Delivery of Public Services

Debate between Paul Holmes and Alyn Smith

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith]

I was hoping to find common ground, rather than hear endless whataboutery. We could all swap stats about the performance of our relative Governments, but I am here to critique the performance of this UK Government and try to find solutions. Have there been challenges? Of course there have. Are we all facing common challenges from the international global situation with covid? Of course we are. It is how we respond to those challenges, the decisions we make, and how we resource our public services that we can be judged by. The people of Scotland judged the SNP Government, and resoundingly backed us. Of course there are challenges, but I am proud to stand by the SNP’s record.

To govern is to choose, and it is the choices of this UK Government that we can critique today. I endorse the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie) about the underlying causes of policy failure, the UK Government’s wrong decision in leaving the EU, and doing so in the way they did. That compounded a number of our difficulties, just as wrong management choices affected the delivery of public services. I will not belabour or repeat the points my right hon. Friend made, but the SNP remains very clear about our ambition for Scotland: we want an independent Scotland, back in the European family of nations. The people of Scotland will have a choice on that in October 2023. We will come back to that discussion at the proper time, I do not doubt, and I look forward to that.

[Paul Holmes]

May I intervene?

[Alyn Smith]

Please do; this will be good.

[Paul Holmes]

I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman, especially after I have just made a speech. Talking of delivering public services and the economy, the First Minister today outlined her plan for independence, but she failed to mention what currency the SNP proposes for an independent Scotland, and whether independence would have a negative or positive impact on the economic outlook of Scotland.

[Alyn Smith]

As I say, I look forward to the debates that we will have in the coming months, and I look forward to the decision of the people of Scotland on those matters.

I have said that it is difficult to be in government, and I acknowledge the problems the UK Government have faced. I am honestly not here to score political points. I will focus my remarks solely on passports and driving licences, because that has been a considerable difficulty for hundreds of the people I serve in Stirling—and, I suspect, for thousands, if not more, people across all our constituencies. I say hand on heart to the UK Government, constitutional politics aside, that I want this fixed. It needs to be fixed a lot more quickly.

I listened carefully to the Chief Secretary’s comments on passports and driving licences, and I am not sure that many of my constituents in Stirling would agree with his rather Panglossian analysis. There have been clear failures in the delivery of these services. I agree that the backlogs in both the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency and Her Majesty’s Passport Office were unprecedented, but they were not remotely unforeseeable, and the scale of the Government response was inadequate. We need a laser-like focus on that in this discussion. We need far greater investment in these services, and far greater support for the hard-working staff who are swamped in trying to deal with the backlogs, which are having significant knock-on effects on the livelihoods and mental health, as we have heard, of many millions of the citizens we serve.

I have three examples from Stirling—this is just a selection from this morning’s postbag. One constituent applied for his child’s passport on 30 March—13 weeks ago this Wednesday. He was to travel on 25 June, but he cancelled, lost the money and rebooked for 6 July. There was no response at all to his requests to expedite the application, and with just seven days to go, there is still no passport.

Another constituent applied on 2 March for passports for herself and her four-year-old daughter, so that they could travel on 1 May—it was to be their first holiday. Their passports were late and they missed their holiday. In another constituent’s own words:

“I went to the Glasgow office today and waited for hours in the queue. They weren’t going to see me as I don’t travel in the next 48 hours. However, I pleaded my case and the lovely lady agreed to at least check everything was ok with my application. It was not. Though they received my supporting documents recorded delivery, HMPO have lost them (3 birth certificates). This resulted in me quite literally running down to the Glasgow registrar office”.

It said it could provide the certificates in 24 hours. My constituent continued:

“I am now on a train back to Stirling to go to the registry office there who have agreed to print them off…then I will head back to Glasgow to have them proceed with the application.”

Missed holidays are not the biggest crisis in the world, but missed livelihoods are, and the failures of the DVLA are even worse. A number of HGV drivers and people dependent on driving for their work have been unable to work and in danger of losing their livelihoods and employment because of the delays.

I always hope to find consensus and to suggest solutions. To solve a problem, one first needs to acknowledge it. I therefore urge a bit more humility and honesty from the Government in dealing with the passport and DVLA issues in particular. There has been investment—I acknowledge that—but it has not been adequate. We need more. The establishment of a Westminster helpdesk for MPs, while welcome—we have used it—reveals something of a Westminster-centric attitude. What we actually need is far more people on the phones, available to our constituents and citizens who need the advice. That advice needs to be properly resourced.

I acknowledge that there has been investment, but it has not been enough, so to talk about tax cuts in general, as an ideological point, is to miss the point entirely. This is a problem that hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of our citizens are facing right now. The Government have to deliver public services, and they have not done remotely as well as they need to. For hundreds of thousands of constituents, backlog Britain is a very real and pressing problem. I therefore congratulate the Labour party on bringing forward the debate and urge the UK Government to do better.

Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Debate between Paul Holmes and Alyn Smith

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith]

I am grateful for the opportunity to perhaps correct if I was unclear. I accept that Brexit has happened. I gave up my seat in the European Parliament because of it; I wanted to come here to fight for Scotland’s place in Europe. There was a point in the December election where we could have had that argument. In the halcyon days, we were thinking about a hung Parliament—with a Labour Administration, with SNP support, and a second EU referendum—but I won Stirling with 51% of the vote and my party won Scotland with a massive vote, to a Parliament we do not want to be in, on a pro-EU platform. Because of events elsewhere, it was clear that Brexit was going to happen anyway. I accepted Brexit has happened in my first speech, so I have made that point. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point. What I am trying to do is extend the transition period to avoid a disaster that Conservative Members are going to inflict on this House out of bone-headed ideology, and when the chickens come home to roost, I do hope they will be as accountable as we have been to the people of Scotland on those points.

I again urge the Minister, whom I have much respect for, on the shared prosperity fund. There has been much talk about the power grab. I see the eyes rolling on the Conservative Benches now, but it is a very concrete example. This was not a power that rested in Brussels. The European frameworks exist in order to empower national and local governments. This was a power that was entirely with the Scottish authorities. The proposal on the table now from the UK Government is to put those powers in the hands of the Scotland Office—a part of the UK Government—removing that budget and removing that competence from the Scottish authorities. If that is not a power grab, I will need to have a look at the dictionary the Conservative Members are working with because, in any objective sense, it is. The Minister can assure us now that I am wrong. I will happily be proven wrong. I will happily engage with what we can do with the shared prosperity fund in Scotland, but it must be as a matter of respect for devolution under the competence of the Scottish authorities. If it is not, it is a breach of trust, it is a breach of faith and it is a power grab.

As I say, the pain of Brexit or the pain that Brexit is causing could be worth it if the benefits were there to be seen, but beyond warm words and sentiment, and beyond slogans that do not stand analysis, we have not seen that. Let us be generous—I do try to be generous—and say that the one-year negotiating period was heroically ambitious. That was before covid. Covid has intervened and has taken the focus of all of our Governments and all of our public officials away, rightly, to a health emergency. Extending the transition period is not about fighting old battles. I am not in the business of fighting old battles. Extending the transition period can be done and will give us breathing space and certainty to allow our economy to recover from a health emergency that is turning into an economic emergency. To add a covid-inflicted disaster upon that because of Brexit would be flat lunacy.

I was struck by the Paymaster General’s previous comments. She is now not in her place, but I was struck when she used the phrase that we are now past the point whereby a request can be made. She said that some might argue it is impossible to apply for an extension. She is not here now, but I would happily give way to anyone on the Conservative Benches who can name anybody in Brussels who is of that view. Anyone—Berlin, Paris, Ljubljana? It is a matter of straightforward principle and pragmatism in Brussels that, if the UK applies for an extension, it will be granted. The EU has, at every stage of the process, accepted with regret the democratic choices of the United Kingdom. It will not engage in our internal discussion, so it is with regret that it accepts that an extension will probably not be applied for.

We have not heard any indication today that the UK Government will change course, but they should, and this is a plea from us to do so, because we can still change course. We must change course. This is not about old battles. I asked whether anybody in Brussels, Berlin or anywhere else shared the Minister’s view. How about Dublin? Speaking of Dublin, Ireland is an independent state in north-west Europe that has done quite well lately. With Norway, it was voted on to the UN Security Council. It has the EU Commissioner for Trade in the inestimable Phil Hogan, who is a very strong negotiator in trade deals—Government Members will want to watch that one. It also has the president of the Eurogroup in Paschal Donohoe. The international accolades just keep coming for Ireland, and that is all based on the solidarity, support and encouragement of 26 other EU member states that have its back against the former colonial power.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the fact that Ireland managed to get itself on to the UN Security Council, but Scotland is a permanent member of the UN Security Council through being part of one of the most successful unions. Does his attitude not show that he actually wants to downgrade Scotland’s place in the world by making it a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council?

[Alyn Smith]

I am happy to engage with that point. I have spent a number of years on the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, and I am now foreign affairs spokesman for my party. The UK is, of course, a P5 member, and Scotland is represented by virtue of that mechanism. I think that it could serve us better if we were an independent member of the UN and an independent member of the EU, working in concert with 27 of our closest neighbours, because I do not have any faith or trust in where the UK is going under the Conservative party. The Brexit process has proven us to be right.

I heard the point made earlier about the 2014 referendum. We do accept that that vote happened—we do accept that arithmetic reality. But a number of people voted no to independence on the basis of specific promises—promises that they cannot risk their European status, that we are a family of equals and a partnership of nations, that the UK is the only way to guarantee economic stability. All those promises and all that airy sentiment now look an awful lot more threadbare than they did, and no amount of bluster from Government Members will disprove that point.

Look at the recent results of votes in Scotland. Under a system where we do not make the rules, we won massively the majority of seats from Scotland in this House. Scotland is represented in this discussion by nobody from the Labour party and by a Minister who represents Milton Keynes. We have no territorial ambitions on Milton Keynes—the Minister can rest easy—but to say that it is part of Scotland is something of a stretch.

The legitimacy of this Government in the eyes of the people of Scotland is really something that Government Members need to have higher up their consciousness, because the people of Scotland are watching. The people of Scotland will have a choice at some point on whether independence in Europe is a better option than being stuck on an island run by the Conservative party. Ireland has shown us what independence in Europe actually looks like, and the Government are showing us what the UK will continue to offer Scotland. I think we have a better choice, and I believe that independence in Europe is coming.