Finance (No.2) Bill

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

3rd reading
Thursday 23rd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I very much liked the earlier comment, Madam Deputy Speaker, about your being a good example to women in this place and someone whom people look up to. I agree with that, and I wanted to begin by thanking you.

Let me now say something about the washing up of Finance Bills in general, and about this particular Bill in the context of washing up. It seems to me that I have spent a great deal of my time in Parliament dealing with Finance Bills, and I have also spent far too much time dealing with Finance Bills during the washing-up process. I do not know whether anyone remembers the Finance Act 2017, but because an election was called the Bill had to go through that process, and it was massively gutted beforehand. My problem was that I had tabled amendments to all the clauses that were now being removed, and I was somewhat unhappy about the fact that I had done a significant amount of work that would never see the light of day.

On that occasion I gave a speech that I think lasted more than 50 minutes, in which I spoke about every amendment I had tabled, but I can reassure that House that I will not be doing the same today. I have not tabled amendments to this Bill, and neither has my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry). In fact, I have come in at the last moment to take over from my hon. Friend, because, sadly, he had returned to Inverness before the Prime Minister made the announcement of the election, and there was no physical way for him to get back in time today. I appreciate the hard work that he has done during the Bill’s earlier stages. He is sorry that he cannot be here, and unfortunately I am a poor substitute, but I will do my best.

We will be voting against the Bill’s Third Reading. I am sure that no one will be surprised by that, given that we tabled a reasoned amendment on Second Reading and that this is consistent with the approach that we have taken throughout the Bill’s progress.

Let me say a little about the way in which Finance Bills—specifically this Finance Bill, and other recent Finance Bills—go through the House. There has been an ongoing issue with Ministers, including Chancellors, refusing to include “amendment of the law” resolutions. Refusing to include a Budget resolution for amendment of the law is a genuine constitutional change, and it has taken place without much of a fanfare—pretty much on the basis that it was done during that wash-up in 2017, or in the case of a Finance Bill that was introduced with a very tight timescale. After that, the resolution was never brought back, although it is important to Finance Bills and it is important for scrutiny purposes. I hope that, should they become a Government at some time in the future, the official Opposition will commit themselves to bringing it back.

I am also concerned about the fact that Finance Bill Committees continue not to take oral evidence. The Procedure Committee will be sick of hearing me talk about this, because I bring it up at nearly all its meetings, but the lack of oral evidence means that scrutiny is not as good as it could be. I appreciate that the Minister mentioned those who submit written evidence, but I do not think that that is an adequate substitute. I understand the argument of Ministers that Finance Bills are taken by a Committee of the whole House followed by Public Bill Committee sessions, but much of the stuff that is considered in the Public Bill Committee is extremely technical, and it would benefit Members to be able to question external organisations with real experience. The Association of Accounting Technicians, for example, would be able to give us a significant amount of information about how such measures would work. When Committees dealing with Bills with which I have been involved have taken oral evidence, Members have relied heavily on quoting that evidence throughout the progress of those Bills, and I think that this would greatly improve both the Finance Bill and its scrutiny.

Let me now turn to our specific concerns about this Bill. The Chancellor made a number of comments on Radio 4 yesterday morning, before the announcement of the election. One of the excellent journalists on the programme pushed him to say whether or not he felt he was better off now than before. The Chancellor did not answer that question, but the reality is that if we ask people up and down these islands what their biggest concern is at the moment, they overwhelmingly say it is the cost of living crisis. They are massively concerned about the fact that food, electricity and gas prices have gone through the roof, and about the extra money that they are having to shell out.

The Budget was an opportunity for the UK Government to recognise that concern, take it seriously, and do what we did in Scotland: we have put tackling child poverty front and centre of decision-making processes. We have the Scottish child payment, which has taken 100,000 children out of poverty. We are doing everything that we can to mitigate the UK Government’s policies, but the reality is that all we can do is mitigate, given that the block grant is the lowest percentage of UK Government spending that it has been since devolution. With capital budgets for the Scottish Parliament being slashed, we find that increasingly difficult, because we are not in control of all the levers. We are not in control of all our finances. We cannot increase the minimum wage to a proper living wage, rather than a pretendy living wage. We cannot scrap the two-child cap. We mitigate as far as we possibly can, but we do not have all the powers that we require.

People in Scotland are better off as a result of the decisions taken by the Scottish Government. They are getting a free university education, and they can go to the dentist for free; I cannot believe the low percentage of NHS dentists in the rest of the UK. People in Scotland can receive the Scottish child payment, and a higher number of children from deprived areas go to university in Scotland. There is a huge amount of good being done in Scotland, but it is being done by the SNP Government, who have one hand tied behind their back by Westminster.

The Chancellor’s refusal to say whether he felt better off shows the difference between the haves and the have- nots throughout these islands. If we ask people who come to receptions in Parliament—people who have high salaries—how they feel about the cost of living crisis, they might say that they feel it a bit, and that they will have slightly fewer holidays or slightly fewer cars, but they do not have to make decisions, every moment of every day, about every penny that they spend. They are not, like our constituents, lying in bed at night worrying about how they will pay the rent and electricity bills, and how they will manage to buy bread, potatoes or pasta.

The inflation figures announced yesterday do not show that things are better. They show that inflation is less high than it was, but does it really make a difference to those buying pasta that it has gone up by only 47%, rather than 49%, over the past few years, given that there has been a 25% overall increase in the cost of food, and that benefits and social security have not kept pace?

The UK Government had the opportunity to provide help with the cost of living crisis in the Budget, and they did not take it. They talk about the changes that they are making to national insurance and tax, but those changes impact only people who are working and earning above the thresholds, and a good chunk of them, particularly those on the lowest earnings, also get universal credit. There are major issues with universal credit, particularly for single people but also for those with larger families, because of factors such as the two-child cap.

The reality is that this UK Government had an opportunity to make a difference to people’s lives, and they refused to take it. They do not have the same priorities as us. We will always put Scotland first. We will always fight in this place against UK Government decisions that the people of Scotland are unhappy with. Whether under a Tory or Labour UK Government, we will do everything that we can to ensure that Scotland’s voice is heard. We will do everything that we can to disagree with legislation that the people of Scotland disagree with, and everything we can to work cross party when legislation is in the interests of the people of Scotland. I have made it very clear that we disagree with this legislation, and will oppose Third Reading.