind of morality would be doing just the same thing.

I am pleased that the SNP has called the debate, but it is not a bystander in this crisis either. The SNP is the Government in Scotland and has been for 15 years. A 33-year-old today, struggling to feed their family while paying their energy bills, has spent their entire adult life under the Scottish National party Scottish Government. Such a person might wonder why the SNP did not support legislation put forward by Labour colleagues in Holyrood to enshrine as a human right the right to food. Perhaps we might be able to find out this afternoon why not.

Parliamentary time will be taken up “in weeks” with legislation for another referendum. People are having to choose between heating and eating, but that will be the SNP’s priority in Parliament and elsewhere for months. I accept that Parliament has the capacity to do other things, but nobody should be under any illusions. All the oxygen in the vacuum will be taken up in Scotland with another referendum or the thought of another piece of referendum legislation. That is the reality of what will happen. With the paralysis in this place, the Scottish Government are obsessed by what gets them out of bed in the morning, rather than the real, everyday issues of Scots.