Budget Resolutions

Peter Grant Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

Let me begin by associating myself with those who have sent messages of congratulations to Prince Harry and to Meghan. I also offer warm congratulations to all the young couples who have today declared their undying love for one another, particularly those for whom marriage would have been unlawful just a few short years ago.

Let me also—along with, I am sure, all other Members—associate myself with what the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said about the appalling tragedy that took place in Egypt a few days ago. It was, I think, a reminder that although the first priority of our defence and security policies must be to defend and protect us, we also have an obligation to protect anyone who needs to be protected. We should never believe that because the threat of terrorism begins to retreat from our shores, we have no responsibility to continue to support those in Egypt and elsewhere who need to be helped to rid themselves of the scourge of terrorism within their own boundaries.

When I came into the Chamber, I had a feeling—it has been confirmed by what I have heard so far—that the Government’s definition of “global Britain” and where Britain’s place in the world should be is very different from where I want my country to be, and from the role that I want it to play in the world. People may regard my country as Scotland, as I do, or they may insist that it is the United Kingdom. Regardless of that, I simply do not recognise the Government’s direction of travel as being towards the place that my constituents, and indeed my compatriots, want the United Kingdom to head for. Perhaps this is the simplest way of describing the problem: in a headline debate on Britain’s place in the world, neither the opening speech nor the winding-up speech is being made by an International Development Minister. What does that tell us about where international development really lies in the Government’s priorities?

When I think about where Scotland’s place in the world should be, I think of organisations such as Mary’s Meals, which was set up 25 years ago in a tiny village in Argyllshire. I suspect that most people could not even pronounce the name of that village, let alone find it on the map, but it is called Taynuilt. Mary’s Meals now provides free school meals for more than a million people in the world’s poorest countries, and recently, just before celebrating its 25th anniversary, it reached the extraordinary milestone of providing its billionth meal. Those 1 billion meals have not only provided nourishment, but helped to support the education system in Malawi and elsewhere.

I think of the efforts of two of my constituents a few years ago in response to the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. Lauren Daly and Lewis Cunningham issued an appeal for any donations that might help the refugees. Two days later, they issued an appeal for a lorry, because they had already collected enough to send to the refugee camps. A few days after that, they issued an appeal for a warehouse to hold the tons and tons of stuff that had been donated.

I think of the actions of people in my former parish of St Columba’s in Cupar and in St Matthew’s in Auchtermuchty, in the constituency of my good and hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins). Over a number of years, they have provided a huge amount of infrastructure for a school in an impoverished part of Uganda, including science teaching laboratories, accommodation blocks, a water supply and school kitchens. All those things have helped the school to become one of the best performing schools in the area. I have no idea what percentage of GDP or what percentage of the income of those volunteers was contributed. Much more important than thinking about percentages is thinking about the impact that their actions are having.

With all three of those examples, I am immensely proud of people’s efforts to help others in the world’s poorest countries. They did that not because it looked good on a CV and not because it would earn them brownie points in the House of Commons or elsewhere, but because it was the right thing to do. When I think of where Scotland wants to be in the world, I think of Mary’s Meals, of Lauren and Lewis, and of St Columba’s and St Matthew’s. I am sorry, but when I think of where the Government appear to want to take Britain in the global world, I think of the ethnic cleansing of the Chagos Islands, and of £2 billion of arms sales to a country that is accused of more than 150 counts of crimes against humanity in Yemen. I have to ask whether those two directions of travel are at all reconcilable; as we say in Fife, I hae ma doots about that one.

[Ross Thomson (Aberdeen South) (Con)]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, so it has access to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, its embassies—there are hundreds across the world—and the Department for International Trade, which ensures that Scottish fish products are sold in China and Vietnam, and that Scottish whisky is on its way to markets in India. Is that not a great direction of travel for Scotland in the United Kingdom?

[Peter Grant]

I suspect that I have much more confidence in the world-class quality of the food and drink that is produced in Scotland than the hon. Gentleman. I do not believe that Scotch whisky really depends on the Foreign Secretary to become a world leader, and I do not believe that the world-class food and drink that we produce in Scotland really depends on gunboat diplomacy to make people throughout the world understand. What it does depend on is barrier-free access to markets, and it is a bit rich for those who support the removal of our barrier-free access to the biggest single market on the planet to claim to have a monopoly of wisdom about how to develop our international trade.

Let me say once again that I do not accept the argument that the sole purpose of foreign policy is to benefit wealthy investors and bankers in these islands. The most important part of the foreign policy of any developed and wealthy nation is to ensure that its wealth is distributed so that terrorist attacks such as the ones that we have seen in Egypt recently, and the starvation that takes the lives of thousands of children every day, become things of the past. If I have to pay a wee bit more income tax, or any other tax, to make that happen, I for one am more than happy to dip into my pocket.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman referred to the intervention in Yemen in a castigating way. Will he at least acknowledge that many Arab countries are involved in the war in Yemen, and that they are trying to avert a humanitarian crisis and deal with the difficulties in that country that are a direct result of Iranian intervention in support of the Houthi rebels? The situation is much more complicated than the hon. Gentleman is trying to suggest.

[Peter Grant]

I entirely agree that it is more complicated than it is often presented as being. I have not said that Iran is entirely innocent, but Iran is not buying £2 billion-worth of weapons of war from the United Kingdom, and Saudi Arabia is. Saudi Arabia stands accused of war crimes. Until those allegations are investigated, I do not think that we should be selling weapons to those who may be committing crimes of mass murder, and I do not consider the question of whether or not they are using our weapons to commit those crimes to be relevant.

When I looked at the timetable for our Budget debate, I saw “Monday: global Britain”, and thought, “That’s not going to take very long, is it?” The fact is that even the Government’s own misguided ambitions for Britain’s place in the world, which I believe are still based on the fanciful belief that we are somehow entitled to retain an empire and colonies, rather than a simple acknowledgement that the world has moved on since the days when any nation could claim the right to colonise any other nation—

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

No, I will not give way just now.

When we look at Conservative Members’ responses to statements by the sovereign Government of Ireland over the last couple of days, we have to wonder whether they recognise that that country’s Ministers have not only the right but an absolute responsibility to speak in the interests of their citizens. If what they say happens not to coincide with the interests of citizens in the rest of the British Isles, that might be something for negotiation.

Even despite the Government’s misguided ambitions for the role that they think Britain is entitled to play, that role is being catastrophically undermined by the shambles—“shambles” is as strong a word as I can use in the Chamber—of Brexit. Nor is it helped by the fact that we have a Foreign Secretary of whom people in the west of Scotland might say, “You cannae take him anywhere,” to which the response would be, “Or you have to take him twice—the second time to apologise.” When the Foreign Secretary assured us that he had had a number of meetings on the Myanmar crisis, I could not help wondering how many were required for him to apologise for the crassly insensitive and offensive way in which he referred to the people of Myanmar in one of his official pronouncements. We can joke about the buffoonery of the right hon. Gentleman, who is no longer in the Chamber. Everybody can say things that are stupid and wish that they had not, but if they start to make too much of a habit of it, especially if they hold as important and sensitive a position as Foreign Secretary, the time comes when the Prime Minister has to start asking whether she has the right person in the job.

We have heard a lot from Conservative Members during our Brexit debates about how leaving the European Union will open up all these wonderful markets for the United Kingdom. It might open up the American market, if we comply with the requirement announced two weeks ago by the American Secretary of Commerce to drop our opposition to genetically modified foods and chlorinated chicken. That is too high a price to pay, so I hope that the Treasury Minister who sums up today’s debate will confirm that if that is the requirement, there will be no deal with the United States of America.

I remind the House of a report published in the last Parliament by the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union on the Government’s negotiating priorities, particularly in the context of global Britain. Paragraph 170 says:

“The Government should seek a UK-EU Free Trade Agreement…which covers both goods and services and retains the mutual recognition of standards and conformity assessments.”

It finishes:

“The Government should maintain the maximum possible flexibility in its negotiating approach to achieve these outcomes.”

I am not quite sure how unilaterally deciding that the customs union and single market are off the table counts as flexible or anything like it.

Paragraph 198 says:

“The Government must provide more clarity as to the features of its preferred customs arrangement with the EU and how it will differ from a customs union.”

That report was published months and months ago—certainly before the election—but we still do not have that clarity from the Government. We hear the same platitudes, the same soundbites and the same slogans, but we still have absolutely no firm and concrete proposals, even for how they are going to square the circle of the border that runs across the island of Ireland, never mind how they are going to reconcile the irreconcilable and maintain full access to the single market when those who set it up made it perfectly clear that countries can be in or out, but cannot have full access without being members.

Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Mr Deputy Speaker, I realise that there has been a sex change while I have been on my feet; I apologise to both of you. We hear the Government talk about prioritising the rule of law—the previous speaker referred to that. That is an excuse for turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the brutality of the Spanish police against some of the citizens of Catalonia.

Why is it that we have annual state visits and state banquets for a Prime Minister whose Government act unlawfully in their occupation of the sovereign territory of Palestine? The UK Government believe that Israel is breaking the law by doing that, so why do they continue to have official state visits for the Prime Minister of a country that the Foreign Secretary believes is acting unlawfully, if the rule of law is so important to Her Majesty’s Government?

We often hear that the wishes of residents must be paramount. With regard to the residents of the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar, I agree with that 100%. What account have the Government taken of the wishes of the former residents of the Chagos islands, whose treatment by previous UK Governments could properly be described as ethnic cleansing or indeed abduction? By today’s standards it may well fall under the UN definition of genocide, which includes the forceful or fraudulent removal of a population. What account has been taken of their wishes? It seems to me that if we steal something from someone, the only way to make an apology seem sincere is to offer to hand it back. Having stolen the islands from their population, no apology can be sincere unless the Government are prepared to offer to hand them back.

[Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Peter Grant]

No. Time is short and I do not want any other hon. Members to miss a chance to speak. [Hon. Members: “Give way!”] If the hon. Gentleman has put his name down to speak, he will get the chance; if he has not, it is unfair on those who have done and who may have prepared speeches.

The debate so far confirms that the direction in which the Government intend to take all four of these nations is very different from the direction that the people of Scotland have made it clear that they want to take. The United Kingdom Government’s vision of their place in the world is very different from how the people of Scotland see our place in the world—I suspect it might be very different from how a lot of the ordinary people of England, Wales and Northern Ireland see their place as well. If the Government believe that Scotland has no option but to follow their lead and be dragged into fulfilling a role in the world that is not the one we want, they are making a mistake as monumental and momentous as any in the catalogue of disastrous misjudgements that we have seen by Ministers in this Government over the last two years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

There is much to welcome in the Budget, not least when we talk about Britain on the global stage. Infrastructure investment in this country will be important in raising our productivity and making us fit for the global stage. With that in mind, the £300 million to link other infrastructure improvements to the HS2 project is important to me, not least because it will link the HS2 station at Leeds to the main line, an idea raised by Transport for the North. That means there is now no need for a mile-long viaduct over Swillington in my constituency. It is not just about saving money on the project; the money should be reinvested in local trams and trains to ease congestion in the city of Leeds. We cannot be truly globally competitive if we are not working efficiently. It sucks away the productivity of this country if people lose a lot of time getting to work.

I was frankly appalled to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), the foreign affairs spokesman for the Scottish National party. He said that Britain has no role to play in the world, which is simply not true.

[Peter Grant]

I do not remember saying that Britain does not have a role to play in the world. What I said, and I will say it again, is that the role in the world the UK Government appear to have decided for Britain is not a role that the people of Scotland will be comfortable following. Nobody would deny that any country in the world has a role to play. If the Official Report shows that I said anything different, I will withdraw it. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The Front Benchers have had a good go tonight. If they are going to intervene, it has to be with very short interventions. I am very sorry but, if people give way, others might fall off the list.