Budget Resolutions

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 1st November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

This Budget is good news for our United Kingdom, good news for Scotland and good news for Angus, with an extra £950 million for Scotland.

Following tireless campaigning from me and my Scottish Conservative colleagues, I am pleased to see a freeze on spirits duty for the second year running, providing much support for our iconic Scotch whisky industry. It is fantastic news for distilleries around Angus, whether it is Gin Bothy in Glamis, Arbikie vodka or Glencadam distillery in Brechin.

In rural areas such as my constituency, ensuring that motoring is kept affordable is vital, because of the poor transport links. So I was pleased, as chair of the all-party group on fair fuel for UK motorists and UK hauliers, to see the Government recognise that and freeze fuel duty for the ninth consecutive year; we have saved our motorists £1,000 since 2010.

Not only have we saved people money at the petrol station, but we have saved taxpayers in their pay packet. By making changes to the personal allowance, we have ensured that basic rate taxpayers have an extra £130 in their pocket, and since 2010 they are £1,200 better off. This Government are working to ensure that those in society who need it the most are able to keep more of their hard-earned money, which, as Conservatives, we know is better in our pocket than spent by the state.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

What does the hon. Lady have to say about House of Commons Library figures showing that the Conservatives have cut the Scottish Government budget by 6.9%, when over similar years the Irish Government’s tax revenue rose by 32%?

[Kirstene Hair]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but it is as false as the SNP Twitter feed, because in fact if we look at the figures, we see a £552 million increase.

As I was saying, it must be noted that the change that the Government are making to the higher rate tax threshold, increasing it from £46,350 to £50,000, is not helping out those in Scotland, because of the SNP-led Government. In Scotland, those earning £50,000 will now pay at least £1,000 more in tax. We are talking here about people working in our health system, in our police and in our higher education system. SNP Members are quick to commend them but then they tax the back off them.

This Budget was welcome news also because of the £150 million ploughed into the Tay cities deal, which will benefit my constituency. It shows exactly what the Scottish people want to see: Scotland’s two Governments working together for the better of our country. I also welcome the funding going into our fishing industry. Only Scottish Conservatives are standing up for that industry; an extra £10 million is going into the technology and methodology fund. SNP Members want to drag our fishermen right back into the hated common fisheries policy.

There is nothing in this Budget that those SNP Members would have agreed to, and nothing that the Chancellor could have offered in this Budget would have allowed them to vote for it. I very much hope that when they troop through the Lobby they know that they are voting against a tax break for the hard-working, against a fuel duty freeze, against a spirit duty freeze, against £150 million going into the Tay cities region, against NHS funding and against extra funding for universal credit. They should put their constituents before their party.

Street Homelessness

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Adam Holloway]

All I can do is suggest that the hon. Lady watches that “World in Action” series from 27 years ago and draws her own conclusions about whether that was a good thing. Let us have a chat about it when she has done that.

Let us carry on with some realities. It is very depressing, after 27 years, to look at streets with the same cohorts of mentally ill and drug-addicted people on them—the people who fall through the cracks in the system. Although the police are more able to intervene when a mentally ill person is on the streets and local authorities have particular duties to those who are vulnerable due to mental illness, the reality is that someone who has had serious psychiatric problems is extremely unlikely to maintain a tenancy or stay off the streets for some time. Indeed, I had not appreciated the churn of people—even when people are engaged, the system does not seem able to keep them for the time that it needs to.

Let us be honest about the correlation between immigration and the rising number of street homeless. It is no surprise to me that, in 2016-17, 1,950 rough sleepers were migrants from Romania, Poland and Lithuania. Obviously, homelessness is a much greater risk when people are far from home and from familial support structures. It became clear to me that some migrants sleep on the streets by choice, preferring to sleep rough than to pay for accommodation. It is a no-brainer that years of high immigration and of successive Governments not building enough houses will have a knock-on effect for people at the bottom of society. Of course that will make rents unaffordable.

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Scottish National party Scottish Government have presided over a decade-long slump in Scottish house building? We went from almost 26,000 new builds in 2007 to almost 17,000 in 2016. That is totally unacceptable, and it has fuelled homelessness in Scotland.

[Adam Holloway]

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), will attest to the fact that I am not well enough versed on what is happening in the rest of the country, so I cannot answer that question, but if my hon. Friend says that, I imagine it must be true.

On people from eastern Europe, perhaps it is time to ask ourselves whether it is exploitative to build an economy on cheap labour provided by those who can barely afford to accommodate themselves in our country. We could of course argue that those people are not strictly homeless, because they might have a home back home, but that is their reality when they are here.

My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) alluded to the housing crisis. We must face up to the inevitable impact of that crisis, and of the related issues of lack of supply and affordability, on homelessness. It is estimated that between 2010 and 2016, population growth, including net international migration, was around 1.58 million. The number of rough sleepers has increased by 169% since 2010. In 2016-17, the housing stock in the UK increased by around 217,000 residential dwellings—an increase of 15% from the previous year, but short of the estimated quarter of a million-odd new homes required to keep up with household formation.

It is not difficult to see that the sums just do not add up, including under this Government. Although the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 strengthens the duties of local authorities to provide advisory services to people threatened with homelessness and encourages pre-emptive action where house building has not kept up with population increases, it is absurd to think that that will not impact the people at the bottom of society who are often the most unseen—not those on the streets but those on sofas.

We must address the fact that homelessness impacts men and women in different ways. Rough sleepers are overwhelmingly men. During my recent stint on the streets, I saw only a handful of women whom I unscientifically judged to be street homeless—the big giveaway is people carrying bags and suitcases. CHAIN data for 2016-17 shows that only 15% of rough sleepers in London were women. Part of the issue must be that those who care for young children—typically women—are rightly prioritised in the allocation of social housing. However, somewhere along the line we seem to have forgotten that men who live on the streets were once part of a family unit.

British Transport Police/ Police Scotland Merger

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Douglas Ross]

Absolutely. I will come to the timing in a moment, but there is no doubt that, several years after the merger, Police Scotland is still operating under considerable strain because of it; now is not the time to add to the workload of Police Scotland when it is struggling to manage what it has now.

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

Surely the fact of the delay is proof that Police Scotland is in no fit state to absorb the BTP.

[Douglas Ross]

Absolutely. We have to remember that the joint programme board is made up of representatives of the Scottish Government, the UK Government and Police Scotland. At their latest meeting in February, they all agreed to recommend a pause to the Scottish Government. None of them could see the implementation of integration being achieved safely by 1 April 2019.

The intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Kirstene Hair) takes me back to where we are now, which is the pause. We are in a welcome place: the SNP, Police Scotland and the joint programme board all accept that the implementation date of 1 April 2019 will not be met. Gone are the supportive comments from the Police Scotland high command that everything about the proposal is rosy.

I cannot forget the response I received to a question that I put as a member of the Scottish Parliament’s Justice Committee; it came from Assistant Chief Constable Bernie Higgins. Almost exactly a year ago today, on 7 March, I asked him about the problems we had seen with the merger of the eight forces into one and the ongoing challenges faced by Police Scotland. At that point last year, I was asking whether it was the correct time to force ahead with this merger. ACC Higgins, before the Scottish Parliament Justice Committee, replied:

“To be frank, two years is a luxury, based on what we had to do to bring Police Scotland together, so I am confident that the transition would occur”.

Two years as a luxury and confidence from an assistant chief constable of Police Scotland—all now wilted on the vine. Deputy Chief Constable Iain Livingstone has made it very clear, in his remarks to the joint programme board and since, that Police Scotland was not ready, that it was not a luxury to have two years to implement the integration and, therefore, that it is correct that we have now paused.

Scottish City Deals

Kirstene Hair Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Sweeney) on securing this hugely important debate. The Government welcome the opportunity to talk about the huge success that Scotland’s city deals are already delivering for all seven of the major cities in Scotland, and will deliver in future.

I am slightly disappointed that the hon. Gentleman is so upset that I am responding to the debate. I am the Minister for the northern powerhouse—for most people in the Chamber, I guess that is the far-southern powerhouse—but I am also Minister for local growth, and it is my cities and local growth team, on behalf of the Government, in partnership with the Secretary of State for Scotland and his civil servants, who have negotiated many of these city deals. I hope today to bring to the debate not just the experience we have had in government of negotiating city deals in Scotland but other experience.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the huge success of the English city devolution programme. We have seen huge steps forward in places such as the West Midlands, which now has a Mayor for its combined authority, as well as Liverpool and Manchester—and, in particular, the Tees Valley. There are important lessons we can learn across our United Kingdom, both from this debate and, more generally, about how devolution—taking real power, money and influence away from Westminster and returning it to the hands of people in local communities to drive forward their own growth—can transform our economy.

Before I get to the main part of the debate, I want to put on record my congratulations to Scotland’s rugby team, who absolutely battered England at Murrayfield on Saturday. I was there, and it was a great privilege. It was not a great result from my point of view, but it was good to be at the match. It shows that sometimes the best team wins, and the team with the best spirit also wins. I therefore congratulate Scotland on winning back the Calcutta cup—after 10 years.

I would like to celebrate the achievements and successes we have seen in our city deals. An additional £1 billion of UK Government investment and funding is going into local growth priorities in Scotland, which has been matched by £1 billion put forward by the Scottish Government, with additional investment from local authorities, universities and—let us not forget it, because it has not yet been mentioned in the debate—the private sector, which together brought forward a further £835 million. That shows that when city deals, and devolution and growth deals, are at their most successful, they are a partnership of equals between the UK Government, the Scottish Government, Scottish local authorities, the private sector and, of course, our colleagues in the public sector.

As we set out in our industrial strategy White Paper last November, the Government are committed to driving forward growth across the whole of the United Kingdom. It is about helping areas to achieve their full potential by building on local sector strengths that attract investment and supporting local businesses to grow. The city and growth deals that we have already negotiated and those that we have committed to negotiate in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are absolutely central to that ambition. Moreover, they show how the Government can work hand in hand with partners in the devolved Administrations across our United Kingdom and local authorities to deliver, in a co-ordinated way, real impacts for local economies.

The first Scottish city deal was agreed in 2014, three years after the then coalition Government launched the first groundbreaking English city deal. It was interesting to hear it referred to as a pre-referendum bribe. If SNP Members believe that—I do not believe it; the deal was about driving forward the city of Glasgow’s economy for the people who live there—I wonder why they signed up to it. Perhaps they can deal with that later.

The deals provide place-based solutions, building on local expertise to co-ordinate investment and policy, and interventions to help to drive economic growth. Recognising that city deals, as piloted in England, could boost local economies across our United Kingdom, Her Majesty’s Government and the Scottish Government agreed that the programme should be extended beyond England, to demonstrate our commitment to supporting dynamic businesses and local communities represented by devolved Administrations. We have agreed four deals across Scotland and are negotiating three more, meaning that we now have deals being either implemented or negotiated for each of Scotland’s great seven cities. We are also working on a cross-border deal between Scotland and England, referred to as the borderlands deal, which was confirmed in the most recent Budget, to see how we can drive forward the ambitions and desires of businesses in the borderlands area of our United Kingdom.

[Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)]

There has been a lot of talk specifically about city deals. On the Tay cities deal, which comes into my constituency, I just wanted to confirm that we will use as much pressure as possible to ensure that the deals cascade out into rural economies as well, because they need just as much support.

[Jake Berry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. We should never forget that the majority of people in this country do not live in a city, but in towns, villages and rural communities. Therefore, every city deal and every growth deal that the Government negotiate, regardless of where it may be in our United Kingdom, has to be about driving forward the economies of areas outside cities as well as in cities. I happily confirm that the hopes and desires of her constituents who do not live in a city will be part of that deal.