Homelessness
Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Callum McCaig
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
I want to talk about the issues facing young people today and then about complex cases of homelessness and the related problems.
At Prime Minister’s questions on 23 November I mentioned Aberdeen Cyrenians, a charity in my constituency. In fact, I think it may be in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig), but it is in my city anyway.
Kirsty Blackman
Our city; I am sorry. I mentioned that charity and asked the Prime Minister about how austerity is increasing homelessness. The Prime Minister’s answer included the phrase “living within our means”, which is unfortunate phrasing. Homeless people do not have any means to live within. They do not have a house or other things. Today’s debate has been much more considered and measured and a lot less political than that exchange at PMQs.
I have heard young people today—as in people under about 35 or 40—being described as the precariat. They have precarious jobs. The gig economy is increasing and they do not have the long-term jobs that people used to have. They are subsisting on zero-hours contracts and do not have the same level of security as previous generations, who could walk into a job and have it for life. They do not have security in housing. They live incredibly expensively in the private rented sector, where not enough safeguards are in place to ensure security of tenure. As has been mentioned, people can come home and find that their locks have been changed, and their private sector landlord feels that that is the way forward. A huge number of landlords are not like that, but enough are to make it a problem.
Young people today are in precarious situations, and the risk of homelessness is real and one that we have not seen in recent generations. A study published in September found that 40% of families have less than £100 in savings. Much has been said today about so many of us being just a step away from homelessness, but that bears repeating—40% of families have less than £100 in savings. People do not have the extra cash in their pockets to deal with an unexpected change in situation, so homelessness is perhaps a bigger risk than it has been previously.
With austerity, benefits sanctions and the changes to the benefits system, the people with the most complex, chaotic lives are being disadvantaged the most. The Government cannot easily get them back into work, and they represent a figure that a few weeks of jobcentre intervention will not change. They need months of intervention—some may need years—due to their complex problems, including mental health issues, homelessness and being unable to hold down a job in recent years. They require huge amounts of intervention before they will be able to get back to being tax-paying, working members of society. It is quite easy, if the Government say they are not going to provide intensive support for those people, for them to fall between the cracks. Allowing that to happen in those complex cases is one of the worst things that this Government have done, and that causes a real issue of homelessness.
A huge number of other things can lead to homelessness. Domestic violence has been talked about a lot, and we have a debate on it on Friday. It can lead to women or men—in the main it is women—fleeing and finding themselves homeless or in an insecure tenancy. That is a real problem that they have to deal with at a time when they are going through a huge number of other problems too. Again, that problem is sometimes being left alone because it is too difficult to tackle and it is not an easy statistic to change—the Government cannot easily get people back into work and back into a secure place.
As someone who was elected to a local authority in 2007, I am a passionate advocate against the right to buy. I saw the damage it caused to our communities and the number of people who do not have a permanent roof over their head as a result of it, and the Government need to change their plans on it.
Offshore Oil and Gas Industry
Debate between Kirsty Blackman and Callum McCaigWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)
Me? Right. [Laughter.] Thank you, Mr Walker, for calling me to speak. I was not quite expecting to be called and there are other people in the room who I assumed were speaking before me; clearly, I assumed wrongly.
I commend the hon. Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), and my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), for securing this debate at the Backbench Business Committee. One of the unique frustrations of having the privilege of being my party’s Front-Bench spokesperson in this area is that I could not add my name to those of the Members who secured the debate, such is the importance of this industry to my constituency, to Scotland and—as we have heard today—not only to large regions of the United Kingdom but to the United Kingdom as a whole.
We have heard from the three key areas: Aberdeen; north-east England; and south-east England. We have heard of distinct challenges facing these areas and we have heard accounts in different accents from the different areas, but let us be clear that those of us here who represent these areas speak with one voice about what is required.
I add my backing to everything that has been said about support for the industry. For all of us who represent constituencies with an oil industry, whether job losses in the industry are in Aberdeen, East Anglia or the north-east of England, we all feel them. They are hugely damaging to communities and it is incumbent upon us to do everything we can to secure the bright future that I believe this industry has; with the right support, I am absolutely sure that it will have a bright future.
The hon. Member for Waveney made an absolutely superb speech to kick off this debate, covering the issues in great detail: the challenges; the opportunities; and the solutions that exist. Let us be clear—the Government do not have the silver bullet that is the cure to the industry’s ills, but they have a significant remit in terms of tackling those ills.
There are three key areas around which there are challenges facing oil and gas. The first is price, which we can do nothing about. The second is the industry’s costs, which the industry is doing its bit on; it is doing it well, but that will result in job losses as money is taken out of the system. Nevertheless, that process is required to get the industry to that bright future. And the third factor is tax.
It may seem slightly perverse that at a time when companies are not making profits and when taxes are not flowing into the Treasury that we should be calling for tax cuts, but it is precisely at this time that we need to call for tax cuts and it is at this time that they will not come at great expense to the Treasury. It will not cost the Treasury anything, or it will only cost the Treasury little, to make tax cuts, but the benefit of making them will be substantially felt in the wider economy, as they will support employment and unlock the finance that we have talked about, which in turn will drive the innovation to support our supply chain in delivering the changes, the innovation, the skills and the expertise that this industry is already world-class in and world famous for.
[Philip Davies in the Chair]
What is at stake here? As we have heard, the industry has produced 42 billion barrels. The reasonable estimate is that there are another 20 billion barrels left. Even if we do nothing, a number of those barrels will be produced; the investment has gone in and the existing platforms will continue to produce. The projects that are in development at this stage will happen.
However, a considerable amount of those reserves that are left in the North sea might not be extracted, and if they are not extracted the cost will fall upon us all. There would be a loss of jobs, particularly in the areas represented by those of us who have spoken today. That would have a knock-on impact on the wider economy—the supply chain that stretches the length and breadth of these islands.
Kirsty Blackman
Specifically on the point about the barrels that are still to be extracted, does my hon. Friend agree that some of them are in more difficult types of field and so are more difficult to extract? The innovation, the research and development and the funding towards that are therefore hugely important for those fields.
Callum McCaig
I agree wholeheartedly. The make-up of the North sea is different from what it was and what has gone past. As well as the innovation and expertise, there is also the infrastructure that is already there, as a number of Members have mentioned. Once that is gone, there are fields that will go from being marginal on the positive side to being marginal on the negative side or just entirely uneconomic.
Returning to the point I was making on the missed opportunities, every single barrel of oil that we do not produce from the North sea we will need to get from somewhere else. We import oil and gas, and we should not underestimate the importance that being an oil producer has for the UK’s balance of payments, which, frankly, are not great as it is. If we have to rely more on imported oil and gas for our supply, it will further exacerbate that issue. If we miss the opportunities to further develop and support the supply chain, the ability to provide the project management, skills, expertise and technology will go with it as oil and gas is exploited in other, perhaps more favourable basins. The prizes are clear: jobs, energy security and support for our balance of payments and exports. Those huge prizes are there, and if the industry is given the right support, they can and will be obtained.
The Prime Minister has talked about building a bridge to the future, and that is necessary and required. The same turn of phrase has been used by my colleague, the Scottish Government’s Energy Minister, Fergus Ewing. We have left a period of very high oil prices, but as day follows night, oil prices will go up. None of us can predict when that will be, but at least until now it has been the case that they have always gone back up again. The difference in supply and demand that we are talking about is not huge, but the impacts that that has over a sustained period of time change the price and make it far more volatile and far lower.
It is a curious situation, but Aberdeen is probably one of the few places in Europe where the local radio stations tell their listeners what the oil price is. At the end of every bulletin, the newsreader will say something like, “Oil trades at $36 a barrel”—folk are happy with $36 a barrel, because it is better than the $29 a barrel it was at. That is strange, and on the face of it that seems like a slightly useless snippet of information, but it signifies how important the industry is to the city that I am proud to represent.
What would a tax cut do? It would provide the clearest signal that the Government can offer that they believe in the future of oil and gas and will do everything they can to ensure that that future is realised as well as possible. We are talking about a multibillion pound investment in a platform 40 or 50 miles out into the North sea, and that is a significant investment. That investment is likely to have a lifespan well in excess of 20 years—potentially, it is 30 to 40 years. In the time that that field will be looking to make its money back, the oil price will go through many ups and downs, but when many international companies are looking across the globe at where to invest their ever-shrinking piles of capital—the oil industry globally is facing a crisis of investment—we need to be at the most competitive we can be. Part of that is the skills, innovation and expertise that I am absolutely certain we have, but that change in the headline rate of tax over the lifespan of a field can put the decision from being, “We do not proceed,” to, “Yes, let’s press the button and go ahead and develop this field.”
Reducing the headline rate of tax is the clearest single way that we can boost the efforts in exploration and in developing the fields that we know about, and it will provide the clearest way forward on the bridge to the future. It will require people to invest. Whether that is companies using the strength of their balance sheet—some are doing that, buying up other operators and such like—or whether it is borrowed money, if we can de-risk the investment decision as much as possible, there is a greater chance that someone will invest that money in the UK continental shelf, as opposed to one of the other basins.