Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, although it seems that speaker after speaker, no matter which side of the House they sit on, has chosen to use a substantial portion of their time to castigate the Scottish National party for its choice of debate topic. In truth, I do not think it really mattered which topic we chose. We could have made one debate about sunshine, lollipops and rainbows, and the Conservatives would still have been determined to take up time giving an airing to their only discernible policy of being against a second independence referendum in Scotland, without which they would have nothing at all to put on their election leaflets in Scotland.

Members on both sides of the House throughout the afternoon have displayed a near-demented determination to paint a picture of a dystopian Scotland that anyone actually living in Scotland would seriously struggle to recognise, even in caricature. It rather begs the question why, if the Scottish Government are doing such a bad job, Labour and the Conservatives are currently tussling over which of them will end up in third place in May’s Holyrood elections.

The reason that reliable polls on voting intentions show such strong support for Scottish independence recently is, in large part, due to a significant body of voters in Scotland: those who voted no in 2014, who voted remain in 2016 and who, in the light of all they have experienced and their unhappiness with the way that the Brexit project has unravelled under the Conservative Government, have chosen to embrace independence as the best future for our country. It is somewhat ironic to find ourselves being lectured in this debate about the problems being caused by the creation of borders, when that is exactly what the UK Government have just delivered straight down the Irish sea, under the terms of the deal agreed.

The Minister, amid some quite poorly chosen remarks, asked for one positive suggestion in this debate from the SNP. Let me suggest one that would help to remove a large part of the friction over the border currently between Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland: aligning food and agricultural standards with the EU once again, which would remove the need for the phytosanitary checks that are threatening to leave shelves empty.

Brexit may not have been the circumstances in which we would have chosen to embark on a second independence referendum, but once the pandemic is over, they are certainly the circumstances that make it necessary to pursue that goal, to secure our recovery, to secure our prosperity and to secure the integrity of Scotland’s hard-won democratic institutions. We have always been a European nation. I look forward to us being so once again.

Contingencies Fund (No. 2) Bill

Richard Thomson Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP) [V]]

This is a short but important Bill. Last year’s measures in the Contingencies Fund Act 2020 were absolutely unprecedented. Setting a level of 50% on the fund ensured that the rapidly evolving policy response to covid-19 could be matched with the necessary resource. It was important that we did so. At that time, we were heading for a lockdown and a parliamentary recess for Easter. It was unclear when Parliament would be able to return and we had no means at that point, at least as I recall, of enabling virtual participation in Westminster, so it was essential to allow necessary and perhaps even extraordinary expenditure to take place in the short to medium term to support the policy responses to covid that were deemed to be necessary, without the requirement for us to reconvene Parliament to ensure that further spending could be authorised.

This year’s Bill, by extending the scale of the fund beyond the usual 2%, clearly recognises a need for that flexibility to continue. Setting this year’s contingencies fund at 12% may well give access in the short term to the same amount of resource that was used in practice last year. In the light of experience, it may be felt that out of all the arbitrary figures that could have been chosen for the Bill this year, this is the figure that somehow just feels right. However, for all the progress that has been made with vaccines and vaccinations in recent times, we are not out of the woods yet. There have been mutations to the virus, which have increased its virulence and forced us in consequence to change our behaviours and responses. There may yet be further mutations that force us to further reappraise our plans on how we wish to emerge from the present restrictions.

The only thing that we can predict with certainty about the future of living under this virus is that we cannot predict it with certainty. As such, while the Scottish National party group supports the Bill and will not oppose the 12% level being set on the fund, I will place on the record that we would have been content, in the interests of prudence and good governance, to see a higher figure being used.

Let me turn to the proposed amendment; I am aware of your injunctions about time, Mr Deputy Speaker, and that the Bill will have a Committee stage. I have looked at the amendment, which has been tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor, and although it increases the length of the Bill tenfold, it clearly seeks to tackle important issues regarding transparency and accountability in Government spending. I have a lot of sympathy with its intent and will listen carefully to the arguments in Committee.

There is, however, a much wider issue regarding the ability of this House to properly scrutinise Government expenditure, which extends to the estimates process. For someone who entered the House with a background in local government and who bore the scars of passing budgets as a co-leader of a minority council administration, it is remarkable, in contrast, how contested local authority budgets running to just hundreds of millions of pounds can be, when hundreds of billions of pounds across the year in central Government expenditure can still sail through relatively untroubled by the interference of competing views from the Opposition. Although there have been some recent changes to the estimates days’ debates—the estimates can now be debated rather than needing the vehicle of Select Committee reports related to them—it is still extraordinary to my mind that there is no meaningful way to seek to amend Government spending through the estimates process or an ability, as a matter of course, to scrutinise planned departmental expenditure before it is approved.

That brings me, in closing, to the current fiscal framework. The Scottish Cabinet Secretary for Finance has repeatedly pressed the UK Government to provide extra flexibility so that the Scottish Government can mobilise funding when it is most urgently needed through this crisis. While the UK Government have indeed confirmed that the late funding allocated in this financial year could be carried forward into 2021-22 without having to use the Scotland reserve, that flexibility is still limited and temporary. The crisis has revealed a fiscal framework in the UK that is not fit for purpose. As the previous furlough extension for England demonstrated, no matter what the devolved Governments might wish to do in policy terms, problems still have often to be felt first in Whitehall before a budgetary response is triggered for England, which then triggers its way through to other Governments.

In my view, the best people to take decisions for Scotland are those of us who make our lives here. The policy choices we make should be restricted only by the limits of our own resources, the limits of our own choices and the limits of our own imaginations, and not by limits and constraints that are set elsewhere. We will continue to press for these additional flexibilities as part of the fiscal framework review.

Contingencies Fund (No. 2) Bill

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Committee of the whole House & Committee stage
Thursday 11th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab) [V]]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a member of the Public and Commercial Services Union.

Parliamentary authorisation of public expenditure is critical, but we all recognise the need for this Bill to ensure that the Government can act quickly to support the economy. That said, the Government should not be able to act without accountability and transparency. I support the comments made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) with regard to transparency and scrutiny. Indeed, just this morning, as part of business questions, the Leader of the House reiterated the point that Members have a right and a duty to hold the Government to account. He also said that scrutiny leads to better government, and that it is in the interests of Government that scrutiny takes place.

It is with those principles in mind that I want to speak in favour of the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, which seeks to improve Government accountability to Parliament for as long as the increased flexibility of the contingency fund is in place. I want to speak specifically with regard to the checks on the regularity, propriety and value for money of any Government procurement decisions, particularly the importance of the reporting of any written ministerial directions given, so that Parliament can be clear when Ministers have decided to override objections made by senior civil servants.

Throughout the pandemic, the Government’s record on transparent procurement processes and securing value for money on public spending has been, sadly, too often completely inexcusable. Despite NHS Test and Trace being allocated a total of £37 billion and a Conservative peer being handed the top job, the Public Accounts Committee’s report on test, track and trace made this finding. In terms of tackling the pandemic, it said:

“There is still no clear evidence to judge NHST&T’s overall effectiveness.”

I also ask the Minister whether he has reflected on yesterday’s report by the National Audit Office on Test and Trace and whether it contained any lessons to be learned by the Government as well.

The theme of incompetence and cronyism does not end there. In a Westminster Hall debate back in December, I joined many other MPs in highlighting the fact that the National Audit Office report on the Government’s procurement during the pandemic had found that contracts had been awarded without due diligence, with a lack of documentation, and no clear audit trail or transparency. Just a few weeks ago, the High Court ruled that the Government had acted unlawfully by not publishing details on the contracts awarded within 30 days, including many awarded through the Government’s VIP lane. The judge ruled that the Government’s inaction breached a vital public function of transparency regarding how vast quantities of taxpayers’ money was spent. The passage of the Bill should not allow the Government to act without accountability and transparency. There are too many instances of the Government’s poor procurement policy representing poor value for money.

In conclusion, I wish to press the point that Ministers must be accountable and civil servants must not be scapegoated for the Government’s poor decision making. The legally binding protection of written ministerial directions ensure that they are not implicated in the Government’s incompetent decision making and cronyism. This is not unnecessary bureaucracy, as referred to by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake); it is right for Parliament to be able to scrutinise them in a timely manner in the public interest.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP) [V]]

I will be brief. The concerns of Scottish National party MPs over certain covid-related Government procurements are well known and on the record, and we will continue to hold the UK Government to account for them. Nevertheless, whether the new clause is viewed through that particular lens or not, the fact remains that taken on its own terms it would greatly improve scrutiny, oversight and accountability, without creating any disproportionate impact on the Government or the overall efficiency of the spending process. Trying to equate the improvement in process that would result with an attack on business, as we have heard today, is frankly nonsense. It smacks of desperation, and I am certain that that is exactly how it will be seen.

The SNP will be supporting this amendment. If the Government have any care at all for transparency on these matters, and for being able to demonstrate that there is proper stewardship of public funds, there is frankly no good reason for them not to support it as well.

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Jesse Norman)]

As you will be aware, Mr Evans, clause 1 provides for an increase in capital for the Contingencies Fund. It raises the limit from the standard 2% to 12%, providing a sum of approximately £105 billion for the financial year 2021-22 only.

We are all agreed across the House on the central importance of accountability to Parliament, but it is the Government’s very firm view that new clause 1 is not needed in order to achieve accountability. It is important to say again that supply processes continue to be used in the usual way with expenditure still subject to parliamentary scrutiny and a vote. This Bill simply permits an advance on expenditure that will be included in the main or supply estimates.

Let me set out four points that make this quite clear. First, the Contingencies Fund is about ensuring cash flow, restricting it to urgent services in anticipation of parliamentary provision becoming available and temporary funds required for necessary working balances. It is not additional spending; it is simply a cash advance to be repaid. It does not in any way preclude the scrutiny by Parliament of additional provision sought by a Department through the supply estimates, nor does it preclude the Comptroller and Auditor General from expressing his view on the regularity of departmental expenditure.

Secondly, each and every departmental accounting officer remains fully accountable for expenditure; and, of course, that expenditure will be audited by the NAO in the usual way as part of the annual reports and accounts of each Department. Transparency arrangements for ministerial directions—where they are sought under the requirements of the doctrine of “Managing Public Money”—will also continue in the usual way. Accounting officers are already required to publish any direction that they receive as soon as possible, unless there is a broader public interest in keeping it confidential.

Thirdly, the House has seen throughout 2021 that Departments must notify Parliament by way of a ministerial statement agreed with the Treasury where a commitment will be or has been entered into in advance of supply. I would like to make it clear that the mandatory WMS wording agreed with Parliament and the NAO already distinguishes whether this advance is a new service, new expenditure or simply a cash requirement ahead of a supply estimate.

I remind hon. Members that the Contingencies Fund is not a tool—some hon. Members have made this point—that Ministers can choose to use; it is not discretionary. It is managed entirely by the Treasury, and the accounting officer must ensure that advances are given in line with strict rules agreed between Parliament, the NAO and the Treasury. These rules are set out clearly in the published estimates manual. Every Department makes an application outlining the urgency of their case and how they plan to meet the listed requirement. It is worth mentioning that the NAO also audits the Contingencies Fund accounts, and that includes a full list of advances.

Let me turn to a couple of the points raised by Members in the debate. I did ask for questions on the Bill, but the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) somehow found that difficult. She raised another irrelevant issue about public spending. She asked me about my own link. I assure her that I had nothing to do with the awarding of any contracts. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) pointed out, this is true for Ministers across the Government, according to the NAO.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who chairs the Public Accounts Committee, made a speech, wonderfully—and I thank her for it—on the Bill. I am very grateful. She asked whether the Bill is rushed through. The answer to that question is no, it is not. It is important to do it, we think, before the beginning of the new financial year. The same Bill was put through in March last year, and so it is here. She asked about Treasury controls. We fully, strongly believe in them. She recommends Ghanaian principles of public finance, but I am not sure I can follow her in that direction.

Exiting the European Union (Excise)

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP) [V]]

Allow me to begin by saying how utterly bizarre I found some of the earlier contributions to the debate. It was as if the impact of these changes was all a bit of a jolly lark, extending no further than the ability to stagger off the return leg of a cross-channel booze cruise armed with nothing more than a blue Brexit passport and a clinking tote bag of bottles to take home. The businesses that understand the issues at stake, and those who work in them whose jobs are at risk due to this change, will, I am certain, be looking on aghast.

Tax-free shopping has played a major role in attracting visitors to our shores ahead of other potential tourist destinations. It supports a very large number of jobs in retail and in the manufacture and production of high-quality and luxury products and produce. Its removal will cost jobs and harm direct and indirect tax revenues—all benefits that will simply be exported offshore.

That affects our airports, which, despite the economic support currently on offer, remain under the cosh as a result of the pandemic. Airlines UK estimates that, without Government support, UK airports are set to lose around 600 routes as a result of the pandemic, a situation that will only be compounded by the effect of these changes on their revenues. Amid that, terminal sales and tax-free shopping, already a key component of the economic health of our airports, will take on heightened significance.

My constituency includes Aberdeen airport, which is of massive strategic importance, supporting the activities of the oil and gas sector. The airport’s operators estimate that these changes will risk a loss in revenue for the airport of £1.6 million annually and put at risk some 45 retail jobs. Retail sales account for up to 40% of revenues in some regional airports—revenues that obviously support jobs but are also there to support investment in facilities and in incentivising airlines to open up connections to new destinations. Without the ability to earn those revenues, there will be fewer passengers, fewer routes, fewer jobs and fewer opportunities for wider economic development outside the perimeter fences of our airports, with growth hindered in the regions they serve and, in consequence, lower tax revenues overall for the Government.

As has been said, tax-free shopping is also hugely important as a driver for tourism. My hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) set out succinctly the benefits to all parts of the economy from tourism activity and the way that the spend is spread around when tourists are here. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that of the 1.2 million visitors who benefited from tax-free shopping in 2019, approximately 20,000 to 30,000 fewer will visit Great Britain every year because of this change in policy, and it is an absolute given that those who do will spend less. All told, the outcome of these changes puts at risk an estimated 40,000 jobs and over £1 billion-worth of investment.

David Lonsdale, the director of the Scottish Retail Consortium, who was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), has been clear on this. He said:

“This decision would leave the UK as the only European country not to provide a tax-free shopping scheme to encourage tourism. There is a good reason no other European nation has taken this step, and we urge swift reconsideration.”

While some of us cannot believe the UK Government’s stupidity here, others cannot believe their luck, and it is little wonder that the French financial newspaper Les Echos has argued that the UK is in danger of shooting itself in the foot.

The UK Government need to reverse the abolition of the airside VAT exemption and allow the introduction of arrivals duty-free. That would allow the industry to restore some profitability more quickly and avoid the competitive loss to foreign airports. Most airports in other parts of the world have been doing arrivals duty-free for up to two decades. Crucially, we must retain the VAT retail export scheme.

There have been precious few Brexit benefits to date, and of those that were promised, very few have been delivered. It seems ridiculous that instead of banking some of the very few potential benefits, including duty-free, the UK Government seem hellbent on exporting them instead. It is clear that the very real concerns raised by business across a range of sectors have not been adequately addressed or heard. The Treasury must reconsider.

North of England: Infrastructure Spending

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (Damien Moore) on securing this important debate. I heard one or two murmurs as I came into the Committee this morning: “What on earth is an SNP member for the north-east of Scotland doing intruding on a debate like this?” Let me put hon. Members’ minds at rest: it is not to provoke a regeneration of the Wars of the Roses. I think some Members have been quite capable of stirring that up all by themselves, and I take no sides; I am strictly neutral in that. However, it quite simple for me: whether Scotland is inside the UK, as everybody else in this room presumably hopes, or outside the UK, as I earnestly hope it will be, the infrastructure—particularly the transport infrastructure—in the north of England matters to us as well. There are extensive business and family connections between Scotland and the north of England—or not-the-north-of-England, depending on whether we include Stoke-on-Trent, and where we draw the demarcation.

The north of England lies between us and markets in the south of England, as well as crucial markets in Europe, so it matters to us that the A1 is so poor after Berwick, and between Berwick and Newcastle. It matters to us that the A66 between Penrith and Scotch Corner, which gives access to Yorkshire and the east midlands, should be accessible in all weathers. In that respect, what matters to people in Scotland probably matters as much to the communities all along those corridors. Particularly important is the discussion about what goes where, to what timescale and, crucially—as noted by the hon. Members for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) and for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), who is no longer in his place—who gets to decide. It is not just about existing infrastructure; future infrastructure in Scotland is also affected by what is or is not decided for the north of England and the rest of the UK.

Let me return to the subject of HS2. It is clear that there are diverse views in the governing party on the merits or otherwise of HS2, perhaps governed in some part by how close MPs are likely to be to a station on the route that is chosen. For us in Scotland, however, it is quite simple: there is a real benefit in relation to climate. If we can get the journey from Edinburgh, Glasgow and other parts of central Scotland to London below four hours, that is an absolute game changer. Nobody would fly, unless they were going somewhere close to the airport. If somebody is going from central Scotland to central London, of course they would take a high-speed train. It is a game changer.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I have a genuine question. The hon. Gentleman will have heard the speculation about a link between Northern Ireland and Scotland, and what strikes me is the ability to build a high-speed railway between Belfast and Glasgow, and then down the west coast to London. I am genuinely interested in the hon. Gentleman’s thoughts on that.

[Richard Thomson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Not so much in Scottish politics, but certainly in Northern Irish politics, it is a bit of a standing joke that whenever a bauble needs to be dangled, there is talk of a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are tremendous technical challenges with that going over Beaufort’s dyke, which is exceptionally deep and full of munitions. Technically, it would be extraordinarily challenging. However the Green Book formula works out, I do not think we will ever see a benefit-cost ratio that will make such a project work, but I am content to let the accountants and number crunchers work that one out. Certainly, in theory, if we could create better connections in the south-west of Scotland and link Northern Ireland to Scotland and elsewhere, I am all in favour of that.

On HS2, if the line is to split either side of the Pennines, it is pretty important to us in Scotland to know on which side of the Pennines it will go. If it goes both sides, logically it is going to head north more slowly than it would otherwise. That matters, because if it goes by Carlisle, we would build a high-speed rail network in Scotland between Glasgow, Edinburgh and Carlisle. If it goes up through Newcastle, we would link Glasgow to Edinburgh and Berwick, and go down that way. Frankly, there is no point spending any money until there is absolute certainty about which way the line will go. That affects the rest of Scotland, because we would be building new infrastructure that would free up train paths capacity and give line speed improvements for the rest of the rail network in Scotland to get into Edinburgh and Glasgow, so the decisions that are or are not taken also matter to us.

There is little doubt that if HS2 had started in Scotland to go to London, rather than t’other way about, it would have happened a great deal faster than it now appears to be happening. That sums up the problem. We can change the formulas in the Treasury’s Green Book, but changing attitudes is another matter entirely. The Prime Minister once notoriously stated that a pound spent in Croydon was worth more than a pound spent in Strathclyde, and I think we can take it that such an attitude also prevails for Merseyside, Manchester and Tyneside. It is quite an embedded mindset in the British Government class—I do not think it is as rare as some hon. Members might wish to think. We will hear later today about the Chancellor’s spending plans and see what transpires.

My final observation is that since 1999, under various shades of political administration, Scottish Governments—whether the Lib-Lab coalition, minority SNP or majority SNP—have moved on investment in Scotland considerably better than in the bad old days of rule from the Scotland Office and Westminster. That is why it is crucial where decisions are taken and why devolution ought to be such an important part of this debate for the north of England.

The UK Internal Market Bill is set to encroach on many of Holyrood’s powers, including the power to set infrastructure spending. Under the guise of “taking back control”, the UK Government are in many respects actually taking away control, and I know it is not just people in my party who regret that that is the case. London clearly receives 60% more per head in capital expenditure than the north-east of England, and 50% more than the north-west. Ultimately, that dial needs to be shifted.

In conclusion, I strongly suspect that it will take a great deal more than today’s announcement to shift that decades-old structural imbalance in where power really lies in the UK, because that power imbalance has roots in politics and the electoral system, and it goes well beyond simple allocations of public expenditure.

Future of Financial Services

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I am very happy to take the issue away, and I look forward to discussing it further with my hon. Friend on behalf of his constituents.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I have to say to the Chancellor that his announcement this afternoon will do little to stem the haemorrhaging of jobs and assets that we have seen since the failure so far of his Government’s negotiations on Brexit. Earlier in the year, Germany announced a £46 billion investment in the green economy to stimulate recovery. How will the Chancellor’s sovereign green bond attempt to match that? What discussions has he had or does he intend to have with the devolved Administrations around these islands to discuss how the proceeds of any such bond issue might usefully be put to work?

[Rishi Sunak]

I point the hon. Gentleman to our Budget in March, where we set out a sense of the capital plans for the next few years. What he will see there are plans to spend more than £600 billion in capital investment in this country over the next five years, raising capital investment to the highest sustained level it has seen in almost half a century.

Support for Self-employed and Freelance Workers

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), as other Members have, on securing this debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling it.

The hon. Member was absolutely spot on: the self-employment income support scheme must be extended in time, it must be extended in scope, and it must be made retrospective. We have heard throughout the debate how upwards of 3 million people across the UK, including several hundred thousand people in Scotland, have found themselves excluded from the support that the Government have offered, and I add my own commendation to ForgottenUK, ExcludedUK and the Excluded UK APPG for the work they have done in highlighting those instances.

The excluded range far and wide in their scope. They include the self-employed seasonal workers who fall outside the scheme. They include freelancers, and directors of small businesses remunerated by dividends. They include, in many cases, the newly self-employed—and of course let us not forget those who, because of the hard cut-off date of 19 March, missed out entirely on any support through the job retention scheme.

The hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) made a point about the exclusion of the newly self-employed. It is possible to support those in that situation. The Scottish Government did precisely that, using their own resources to fill the gaps. That additional response included £100 million to help the newly self-employed and £10 million to help support those in the events sector who were not able to access any other kinds of support.

Time prevents me from going much further on that, but the Scottish Government certainly flexed their budgets as best they could to spend beyond the allocations that came through the Treasury and Barnett. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Alyn Smith) said eloquently, the Scottish Government lack the financial powers to extend support much beyond that, but it is not good enough to say, as the Minister did in response to the previous debate, “You’ve got tax powers; off you go and use them,” when the Chancellor prefers, quite rightly, to expand borrowing rather than increase income taxes to achieve that outcome.

The real harm here is the damage of exclusion—not just the immediate hardship, devastating as that is for those affected, but the effect it will have in hampering the economic recovery. I represent a constituency in the north-east of Scotland that has one of the highest start-up rates for businesses in the UK, let alone Scotland. It is no exaggeration to say that those small businesses—those enterprises; those risk takers—are absolutely the backbone of our economy. They include the start-ups, the spin-outs, the home enterprises, the lifestyle businesses, those who are working from home supporting the oil and gas and engineering sectors, the creative businesses, those who organise events, those involved in tourism, the musicians—in short, the creators, the innovators, the entrepreneurs: folk who roll up their sleeves, get their faces dirty and in many cases, as the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) said, put their homes on the line to do what they do. Those are the people who will drive the recovery. Hammering their finances and their ability to do all that they do best will not just impoverish them; in the long run, it will impoverish us all.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) said that providing support for the self-employed was complicated and that the Treasury had responded with alacrity. That much is true, but let me repeat the plea for the universal basic income. Surely it would have been better just to give everyone something than to try to cut red tape sideways or do as the Chancellor is often wont to do and obsess about the wrong details, leaving so many people excluded from support.

Many hon. Members have given eloquent personal testaments from their constituents to describe the gaps. We have heard about how pernicious the gender gaps in particular are. I acknowledge that the job retention scheme and the self-employed support scheme were fine as far as they went. I have welcomed and supported them; we have been bipartisan about that. The trouble is, although they are fine as far as they go, we know that they do not go nearly far enough. My plea to those on the Treasury Bench is: acknowledge the gaps and the hurt they have caused the people who have been excluded; please agree to meet those who have been affected; and commit to doing, to quote the Chancellor, “whatever it takes” to help put that right now and for the future.

Covid-19: Future UK-EU Relationship

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

My constituency of Gordon in the north-east of Scotland is one which very emphatically did not vote to get Brexit done. In fact, the reason I stand here today is that I stood on a pledge saying that we needed two referendums: one for the putative withdrawal agreement; and, secondly, in light of all that the people of Scotland have experienced since 2014, a chance to reconsider the issue of Scottish independence. It is the very fact that the UK refused to consider the first of those that the second of those positions is now a near certainty.

Brexit is going to happen—I absolutely accept that—but my real disappointment is not so much in the result but the treatment handed out by the UK Government afterwards, when they confused 52% of the British people as if they spoke for 100%. The Scottish Government sought to find an accommodation that would have kept us in the single market and mitigated some of the very worst impacts of Brexit right across these islands. At every stage, they were met not with courtesy or accommodation, but instead with bone-headed obduracy, witless statements about red, white and blue Brexits or Brexit meaning Brexit, and hardline exceptionalist dogma.

When it comes to our current Prime Minister, it is very tempting to conclude that his place in history will be as the worst Prime Minister since the last one, but his culpability for the shambles we are in at this point goes far, far deeper than that as the architect, the clown prince and the front man of the Brexit campaign. Frankly, it speaks volumes for the sheer and utter desperation of the Conservative party towards the end of last year that the only reason it stumbled towards the withdrawal agreement was that it was prepared to scrap the sacred red line about the relationship between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. It replaced the backstop and took that red line and laid it down the Irish sea instead.

What, I ask, have we got in return? After four years of negotiations, we certainly do not have a deal, but what we know will happen, deal or not, is that the Government have managed to create that border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We are going to sacrifice the freedom of movement and the freedom we have come to take for granted over the past few decades of being able to live, work, love and study right across the continent, freely and without hindrance. We know that there is a threat to those parts of our economy where we have been blessed with immigrant labour to help us, and I am thinking particularly of the fish processing sector in the north-east of Scotland, the agricultural sector, the care sector and our NHS. We know that importers face increased costs, and we know that exporters will face huge delays.

We know that in Scotland and the devolved institutions, we are facing a power grab that will drive a coach and horses through the principle that that which is not reserved is explicitly devolved. We also face a race to the bottom on food standards, animal welfare and workers’ rights.

Is it any wonder that people in my constituency and right across Scotland are looking at the political shambles created by this Government and their predecessors and what they now represent and deciding, “This is not who we are. This is not who we wish to be. This is not how we wish to be represented. This is not how we wish to be seen in the world.”?

We are clearly approaching a constitutional endgame when it comes to Brexit and Scottish independence. I care very much indeed about having a stable, prosperous neighbour in the nations of the rest of the United Kingdom, but I am a democrat. If the rest of the UK is determined to go down this reckless path, I have to accept that there is nothing that I or any other Scottish MP or any other Scottish voter can do to halt that process. If the UK is determined to crash out of its closest European alliances in a state of dishevelment and disarray, that absolutely has to be respected, even if it does not have to be seen as the best future we can go for.

Frankly, an extension to the negotiations seems a no-brainer. It would give time to negotiate a stable landing point, but what cannot be ignored is that the Union that Scots were invited to vote for in 2014 no longer exists. That 55% opposition to independence has turned into 54% support in the most recent opinion polls. It is no longer acceptable for the UK Government to stand in the way of that support finding its expression at the ballot box and the Scottish people being able to choose their own future.

Finance Bill

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Report stage & Report stage: House of Commons & Report: 1st sitting & Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Wednesday 1st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Flynn]

I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. Surprisingly enough, I was not aware of that, but it certainly seems to reflect the situation in Scotland through the national performance framework. I encourage the UK Government to look at the example that has been set in that regard, and the one set north of the border. I will finish there in relation to the UN sustainable development goals and move on to new clause 14.

New clause 14 would require the Chancellor of the Exchequer to review the impact of the Bill on the UK meeting its Paris climate change commitments. As the hon. Member for Ilford North said, the immediate focus of all legislators has been on overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, and rightly so. Protecting public health has had to be at the forefront of everything that we do. But the climate emergency has not gone away. We need to be cognisant of that fact and make sure that policies that are put in place recognise it. The need for urgent action has not stopped. In fact, we could perhaps argue that covid-19 has shown just how fragile our society is, particularly for those who need support the most and who live in the areas of higher deprivation. Those who have been impacted the most by covid-19 are projected to be impacted the most by the climate crisis.

It might sound a little bit bizarre that an MP for Aberdeen, which is of course a city well known for its oil and gas industry, would stand here and talk about climate change, but it is for a good reason: the reality is that we do not get to net zero without taking the oil and gas industry with us. We need to invest in the support that it requires in order to meet net zero.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

As another Member of Parliament who is very proud to represent a part of the great city of Aberdeen, I very much appreciate the speech my hon. Friend is making. There is no route to net zero without investing in the oil and gas industry for things like carbon capture and storage. Does he share my concern that there is as yet no apparent sign of any sector deal, which might harness the skills and capital invested in that industry to help us to effect the transition?

[Stephen Flynn]

I thank my hon. Friend, who shares representation of the wonderful city of Aberdeen through his Gordon constituency, for his timely intervention: it is almost as though he has read my mind as to what was due to come next in my speech.

As things stand, to date the UK Government have failed to deliver on their promise of an oil and gas sector deal. An oil and gas sector deal may on the face of it, to those who look at it from the outside, appear to be a way to support the oil and gas industry to continue to take oil out of the ground. There is a certain element of that—we need to ensure that sustainability in the industry is there—but more importantly, it is about ensuring a sustainable transition that allows us to meet net zero but provides sustainable energy moving into the future. The UK Government have to date been found absolutely wanting. I have raised this on numerous occasions since the start of March. In recent weeks, Oil and Gas UK produced a report that outlined that 30,000 jobs are due to go in the oil and gas sector as a result of the current downturn in oil prices. That is on top of the huge impact of covid-19 across the tourism sector and all the other sectors that are impacted in every single constituency across Scotland and the United Kingdom. Yet this Government continue to sit silent and continue to fail to deliver.

The Scottish Government have stood up to the challenge. Only last week, they put £62 million into sustainable energy going forward, with £25 million going into a transition, and money going towards a hydrogen hub and a number of other projects put forward by the oil and gas technology sector. Yet this UK Government have failed, to date, to provide a single penny. So where is the strategy? Where is the desire to support the industry in getting to net zero? As I have said, we do not make the sustainable energy transition without that investment, be it in the aforementioned energy transition zone, in further investment in hydrogen, or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Richard Thomson) mentioned, in carbon capture and underground storage—a pledge that was made prior to 2014 and, shamefully, taken off the table by the Conservatives following the independence referendum result. It is now on the table but has no delivery timescale whatsoever. When is the Acorn project going to be brought online so that we will see that investment in climate priorities? We have heard from the Government numerous times that they will do whatever it takes, but “whatever it takes” is not enough—we need action,

This is a Finance Bill debate, so I shall mention this important point. The Treasury has coined £350 billion from the oil and gas sector, notwithstanding the taxes being paid by those individuals whose employment has been linked to the industry. It is time to give back, and it is time to give back in spades. We cannot afford to wait. What we have had up to now from the UK Government is simply not good enough. I shall conclude where I started, with the remarks of a former President of the United States, who stated:

“No country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order.”

Let us invest in those industries and the tech that can protect jobs, protect our environment and lead us into a future that protects our planet.

Financial and Social Emergency Support Package

Richard Thomson Excerpts

Wednesday 25th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), who has just made a most moving and thoughtful contribution. I was particularly taken by what she said about our need to give thought after this to the country that we wish to be. I absolutely agree that in all that we do we must emerge from this better.

Significant policy changes when it comes to the support on offer for the economy have already been announced in the House over the past couple of days. On Monday there was the Coronavirus Bill, and we took further important steps yesterday—we did a rain dance around the much fabled magic money tree, to make sure that the supply was there to give effect to the policy changes. It was important to make sure that we did that to protect our constituents.

My party has been resolute in its support for that package of measures. It is clear that the response continues to evolve. We have already heard from Government Front-Bench Members about the changes being put in place to make it easier for distillers, for example, to produce quantities of hand sanitiser. In my constituency, a brewer and distiller, BrewDog—other brewers and distillers are available, but that one comes to mind—has already been supplying hand sanitiser that it has been making to the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. That is exactly the sort of repurposing and innovation that we need. The Government must always be there to facilitate and enable that, and I am pleased that that has happened.

Like those of all hon. Members, my constituents are increasingly getting in touch in response to the crisis with questions of detail that are underpinned by deep questions of substance. We might think that the Government have been clear about who should be at home and who should be working. Nevertheless, I am hearing worrying stories. My inbox is becoming increasingly active with stories of employers who, through a lack of knowledge or awareness, or because they simply think that the rules do not apply to them, are trying to force people out to work under pain of disciplinary action, redundancy, termination of contracts or not being paid.

My office has also found stories of employers who seem reluctant to pass on the considerable amount of support that has already been offered to companies and to PAYE employees. The Government have taken the right actions, but they need to reinforce the right expectations of where that resource is supposed to go. If that resource does not hit the pockets of working people, it will certainly not achieve all that we need it to achieve to get through the crisis.

While we are rightly about to fire-hose cash at businesses and PAYE employees, I make no apology for returning to the issue of the self-employed and those on zero-hours contracts, who find themselves outwith furlough schemes, who are now underemployed, and who might expect to see reductions to their take-home pay in consequence. We need to make sure that we are also supporting them. Although I am reassured that the Government are giving considerable thought to how they support the self-employed, I have picked up worrying signs that they might be overthinking it by trying to follow every glitch and contour in a determination not to see a single penny go astray. The bigger picture point is perhaps being missed in paying attention to the wrong sort of details.

In summing up the debate on the Contingencies Fund Bill yesterday, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury said that he did not share my enthusiasm for a universal basic income, which is a shame. I respect his view, but nobody has yet devised a perfect welfare system that is entirely free of bureaucracy or of some perverse incentives, or that manages to make sure that people never lose from their earnings more than they would lose from the support that was there when they were not earning. That has led to many people finding themselves trapped in a poverty that is not of their choosing and that they would desperately like to escape from. A universal basic income would resolve many of those problems if we were prepared to consider it as part of our package of support for the self-employed and others.

It is also clear that businesses are still in need of more and different types of support. We have heard about the difficulties—indeed, I was speaking to an employers’ federation this morning about the need for clarity on insurance, in order to trigger payments from insurance companies. It is not good enough just to say that the words we have heard from Ministers ought to be sufficient; they need to be sufficient. I encourage the Government to continue to engage with not only the insurers but the various industry sectors, to ensure that clarity is absolute and that payments can be triggered in the light of the response we are expecting.

Other measures are required. We need to raise the statutory sick pay level to at least the EU average. We need to get rid of the bedroom tax. We also need to scrap the rape clause. Let us not forget the impact that advising people to stay at home can have on households where there are, sadly, abusive relationships and how much worse it must be at this time of dread for so many people to find that the financial support that would ordinarily be on offer simply is not because of the two-child limit.

Ministers have rightly praised NHS workers who are on the frontline of the response to this crisis, but there is one subset of NHS workers who might be entitled to find those words just a little hollow: those who have come here to work from elsewhere, whether that be the EU or countries outwith it, who are expected to pay the NHS health surcharge. I was contacted this morning by the husband of a nurse who works at the Aberdeen Royal Infirmary. She came to the United Kingdom in 2017 from the USA. She is here perfectly legally, with a visa. But in order to have the right to access the services of the NHS that she and others work so hard to support on a daily basis, she has to pay a fee of £400 a year, which the Chancellor announced in his Budget will soon rise to £624 a year. At this time of national crisis when we expect so much of workers in the NHS in particular, is it not sending the wrong message entirely that we are charging people to access services that they may need more urgently as a result of the help they are trying to give others? I urge the Government to consider that point carefully.

We must consider how we prepare ourselves for the period after this. Earlier today, the Prime Minister said that he believed the country will “emerge better and stronger” from this crisis. I very much hope that he is correct, but the one thing that is certain is that we cannot allow a return to business as usual. We have to think about how we lay the foundations of recovery—economic, yes, but it is not just about the economy. It is about how we build on the efforts we are seeing in our society to rebuild social infrastructure and ensure that it is fit for purpose for the country that we will be living in afterwards.

We need to be placing much greater value on the ethos of public service, and we also need to value more the public services that we have. As I said in relation to the NHS surcharge that is expected of those from outside the country, we need to value far more the contribution of those who have paid us the compliment of choosing to come and live their lives among us. I do not wish to make this about Brexit, but it is inescapable that since the UK voted to leave the European Union, a meanness and a nastiness has crept into some of the discourse. I do not blame Brexit for that—I think that it was always there in many respects, but it seems to have been emboldened. We need to do far more to value the contribution of those who make their lives here. As we expect discipline, patience and self-sacrifice, we need to expect similar levels of those attributes from those who have most, and not just, as ever, those who have least.

Whatever challenges we face today, we know that there will be a tomorrow and that we must make it better. We owe it to all those we represent to make sure that the tomorrow we are about to bequeath to our constituents is, through our actions and our foresight today, better than the country that far too many of us were prepared to tolerate the unfairnesses and injustices of.