The Economy

Luke Graham Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the banks should think carefully about their responsibilities to all communities, and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury met the chief executive of Barclays just today to discuss that very issue.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s announcements on infrastructure and broadband, which will also apply to Scotland. Will he also confirm that we were spending around £20 billion more on interest payments when the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats came into government? Those interest payments were going to international bondholders, so the friends of the international bankers and financiers are, in fact, in the Labour party, not the Conservatives.

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend is right. A Labour Chancellor deregulated banking and created a light-touch system, and we all paid the price.

I want to compare my approach to infrastructure with Labour’s. I am going to invest in new infrastructure that will grow the economy. Labour would borrow hundreds of billions to renationalise productive assets and then run them into the ground. I want to unleash all the talent and expertise of the private sector. Labour says—I quote the shadow Chancellor here—that business is the “enemy” and would tax it into submission. I will do all my work within a careful and credible fiscal framework; Labour would simply waste the money just like last time.

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[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I am not standing up to make a job application, as some people have suggested. In fact, we are trying to work ourselves out of a job by securing an independent Scotland, not one that has to send representatives to this place.

I take this opportunity to introduce amendment (h), in the names of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts)—the leader of Plaid Cymru in the House of Commons—and many other SNP Members.

This place has been nothing short of chaotic over the past few weeks and, in fact, over the past three years. If Members are looking on in horror at the childish behaviour of the UK Government, I can only imagine how people out there are feeling as they watch the utter chaos created by the actions of this Tory Government.

This year’s Queen’s Speech comes in the most turbulent and uncertain times these isles have seen in decades. In the pursuit of a hard Tory Brexit that rips us out of the single market, the Scottish economy is already £3 billion smaller than if none of this had been foisted upon us by this Government. UK in a Changing Europe estimates that GDP per capita will be some 6.4% lower in the long run compared with the UK remaining in the EU. That represents, on average, every person in these isles missing out on £2,000 of income each year.

This deal proposes the loss of the single market. The world’s largest economic bloc gives businesses in Britain access to 500 million customers, with no barriers, no tariffs and no local legislation to worry about. It is no surprise that nearly half our exports go to other EU nations. Those exports are linked to 3 million jobs in the UK. Today, almost 80% of British jobs are in the services sector, a sector with £226 billion of exports, nearly half of which go to Europe.

“I can see why some people want to leave the EU. Arguments about national identity and sovereignty pack an emotional punch. But for anyone who cares about British jobs, it comes down to one key question. Do businesses want the benefits and security of continued access to the Single Market, or the instability and uncertainty of a lost decade?”

Those are not my words but the words of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who is now willing to tip businesses into that lost decade in pursuit of this hard Tory Brexit.

[Luke Graham]

The hon. Lady talks about childish behaviour, but it was, of course, the SNP that walked out of proceedings in this House rather than participate in debate.

On her point about tipping over the economy, I would say that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer understands the irony of a nationalist standing up in this House to talk about leaving an internal market, costing billions of pounds, when that is the SNP’s reason for existence.

[Kirsty Blackman]

The SNP only walked out of this place because our leader was chucked out. We followed him out because we were standing up for the rights of the Scottish Parliament to stand up against the power grab this place was foisting on us.

A Panelbase poll came out a couple of weeks ago showing that more people in Scotland believe they would be better off in an independent Scotland within the EU than in broken Brexit Britain. We are winning the economic argument, and the Conservatives are losing it.

The Conservatives know they are losing the economic argument, which is why they are unwilling to publish an economic impact assessment of this deal. They are unwilling to allow the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish the figures on what will happen to the economy as a result of the Prime Minister’s Brexit deal. That is why they are wavering about the date of the Budget. If the Chancellor would confirm that the Budget will be on 6 November and that the OBR’s figures will be published, that would be welcome news, but he does not seem keen to see those figures come forward.

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[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I obviously want to praise the Government for their Queen’s Speech. Some of today’s announcements on infrastructure and broadband will bring real benefits to Scotland, actually delivering where the devolved authorities have failed on so many measures—failing on their R100 targets, failing on their landfill targets, failing on their education targets, failing on their mental health targets. Even in areas that are exclusively devolved, the SNP continues to underperform, and that is why it is so important that the UK Government make it clear that they are there for every constituent in Scotland, as they are for those in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and anywhere else in our United Kingdom and overseas territories.

Unsurprisingly, we will talk about Scotland, and we have been talking about Scotland today, but I shall focus on some aspects in the Queen’s Speech that will improve our infrastructure and help boost our productivity. The broadband investment and the increase that, hopefully, will be coming through the shared rural network will help increase mobile connectivity in the most hard-to-reach parts of my constituency and also further north up into the islands. It will also give us the opportunity for further investment in our local communities, which I will come on to in just a minute.

Labour Members were taking issue with the economic literacy and performance of the United Kingdom Government. I would just like to say that, even in spite of some of the issues and challenges that are exposed through Brexit—let us face it, GDP growth has slowed since the referendum was announced in 2015—the UK is still performing pretty strongly in a European context. Its performance is still stronger than that of Germany, which is not facing Brexit and is a well-known advanced economy. So I do not think Brexit is the cause of all our ills. It is also not right to blame any of our European partners for some of the structural weaknesses in our country, such as our productivity and labour market capacity, which, of course, we need to increase.

The Queen’s Speech is important and the Budget will be even more important in showing my constituents why the UK Government actually work for them. Yes, over the past two years, we delivered the VAT changes to get £35 million back for our police and fire services; yes, we corrected the historical injustice of 2013 to make sure that our farmers got the right amount of convergence funding, and got £50 million on top of that to put us on a fair footing looking forward, so our agricultural and rural communities get the funding they deserve; and yes, in this last spending review alone, we got £1.2 billion more put to the Scottish block fund, which is more than we received in EU structural funding between 2010 and 2016. That shows the value of the United Kingdom and the performance of this United Kingdom Government.

Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, we have a Government who continuously underperform. Business confidence has been trailing behind that in the rest of the UK since before 2014, and we have a £1 billion tax gap that was exposed just in the last year. So the SNP consistently asks for more powers, but every time it gets them it underperforms. On economics, we have that £1 billion tax gap and, as I have said, business confidence is way behind the rest of the UK. On welfare, we were told that a welfare agency could be established within 18 months, yet it has been deferred for over seven years. So the SNP is completely underperforming for our constituents.

It is vital for my constituents to understand that the UK Government are there for them. Whether in our rural towns such as Crieff or in former industrial areas such as Alloa and other towns in Clackmannanshire, it is clear the Government mean to deliver. I hope that in the Budget they will expand the stronger towns fund to Scotland, and I also hope they will continue to look at the Budget references and proposals from the Scottish Conservative and Unionist group, which will support our whisky industry, help our rural towns and communities and give us the opportunity to show that, actually, when our Government work together—central, devolved and local—we can perform for all our constituents and be proud to be Scottish and British together.