Scotland: Demography and Devolution

Debate between Pete Wishart and Steven Paterson

Thursday 9th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Second Report of the Scottish Affairs Committee, Demography of Scotland and the implications for devolution, HC 82, and the Government response, HC 938.

It is a pleasure to serve with you chairing this short debate, Mr McCabe.

Back in February 2016, the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs launched our inquiry into the demography of Scotland, to better understand the issues concerning our populations and the impact those trends will have on devolved services in Scotland. We had four sessions here in Westminster and one in Edinburgh, and we were delighted to visit the Isle of Skye, where we visited the Gaelic college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and held an evidence session there. As always, we are grateful to all those who contributed to the inquiry.

May I start with the good news? It is very good news. Scotland’s population is stable and growing. We say in the report that that is good news. Something that differentiates us in Scotland so much from the rest of the United Kingdom is that we welcome population growth in our nation. When we get news of population growth, Ministers put out press releases saying that it is a good thing; when they get similar news down here in the UK, it could not make Ministers more miserable. That says everything about the respective attitudes in Scotland and the United Kingdom.

Only 15 years ago, Scotland was suffering what can only be called structural depopulation, and there was real concern that the population might actually dip below the iconic 5 million mark. Scotland’s population has been turned round and is now at its highest ever level, standing at 5.37 million people resident in Scotland. That population growth—not dramatic, but steady and good—is owed to increased fertility among the indigenous population and, more than anything else, immigration, particularly immigration from the European Union following the accession of nations in the early 2000s. After a century of sluggish population growth punctuated by periods of decline, and following centuries of emigration, Scotland’s population is now stable, and that is good news.

I mentioned our history because we as a nation are probably more familiar with historical issues of emigration than we are with immigration. That flavours and shapes Scotland’s response to the current debate about immigration that is raging throughout the United Kingdom—a debate that probably hijacked the whole conversation about exiting the European Union. There are concerns about immigration in Scotland—we find that in social attitude surveys and opinion polls—but it is absolutely clear to me and other members of the Scottish Affairs Committee that there does not seem to be the same heat in that debate in Scotland as there is in the rest of the United Kingdom. There is a healthy understanding of our immigration requirements as a nation and our need to sustain a healthy population and demography.

That is the good news, and it is welcome. The not so good news is that our population increase is lagging way behind that of the United Kingdom as a whole. That is a critical part of this equation and a critical relationship. The UK’s population is projected to increase to 70 million in 2027 and reach 74.3 million by 2039. That is an increase of 15% over a 25-year period. I know that we are ending free movement, that there are going to be new immigration policies in place and that the UK Government are confident that there will be some sort of Brexitised Canute to stand against this tide of an ever-increasing movement of people throughout the world. That is their ambition and what they intend to do, but according to current figures the population growth of the UK is expected to be 15% over 25 years. In the same period, Scotland’s population is expected to grow by 6%.

That population growth gap will have a huge implication for Scotland’s economy and our ability to support and sustain an increasingly elderly population. That is because Scotland is predominantly funded on the basis of its population in the form of a block grant that we receive and is calculated on the percentage-based Barnett formula. Increasingly, the distribution of resources throughout the United Kingdom will be on a per capita basis. The main concern, therefore, is that Scotland’s revenues will not keep pace with those in the rest of the United Kingdom. That could be increasingly acute as we come to renegotiate the fiscal framework in 2020, where population concerns will once again be factored in, possibly to Scotland’s deficit.

The other issue the Committee found is that population growth is variable across Scotland as a whole. That is why the Committee visited the Isle of Skye to try to better understand the regional variations and the issues in Scotland’s rural areas, in particular the highlands and islands. We found pockets of success, particularly in the highlands, but an otherwise ongoing story of decline in Scotland’s rural areas. For example, most of the new population growth happens in Scotland’s cities and conurbations close to them. In my constituency, in Perth and Kinross, we have solid population growth of around 15%; in Edinburgh, where my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) is resident, it is in the region of 20%; and in Midlothian it is 26%. That contrasts with areas of the highlands and islands that have experienced net population decline, the worst example being the Western Isles, which is expecting a population decline of some 14%.

Scotland has one of the lowest population densities in the whole of Europe. During the inquiry we heard that Sutherland in north-east Scotland has lower population density than Mali in northern Africa—a nation that is entirely covered by Sahara desert. More than anything, that suggests that Scotland is not full up and that we can accommodate many more immigrants to help us to address some of the issues in our economy.

Lurking underneath the statistics are demographic issues that really need to be tackled. The age profile of Scotland’s population is rising at a faster rate than that of the UK as a whole. Several witnesses we spoke to in the course of the inquiry identified the combination of Scotland’s lower population growth, ageing population and lower life expectancy as one of the key challenges it will face in the delivery of public services in the coming years and decades. Over the next 25 years, Scotland’s population will have a lower proportion of working-age people than it does now, and they will be expected to support an even bigger number of dependants. That is referred to as the “dependency ratio”—several groups took exception to that phrase when we visited Edinburgh, as my colleagues will remember. In the next 25 years, the dependency ratio will increase from 58 dependants to every 100 working-age people to 67 dependants to every 100 working-age people. That has serious implications for the delivery of public services.

The Committee found two particular areas where the dependency ratio might have an impact. The first is the size of the tax base and the ability to service through that tax base an ageing population. Secondly, it will be much more difficult to fill some vacancies in a number of sectors, including health and social care. An ageing population will increase demand for those services without there being a commensurate increase in the pool of working-age people available to fill those vacancies. That will have to be factored in to the planning and developing of Scotland’s public services over the coming years and decades.

Another thing the Committee found during our inquiry is that life expectancy and healthy life expectancy, especially for men, are lower in Scotland than in other parts of the UK. A new report, which we did not have the opportunity to take into account, has emerged in the past few weeks. That report, produced by the University of Glasgow, suggests that for the first time in 150 years life expectancy is not increasing in Scotland. It found a spike of more deaths in 2014 than at any time in Scotland since the second world war. We are not in a position to assess that, but it would be particularly worrying if that was a trend that is beginning in Scotland and was a reflection of some of the social policies that have been carried out not only in the name of this Government, but across both Governments in the United Kingdom. That is something we very much want to keep an eye on over the next few years.

The health inequalities are what concern the Committee more than anything else, and again we saw a disparity not only in the United Kingdom but in Scotland. The most revealing example was given by Professor David Bell, who talked about the train journey from Jordanhill in Glasgow to Bridgeton in Glasgow and how life expectancy declines by 15 years in the course of it. Professor Bell also told us that Jordanhill’s people have the same life expectancy as those of Canning Town here in London. Canning Town is a tube journey away from Westminster, where life expectancy is seven years higher. The disparity across the United Kingdom is 21 years, which surely should set off all sorts of alarm bells when we are planning services and considering how to reduce health inequalities.

The Committee considered what would be required to resolve some of the difficulties that we identified in our inquiry. First, we note the Scottish Government’s target of matching population growth with the EU15, which was set in 2007 to be completed by 2017. The Scottish Government have been relatively successful in ensuring that we have achieved the EU25 mean. Some witnesses praised the Scottish Government for setting the population target, saying that it was in the interests of the nation to aspire to be population healthy and demographically healthy. However, some—primarily those in the UK Government, who did not see much value in it at all—felt that there was no need for a population target and questioned the whole idea.

None of our witnesses could tell us the optimum population size for Scotland, although a few gave valid examples of their efforts to do so. Professor Jim Hunter, emeritus professor of history at the University of the Highlands and Islands, told us that it is difficult to establish Scotland’s optimum population. When we were on Skye, he told us about some of the reasons given for the clearances, including that the population in the particular area was unable to sustain itself, but he also said to the Committee, revealingly, that

“the population of London exceeded the capacity of the London area to grow potatoes and turnips a heck of a long time ago, so it depends entirely what sort of economy you are looking to create here.”

I thought that those were particularly wise words.

We found, unsurprisingly, that what is required to keep a healthy demography and a stable and competitive rate of population growth is an obvious equation between emigration and immigration. We must retain more people in Scotland and do more to attract working-age migrants to Scotland, but that will be a lot harder to achieve with the end of free movement of people from the European Union.

To give an example of the sort of figures that we are talking about, in 2014-15, net inward migration to Scotland was 27,968, while net migration to England was 298,882. That is a huge disparity in our ability to attract immigrants. We must do more to attract migrants to Scotland, but it is particularly difficult to achieve when the legislative levers remain in the gift of a UK Government resistant to immigration and concerned to the point of obsession with immigrant numbers. The UK Government, in their response to the report, defiantly refused to give the Scottish Government responsibility and opportunities to address their immigration concerns, and they have ended schemes such as the Fresh Talent initiative, which allowed us, at least in relation to the student population, to try to increase our population by giving incentives to stay in Scotland.

I mention that because something important and alarming came out in the statistics given to us by National Records of Scotland. There has been a positive spike in Scotland’s immigration figures: the number of people coming to Scotland in the critical 19-to-23 age bracket has risen. That suggests that people are coming to Scotland attracted by the offer from our excellent, world-class universities. However, there is an almost commensurate spike in emigration among those aged 23 to 27. That suggests to me that people are leaving Scotland once they have been educated, because they do not have the opportunity to stay there.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

As my hon. Friend might be aware, in 2015-16, Stirling University had 930 EU students and 1,350 overseas students; 20% of the student population came from overseas. It clarifies how important immigration is to solving the problem not just of the skills base, which he correctly identified, but to the universities’ health in the future. What are his views on that?

[Pete Wishart]

That is exactly what we found in the course of our inquiry. One of the report’s recommendations was that the Government reconsider their approach and attitude to the post-study work scheme offer. That would address the issues that my hon. Friend raises, but to me the problem is much more fundamental. It is beyond absurd that we attract all those talented young people to Scotland with the quality of our world-class universities and train and educate them to a high standard simply to watch them sail away, when we need those people to help grow and contribute to our community.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Pete Wishart and Steven Paterson

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

It needs to be abolished. It is unreformable. It is an absurd circus. I am not a unicameralist: I believe that a nation as complex as the United Kingdom requires a scrutinising Chamber. Some of my hon. Friends take a different view, but my personal view is that we need a scrutinising Chamber that is properly elected.

What an embarrassing humbling the Government received yesterday when they had to withdraw the Strathclyde review. You cannot take on the boys in ermine and get done like that! The Government will have to reflect on their overwhelming and embarrassing defeat at the hands of the House of Lords. They took on the aristocrats. Those guys won battles in the medieval ages to exercise their right to rule over us. The Government sent the bumptious Lord Strathclyde to try to tame them and that is the result.

I hope that the Government reconsider their approach to the Lords. All they are going to do is increase the number of peers. We now face the prospect over the next few days of having the dark lord Farage. The bad Baron Boot-Them-out-of-Here is going to be a feature of our democracy. Someone who has been beaten eight times in Westminster contests might find himself a parliamentarian through the back door.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

Does my hon. Friend think that the system of appointments to the Lords by the Prime Minister is an example of the royal prerogative being abused and used irresponsibly?

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Yes, it is. As we are into a debate about the exercise of the royal prerogative, we should consider that, because he makes an interesting point.

The bad baron Farage will be joining 800 or so of the weirdest parliamentarians to be found anywhere in the world, in the second largest Chamber in the world. He will be joining not just the cronies, the donors and the party placemen, but the Church of England bishops, the aristocrats and, even worse, the Liberal Democrats—the Chamber of unelected horrors.

In the next Parliament, if the House of Lords continues to increase in the way that it has, we face the real prospect of something approaching 1,000 unelected Lords to scrutinise the work of 600 Members of Parliament. We will almost have two unelected parliamentarians for every elected one, yet we have the gall to lecture the developing world about the quality of their democracy.

The main case made by the Government to do this was to reduce the cost and the size of politics, but they are clearly not doing that. The cost of politics is increasing exponentially, not year on year, but month by month. We have heard about the armies of civil servants that will have to be created to staff the new Departments dealing with this Government’s chaotic Brexit plans; the number of Spads has increased by about 20% in the past few years; and the Government have put 250 donors, cronies and placemen into the House of Lords. What are the savings? The Minister claimed £66 million, but I believe that is over five years. The figure—I think the hon. Member for North West Durham said it—is closer to £12 million. When it comes to making savings that will not even pay for the paint on a Trident missile.

House of Lords Reform and Size of the House of Commons

Debate between Pete Wishart and Steven Paterson

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, so I will try to make a bit of progress and come back to him later if I have time.

We are reducing the number of Members of this House to save money, but at no point do we look at what is going on down the corridor. As I said earlier, the cost of the House of Lords is now a cool £100 million—that is the operating cost for a year. Members of the House of Lords get £300 just for turning up or £150 for working from home, and these are tax-free allowances. That figure of £100 million works out at about £100,000 per peer. For the same cost as these 800 part-time peers, we could have 300 democratically elected and accountable peers on an MP’s salary.

[Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)]

Two of my constituents, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean and Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, sit along there in the House of Lords. Last year, Lord Forsyth cost £46,346 and Lord Robertson cost £19,708. I was on the front page of the local paper because of how much it costs for me to come down here and do my job and employ staff. I wonder when newspapers will print that kind of information about how much our Lords are costing us.

[Pete Wishart]

My hon. Friend makes an important point that brings me on to my next subject—value for money.

We know how hard we work in this place. We have constituents whom we have to represent and make sure that their interests are brought to this House. The Lords have none of that. Some of them barely turn up. Some of them have barely been in for a debate or made any parliamentary contributions at all. Yet we are prepared to have this huge expense to sustain that place while the number of Members of Parliament who come down here and work hard for their constituents day in, day out is being cut.

I want to say a couple of other things about the reduction in the number of Members of Parliament. The Government are in the process of taking us out of the European Union, and when the 73 Members of the European Parliament, who have significant powers, are no longer there, we will be expected to take up that work. An increased workload will fall on a smaller number of Members of Parliament when we no longer have Members of the European Parliament working for us in Brussels and Strasbourg.

Although the Government intend to reduce the number of Members of Parliament, they have absolutely no plans whatsoever to reduce the numbers in Government. Instead of attempting in any way to reduce the size of Whitehall, they have made sure that there are more Departments, more special advisers and more civil servants. If there is to be any reduction in the number of Members of this place, surely there should be a reduction in the number of people who serve in this Government.