Conduct of the Right Hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Ian Blackford

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

Let me respectfully say to Government Members that I will give a guarantee, a promise and a commitment right here and now that all moneys raised by the Scottish National party for the purposes of fighting an independence campaign—every penny—will be spent on independence campaigning, because that is what we are about. There is a big difference in those who fund the SNP and the independence campaign, because—I will make another promise—not one single member of the SNP who gives to us willingly will end up in the House of Lords; they will be funding the SNP and the independence movement to ensure that we deliver on our promise to take Scotland out of this Union.

There is another important point about how deeply damaging all these scandals are. Every day that the Prime Minster spends concentrating on how he will somehow avoid scrutiny is a day not doing the basics of what his job demands. It is also becoming clearer just how damaging and dangerous it is that chaotic governance now defines Downing Street. That would be bad enough in normal times, but it is totally unforgivable in the middle of a pandemic.

In the real world, away from the shambles in No. 10, people are suffering not only from the pandemic, but from a Tory cost-of-living crisis. Inflation is running at 5%. Rising day-to-day costs and rising household bills are the main focus for families. While all the political stories on sleaze have been going on and taking up time at Downing Street, the political decision to cut universal credit has been hitting homes hardest. The shameful cut to universal credit was not just the wrong policy; it came at the worst possible time for families this winter. We are left with a UK Government who are not only up to their necks in sleaze, but hitting families at the same time. In Scotland, I am proud that we have a First Minister who understands the pressures that family finances are under, and a Government who listen and respond. I am proud that at the very same time that the Westminster Government are cutting universal credit by £20 a week, the SNP Scottish Government are raising the Scottish child payment by £20 a week.

One of the public’s real angers about these scandals is the deep dishonesty that has been so openly on display. The truth and the Prime Minister have always been strangers. I say that in sadness and not in any anger. Let me just take a few examples. On 4 March 2020, the Prime Minister said:

“We have restored the nurses’ bursary”.—[Official Report, 4 March 2020; Vol. 672, c. 829.]

That was completely and factually untrue. On 17 June 2020, the Prime Minister said that there were

“400,000…fewer families living in poverty now than there were in 2010.”—[Official Report, 17 June 2020; Vol. 677, c. 796.]

Both the Office for National Statistics and the Children’s Commissioner have confirmed that that is false. On 7 November 2019, the Prime Minister told Northern Ireland businesses, in person, that the protocol would mean

“no forms, no checks, no barriers of any kind”—

once again, completely untrue. It is right to be careful in terms of the language that we use in this House, but when it comes to language it is also right to be accurate and honest. On the basis of all the evidence, I can only conclude that the Prime Minister has repeatedly broken the sixth principle of public life. I can only conclude that the Prime Minister has demonstrated himself to be a liar.

I think there is a misguided sense among those on the Tory Benches that they have gotten past the scandals of the past few weeks. The Prime Minister thinks that, if he blunders on, people might not forgive, but they will forget. Not for the first time, the Tories are badly wrong and badly out of touch, because they just do not get that the depth of anger among the public is very real and is not going away. I know that people in Scotland are looking on at a broken Westminster system that has never felt more remote, more arrogant and more corrupt.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate, and do Conservative Members appreciate, the damage that has been done when to be able to use the word “liar” in this place is now passed as fair comment and accepted, and the damage that that is doing to our democracy?

Afghanistan

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Ian Blackford

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for facilitating the recall of Parliament. It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), and I hope the Government will reflect very carefully on her words—particularly her remarks at the end of her contribution about the role of NATO in the light of the American decision to pull out of Afghanistan. These are very real issues about the capabilities within NATO. If I may say so, it is about not just the capability of NATO but how we make sure the United Nations has all the tools at its disposal to do what we expect of it. We will have to return to these matters in this House when we come back from recess.

I thank the Government for the briefings we have had over the course of the last few days, and in particular I commend the Defence Secretary for making himself available and for how he has conducted himself. Indeed, that is also true of Ministers in the Home Office—I think particularly of the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and, from the Foreign Office, the Minister for the Middle East and North Africa. When we are talking about human lives being lost, it is important that we in this House work together where it is possible but—yes, of course—that we ask legitimate questions.

There can be little doubt that the chaos and crisis that has been inflicted on the Afghan people is the biggest foreign policy failure of modern times. The sheer scale of that political failure is matched only by the humanitarian emergency that it has now unleashed. As we gather here this morning, the future and fate of Afghanistan has never been more uncertain. Afghanistan, a country that has been through so much, is once again facing a period of darkness. Over the course of the past week we have watched those tragic images from afar. The scenes of Afghans seeking to jump on to moving planes to escape will haunt us for the rest of our lives. We have watched from afar, but we all have a deep sense of sorrow about just how closely the UK has been involved in what has unfolded. Geographical distance does not for a second diminish the moral responsibility that we need to feel for the west’s role in this crisis. Washing our hands of this crisis will not make it go away, and it definitely will not wash away our responsibility to the Afghan people. We all know that acting now will be too little, too late, but better little and late than nothing at all.

Today we have a choice: we can either offer meaningless words of sympathy and stand idly by, or we can start to do the right thing. We can take responsibility and act. The Home Secretary has today talked about evacuating more contacts of the UK Afghanistan operation from the existing resettlement scheme. Let me be clear: there should be no ifs or buts; everyone who has worked with UK forces and who by definition has a vulnerability, must be moved to a position of safety. No one can be left behind. That is our moral and ethical responsibility. All those who work with us are our responsibility. We do not, we cannot, walk away from them. Today I am asking the Government to make that commitment.

That action needs to begin with a co-ordinated domestic and international effort to offer safe passage, shelter and support to refugees fleeing this crisis is obvious. That action cannot wait. If we are to act, we must act with the same speed with which the situation in Afghanistan has developed. I am sad that the scheme announced last night by the UK Government, and today by the Prime Minister, does not go nearly far or fast enough. It can only be right that the number of refugees we welcome here reflects the share of the responsibility that the UK Government have for this foreign policy disaster. This scheme falls way short of that responsibility. The scheme must be far more ambitious, generous, and swift to help the Afghan citizens that it has abandoned and left at serious risk of persecution, and indeed death. The scale of the efforts must match the scale of the humanitarian emergency.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

Considering that the Government promised in 2016 to save 3,000 unaccompanied refugee children from Calais, is the right hon. Gentleman concerned that the number who have actually been saved stands at around 380? If those promises can be broken, and among those children were many from Afghanistan, is he concerned that the promises made today may be as unrobust as those of the past?

Debate on the Address

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Ian Blackford

Tuesday 11th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

“We didn’t win”—can you believe it? We have just taken two seats from the Conservatives in the election: Edinburgh Central and Ayr. I do not know what the hon. Member calls winning when, by the Westminster rules, we win 62 of the 73 seats, and by the warped logic of Conservative Back Benchers, we have not won. The hon. Member lives in a parallel universe if that is what she believes.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will join me in wondering how the House will hold Welsh Labour to account, which has moved its manifesto so much that it can talk about parking its tanks on Plaid Cymru’s lawn, but Plaid Cymru made that lawn.

[Ian Blackford]

I thank the right hon. Lady for that intervention. Hopefully the light that we have shone in Scotland gives an example to the people of Wales and Plaid Cymru that they should follow us and find their way back into Europe as an independent country.

Putting on the record the scale of the SNP victory and achievement and the verdict of the Scottish people is especially important given today’s context, because today this Tory Government put forward their policy programme for the new Session. The Prime Minister gained the authority and the mandate to do so when his party was re-elected to office in 2019—re-elected, I might add, with a significantly smaller vote share than was achieved by the SNP in Scotland last week. In that election, the Prime Minister put forward a manifesto with the policies that he said he and his party would implement. Those of us on the Opposition Benches have the right to oppose many of those policies, and we will do so and do so forcibly, but if the Prime Minister secures a majority in this House, that mandate from the manifesto will be legally implemented. It is a pretty fundamental principle and should be a simple concept—it is called parliamentary democracy.

Yet, a few short days after a landslide victory in Scotland, it is that very basic principle of democracy—that right of Governments to propose and implement their manifesto commitments—that this Tory Government are threatening to undermine. By doing so, they are threatening a new low level of hypocrisy and disrespect. The defeated Scottish Tory leader has said that the SNP seeking to implement a fundamental manifesto promise—a commitment to give our people a choice on their own future—should be treated as illegal. Before the results had even been completed, the Prime Minister himself told his favourite newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, that he would try to block a post-pandemic independence referendum.

On today of all days, I genuinely urge the Prime Minister and his Government to think again. He is looking away and looking disinterested, but this is important, because it is about democracy. It is about the rights of people. [Interruption.] People will be watching this, and they can hear Conservative MPs laughing about our desire to make sure that democracy is delivered. That is the contempt that I have talked about.

Let me say to the Prime Minister that any confrontation will not be with the SNP. If the Government seek to deny Scottish democracy, their confrontation will be with the people of Scotland. Secondly, the Prime Minister needs to reflect on this reality: a fight with democracy is a fight he will never, not ever win. I know that the Prime Minister does not want to hear this, but he might try to show some interest in what is going on, because what we are seeing is this Government’s contempt for Scotland.

Today’s Queen’s Speech and this Tory policy programme emphasise another important point. Last week’s elections brought into stark focus the chasm in the political choices being made in different parts of the United Kingdom. The differing values in leadership between the Prime Minister and our First Minister and the tale of two Governments in London and Edinburgh have crystallised the choice of two futures. Time and again, the majority of people in Scotland back a progressive, inclusive, outward-looking vision for the future of our nation. This has been our direction of travel since we gained some powers through devolution, yet in this Westminster Parliament we are facing many more years of right-wing, Brexit-obsessed Tory Governments we did not vote for taking us in a direction we have not chosen. That clear divergence in political direction is simply not sustainable: Scotland has chosen a different path.

As we look beyond the pandemic and build the recovery, our alternative to these Tory values and their vision is set out in our manifesto. Unlike this Tory Government, the SNP manifesto has the support of the Scottish people. The policy programme the SNP put before the people of Scotland will move our country forward, making it fairer, greener and more prosperous. The First Minister is already back at work and getting on with the job. Our alternative to this Queen’s Speech is already in action.

With health and social care services being won on the frontline of the pandemic, this new elected SNP Government will now deliver a 20% increase in frontline NHS spending, a total of £2.5 billion. While this Tory Government dither and delay on reforms to social care, the new SNP Government will move to establish a national care service, backed by a 25% increase in social care investment. While the Conservatives dither, the SNP Government in Edinburgh act. This will include significant investment in the staff themselves. The Tories continue to laugh while we talk about investment in the NHS. Unlike the insult of the 1% offered by the Tories, in Scotland NHS staff have been offered an average—an average, Prime Minister—of a 4% pay increase. The new national care service, backed by £800 million, will enable the Government to offer a national living wage to all care staff. It is little wonder that the Prime Minister hangs his head in shame, and so he should.

To invest in the next generation, the SNP Government will invest over £1 billion over the next Parliament to close the school attainment gap and to recruit 3,500 additional teachers and classroom assistants. [Interruption.] I do not think that if the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine was back in school he would behave the way he is behaving in this House. He really ought to calm down.

This Tory Government have to be shamed by a professional footballer into providing free school meals. In contrast, the Scottish Government will get on with providing free school breakfasts and lunches to every primary school pupil year round and a device for every child in Scotland to get online. For families, the SNP Scottish Government will build a wraparound childcare system to help support working parents, with the least well-off families paying nothing. While this Tory Government threaten to rip away the lifeline of the £20-a-week uplift to universal credit, the new SNP Government will double the game-changing Scottish child payment over the lifetime of their Parliament. That is a Scottish Government delivering on the people’s priorities.

The context of the covid crisis makes the choices made now all the more critical, because in seeking to build economic recovery in the aftermath of this pandemic, it is vital that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. But the Budget in March and this Queen’s Speech are clearly laying the grounds for more Tory austerity and more Tory cuts. It is also important to point out that no party and no Government who forced through a job-destroying Brexit in the middle of a pandemic can credibly claim to be focused on recovery.

With the powers we have, the SNP Scottish Government are doing everything they can to mitigate this damage and seeking to protect our businesses. We believe a fair recovery should follow the example of the Biden Administration: it must be investment-led. At the centre of the SNP’s recovery plans is an economic transformation that would have fair work and the climate emergency at its heart. This will include an investment of £500 million to support new jobs and to retrain people for the jobs of the future, as well as funding the young person’s guarantee of a university, college, apprenticeship or training place or a job for every young person who wants it. The SNP Government will also embark on a massive programme of capital investment. Over £33 billion will be invested over the next five years in our national infrastructure, directly supporting 45,000 jobs. An SNP Government will deliver a further 100,000 homes by 2032, with investment of £3.5 billion over this Parliament, which will support 14,000 jobs a year.

Ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow in November, enhancing and expanding our world-leading climate action policies will be a key priority. The SNP Government will deliver a green transport revolution by providing free bikes to all school-age children who cannot afford them, removing the majority of fossil-fuel buses from public transport, ramping up investment in active travel, and bringing ScotRail into public ownership with the aim of decarbonising the rail network by 2035. There is also a commitment to decarbonising the heating of 1 million homes by 2030.

This is the vision and these are the values that we will use to fuel the recovery with the limited powers of devolution we now hold. However, the covid crisis has laid bare the need to equip our Parliament with the full powers that are needed to drive our long-term recovery. If we are to fully build the kind of country we want to see, it is clearer than ever before that we need the full powers that we can only deliver with independence—powers to borrow and invest in our economy and in our people. Only then can we build the country that truly and fully reflects our choices, our values and our priorities: a country that lifts children out of poverty instead of wasting sums of money on yet more nuclear warheads; a country that gives our young people the ability to travel, instead of stopping their freedom of movement across the European continent; a country that welcomes the world instead of imposing a hostile immigration policy that damages our economy; and a country that respects and values refugees—refugees who were allowed to vote in our elections of last week—instead of proposing a law in this Queen’s Speech that will rip up the refugee convention.

Just as it is right to point out the opportunity before us, it is also right that we are honest about the risks to recovery if we remain trapped in a broken Westminster system—because hidden in this new legislative programme from the Tories lies a familiar threat. Just as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 was a blatant assault on devolution, this Queen’s Speech doubles down on that agenda with further power grabs on state aid and other aspects of devolved spending and powers. Only yesterday there were more media reports of the UK Government seeking to spend money directly in devolved areas in a desperate attempt to shore up support for the Union. The Tory plan has now been obvious for some time: it is to hand this Prime Minister and his Government more powers to control our choices and dictate our future. It is one more powerful reason for Scotland to choose a very different future.

Post Brexit and post pandemic, Scotland now has the choice of two futures. We know the past Westminster has imposed and we now know the future that it will inflict. Westminster has chosen its future: a job-destroying Brexit, a return to austerity cuts, and more attacks on devolution. Today’s legislative agenda confirms and cements that choice. For Scotland, the choice over our own future is now ever clearer and ever closer. We have repeatedly said that our immediate priority is to steer people safely through this pandemic and to kick-start the recovery. We remain true to that commitment. But when this crisis has passed, there is now a fresh democratic commitment to give the Scottish people the right to choose an independent future. The Prime Minister would do well to listen to the First Minister: an independence referendum is now a question of when and not if. On the SNP Benches, we relish the opportunity for debate and democratic decision that that now-inevitability awakes, and we look forward to Scotland rejoining the independent nations of the European Union.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Liz Saville Roberts and Ian Blackford

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion & Programme motion: House of Commons
Monday 14th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Blackford]

I am grateful for the question. We will be voting against this Bill this evening but we will not be supporting the reasoned amendment, because of some of the other conditions attached to it, not least that there should be a single market Act that does not enshrine the rights of the devolved nations to be able to protect their own interests—that is the fundamental difference we have this evening. I ask the House to oppose the Bill and vote it down on Second Reading.

The provisions of this legislation recklessly and deliberately risk a bad deal or, increasingly, the economic devastation of a no deal. You cannot claim to support business while pursuing a bad Brexit. You cannot claim to support business by burdening it with yet more economic uncertainty, in the face of a global pandemic, one where we know the challenges we face. Yet, in the midst of this, the Prime Minister brings this Bill. The Government cannot claim to support the Scottish economy by taking more economic powers away from Scotland’s democratically elected Parliament.

I will turn now to some of the contents of the Bill, and specifically the numerous aspects that will undermine the powers and authority of Scotland’s Parliament. Clauses 2 to 9 contain sweeping powers that could act to compel Scotland to accept lower standards set elsewhere in the UK. That means standards on animal welfare, food safety and environmental protection to name but a few. We all know the risk and the threat that that will bring, especially for Scotland’s farmers and consumers. This law is a Tory invitation for chlorinated chicken and hormone-injected beef in our supermarkets. [Interruption.] We can hear the guffawing from the Conservative Benches, but yesterday morning on “Politics Scotland” a Treasury Minister more or less admitted that they could not stop chlorinated chicken coming into the United Kingdom. [Interruption.] Go and check the tapes; it is there.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman shares my dismay that the non-discrimination clause would mean that popular policies already made by the Welsh Government and our Senedd to do with the smoking ban, the ban on plastic bags, and organ donation could have been called in and not been valid under this legislation.

[Ian Blackford]

The right hon. Member makes a very good point. There are policies that we are very proud of introducing in Scotland, such as minimum alcohol pricing, which was so critical in dealing with misuse of alcohol in Scotland, but there is no guarantee that we would be able to bring in such initiatives in the future. We would have to go cap in hand to Westminster for authority. The days of us being “too wee, too poor, too stupid” are well and truly over.