Debate on the Address

Patrick Grady Excerpts

Tuesday 7th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Well—God save the King! Those are not words that might be expected from someone brought up to have a healthy scepticism of the role of the hereditary principle in a modern democracy, but if the kind of woeful, unambitious and retrograde legislation that has been announced today is what the new monarch will have to put up with for the rest of his reign, he will need all the divine salvation he can get.

One person who can be more confident in their ambition is my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss); I am delighted that she has been selected as the candidate for the redrawn constituency of Glasgow North at the next general election. She has been an outstanding Member of this House, and I have every confidence that she will be returned at the next election to continue working with the same passion as she does now for her constituents, making the case for a fairer, greener, healthier, wealthier and independent Scotland. Only independence can truly deliver the change Scotland needs to tackle the cost of living crisis and the challenges that face the world today.

The cost of living—and the cost of energy in particular—is the single biggest issue affecting people in Glasgow North today. Although inflation rates are going down, that does not mean that prices are going down. Prices are still going up: mortgages and rents, food and grocery bills, car and home insurance and phone and internet costs are all higher today than they were under the previous Prime Minister last year, or indeed the Prime Minister before her. While every country in the world has had to deal with the consequences of the pandemic and with the conflict in Ukraine and elsewhere, only the UK has had to deal with the impact of Brexit—a Brexit that 78% of people in Glasgow North voted against, and that none of the Westminster parties is prepared to admit has been nothing short of disastrous.

There is nothing in today’s announcements that deals with any of that. The Government could have announced more energy fuel rebates, mortgage interest rates relief or the kind of action on food prices that has been taken in Ireland. They could have put in place an essentials guarantee so that people definitely have enough to live on, or simply uprated universal credit in line with the recommendations of the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extreme poverty. Instead, there is silence. That silence is echoed on the Front Bench of the official Opposition, who are so terrified of doing or saying anything that might frighten people who voted Conservative last time round that their position becomes almost indistinguishable from that of the Conservatives.

The Labour party used to pride itself on delivering devolution to Scotland—on the second attempt and 18 years late, mind you—but now, like the Conservative party, it seems to think that a kind of constitutional perfection has been reached and that Scotland’s Parliament now has all the powers it will ever need to continue to be the best wee devolved Parliament in the entire universe. Even though the leader of the Labour party in Holyrood says that he would “love” for employment law to be devolved to Scotland—a power that was promised as part of the vows made to voters in 2014, and that would allow the Scottish Government to drive forward workers’ rights and protections in Scotland—the position of the leader of the Labour party in Westminster is: “You’ll have had your devolution, so that’s the end of the matter.” Neither side will devolve employment law, but yet again the King’s Speech lacks an employment Bill, which could protect and enhance the rights of workers to fair hours, fair pay and fair treatment in the workplace. So, it will probably fall again to the arcane private Member’s Bill system to try to take forward any improvements.

The same appears to be true for large areas of animal welfare. Scotland is a nation of animal lovers, and although the live animal exports Bill announced today is welcome, I hear regularly from constituents who want more action from the Government on puppy smuggling, trophy hunting and animal testing, all of which could be dealt with in a wider animal welfare Bill with the Government’s backing. Yet once again, we are faced with a year of bits and pieces of ad hoc legislation, subject to the whim of Members in turning up on Fridays for private Members’ Bills.

Not content with ignoring the welfare of animals, the Government seem determined to ignore the basic rights and dignity of some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of our society. Asylum seekers and refugees I meet in Glasgow North have come here because they have fled conflict, persecution or natural disasters. They have not come just to seek work, but of course they want to be able to work. They do not want to be told that they have no recourse to public funds and to become destitute. They have valuable skills and experience, and they want to put them to use to earn money, pay for their own accommodation and pay taxes into the system rather than take resources out. However, the Tory Government want to do the opposite of that: they actively want to spend taxpayers’ money to make it more difficult for asylum seekers to make a positive contribution to society and the economy.

Like other Members, the issue I have most heard about from my Glasgow North constituents in recent weeks is the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and the need for an immediate ceasefire. I have received more than 700 such emails at the last count; many—if not most—are from constituents reaching out for the first time, appalled, horrified and sometimes even traumatised by what they are seeing on the news, especially those who have friends and family in the region. Thousands of completely innocent children have been killed—by some counts, one child for every 10 minutes of the conflict so far—and acts of what can only be described as collective punishment are being inflicted on people in Gaza by the Government of Israel. Likewise, there is no justification for the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Nor is there any excuse for antisemitism in any form. At the end of the day, a lasting settlement can only come about through negotiation and a willingness to come to agreement.

That is why a ceasefire, which means that everybody involved ceases firing, must be the start. That is not the position of the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition, but it is the position of the UN Secretary-General, the UN General Assembly, the World Health Organisation, Oxfam, Amnesty International, Scotland’s First Minister, His Holiness Pope Francis and the many, many Glasgow North constituents who have reached out. They also want aid convoys to be allowed in, people who want to leave to be able to do so, and then legitimate representatives to get round a table and work out a route to peace.

As Pope Paul VI said:

“peace is not simply the absence of warfare, based on a precarious balance of power; it is fashioned by efforts directed day after day toward the establishment of the ordered universe willed by God, with a more perfect form of justice among men”—

more succinctly: “if you want peace, you must work for justice.” The God that he spoke of is the God held to be true by Jews, Muslims and Christians alike—the God who teaches in their holy books that we should treat others as we ourselves wish to be treated. In that golden rule of reciprocity lies the route to peace in the middle east, and indeed to peace and justice around the world—in Afghanistan, in Ukraine, in Sudan and in so many other places.

We live in a world that is more turbulent and unstable than it seemed just eight years ago when many of my colleagues and I were elected to this place. Not all the challenges can be dealt with by a legislative programme announced from a throne in the House of Lords, but we have to consider how best to play our part. The Government’s shameful cut to the aid budget diminished the UK’s standing in the world and has done lasting damage to countries and communities where programmes have been stopped or scaled back. The forthcoming White Paper might stabilise things, but it may not be enough, especially if other policies continue to go in the opposite direction.

The way to respond to the climate crisis and the challenge of the energy crisis is not to simply carry on as if nothing is happening. We have to wean ourselves off the oil and fossil fuels that are changing the planet’s climate, and invest in clean, green, renewable energy from sources that Scotland has in abundance: wave, wind, and—though it may be hard to believe—solar. Investments that can use and develop the skills of our workforce and provide new, well-paying jobs for this and future generations. The petroleum licensing Bill announced today appears to do just the opposite.

At a time when we need to be looking outward, showing leadership on the world stage, the UK Tory Government—and, sadly, their wannabes in the official Opposition—are increasingly looking inward. The King’s Speech is largely legislative navel-gazing, trying to cobble together interest and support from wherever it can be found in a desperate attempt to stay in power. If that speech, and the official Opposition’s reaction to it, is literally the best that the UK can do, then the UK is frankly no longer fit for purpose.

Scotland can and must, and in the end will, do much better than this. Independence would give us the powers and opportunity to tackle the cost of living crisis at home and the climate crisis across the globe. It is time, as the late, great Winnie Ewing said, to stop the world, because Scotland wants to get on.