Debate on the Address

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Legislation is already in place to put new requirements on house builders to reduce the carbon footprint of new homes. Those will tighten up as time goes by. As he and his hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have pointed out, there are so many different green initiatives. I hope that that becomes the way that we make our living in the world, through jobs at home and exports overseas.

The pledges to the Union are the third area that I will highlight from the Queen’s Speech. For me, as a proud Conservative and Unionist party member, keeping the Union together is what it is all about. There is no doubt in my mind that the Union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is so precious to all of us. It would be a grave mistake—in fact, I simply cannot understand why separatists want to do this—to break apart our Union. It makes no sense to me. This is a fabulous place, where we have centuries of shared history, shared family, shared culture, shared language, a shared currency and shared institutions.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

A whole range of Bills in the Queen’s Speech fly in the face of the Standing Orders, including No. 9B, in the Scottish Parliament and the Sewel convention, which requires legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament for this range of Bills. Does the right hon. Lady think that riding roughshod over the Scottish Parliament and imposing these Bills against its wishes will strengthen or weaken the Union?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I say to the hon. Lady that, as a separatist, she wants nothing more than to see the UK Government setting out any sort of possibility whatever that she can argue against with some sort of fake grievance. I want to appeal to the fabulous people of the United Kingdom: let us stick together.

I have some ideas. I think that we should share rights to one another’s health systems because, in Wales, there are serious problems with healthcare. I would like nothing more than to see Welsh citizens able to access the healthcare systems of England, Scotland or Northern Ireland whenever they want to, and vice versa. I would also love to see school exchanges right across the UK so that children, as they are growing up, can develop a better sense of the unity of the United Kingdom. I would love to see consideration given to more freeports around the United Kingdom and, particularly, to a freeport that could encompass the whole of Northern Ireland. It is one part of the UK that really needs and deserves a huge boost to jobs, growth and opportunity, so I would love to see a freeport that gives beneficial tax status and makes sure that Northern Ireland is integrally joined to and feels part of the United Kingdom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

The Queen’s Speech, setting out the UK’s programme for government, offers little comfort to my constituents in North Ayrshire and Arran. It comes in a context where we have seen the Tory vote across Scotland collapse, with the Labour revival amounting nationally to no more than a lacklustre 1.6% increase in first preference votes on the council elections in 2017 and its second-worst local government performance since devolution in 1999. I find myself in the odd and strangely surprising position of agreeing with the leader of the Tories in Scotland, the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross)—a rare event, I am sure he would agree—when he said that the Prime Minister must “reflect” on a series of disappointing results for the Conservatives across the UK. The reality is that there is a leadership crisis for the Tories in both London and Edinburgh. I will say no more on that for fear of intruding on private grief.

The Prime Minister and his Cabinet would also do well to reflect on their deafening silence over the cost of living crisis, which is hammering households across my constituency and across the whole of the UK. The Queen’s Speech, as others have said before me, has indeed been a missed opportunity. The Prime Minister should have used the speech to urgently deliver desperately needed support, but it seems that standing back and consigning more people to poverty and hardship is the plan, which is disgraceful.

I welcome proposals to bring forward measures in the financial services and markets Bill to protect access to cash, following huge pressure from me and my SNP colleagues, as well as the consumer organisation Which? and a range of other stakeholders. However, the measures must be meaningful and they must be fit for purpose. I look forward to scrutinising the detail of the proposals.

Households are suffering rising food, energy and goods prices, and record levels of inflation, with Brexit playing a central part in this crisis, but the Government continue to downplay the impact Brexit is playing in those challenges. We in the SNP have consistently called for a meaningful package of measures to help tackle the cost of living crisis and put money back into people’s pockets. However, the Tory Government have ignored those calls, with the Chancellor apparently holding off on addressing the crisis until the Budget in autumn. Struggling households simply cannot wait until autumn as they struggle under the weight of increasing hardship.

We in the SNP again call for the UK Government to at the very least convert the £200 energy loan into a more generous and substantial grant, scrap the regressive national insurance tax hike, reverse the £1,040 cut to universal credit, match the Scottish child payment UK-wide, introduce a real living wage to boost incomes, reduce or remove VAT on household energy bills, and follow the Scottish Government’s 6% uprating of benefits. This Prime Minister, his Chancellor and the Cabinet hand-wringing or sitting on their hands while households struggle with the soaring cost of living is unforgiveable. There is no end in sight to this crisis so we need action now, yet there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to suggest that such action will be taken.

As the Bank of England predicts that inflation is likely to rise to an eye-watering 10% later this year, food and energy price rises are placing a particularly high burden on households. Despite the fact that the UK has the highest poverty rates in north-west Europe, with 11.7% living below the poverty line, sadly things look as though they are set to get even worse. People are told that work is the best route out of poverty, but the reality is that in-work poverty is rising. The phenomenon of in-work poverty should be a contradiction in terms. It should not exist, and the fact that it does is utterly disgraceful. Instead of a plan to support households through this crisis, we have a Chancellor telling those who are suffering because of the crisis that it would be “silly” to introduce measures now to help people. No wonder people are angry, and so much for levelling up.

Alongside that, the Tory strategy to undermine devolution continues. Scots are to be punished for not voting Tory by having their Parliament undermined via the Orwellian tactic of introducing the ironically named Brexit freedoms Bill. Much retained EU law is incorporated in Acts passed democratically in the Scottish Parliament, and those must be respected. Instead, Brexit Bills will deliver nothing but a race to the bottom on so many issues.

I would remind Government Members, but sadly the Benches opposite are empty, that under rule 9B of the Standing Orders of the Scottish Parliament and in accordance with the Sewel convention, the UK Parliament should not legislate on devolved matters without the consent of the Scottish Parliament. This means that under our constitutional arrangements, the procurement Bill, the trade Bill, the Bill of Rights, the levelling-up and regeneration Bill, the energy security Bill, the economic crime and corporate transparency Bill, the Brexit freedoms Bill, the Northern Ireland troubles Bill, the social security Bill, the transport Bill, the modern slavery Bill and the data reform Bill will all require the legislative consent of the democratically elected Scottish Parliament. Indeed, there may be more to add to that substantial list. That shows that the Government’s intention is to trample all over devolution. I remind them that riding roughshod over Scotland’s Parliament will simply not be tolerated and it will not serve them well.

Alongside that, we have an absence in the Queen’s Speech of an employment Bill, which was first promised in 2019, and there is no animal welfare abroad Bill, which would have banned fur imports and foie gras. Those measures have been quietly dropped.

This Queen’s Speech has been defined not by action, but by complacency and short-sightedness. Scotland needs no more of this. As well as the attacks on Scotland’s democratically elected Parliament, which are set to continue, our resource budget allocation has been cut by Westminster by 5.2% and the capital budget allocation has been cut by 9.7% in real terms.

The SNP Government are doing what they can to support households during these difficult times. I could talk about the bedroom tax being fully mitigated, the council tax mitigation, the Scottish child payment being doubled, free tuition, free prescriptions and free school meals for all primary schoolchildren, but as Scotland tries to mitigate the worst excesses of this Tory Government, the Scottish Government are hemmed in by Tory cuts to Scotland’s budget and the lack of power over the full fiscal levers needed to tackle the fundamentals of poverty and want in Scotland. A lack of powers for the Scottish Government means that we can really deal only with the symptoms of poverty inflicted by this Tory Government, not the deep-rooted causes of the inequality in our society that delivers child poverty and pensioner poverty and leaves many households struggling to make ends meet.

The people of Scotland understand that the Westminster system is broken. It does not serve Scotland’s needs, and it does not serve the people of Scotland and their families’ interests. Today, the First Minister of Scotland confirmed that a Bill for a referendum on Scotland’s future will be brought forward, with White Papers to be published in the near future. For an increasing number of people in Scotland, this cannot come soon enough, because they agree that Scotland deserves better than this. Scotland deserves to have its own future in its own hands. Scotland deserves independence.