Covid-19

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Monday 28th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I think the fact that the Government have made this time available for scrutiny is welcome. I want to start, as others have done, by thanking all the care workers, NHS staff, support staff and council staff who have responded so courageously to the pandemic in Glasgow North.

I particularly want to express my solidarity with and send my best wishes to many of the new constituents in Glasgow North who have been affected by the outbreak at the University of Glasgow and have found themselves confined to their halls of residence. I am grateful to the principal of the university, Professor Sir Anton Muscatelli, for taking the time this morning to speak to me and my MSP colleagues Bob Doris and Sandra White about the situation and the steps the university is taking to support students who have found themselves in difficulty. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you take a particular interest in the University of Glasgow and the wellbeing of its students.

The pandemic is going to bring flare-ups and flashpoints, and some of them will be easier to see than others, but, as others have said, nobody is to blame for this. Catching the virus is not something wrong or in itself a breach of the regulations. It is not a question of blame, but there is a question of responsibility and where the duty of care lies, and that is what I want to look at in my short contribution.

That is particularly important, in Glasgow North, for people who are in the creative sector and who are self-employed. They are literally the heart and soul of our city. Creativity means so many different things: it is the musicians, the artists, the sound and light engineers who support them, the pop-up shops, the artisan producers, the wedding dress makers, and the event organisers and co-ordinators. These are individual self-employed self-starters, and they have been left behind by this Government. I thought the Tories were supposed to celebrate and support entrepreneurs, and instead they find themselves excluded, but it does not have to be that way.

This comes back to the question of responsibility, and that was the point I was making to the Prime Minister last Wednesday. The costs and the consequences of covid are unavoidable. Somebody has to meet them, and that somebody has to be and can only be the state—the Government. The Government have already had to borrow an unimaginable amount of money. Governments around the world have had to do that, and an independent Scotland would be able to do that.

The question is how the money is used to the best effect. The Government can either pay through job retention schemes, through income guarantees and through investment in preventive healthcare and support for people’s mental wellbeing, or they can pay through long-term mass unemployment and through the social security system, with the costs that come with that—from the health service to social work, the police and all the rest. That is why we have to see this moment as a chance to do things differently and to set a different path, whether that is a universal basic income in whatever shape or form it might take, or prioritising green, sustainable alternatives to working practices, transport and service delivery.

However, the Government’s vision seems to be a return to the rat race and a return to trickle-down economics—that we will know we have beaten the virus when things go back to the way they were before. They already want to take us back to some notion of empire with their Brexit obsession, and now they are harking back to the days of Thatcher, where mass unemployment is fine so long as some people get to be filthy rich. They should not think that we are not wise to the idea that the disaster of a no-deal Brexit can be hidden behind the economic difficulties caused by the pandemic. That might suit some of the Tories, but it is not what people in Glasgow North want to see. They and we in the SNP want “Build back better” to be not just a slogan, but a genuine direction of travel.

In reality, we cannot go back and we will not go back. There is not going to be a light-bulb moment, even in this Chamber, when suddenly we stop washing our hands, keeping our distance and wearing masks, and we all just pile back into offices instead of working from home. We are moving to a new kind of normal and to a different way of how society and the economy will work in future. If that direction does not come from Westminster, then people in Scotland will seek it and find it elsewhere. The virus will not be defeated by grandiose rhetoric about moonshots and world-leading apps; it will be defeated by everyone working together, by making careful judgments based on the best scientific advice and by admitting—as the Scottish Government and the First Minister have done from the start—that mistakes will be made and learning from them for the future. Ultimately, of course, the future for Scotland will be in Scotland’s hands. It always is.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Chris Bryant.