Strengthening the Union

Debate between Pete Wishart and Lesley Laird

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lesley Laird]

I wish to make some progress.

It is Labour that will protect people in the workplace and create the opportunities needed for young people. People will not get that from the Tories nor from the SNP, which continues, incredibly, to count zero-hours contracts as a positive destination for school leavers. It is a Labour Government who will ban zero-hours contracts and deliver an industrial strategy to create high-quality, high-skilled jobs. It is Labour that will always respect devolution, unlike the Tories, who at every turn during the Brexit negotiations have simply ignored Scotland’s devolution settlement, while the SNP’s opportunism has sought to sow division and discord.

Britain needs Labour and our approach, which recognises and respects all the nations of the UK. We will continue to stand up for and protect the devolution settlement, which we, the Labour party, founded.

[Pete Wishart]

This debate is about the Union and the constitution. I thought that Labour’s great innovation was a UK-wide constitutional convention, where Scotland will be a federal part of a new arrangement. Is that still Labour’s policy, and if so, could the hon. Lady talk a little bit about it?

[Lesley Laird]

The hon. Gentleman is right: that was in our manifesto and we will continue to work on it, because we believe it is the next evolution of devolution.

Britain needs investment, and only Labour will deliver. It cannot afford any more of the Tory version of austerity that we have experienced for almost a decade, with millions needing food banks, or SNP timidity, which acts as a conveyor belt for Tory austerity, with millions more cut from Scottish public services without so much as a whimper. It is Labour that has a vision of renewal, transformation and shared prosperity, with an additional investment of £70 billion in Scotland over the course of two successive Labour Governments.

Even on the simple things, this Tory Government cannot get it right. Only last week, Scotland’s invisible man in the Cabinet, the Secretary of State for Scotland—I note that he is not here today—missed another opportunity to show leadership and solidarity with the residents and businesses displaced by the fire at the Glasgow School of Art, by failing to push for UK Government assistance. That was an open goal, yet the Secretary of State put the ball over the bar once again, with a mealy mouthed response and, like so many of his colleagues before him, telling local government to take the strain.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and what fills it too often these days is narrow nationalism, petty jealousies and grievance. It is hardly surprising that we are missing opportunities to strengthen our Union when the Tories clearly do not understand devolution, never mind believe in it. And they are sleepwalking into a nationalist trap, because their instinct is to pass the buck, while the Scottish Government’s instinct is to draw powers from Whitehall and hoard them in Edinburgh, undermining local government at every turn.

Devolution is a process, not an event, and I am clear that those powers must be devolved all the way to the point where they can most effectively be delivered. To make a difference, politics must be about vision. It must be about ideas and how they can be fulfilled. It must be about the vision of how life can be made better for every household and community in the land.

In our 118-year history, the Labour party has been in government for only a little over 30 years, but every one of those years saw a Government for the many, not the few, and strengthened the Union by giving people hope—hope that, by the strength of our common endeavour, whether it be in Cumnock, Coleraine, Cardiff or Croydon, we achieve more together than we achieve alone. That is the way to strengthen our Union. Labour today, like Labour in the past, has a vision that will benefit all our people—men and women from the north, the south, Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I say respectfully to Government Members: your ineptitude, selfishness and brand of politics have played into the hands of those opportunists on the SNP Benches. Do the Union a favour. Do the country a favour. Do the millions of people whose lives are worse off under this rotten Government a favour and move over and allow Labour to govern and to invest in our people, our communities, our public services and our industries, and in the process, to strengthen our Union via the ties that bind our people together through a vision of sharing, equality and opportunity for all.