The Economy

Debate between Martin Whitfield and Kirsty Blackman

Thursday 24th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman]

You are looking at me, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will make some progress.

I am going now to focus on tackling inequality. This Queen’s Speech offers no rays of sunshine. In Scotland, we are bringing forward all our spending review plans, our programme for government and our national performance framework and looking at the plans on the basis of the wellbeing of people who live in Scotland. Scotland and New Zealand are leading the way in the world in this space. The UK Government are not taking account of wellbeing, as we can see by the fact that every time Conservative Members stand up they talk about how great it is that we have such low unemployment, how rich everybody is, how well everybody is going and how much higher their wages are. If we ask people in the streets and people at our surgeries whether they feel as though they are richer than they were before a decade of austerity, we find that they all say that they are not richer and that this Tory Government have catapulted them into poverty. We are seeing increasing numbers of children in poverty. In Scotland, we are doing everything we can to combat that, through things such as the baby box and the Scottish child payment. Our Government are doing everything they can but they cannot mitigate every one of the excesses of Tory austerity, no matter how hard we try, because we do not have all the levers that would be available with independence.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady share my disappointment that in opening this debate the Government were unable to give us a date when they are going to close food banks?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I agree. I am incredibly concerned about the increase in food bank use that there has been, particularly among people who are working. The Government talk about the fact that so many more people are at work, but so many more of those people who are at work are having to go to food banks. People are having to make the choice between heating their homes and feeding their children. Half of families have less than £100 in savings and, if their washing machine breaks down and their kid needs a new pair of shoes, they are into debt. That situation cannot continue. We need this UK Government to step up to ensure that people are paid a living wage that they can actually live on. It does not matter what age they are, be it 19, 29 or 59, they should be paid a living wage that they can live on.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Martin Whitfield and Kirsty Blackman

Committee: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 6th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

I was slightly not expecting to be called to speak then. I am very glad that I have been—honestly. It is good to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, particularly on the financial aspects of the Bill. Given the rumours that we heard last week in the press about the divorce bill, which have not yet been substantiated by the UK Government, this is a good time to be having this discussion.

As a number of hon. Members have said, it is clear that the divorce bill is likely to be significant. But the reason that we are making assumptions—or trying to come up with ideas about what the divorce bill might look like—is because there are no solid facts coming out of the Government. It would be incredibly useful for all of us if the Government were to say, “This is how we expect the divorce bill to be structured. This is what we expect the money to be spent on. This is how we expect it to be allocated.” We would then be able to provide appropriate scrutiny, which is the job not just of the Opposition, but of Back-Bench Government Members. It would be useful if we were able to do that.

The Government say that they have not pinned down exactly how much money we are talking about, but they have not even said that they will tell us the breakdown of the money in the end. They have not promised that level of certainty. It is all well and good for Conservative Members to say, “I’m sure that the Government will give us this information.” It would be a positive step forward if the Government actually committed to doing that.

We cannot have the devolved Administrations having to pay money towards the divorce bill. It is ridiculous that this Parliament would in any circumstances suggest that the devolved Administrations should have to pay towards something that Scotland and Northern Ireland did not vote for as those countries. It would be incredibly galling if it were suggested that we had to use the money that we would spend on public services, over which the devolved authorities have discretion, to pay any portion of the divorce bill. We would completely disagree with that.

My best guess, given the lack of information from the Government, is that the divorce bill that is being spoken about is not for future trade access, or to allow us to get into the single market or to use the customs union. In fact, the Government have been clear that they do not want us to be in the single market or the customs union. This £50 billion or €50 billion or up to €100 billion—who knows how much it will actually be—is just for our ongoing liabilities. It is not to give us access. As I have said, if the Government said what it was actually for, we would throw less accusations across the House at them about it.

New clause 80 on the transparency of the financial settlement pretty well covers what we are seeking from the Government. We need to see all that detail and it would be good to see it as soon as possible.

We have seen how the Government have behaved. The Prime Minister’s speeches have not been made to this House and she has had to come to the House afterwards to make statements. I think that, when the divorce bill is agreed—when there is a signature on the dotted line—the UK Government should have to come to tell the House first. If we are talking about bringing about sovereignty, that is the way in which such things should be undertaken. There should not just be an announcement or a speech; there should be a proper announcement to this House so that the divorce bill can be effectively scrutinised. That would be the best way to do business.

I will move on to parliamentary scrutiny and the issue of sovereignty. The hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) spoke about fees and levies being put into statutory instruments. She was absolutely correct that, if something is a tax-like charge, it is a tax. Therefore, it should not go through a Delegated Legislation Committee; it should be in primary legislation that is discussed on the Floor of the House.

The statutory instrument system we have is already pretty rubbish. We are given the SI without much notice. When we go into the Committee, we do not know how things will go. It tends to be made up of a number of MPs who are pretty disinterested, most of whom have not read the legislation. I have been on two SI Committees over the past couple of weeks. One took about five minutes and the other took much longer and involved a much more in-depth discussion. Before we go into an SI Committee, we do not know which one of those it is likely to be, because no measure of priority or importance is given to them in advance. If we are going to put everything, from taxes to the replacement of EU workers legislation, through an SI Committee, we need a better SI system in this House to ensure that there is proper scrutiny.

To have another slight rant about proper scrutiny, the estimates process in this House is utter nonsense and does not provide proper scrutiny. I have been shouting about that for a very long time and I will not stop. If the UK Government decide that the £50 billion will go through the estimates process and will not, therefore, be properly scrutinised, there will be an awful lot of incredibly upset Members in this House, and not just on the Opposition Benches. I would like the Government, if possible, to be very clear that if there is to be a vote on this money in Parliament, there will be a proper vote—not a vote as part of the estimates process, during which we are not allowed to discuss things in great detail.

[Martin Whitfield]

As well as upset Members in this House, does the hon. Lady not envisage thousands of upset people outside this place—namely, our constituents?

[Kirsty Blackman]

I absolutely agree. If the incredibly inadequate estimates procedure were used, an awful lot of my constituents would say to me, “Why did you not talk about this?”, and I would have to say, “Because it didn’t happen to be picked by the Liaison Committee and therefore we had to talk about something else and couldn’t vote on specifically amending this matter.” That would be a major concern to people here and people outside. It would be great if the Government could give the commitment today that any vote on the divorce bill will not happen through the estimates procedure and will be properly scrutinised on the Floor of the House.

It is really important that we do get House of Commons approval for any financial settlement that is agreed on. It absolutely has to be agreed by this House. I would prefer it also to be agreed by the House of Lords. It would be sensible for it to have as much scrutiny as possible before any agreement happens. We are making it very clear that that is very important to us.

Last week, I called for the Chancellor to bring forward an emergency Budget. The Budget that we had the week before last made no mention of payments in relation to a withdrawal settlement, but the Chancellor must have had some idea about this. I can only assume that he did, but given that the DUP did not know what was going on with the agreement that had been made on Monday, perhaps he did not. He should have had some idea of the ballpark figure that was going to come out in the news the following week, and therefore it should have been in the Budget. As it was not in this year’s Budget, the Chancellor needs to come to the House and introduce an emergency Budget explaining how he is going to pay this bill—which taxes he is going to raise, perhaps—and where the money is going to come from, and then this House should properly debate the matter.