Scotland and North-east England Post-2014

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 4th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Mike Weir (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Mr MacNeil]

It is not necessary to have David Cameron as Prime Minister to be British.

Fairness and Inequality

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 11th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: the Scottish Government can do so, but they have to balance the budget. In fact, although John Swinney, the Finance Secretary, balances it every year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer does not. If the hon. Gentleman wants extra expenditure, he knows full well that, under the devolution settlement, he must explain what he will cut. It is, “Want, want, want,” but he has not made any suggestions about what he will cut.

[Mr Weir]

Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that although funds for fuel poverty programmes have all been slashed down here, they have continued to be invested in Scotland; that child poverty in Scotland is now lower than in the UK as a whole; and that, worst of all from the Scottish Parliament’s point of view, one of the drivers of poverty is the welfare changes controlled by this Parliament, not by the Scottish Parliament?

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. We can see that again in the philosophy behind the bedroom tax, which is not one that I subscribe to in any way. Last night, I stumbled across a Channel 4 programme on Walsall and Glasgow housing authorities. It talked about having to demolish houses in Walsall, due to their being left empty: people cannot stay in them because of their cost and what people have lost in welfare. Glasgow housing authority has demand for 1,500 more one-bedroom properties—people want them so that they will not be penalised—but it does not have them. It is, inefficiently, trying to build them so that people can avoid the bedroom tax, but the costs are colossal.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman is like a broken record. I have explained already, and have done so on numerous occasions, our objections to the energy price freeze. It is easy for Labour to say, “Let’s have an energy price freeze.” It sounds great and I am sure many people love to hear it; unfortunately, it simply will not happen. It will not lead to lower bills, it will freeze in the inequalities already in the system, and it will leave people with higher bills, while his party leader flails about trying to find some flesh to put on the bones of that policy.

[Mr MacNeil]

When Labour Members talk about an energy price freeze, are they not basically saying to the people, “Do you want your energy bills to go up before we announce the freeze and to go up again afterwards?” It is a total con, and they know that full well. It was done one weekend for a headline in a Sunday newspaper and they are sticking with it now. That is the long and the short of it.

[Mr Weir]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

Scotland’s Place in the UK

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Thursday 6th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

No, I will not, but others are free to campaign for that if they so choose and to do so if they win a mandate.

To my many English friends who worry that in the absence of Scotland they would have permanent Tory Government in the rump UK, the facts are that Scotland has changed the Government of the UK for only six months since 1945, whereas the Scottish nation, under the tawdry political Union of 1707, has got a Government it has not voted for two thirds of the time since 1945.

[Mr Weir]

Does my hon. Friend remember all the claims made for devolution by those in the Tory party who said that it would lead to Labour being in power in Scotland for ever, and how a short a period that turned out to be?

[Mr MacNeil]

My hon. Friend makes a great point. Labour is out of power in Scotland, and, like the Liberals and Tories, is heading ever further downwards.

Scotland will not affect the Government of Westminster 98% of the time. Regardless of that, our first job as representatives of the people in Scotland is to make the lives of those who live in Scotland better. Concern about who is in government in London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin or Dublin should not be the guiding light of any Scots democrat: it should be the conditions of people in the housing estates of Easterhouse, Castlemilk, Sighthill and The Raploch and bettering our cities.

The Economy

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Weir]

The Scottish Government have been putting more and more money into capital investment. [Interruption.] It has not been decreasing. They have been putting money into capital investments that matter, despite the overall budget from Westminster having been cut.

The Scottish Government have been taking the action that the former Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling), called for earlier. In June, they announced a £105 million package of investment for so-called shovel-ready projects. Conventional capital investment has been boosted by a £2.5 billion pipeline of infrastructure projects that is being delivered through the non-profit distributing model. The Scottish Government recognised long before the current Chancellor did that the model of private participation in infrastructure was fundamentally flawed, although Labour does not seem to have cottoned on to that yet. A total of £700 million has been switched from the resource to the capital budget to support capital investment. The Scottish Government are supporting a range of innovative finance initiatives such as the National Housing Trust.

It appears from what he said this afternoon that even the former Chancellor has changed his original views and now supports the increase in capital expenditure on infrastructure, although that has not prevented his Labour colleagues in Scotland from continually attacking it; such is the way of politics, I suppose. Indeed, their leader has announced a cuts commission—an initiative whose only backers appear to be their friends in the Better Together campaign, the Conservatives.

[Mr MacNeil]

Has my hon. Friend noticed, as I have, that the main cheerleaders for Labour in Scotland’s cuts are the Tories in Wales, who welcome them on board with the same ideological baggage?

[Mr Weir]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. The Conservatives in Scotland have also supported the cuts commission, so it appears that they are all cutters together rather than better together.

The SNP Government in Scotland have been very active in ensuring that we rebalance our economy with investment in new green initiatives. The Government down here often talk about that, but we have seen little evidence of it. Indeed, the proposals in the Energy Bill give cause for concern about the way in which this Government look at green investment and whether there is to be investment in new green energy or whether the Treasury is winning the battle and we are going down a different route.

This is important to Scotland because the renewables industries now support more than 11,000 jobs in Scotland, and that figure is growing. There have been significant investments in green energy. Gamesa chose Leith for its new UK offshore wind manufacturing plant, which will create up to 800 jobs. Burcote Wind has announced plans for a £l billion investment creating up to 600 new jobs. Global Energy Group has announced that Nigg skills academy will deliver training for up to 3,000 people over three years. Scottish Power has announced the creation of 300 skilled jobs as part of a £5 billion investment in Scotland’s grid, and it is also investing £6.5 million in grass-roots skills development.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

rose—

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

rose—

Constitutional Law

Debate between Mike Weir and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr MacNeil]

The SNP would have treated the Scottish people with more courtesy than the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, who have treated them with disdain by parking their tanks on the lawn of the date of the Scottish election—the first Thursday in May in 2011, a date that had been scheduled for many years.

This Government have ignored the strongest point of the Gould report into the 2007 Scottish election, which stated that, among other things, there should be a six-month period between the statutory instrument coming into force and polling day. We are already within the six-month period for the Scottish parliamentary elections and are thereby in violation of the strongest recommendation in the report. Why do we need six months? The report states:

“Throughout this report, we have pointed to problems that have arisen because the passing of electoral legislation has been unduly delayed. To avoid these problems, we would recommend a practice found in the electoral laws in other countries. These laws provide that electoral legislation cannot be applied to any election held within six months of the new provision coming into force.”

Even without the report, that is surely common sense. We have international practice and the Government are indeed fond of citing international examples. It is beyond me how they can fail to note that other countries use the six-month electoral law. When electoral legislation is rushed through at the last minute it is the voters who suffer.

I want to discuss the new ballot papers, which do not adhere to Electoral Commission recommendations and have not been properly user-tested. Forms J and K on the order do not exactly correspond to the form on page 20 of the Electoral Commission report, “Making your mark”, which was directed at Government policy makers. The Scotland Office says that it has used that information in drafting the forms in the statutory instrument, but the form on page 20 of the report is plainly far superior to what the Government have offered. Specifically, I am concerned about the spacing of the lines separating candidates and parties, which do not extend over the page. Also, the spacing of the words and emblems are not closely matched to the box. Those points might seem trivial, but if only 5% of voters make an error we have a serious problem, as we discovered in 2007.

The average voter is, perhaps, too busy with shopping, picking up the kids and the stresses of work to make absolutely sure that they are complying with what the Government intended. People are not going to have rulers ready to discern which line applies to which candidate and party. Surely, it is the job of this place, for now, to make such things as easy as possible for the voter and to remove potential bear traps.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about the lining up of candidates and party affiliations. Does he recall that in the disputed American election of 2004, with the famous hanging chads in Florida, one problem was the design of the ballot paper on which the candidates did not line up with the designations?

[Mr MacNeil]

To be absolutely honest, I do not recall that, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising it. Presumably, when those ballot papers were being designed someone thought that would not be an issue but lo and behold it did become an issue in Florida and other areas.

The problems I am highlighting could have been avoided if the Government had followed the Electoral Commission’s suggestion of user-testing the new ballot papers. That has already been mentioned. As far as we can tell, the Government have not made any attempt to get the new ballot paper checked. Even the ballot paper in the ill-fated 2007 election was user-tested by at least 100 people. That number was small, given what happened, but better than none and better than what is happening now.

Without independent evaluation, we cannot be sure that the ballot paper will be easily understood and will not lead to confusion. In addition, we will, or could, have an AV referendum on the same day using a slightly different ballot paper and a different design altogether. As none of the ballot papers has been tested independently, we cannot assume that the vast majority—towards 100%—of people will understand these ballot papers, just as I cannot assume that the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr Hamilton) would understand me if I started speaking in Gaelic. It might make sense to me, but countless others, including the hon. Gentleman, might be left in the dark.

This is not the first time that the Scotland Office will have heard our concerns. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman asks me to translate—he probably assumes that I am speaking in Gaelic already. [Interruption.] It is time he learned some.