Business of the House

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Mel Stride

Thursday 6th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I am sure there are many light-hearted and satirical moments in the House—too many for any producer of any film to get their head around, I would imagine. However, whether we should permit this might be the subject of a future debate, rather than my opining on it at the Dispatch Box.

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

Unfortunately, many foreign-born citizens and others with the right to live and work in the UK are being made to feel like second-class citizens. This happened a couple of weeks ago to EU citizens who were turned away from polling stations, and last week at my surgery, Firas Ibrahim, the regional director for the middle east at the University of Edinburgh, came to tell me that, despite the fact that he loves living and working in Scotland, he feels that the UK Government are making him feel like a second-class citizen. Despite holding a British passport and fulfilling an important role at a Russell Group university, he has been repeatedly questioned by border officials on returning from business trips abroad, and as a dual Syrian national, he was very upset by the Home Secretary’s suggestion about banning travel to Syria. As the architect of the hostile environment—the Prime Minister—vacates her role, may we have a debate on how the hostile environment has made our friends, colleagues and family members who are foreign-born British citizens and EU nationals living here feel like second-class citizens, and on what we can do to remedy that?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Joanna Cherry and Mel Stride

Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

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

T3. The Scottish National party has repeatedly asked the Government to take action to enable Scotland’s police and fire rescue service to reclaim VAT in the same way as they have done for national bodies such as Highways England. If that action can be taken for Highways England, why not for Police Scotland and the fire and rescue service in Scotland? Will Ministers commit to doing that in the next Budget?

[Mel Stride]

As the hon. and learned Lady will know, when the Scottish Government decided to restructure their police and fire services, they went into that decision with their eyes wide open—they knew what the VAT consequences would be—so it is down to the SNP to ask those questions of itself.