Cost of Living and Brexit

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Lamont]

I have not complained about the SNP bringing forward this debate. The cost of living is an issue facing every single one of us in this House and each one of the households and residents we represent here. What I am complaining about is SNP Members laughing and trying to shout down Government Members just because they do not agree with the points we are making. I also disagree with the fact that, when we should be talking about the measures that both Governments in Scotland are taking to address the cost of living, SNP Members choose to talk about independence, rather than anything else. Your obsession—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I do not have an obsession. If the Minister is saying that he is not going to take interventions, Members should please not just stand up and shout at him. I am sure the Minister will indicate if he wants to give way, but Members should not keep standing up for too long, because otherwise it is difficult to hear what he is saying.

[John Lamont]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. My frustration is with SNP Members’ continual focus on independence, rather than on the measures that both Governments of Scotland—the UK Government and the Scottish Government—should be taking to address those challenges that all our constituents are facing. Yet again, SNP Members focus on independence.

The SNP argues that the Scottish Government do not have the financial powers required to mitigate the increases to the cost of living. I strongly suggest that that is simply not the case. The UK Government are providing the Scottish Government with a record block grant settlement of £41 billion a year. In real terms, that is the highest settlement since the start of devolution for Scotland. The spring Budget provided the Scottish Government with £320 million over the next two years, and that is on top of the £1.5 billion of additional funding we provided at the autumn statement in 2022. This funding is still set to grow in real terms over the spending review period.

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[Drew Hendry]

Will the Minister give way?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Excuse me, but before the Minister has even answered that point, it is not really fair to ask him to give way straightaway.

[John Lamont]

Scotland is already a normal country, despite what the hon. Member for Glasgow East might suggest. Talking down Scotland is not something I am here to do; I am very proud to promote Scotland. If the SNP Government in Edinburgh perhaps used some of the powers they are responsible for, then some of the challenges in the Scottish economy and in other aspects of Scottish society that we are dealing with would not be as great as they are. I am very clear that what this Parliament should be focused on is how the Scottish Government, along with the other devolved Administrations, could and should work with this United Kingdom Government to build a better future for the people of Scotland.

The SNP motion to establish a Select Committee to look at the cost of living crisis is not only unnecessary duplication of other work by this Parliament, but a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. The total anticipated cost to the House of Commons of this crackpot idea is in the region of £463,000 per annum. In addition, there would be extra costs to adapt Parliament’s Committee Rooms to accommodate this massive new Committee. I suggest that that would be a complete and utter waste of taxpayers’ money.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. Before I call the shadow Secretary of State, let me provide a little bit of guidance. This debate has to finish by 4.20 pm, so I suspect the wind-ups will start at about 4 o’clock. That means speeches of about 10 minutes each would be a good guide to make sure that everybody gets in. I call the shadow Secretary of State.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Before I call the next speaker, just a reminder, as there is quite a lot of intervening going on: if a colleague makes an intervention on another Member, it is important to stay for the whole of that Member’s speech and to have been present at the beginning. It is just courteous.

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[David Duguid]

Well, I voted against Brexit, but as a democratic country, we moved on and left the EU. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh South said, to leave the EU without voting for a deal—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I completely understand that there are a lot of interventions, but I am conscious that many other people want to speak. Some of those who are standing now wanting to intervene have not put in to speak. It is quite a long time since the hon. Gentleman started his speech and he has taken a lot of interventions.

[David Duguid]

Thank you for your clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I thank the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for bringing me a glass of water. I was glad of it because, as hon. Members will have noticed, I have a bit of a frog in my throat today.

To finish, I will repeat some of the main issues that are often misrepresented in our ongoing relationship with the EU. Compared to 2018, when the UK was in the EU, we are about even on trade exports to the EU—a fraction below in goods, but considerably higher for services. The biggest factor in any fluctuations in UK trade exports to the EU in the intervening years was due to coronavirus.

UK trade exports to the EU have increased year on year by 24%, which is part of the post-covid recovery that demonstrates that covid was the biggest factor in those trade issues. That was 24% year on year for UK trade exports, but Scotland’s exports to the EU have increased by 28%, including record exports in whisky and salmon—other fish are available, as I often remind people—so Scotland is actually doing better than the rest of the UK in the ongoing trade with the EU.

It is crucial for Scotland and the UK’s interests to increase exports, not only in the EU but around the whole world, and not focus solely on Europe. We could not commit to both EU and non-EU free trade agreements when we were a member of the EU. Outside the EU, there is a huge opportunity and presence to increase trade exports with Latin America, including Chile, as well as with India, Mexico and Malaysia, and other states in the CPTPP. Going to non-EU countries seizes more untapped market space and more export growth than going to any EU country, where we already have, and continue to have, a significant presence.

With that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will finish my remarks, with great disappointment, but I really have to have another drink of water.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We are now down to about nine minutes for each speech.

[Owen Thompson (Midlothian) (SNP)]

We can all agree that the cost of living crisis is connected to other social and economic disasters, but public services have been undermined by more than a decade of austerity, with devolved Governments, social security benefits and the National Health Service bearing the brunt.

The UK’s dependence on fossil fuels, under-investment in renewables, reduced gas storage and failure to regulate the energy market meant the nations of these islands faced unprecedented price rises from early 2022, despite being much less dependent on Russian gas than our European neighbours. Inflation triggered by reopening the economy in the aftermath of the covid-19 upheaval was augmented by supply chain disruption, with food particularly affected. We have had too many years of Torynomics, looking out for the wealthy at the expense of those who can least afford to live, and that was before the bombshell car crash of a Budget experiment towards the end of last year.

I see the effects of these decisions every day in my Midlothian constituency. New figures have laid bare the full scale of the problems facing my constituents in Midlothian. Last year, there were more than 4,500 children living in poverty in my constituency, according to End Child Poverty. Last month, more than 1,300 people were claiming unemployment related benefits. Around 250 of these claimants were aged 18 to 24. Up to 21,000 adults living in Midlothian cannot afford to turn on the heat in their homes to keep warm or to eat a balanced meal, a report found.

We heard about some of those issues on Monday, at the launch of the all-party parliamentary group on coalfield communities, of which I am a vice-convener. This is not a new phenomenon in our coalfield communities but a legacy of Thatcher that we have never recovered from and that successive Governments have done nothing to tackle.

It is estimated that as many as 34,000 people were worried about energy bills. The same survey found that in one month alone, 8,000 adults went hungry because they did not have enough money to buy food. Those figures, presented to a meeting of Midlothian Council last month, come from an independent study ordered by that council’s cost of living taskforce, set up last summer. With residents facing this cost of living crisis, it is clear that has quickly become the biggest priority for our SNP-led council and why it has invested more than £1.3 million in direct help to residents across Midlothian. It is hard to imagine a much worse scenario, but then there is Brexit.

Even the usually staid publication, The Lancet, says the Brexit fiasco is one of the central elements at the core of this cost of living crisis. It impacts not just our constituents and their households, but the Scottish Government, other devolved Governments and local government across the country. They are all facing the same inflation costs, increased costs of capital projects and increased energy bills that are all a drain on limited and fixed budgets. That is certainly the case with the Scottish Government, who do not have the borrowing power of this place or even of local government.

As well as laying bare the massive public health impacts of the cost of living crisis, a recent article in The Lancet says:

“There are several factors driving this crisis. The most immediate trigger is high inflation, partially a consequence of trade disruption associated with the conflict in Ukraine, superimposed on the impact of Brexit and associated fall in the value of the pound, which is leading to a rise in the costs of energy, food, and other essential resources for life.”

The Lancet also makes the ominous point that this is just the beginning and there is more to come. We have heard others talk about the impact on mortgage rates. Because of the tendency to set fixed rates, many people are still to come up against the worst of the increases.

My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) talked about the impact of staff shortages on our public services. How can we have a situation where impactful decisions taken in this place can have such a direct consequence for communities across our isles? Those are chilling words from The Lancet, which make it ever more baffling that the Government persist with the failed Brexit project, and even more so that Labour want to continue to do more of the same.

As the SNP’s armed forces and veterans spokesperson, I am acutely aware of the impact that the cost of living crisis has on our men and women in uniform. Serving military personnel and their families have been forced to use food banks and there are serious questions to be answered around the pay offer to our armed forces.

This week, Sky News revealed that an unofficial food bank even exists at a Royal Air Force base in Lincolnshire. The voluntary facility at RAF Coningsby, home to Typhoon fast jet squadrons, was set up by an aviator to collect food donations from servicemen and women to support civilians in their local community, but a defence source claimed it is now being used by RAF personnel too. Despite the much-vaunted armed forces covenant, we now have a situation where service personnel need to choose between food or fuel. The crisis is impacting on so many places where people would never have thought that would be the case. According to the reports, one aviator, a single mum, was forced to go without a hot meal for four days because she had spent her last money on baby milk formula.

This place, the Tories and their Brexit-supporting Labour pals, need to take responsibility for this utter clusterbourach. In Scotland, we are fortunate that we have a path out of the chaos. We can become independent. I know the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) will be delighted that I have said that, because he was waiting for it. We have the opportunity to elect progressive Governments that can implement all the levers that a normal nation can in taking forward their own destiny as a member of the European Union. As we work towards that goal, we desperately need an inquiry led in this place to reveal the full extent of the devastation wrought by Brexit and the cost of living crisis. Why would we not want to get to the bottom of why these problems are happening? That is the only way for Scotland to weather this perfect storm. I look forward to the day when we can get the answers we need, but much more important, I look forward to the day when we can make our own decisions in Scotland.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I now have to announce the results of today’s deferred Division.

On the draft Animal By-Products, Pet Passport and Animal Health (Fees) (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, the Ayes were 284 and the Noes were 14, so the Ayes have it.

[The Division list is published at the end of today’s debates.]

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I am conscious that there are four more speakers and the wind-ups will start at 4 pm. Please bear that in mind. I call Brendan O’Hara.