Cost of Living Increases

Neale Hanvey Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Neale Hanvey (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Alba)]

I thank the SNP for bringing forward this important debate, and I commend the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for his opening remarks.

The front page of today’s Daily Record newspaper brings this shameful situation into sharp relief. While inflated Tory egos jockey for position in a power struggle for the worst of possible reasons, the cost of real-world inflation is being felt across these islands as millions struggle to fund the power they need to heat their homes. What a dismal situation it is where more than one in three Scots are already in crisis with energy costs soaring by up to 28%, but there are more price hikes and more pain still to come. This underscores the need for my Cold Climate Allowance Bill, and I hope the Government will give that due consideration in the course of this Parliament.

This debate is on the cost of living crisis, but for Scotland it could easily be cast as the cost of the Union crisis. Since 2014, the cost of the Union has been to rip Scotland from Europe against our democratic will, damaging our freedoms, impacting our economy and driving European friends away from their homes. It has seen the opportunities of our vast renewable resources realised abroad, while Scottish jobs have failed to materialise. We have suffered the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, the rape clause, universal credit cuts, and Ministers acting unlawfully, while obscene billions of pounds have been lost or written off on covid contracts and schemes. All the while, the Government have pursued a tax and cut agenda, punishing the poorest and the most vulnerable, yet it seems today that the anticipated rise in national insurance may be abandoned. If the Government know it is wrong now, then they knew it was wrong when they pushed it through.

All of this is intrinsically linked to Scotland’s continuing position in the UK, yet nothing is more emblematic of the cost of the Union than the current Prime Minister, who stands rejected by his own Scottish party and its leadership. I have found that politicians generally fall into two groups: people who want to do important things and people who want to feel important. The Prime Minister takes self-importance to stratospheric levels of self-indulgence. If he had just one ounce of humility, he would surely die of embarrassment.

It was the Tories’ return in 2010 that brought me into frontline politics, because I knew it would be bad and that our communities would suffer, our economy would suffer, poverty and greed would rise, and compassion would fade into the shadows. I knew this because I remember when Thatcherism stalked the streets of Scotland, decimated industry, fractured communities, broke people and robbed them of hope. Toryism is the engine room of despair and the champion of injustice.

Of course the Prime Minister should resign, but what would this achieve? A Tory power struggle will not change the very real power and poverty struggle in Scotland one iota. Each and every one of us in Scotland should prosper from our vast natural resources, but instead those assets are handed on a plate to profiteering corporate interests, while our people are cold and hungry, and people turn to the oblivion of drink and drugs because hopelessness has replaced opportunity. I urge Scottish colleagues across the House to join my calls for the Scottish Government to begin a constitutional convention to consider Scotland’s future. This is the cost of the Union, and from my perspective there is only one clear remedy—the aspiration and hope of an independent Scotland.