Debate on the Address

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

The Queen’s Speech frequently seems to have coincided with significant electoral or political developments in Scotland over the past few years. Once again we meet in the aftermath of council elections, and I congratulate all those elected in Glasgow North last Thursday, particularly my returning SNP colleagues Ken Andrew, Kenny McLean, Jaki McLaren, Allan Gow and Franny Scally. I also congratulate Linsey Wilson on a fantastic campaign in Partick East/Kelvindale that did not get the result she deserved.

I make a particular mention of Councillor Abdul Bostani, whom I have spoken about in this Chamber before. Abdul arrived in Glasgow aged 18, after fleeing for his life from the Taliban. Twenty years later he is representing his adopted community in Maryhill as a city councillor, he will be joined in the chambers by Glasgow girl Councillor Roza Salih, the first refugee to be elected as a councillor anywhere in Scotland. When Glasgow says it loud and says it clear that refugees are welcome here, we mean it. We elect refugees as councillors to champion their local communities.

What a contrast that is with the Tory Government’s increasingly hostile environment for people who want to make the UK their home. That rhetoric continues in the Queen’s Speech today. I hope that the provisions in the anti-refugee Nationality and Borders Act 2022 are challenged at every turn as the Government seek to implement them, and constituents in Glasgow North who want to see the Government held to account for their inhumane attitude to refugees can rest assured that SNP MPs will continue to speak up loudly and clearly.

The Home Office is collapsing under the weight of the policy and attitude. The Homes for Ukraine scheme is moving far too slowly; many Afghans who still want to come here cannot; and now even UK citizens who just want to go on holiday are unable to travel because of chaos at the passport office. Constituents are getting in touch daily, and the Government really need to get a grip.

The hostile environment is just one aspect of the increasing divergence between the politics of Westminster and the policies of the devolved Administrations. Where the Scottish Government are doing everything in their power to tackle the cost of living crisis—doubling the child payment and increasing social security payments by 6%—this Tory Government are slashing universal credit and hiking up national insurance. They have had to be dragged by immense campaigning work across the country, including by my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry), to propose in the Queen’s Speech the social security end of life Bill, which will finally allow people, including one of his constituents, a very close friend of mine, Melanie Finlay, to access the benefits they ought to be entitled to after receiving a terminal diagnosis. I congratulate her on her bravery in facing her illness and on helping to front up Marie Curie’s campaign to make sure that nobody dies in poverty. Why in the 21st century does any organisation have to run a campaign with such a slogan? That is the level of ambition that needs to be tackled and is largely missing from the Queen’s Speech.

That divergence continues in other policy areas. The Scottish Government have helped to support the refurbishment of The Burrell Collection in Glasgow, and the city is becoming ever more popular as a location for the film industry, while the UK Government embark on the privatisation of Channel 4, which does not cost the taxpayer a penny, for purely ideological reasons. As others have said, the Queen’s Speech is as notable for the Bills and policies it does not contain as for those it does. People in Glasgow North want to see the highest standards of animal welfare applied across these islands and will be disappointed at the lack of ambition outlined today.

We need more and faster action to tackle the climate emergency. This time last year, the UK Government were boasting about their “soft power superpower Global Britain is great” status as the host of COP26. That got barely a mention in the speech delivered in the House of Lords earlier. The real agenda of the Conservatives is revealed as they seek to drop net zero action as quickly as possible. Real reform of housing and energy would reduce not only emissions, but the cost of living. Again, such action is posted missing, and that is simply not good enough. The vast majority of councillors returned in Scotland last week are fully committed to tackling climate change and that is a message that Ministers should heed. Next week, I, and I know many other colleagues, will be joining constituents in “The Big Plastic Count” to help to build a UK-wide picture of plastic waste and the action we and the Government need to take to tackle it.

How we approach climate change also speaks to how seriously we take our other international obligations. Constituents in Glasgow North were overjoyed at the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, but they have not forgotten prisoners of conscience and other human rights defenders who are oppressed and persecuted elsewhere. They want urgent action to secure peace in the middle east, an end to arms sales to brutal regimes and the restoration of the 0.7% aid spending target. Again, all those points of ambition are lacking in the Queen’s Speech and the associated documents. Instead, what we see from this Government is constitutional overreach, more attempts to undermine the devolution settlement, and the solution to EU legislation and regulation being, apparently, yet more legislation and regulation. The biggest Brexit opportunity seems to be an even greater power grab by Executive, rather than the promised taking back of control for Parliament.

Many of us will be keeping a close eye on the so-called “Brexit freedoms” Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) mentioned, we are seeing the Queen’s Speech trying to put into action the Government’s muscular Unionism policy. The Scotland Office is going around boasting that 27 of the 38 Bills will apply across the UK, but many of them will encroach on devolved areas. The Tory Government are not just disrespecting devolution—they seem to have forgotten that devolution exists at all, which is perhaps not a surprise, given that they never really supported it in the first place.

So the divergence on these isles, by the insistence and action of this Tory Government, continues. Scotland’s Government and Parliament are progressive, outward-looking, internationalist and focused on helping those who need it most in challenging times. The Tories pursue their pet obsessions no matter the cost to the economy, society or the environment. So the choice for Scotland is clear. Our best future, our best opportunity to build a fairer, greener society, will be as an independent country. If the Tories are so convinced of their case for the Union and the level of support for the Union that exists in Scotland, they should be welcoming the opportunity of a referendum, instead of trying to block one. Their candidates all stood last week obsessed with an independence referendum; all their literature said, “Vote for the Conservatives to stop a referendum from happening.” Well, people did not vote for the Scottish Conservatives and the SNP secured its best local election result in history, so perhaps they should listen to the message that is being sent by the voters.

The reality is, as this Queen’s Speech has shown, that every promise made to Scotland in 2014 has been broken. Scotland was told in 2014 that, if it voted for independence, it would leave the European Union, the cost of energy would skyrocket and supermarket shelves would be empty. All those things have happened and the last time I checked Scotland did not vote for independence, but next time it will. That opportunity is coming soon and, when the people of Scotland have that opportunity, they will choose an independent future.