Sustainable Development Goals

Debate between Patrick Grady and Chris Law

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In fact, I visited a local primary school in the past month or two to discuss global leadership, and I was impressed that the children were able to list all 17 goals. Getting the SDGs into the national curriculum across these islands is vital. The next generation will inherit both what we do right and what we do wrong, so now is the time to put this topic front and centre.

It is no secret that the SNP is working towards an independent Scotland, but crucially we want this process because we want to play our part as global citizens, to improve the lives of people at home and abroad, and to aim to be world-leading in everything we do. The Scottish Government’s actions on the sustainable development goals typify that. Not only was First Minister Nicola Sturgeon one of the first national leaders to commit publicly to the SDGs, but Scotland has continued to set the pace for the rest of the UK. The First Minister noted in 2015:

“The national and international dimensions to poverty and inequality are interlinked. Scotland cannot act with credibility overseas, if we are blind to inequality here at home. And our ambitions for a fairer Scotland are undermined, without global action to tackle poverty, promote prosperity and to tackle climate change.”

The UK Government would benefit from listening to those words. Let me outline some evidence of what is being done.

Commenting on the Scottish Government’s attempts to reduce inequalities, the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations noted that

“great efforts are being made to help Scotland progress towards the SDGs.”

It highlighted the introduction of a new advisory council on women and girls as just one example of Scotland’s efforts to reduce inequalities.

Similarly, in the 2018 “Measuring Up” report by UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development, Scotland’s target to eradicate child poverty in Scotland by 2030 through the Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 was praised as “ambitious” and the Child Poverty Action Group’s “The Cost of the School Day” programme featured as a case study for UK best practice. We should just think how that compares with the comments made by the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Professor Philip Alston. He said that the UK’s social safety net has been

“deliberately removed and replaced with a harsh and uncaring ethos”

and that the UK Government have inflicted “great misery” on their people with

“punitive, mean-spirited, and often callous”

austerity policies. How did the UK Government reply? Denial.

The priorities of this Conservative Government have been laid bare by the fact that the only SDG target for which the UK has received a green rating is under goal 8, on decent work and economic growth:

“Strengthen the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and to expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all.”

That is almost laughable, because I do not think a single Member represents a constituency that has not been affected by local bank closures on the high street. Surely this serves only to demonstrate that the UK Government are focused on boosting the financial services sector while ignoring working people.

As well as work at home, the Scottish Government have been striving to support other countries to achieve the SDGs overseas. It goes without saying that SDG 4, on quality education, is one of the most valuable tools in the fight against global poverty, yet some of the world’s most vulnerable people remain without access to education. The SNP Scottish Government have been working to meet this goal by empowering people in developing nations and giving them the skills and opportunities to improve the lives of themselves and their communities.

We have backed programmes such as the Pakistan scholarship scheme, which has helped to support more than 400 women and more than 1,400 schoolchildren to continue their education. Also, more than 73,000 Malawian children have been helped to stay in school through support given to a feeding programme, while the Livingstone fellowship scheme allows doctors from Zambia and Malawi to come to Scotland for specialist training, which they will take back home for the benefit of their communities. Last week I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State commend Scotland’s partnership with Malawi and the many projects it upholds.

SDG 16, on peace and justice, is one of the UN’s five priority goals this year. As well as welcoming people from developing countries for training, Scotland has been a place of refuge for those fleeing conflict. Scotland, which has less than 10% of the UK’s population, has taken almost 20% of the UK’s intake of Syrian refugees.

The Scottish Government are also playing a role in the Syrian peace process. The SNP has long shown its determination to put women at the heart of government and politics. Recognising this, the UN special envoy to Syria invited the First Minister to provide support in training female peacemakers in negotiation and communication skills. Indeed, since its launch, the programme has trained more than 150 female peacemakers from Syria, Libya, Palestine and other conflict zones around the world. These are clear examples of the Scottish Government’s ambitions being met in Scotland and overseas, and I now turn my focus to the UN’s fifth focus goal for 2019, namely SDG 13 on climate action.

Crucially, many of the sustainable development goals will be rendered unachievable, and existing development gains that have been made will be reversed if we do not tackle climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report of autumn 2018, the UK Committee on Climate Change report of May 2019 and the International Development Committee report of this month all reach the same conclusion: we have too little time to prevent Earth’s temperature from increasing by more than 1.4° without radical solutions and clear political leadership. By way of example, Mongolia and Tibet are already experiencing 2° above pre-industrial levels.

The demonstration by Extinction Rebellion and strikes by young people in our schools serve to focus us on and remind us of how urgent action is needed. There is no doubt that we face a climate emergency. The world will be less safe, resources will be sparse and ecological and demographic crises will be unmanageable. What good is our work on education, inequalities, peace and justice if it is undermined by natural disasters, civil unrest, disease, displacement and mass migration caused by climate change, which pushes 100 million more people into poverty?

I was interested to hear the Secretary of State affirm last week:

“There should be no distinction at all between the work that we do on international development and the work that we do on climate and the emergency.”—[Official Report, 6 June 2019; Vol. 661, c. 256.]

That is commendable, and I am sure he will look to how the Scottish Government have approached the issue, and have become a world leader in their response to climate change. The Scottish Government have rightly called a climate emergency. Scotland has outperformed the UK as a whole and is one of Europe’s leading countries in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Our target is to cut those by 90% by 2050, compared with the UK’s target of 80%. Also, a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy company to deliver renewable energy will be established as part of the strategy to reduce emissions.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

It might be worth reflecting—the Secretary of State might be interested in this—that the water company in Scotland is in public ownership, and has managed to achieve at least as much success as the privatised system down south, but with all the benefit being retained for the public purse.

[Chris Law]

That is absolutely correct. If you look across these islands, Scottish Water covers all of Scotland, which is one third of the landmass of the UK. Most people sometimes imagine Scotland to be a small periphery; it is actually a huge part. Considering the number of water companies across the UK and their different rates and tariffs, and the fact that people have to measure the amount of water they consume to keep their costs down, it really is a great benefit to us that our water in Scotland is nationalised. Furthermore, Scotland’s ban on diesel cars will begin in 2032—eight years ahead of the UK Government’s—and unlike the UK Government, the SNP does not support fracking, or a return to nuclear energy.

In addition to that progress at home, the Scottish Government have distributed £21 million through the world-leading climate justice fund, which is now supporting projects in Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda. Through that, more than 100,000 people have been provided with training on climate change and water rights issues; over 100,000 trees have been planted; and over 200 village-level committees have been established to support water management, to prevent or mitigate the negative impact of climate change.

Let us be in no doubt: tackling climate change is a universal imperative. The UK Government can take lessons from the Scottish Government, and must recognise the imminent impact that climate change will have on international security and humanitarian access to fundamental resources, both at home and abroad.

In a report that I mentioned earlier on UK aid for combating climate change, produced by the International Development Committee, we concluded that climate change must be placed at the centre of each strategy and funding. Our report urged a minimum spend of £1.76 billion annually, and a halt to funding fossil fuel projects in developing countries unless it was possible to demonstrate that they supported transition to zero emissions by 2050.

Disappointingly, we often heard evidence suggesting that Government Departments were not taking climate change seriously, and that there was not joined-up thinking across Whitehall. When I asked the prosperity fund what proportion of its spend supported the use of fossil fuels, I was told that it could not provide that percentage. Similarly, when I asked whether any assessment had been made of the carbon footprint and potential climate impact of its spend, I was told that it did not have specific indicators on carbon footprint. That was surprising and extremely worrying. Unfortunately, that incoherence and lack of focus appears to be common across Government, with policy in one area often undermining delivery in another. Nothing exemplifies that more than the fact that fossil fuels made up 99.4%, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), and renewables a mere 0.6%, of UK Export Finance’s energy support for low and middle-income countries; those are the countries most likely to be adversely affected by climate change. There is a long-term tie-in to those countries, because once fossil fuel energy supplies are established, they can go on for decades, fundamentally undermining our goal of reducing CO₂ emissions globally.

Between 2013-14 and 2017-18, in low and middle-income countries, UK Export Finance provided £2,360 million-worth of support for exports in the fossil fuel energy sector, and less than £2 million-worth of support for exports in the renewables sector. It is therefore no surprise that this policy incoherence has impacted on the UK’s ability to deliver the sustainable development goals.

In their “Measuring Up” report last year, the UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development found that out of 143 relevant SDG targets, the UK’s performance was “inadequate” or “poor” on 76% of them. Astonishingly, that is more than three quarters, for those of us of a certain age who work on the pre-decimal. The UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development has also stated that there is little evidence of tangible progress from Government Departments, or the Prime Minister, or even within the Cabinet.

Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Debate between Patrick Grady and Chris Law

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law]

I thank the Minister for raising that point. That £28 million is to be saluted—it is very important—but it is not what we are discussing today. We are discussing the issue of refugees coming to this country.

According to UNICEF, more than 30,000 unaccompanied children fleeing war and persecution arrived by sea in Greece and Italy last year. Only eight of those children were transferred to the UK, where they had family links. Our country is quite simply failing to play our part in caring for those children.

It was only last year that we were told by the previous Prime Minister, David Cameron, that “a specified number” of vulnerable refugee children would be given a home here under the Dubs amendment to immigration legislation. Lords Dubs, as we know, was himself rescued from Nazi persecution and brought to the UK in 1939 by Sir Nicholas Winton.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way: he is being very generous compared with the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), who spoke immediately before him. Does he agree that the Government’s refusal to live up to what people expected them to do when they accepted the Dubs amendment is a betrayal not only of the thousands of children who will not be able to come here, but of the many hundreds of thousands of our constituents who wrote to us, campaigned and signed petitions? They expected the Government to live up to the commitment for which they all campaigned.

[Chris Law]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point and I agree with him completely. In fact, I received emails leading up to today’s debate that made exactly the same point.

It now emerges that we will take only 350 children, including the 200 who have already come over from Calais. We have been told by the Minister that the door is still open, but, to be frank, the impression is that it has been slammed shut. The UK Government have stooped to a new low, targeting the most vulnerable of the vulnerable, namely unaccompanied children.

Even the timing of ditching the Dubs scheme was appalling. The Home Secretary cynically ditched it on the eve of the most recent parliamentary recess. Lord Dubs condemned the move, saying that the bad news was buried

“while most eyes were focused on the Brexit debacle”.

In her statement, the Home Secretary claimed that the scheme created a “pull factor” for unaccompanied children to make perilous journeys to the UK and, therefore, increased the risk that they would fall into the hands of traffickers. That has been touched on several times today. She said:

“we do not want to incentivise perilous journeys to Europe”.—[Official Report, 9 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 637.]

Why would she say that? Why on earth would anyone think that we only have pull factors, when I have already described so many of the push factors? The real message that my constituents and constituents across the country are getting from this is, “Not in my back yard.” There is no evidence that there is a pull factor. In fact, relocation services that provide safe and legal routes to the UK for those seeking asylum disrupt the people traffickers, who seek to profit from smuggling desperate people across borders.

I urge the Minister not only to allow the Dubs scheme to continue, so that the UK receives at least 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees, but to increase the total number of refugees he intends to settle under the Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement programme. I remind the House that Scotland is not full up. The Scottish Government have always said they are willing to take their fair share of refugees and have called on the UK Government time and again to increase their efforts to respond to this humanitarian crisis. That is a cross-party stance that has wide public support.

Creative Industries

Debate between Patrick Grady and Chris Law

Thursday 7th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

Frankly, in any discussion of the creative industries, it is essential to begin by reminding ourselves of the deep complexity and real significance of the activities that this topic covers. Yes, the creative industries include large enterprises in areas such as film-making, computer games, fashion and publishing, and they have many thousands of employees and trade globally. And yes, the creative industries involve countless numbers of individuals and groups who are active in fields such as art, music, dance, poetry and many other things. In addition, however, there are those who support the creative industries through their contribution as teachers, curators of galleries, event organisers and other support roles. All of that adds up to the colourful, diverse and beautiful tapestry that makes our lives so enriched. I am sure that everyone in the House is wholly thankful for the wonderful contribution that those people make to our lives.

It has been estimated that the creative industries employ 1.9 million people in the UK as a whole, and 174,000 of those are in Scotland. Believe it or not, the creative industries are worth more than £9 million pounds an hour to the UK economy and this is the fastest growing sector in the UK. Yet it is not sufficient for us as legislators and policy makers to view the creative industries purely in economic terms. The key message is that the health and vitality of the creative industries should be an issue that is of crucial significance to this House.

Where better, of course, to reflect upon this than in my own constituency of Dundee—quelle surprise!—which has a long and distinguished history in leading the creative industries. Within the University of Dundee, for example, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, first established in the 19th century, is now one of the leading art schools in the UK. This creative hub is now the centre of a thriving network of studios, artists, designers and architects and has been instrumental in supporting the development of the Dundee Contemporary Arts centre, which opened at the end of the last millennium.

As part of the current £1 billion regeneration of our waterfront, Dundee was chosen, out of all other cities in the UK, to build the new Victoria and Albert design museum, which will be completed in two years’ time. I would welcome all Members visiting us. The Dundee repertory theatre is home to both Scotland’s only full-time company of actors and the Scottish dance theatre. Dundee is also well known as the home of many iconic and best-selling children’s comics, such as The Beano, The Dandy, the Judy and the Jackie, which is now a west end musical. I recommend all Members to see it at their earliest opportunity. If they visit Dundee today, they will find an iconic trail of 55 sculptures of one of our famous comic characters—Oor Wullie. After all, he is Oor Wullie, Your Wullie and A’body’s Wullie!

In 2014, Dundee was the first UK city to win the UNESCO City of Design award.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend has name-checked a number of important characters and creations emanating from Dundee, including Oor Wullie, but I think he forgot to mention The Broons.

[Chris Law]

I must apologise to the House. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ma and Pa Broon would be disgusted with me for forgetting to mention them. “The Broons Annual” is a fantastic Christmas present.

Believe it or not, in addition to all that, there is more. With the assistance of investment and facilities at Abertay University, Dundee’s creative tradition has found a new outlet. The city is now an internationally renowned centre for video game development, and the birthplace of some of the biggest names in game history. Abertay offered the first computer games degree in the world, in 1997. That bold move was subsequently copied by higher education institutions around the world, and helped to cement Dundee’s reputation as a centre of excellence for video games.

Let me give a few examples. In the 1990s, the Dundee company DMA Design created the game “Lemmings”, which sold over 50 million copies on multiple formats. It also developed “Grand Theft Auto”, which today is the biggest selling game in the world. I urge you to get your hands on a copy as soon as possible, Mr Deputy Speaker. Most recently, Chris Van Der Kuyl’s 4J Studios developed the global gaming sensation “Minecraft”. There are now more than 100 video games companies based in Dundee, and I am pleased to say that the number is growing rapidly.

As we heard earlier from the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Chris White)—he and I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on video games—the video games industry is vital to the UK economy. As a whole, games companies generate high-quality, high-productivity jobs. The UK boasts the highest number of mobile games jobs in the EU, with 5,000 full-time employees, and 64% of all registered games companies in the UK have been incorporated in the last five years alone.

These are just some of the examples of industries and businesses that give Dundee its creative pulse, and are reflected in many other areas of Scotland and the rest of the UK. So how do we support these activities that are so important both to our individual wellbeing and to economic prosperity? Artists, designers, musicians and games programmers are not merely creative individuals; they also need to be entrepreneurs. Like other small businesses and start-ups, they need advice, information, and access to funding and financial support.

In Scotland, we have a more culturally ambitious Government than ever before. Set up by the Scottish Government, Creative Scotland promotes enjoyment of the arts, and helps to identify and develop talent. It also chairs Scotland’s Creative Industries Partnership, in which public agencies work together to share intelligence and research on the creative industries, co-ordinate opportunities, and clarify and signpost agency support. However, only some aspects of creative industries are devolved to Scotland.

In January this year, the Scottish Affairs Committee, on which I have the privilege to serve along with two of my colleagues who are present—very fine colleagues indeed—published a report on the creative industries in Scotland. It identified three key issues: tax incentives, broadcasting, and links with the EU.

A number of tax reliefs are available to the creative industries. There are film, animation, television, video games and theatre reliefs. They allow qualifying companies to claim a deduction when calculating their taxable profits, and they are very valuable to the creative industries as a whole. However, we found that they had been of limited use to the creative industries in Scotland, partly owing to the smaller scale of most creative enterprises in Scotland and partly because tax reliefs do not incentivise the locating of production outside existing industry hubs, which are predominantly London-based.

Our report made a number of specific recommendations for enhancing the responsiveness of tax relief regulations to the specific needs of the creative industries in Scotland. I urge the Minister, and his colleagues in the Treasury, to treat this as a matter of the utmost priority, and to consider the possibility that the most effective means of resolving these issues would be to devolve responsibility for tax reliefs for creative industries to the Scottish Government.

Public service broadcasting, in the form of the activities of the BBC, represents a crucial driver of the creative industries in Scotland, as well as representing a central pillar of our cultural life. There is widespread dissatisfaction with the output of BBC Scotland. There is also a striking economic imbalance, with licence-fee income of over £320 million generated in Scotland, but a BBC Scotland budget of less than £200 million.

The BBC has been slow to respond to these issues and has been less than transparent in its decision-making process around them. Within the past few days, a report from the inquiry “A Future for Public Service Television”, chaired by Lord David Puttnam, has been published. It recommends that the only effective solution to the growing mismatch between the needs and aspirations of the Scottish people in respect of public service broadcasting and their increasing frustration with the BBC is to devolve an appropriate proportion of the overall BBC budget to Scotland, and allow BBC Scotland to commission programmes and design schedules as it sees fit. While acknowledging the independence of the BBC from Government, I urge the Minister to express clear and unequivocal support for this proposal, which has the potential to allow Scotland to develop as a hub for high-quality television and film output and contribute to an expansion of employment in this field. I share Lord Puttnam’s view that little in the BBC reflects

“the current constitutional settlement with Scotland.”

The recent Scottish Affairs Committee report devoted little attention to the EU dimension of creative industries because, other than in areas of intellectual property, the individuals and organisations that we consulted were largely satisfied with the opportunities and benefits to the creative industries that flowed from EU membership. However, all this has changed due to the fear and uncertainty created by this Government in their misguided EU referendum. This is a troubling situation. Many aspects of the creative industries in Scotland are embedded in our broader cultural European tradition, which requires ongoing collaboration with colleagues in other countries. At the very least, this situation requires that the creative industries should have full and active representation in future negotiations with the EU, and that the particular needs of the creative industries in Scotland should be specifically championed through the presence of members of the Scottish Government.

Having talked briefly about the issues and challenges facing the creative industries in Scotland, I would like to sum up by making one final point. Scotland is undoubtedly an outward-looking, internationalist and progressive society—a “mongrel nation” where all Jock Tamson’s bairns reside—yet it is also distinctive and different, and demands to be heard. However, cultural life, and the funding decisions that go with it, are still dominated by London, stifling Scotland’s creative industries as a result. This is not a zero-sum game, however. Successful broadcasting, film-making, computer games and festivals in Scotland reach out to an international market, and do not diminish the significance of London and Manchester as global centres of creative endeavour. In this, we can all be winners.