Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Bill (Instruction)

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The point is that other people might choose to bring other cases to the courts on the matter, unless Parliament chooses to discuss it and legislate on it. I would have thought it entirely in the Government’s interest to allow the debate later today and to come to a resolution on the matter.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman is correct that if new clause 3—his amendment to allow a vote on Prorogation—were agreed to, it would render Prorogation non-justiciable in future, and that that is the intention. However, may I ask a more prosaic question? If the motion that he is now moving to allow debate on the amendment is passed, will it not render the programme for the rest of the day null and void, as we will have something brand new and rather substantial to consider?

[Chris Bryant]

No, I do not think that that is right, but if the House decided not to consider the matter, the courts could in future legitimately decide that Parliament had decided that Prorogation is justiciable. That is the problem for the Government.

Afghanistan

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

Four hundred and fifty-seven UK service personnel, in excess of 3,000 coalition forces, nearly 70,000 Afghan Government troops and police, aid workers, journalists, humanitarians and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed over the past two decades. Many, many thousands more have been injured or brutalised. I hope—it is only hope—that all that pain and suffering was not in vain, but I fear greatly when I see the current scenes at Kabul airport.

Before I start properly, I wish to make an observation. The right hon. Members for Maidenhead (Mrs May) and for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) both mentioned intelligence. I do not know whether there was a failure of intelligence or of intelligence assessment, whether those who had the facts had the access or the confidence to speak truth to power, or whether the Ministers who were in receipt of those assessments understood them or ignored them, but when the autopsy on this situation is complete, we need to know whether there was in any way an intelligence failure.

Let me put the Afghan situation into a slightly broader regional context. On 2 August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. On 16 January 1991, 700,000 troops, including from the UK, launched Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Sabre and destroyed Iraq’s air defences, communications, Government buildings, weapons plants, oil refineries, bridges and roads. Iraqi resistance collapsed on 28 February, but Saddam Hussein was left in power, and uprisings by the Kurds and the Shi’ites in the south were brutally suppressed.

On 20 March 2003, the Iraq war started when allied forces, including UK forces, launched an attack on Iraq. Although the fighting was mainly over by 1 May, it would be six more years until UK combat operations came to an end. The war would cost at least $1 trillion dollars—some say between $3 trillion and $6 trillion—and perhaps a million people would lose their lives. It would see the rise of ISIL—Islamic State—which at one point would control a third of the territory of Iraq. By the time that conflict was ending, Libya had a revolution, or a civil war or, more accurately, a NATO-backed insurrection. A second civil war followed and there were at least 10,000 dead people and two competing Governments. Of course, I could add that the UK and others are supporting rebel forces in the ongoing tragedy that is Syria.

Within a decade of the start of the first Gulf war, we had 9/11. There were four planes: one went into the north tower of the World Trade Centre and one into the south tower; one went into the Pentagon; and one went into a field in southern Pennsylvania. In the World Trade Centre, 2,600 died; 125 died in the Pentagon; and 256 died on the planes. The US death toll was bigger than that at Pearl Harbour.

On 7 October 2001, the bombing of al-Qaeda and Taliban positions by US and UK forces started, with conventional ground forces going in 12 days later. That action was completely justified. By November 2001, the Taliban were in retreat. By 5 December there was an interim Government and by 9 December the Taliban had collapsed. One would have thought we were coming towards the endgame.

It took more than another 10 years for combat missions to stop. We then did not heed the warnings as province after province fell and the Taliban began to control more and more territory. We did not heed the warnings in 2018, when 115 died in suicide attacks in Kabul. We should have heeded the warnings and seen what was going to come next and the rapid way in which the Taliban took over almost the whole of Afghanistan.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Is that not why it is so important that the UK Government maintain and increase their aid commitment? No matter what the Foreign Secretary says about doubling aid, the reality is that less aid money will go into Afghanistan this year than was previously planned—a direct result of the unfortunate decision to cut aid from 0.7% to 0.5%.

[Stewart Hosie]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend that the aid budgets must at the very least be maintained at their previous level, and probably increased. I also agree with all the calls today that it is not simply UK citizens and those who work directly for us who are at risk; it is many, many of us whose lives are at risk from the Taliban, and we, the west, must do everything that we can to evacuate all—all—of those who put their faith and trust in us and whose lives are now in jeopardy.

I have a question, which I know many members of the public have. Why is there always the political will and the funding to go to war, but rarely the foresight to work out what the consequences for ordinary people will be, although those consequences are always the same; and why are there never the resources to rebuild and reconstruct, and never a plan to win the peace?

Voter ID

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) on securing this debate.

It is striking that the general arguments against this measure are so consistent: it is a solution in need of a problem, its implementation will have a disproportionate effect on certain communities and it undermines our democracy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) said, it is part of a pattern of measures—something we must not lose sight of. The hon. Member for Gedling (Tom Randall) made an important point; he said that we cannot really quantify it, but a problem really exists. In evidence-based policy making, one would normally identify a problem and then craft a proportionate solution. This way, we have a so-called solution that we know will cause a problem, but we have absolutely no idea of the quantum of the problem it is there to fix, if it even exists at all. I say gently to the Government that one should develop policy on the basis of evidence rather than anecdote. It is no surprise, given the evidence that we have, that this measure has quite rightly been described as voter suppression.

Let me turn to the genesis of the current voter ID plans. When the noble Lord Pickles reported on electoral fraud in 2016, he highlighted what he called the trust nature of polling station voting, and he was absolutely right to do so because trust is at its heart; it is the great strength of the voting process. Regardless of whether one agrees with the first-past-the-post electoral system, once voters have properly registered to vote, they do not need ID or even a polling card. In this democracy, if someone is entitled to vote, they can turn up and can cast their ballot—or not—for whoever they please. Suppressing the right to do that by making it more difficult will reduce trust in the result, not increase it, because the public will assume, quite rightly, that in some way this Tory Government have suppressed the vote to fiddle the result in their favour.

We did hear stuff about Tower Hamlets, and I do not doubt for a second that a lot of shenanigans went on, but the criminals should be arrested under the existing law. We refer to Tower Hamlets, but let me remind hon. Members of Dame Shirley Porter, Westminster council and the homes for votes scandal, which the district auditor described as “gerrymandering”. At the end of the day, after many court cases and trials and a huge amount of money, the verdict was upheld by the House of Lords and she was asked to repay £42 million. If the public are concerned that somebody is at it, we have evidence of Tory gerrymandering designed precisely to win a handful of marginal wards in one local authority.

I do not think we should be going down the road of voter suppression, lest we end up with the head of the Post Office taking away post boxes for communities that do not vote Tory, as we saw in the United States when post boxes were removed from Democrat-voting areas during the last presidential elections. To proceed with this voter suppression plan, before the Supreme Court has made a determination on whether the pilot schemes that the Minister may pray in aid were even legal, further suggests that something is far from right.

When the Government responded to the various reports by the Lords Select Committee or the Joint Committee on Human Rights on this matter and various related matters, they said a number of things, such as that the potential for electoral fraud exists and

“the perception of this undermines public confidence in our democracy.”—[Official Report, 12 May 2021; Vol. 695, c. 2WS.]

However, there was precisely no evidence that anyone has ever not voted because of the small potential for electoral fraud. They said that although the incidence of voter fraud may be low, its impact can be significant and takes away a voter’s right to vote as they want. That is true in the few cases of personation that we have seen, but the impact of voter fraud is not just low to the point of being almost insignificant; it is almost non-existent. This is, as almost everyone has said, a solution looking for a problem.

The Library has helpfully told us that the worst year for personation was 2016, with 44 allegations and a single, sole, solitary conviction. That is one conviction for personation in 2016, which was the year of the EU referendum—a ballot in which more than 30 million people cast a vote.

The Government have also said that showing ID for everyday activities such as picking up a parcel is something that people from all backgrounds do already, and that voting should be no different. In my view, that is a facile and puerile argument. Collecting a parcel is not a human right, but being able to vote freely in a democracy is.

Finally, the Government have said that voter ID does not have a negative effect on election turnout or participation. That is simply not true. We know from the pilots that the proportion of voters not returning after initially being refused a ballot ran at between 0.1% and 0.7%, which implies between 46,000 and 325,000 people in a UK election in the whole of Great Britain. This plan alone would likely deny somewhere in the order of a quarter of a million people the right to vote, so it will have an impact on participation. And as has been mentioned a number of times, the Electoral Commission has suggested that 3.5 million people would not have a suitable ID, which means that the impact could be substantially larger.

So, however the Government slice and dice it, whether the scale of the suppression is only a quarter of a million voters or 3.5 million voters, and whatever we heard in Tower Hamlets or whatever we know about for Westminster City Council, this would be voter suppression on an industrial scale, and I urge the Minister to think again.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady refers to my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). He is a former Chief Whip, and, as a member of that broederbond, I know that there can sometimes be a tendency to prefer discretion rather than transparency, but in my current role I am all in favour of transparency. Indeed, we do not need to look anywhere other than the current public opinion polls, which show that support for independence is declining and support for the United Kingdom is increasing.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The High Court ruling by Justice O’Farrell concluded that the Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster acted with “apparent bias” in the “unlawful” action when he awarded contracts to his chums at Public First, who had previously worked as advisers to him, to the Prime Minister and, of course, for Dominic Cummings. How can the Minister justify siphoning off many tens of thousands of pounds from covid recovery work to fund this highly political research, which is obviously designed to inform the no campaign in the next independence referendum?

[Michael Gove]

I hesitate to correct the hon. Gentleman, but Lady Justice O’Farrell did not find that I had operated with any form of bias—apparent, actual or otherwise. That is a misreading of the court judgment.

The Scottish Government have received more than £180 million from the UK Government in covid recovery funds and it is not yet the case that the Scottish Government have published how a penny of that money is being spent, so before asking for greater transparency from this Government, I think it would be appropriate if the hon. Gentleman were to ask his colleagues in the Scottish Government to publish accounts for every single penny that has been received and how it has been spent so that we can be assured—as I am sure will be the case—that the Scottish Government have used their resources appropriately to fight covid.

[Stewart Hosie]

The question was about the Minister’s actions, not about anyone else. It would be better if he paid attention to his own work. Given that we already know attitudes, and that, over time, support for independence has risen considerably and support for the Union has declined, is it not more than passing strange that the Minister was so desperate to hand Public First these contracts without competitive tender, were there not to be a second independence referendum? But, more importantly, given that the contract was not restricted to immediately required work, is it not hugely suspicious that such subterfuge was used to funnel taxpayers’ money so quickly to Public First, effectively using taxpayers’ cash as a bottomless Unionist slush fund?

Security of Ministers’ Offices and Communications

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Julia Lopez]

It is important that a distinction is made between material that was inappropriately sourced and then leaked and people who are trying to raise legitimate concerns that require public transparency. I shall look into the concern that my hon. Friend has raised to make sure that there is no blurring of those two very important and distinct issues.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I will follow your strictures precisely, Mr Speaker—all my questions are about ministerial offices.

Was the former Health Secretary aware, and indeed, was the security officer in his Department aware, of the CCTV camera in his office? Is the Minister aware of similar CCTV cameras in any other ministerial office? Who installs such systems in Ministries and who monitors them and has access to their feeds? Do they record video only or is it sound and vision? Given that there were reports of this footage being touted on Instagram for some time, is it true that staff from private companies manage those systems and monitor the footage? If it is true, who is responsible for vetting, and what is the process for vetting, such staff?

Finally, and most importantly, how confident is the Minister that others—states and non-state actors who would do us harm—have not already compromised other staff or gained direct access to some of these CCTV feeds?

[Julia Lopez]

Those legitimate concerns will be raised and, I hope, addressed through the Department of Health and Social Care investigation. As I say, the Cabinet Office is there to set the standards, on which we have regular correspondence and engagement with Departments.

The hon. Gentleman raised a number of points—who installs such machines and so on—that we need to look into via the Department of Health and Social Care investigation. My understanding is that it was a CCTV camera, not a covert device. There are obviously questions to answer about the way in which civil servants are vetted—they do go through stringent vetting processes—and in respect of a risk-based approach as to which Departments need to be more regularly swept. I hope that some of the answers that the hon. Gentleman seeks will be answered by the Department of Health and Social Care investigation into this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

In February, I raised with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster the issue of Wilde Mode, a company in my constituency, and the increases in shipping costs it has had. In the past week or so, it has confirmed that it is still being quoted about €1,000 to ship in from Poland, when pre Brexit it was effectively zero. What concrete action are the Government going to take to resolve these problems, to end this uncompetitiveness and to mitigate these massive Brexit-driven cost increases?

[Penny Mordaunt]

In addition to the work that my noble Friend Lord Frost is leading on, which the right hon. Gentleman will be aware of, and the financial support we have put in place, we are monitoring what businesses are being charged, whether it is through trader support services or through particular aspects of the supply chain. We are monitoring those costs, and that is factored into our work and the work that Lord Frost is taking forward.

[Stewart Hosie]

Monitoring is fine, but we need action. Let me raise the issue of another business: ATL Turbine Services, which brings into Scotland for repair turbine parts from around Europe and the world. It has told me that its post-Brexit admin costs are now 10 to 15 times greater than they were last year. It cannot use the Revenue’s post-VAT accounting processes. It is encountering significantly more shipping errors, not just costs. Most damningly, it has said that, while the high-level structure has been put in place, the details of how it works in practice are basically non-existent and, where they do exist, have fallen short. Cost increases, administrative burdens, shipping errors, no useful guidance—when will this Government finally take these issues seriously? Would it not be better to admit, finally, that the truth is that, for business, Brexit is not working?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I have been doing a large amount of work with Lord Frost to look at what advice and support there is for businesses and what their needs are. They now need at this stage more bespoke support, and we are standing that up and putting it in place. We will be informing Members of this House about that in short order. As well as mitigating the difficulties that we are having, as a nation, to work through, we want people to maximise the opportunities. The trade deals that I referred to represent £217 billion-worth of business. We want all businesses across the UK to maximise that and we will provide the space for them to do that.

Ministerial Code

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We now come to the SNP spokesperson, Mr Stewart Hosie.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this important urgent question. We have had PPE contracts awarded to donors and cronies without a robust tender process, NHS contracts awarded to a firm partly owned by the Health Secretary, privileged secret communications between an ex-Prime Minister and the Chancellor, and between James Dyson and the current Prime Minister—and I could add a Tory fondness for oligarchs—and the allegation of Tory donors funding the Prime Minister’s home improvements. There is no point in the Minister’s sitting there, part bombast and part Teflon Don, hoping that the stench of cronyism will simply pass. It is far too late for that. When did this Government judge that integrity, probity, transparency and the ministerial code were obstacles to be overcome rather than principles to always be adhered to?

[Michael Gove]

The right hon. Gentleman is always a skilled and gifted rhetorician, but as I pointed out in response to his colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), if we look at PPE, we see that the processes by which it has been procured by this Government have been independently validated and assured by officials, with an eight-step process to ensure that contracts were awarded only to those who could provide the right equipment. There is no variance in the approach that this Government took and the approach that the Scottish Government or Welsh Government took in the procurement of PPE.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about a Tory fondness for oligarchs, and refers to text messages and so on. I can only point out that our mutual friend the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism dined with Mr Lex Greensill and Mr Gupta in one of Glasgow’s finest restaurants. If there is a particular fondness for dining with oligarchs, it is not the preserve of any one individual or party in this House.

As for suggesting that the ministerial code is something to be got round or overlooked and suggesting that propriety might need to be looked at, I would simply refer the right hon. Gentleman to the report of the independent Committee of the Scottish Parliament on the investigation into the former First Minister. If people want to see a story of obstruction, obfuscation, prevarication and a waste of taxpayers’ money, they can find it there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us go to Chris Law. That is not Chris Law. I do not care what anybody says, that is definitely not Chris Law—in which case, I am going to go to spokesperson Stewart Hosie.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

In relation to these native adverts regarding the so-called benefits of Brexit, the Advertising Standards Authority says that

“Marketing communications must be obviously identifiable as such”

and that marketers—in this case, the UK Government—

“must make clear that advertorials are marketing communications”.

Some newspapers do say “Ad features sponsored by the UK Government.” Others say, “in conjunction” or “in association”, which is less clear. Many simply say “sponsored” but not who by, and at least one newspaper describes the UK Government—the marketer—as a “contributor”. Why have the Government, as the marketer, chosen to flout the ASA code in this way?

[Michael Gove]

I have been furnished with no evidence of any flouting of the code. Of course if there are any complaints that have been raised by readers or citizens, we will of course investigate them. But it is the case that the Scottish Government themselves, entirely understandably, devote tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money to also furnishing content in newspapers such as The Press and Journal, The Courier and even a newspaper called The National, which I understand has some popularity among some communities in Scotland.

[Stewart Hosie]

There are many examples of what I am talking about, and the Government do not know them. That the Minister does not know is to his shame. Rule 7.2 of the ASA code makes it clear that:

“Marketing communications by central…government…are subject to the Code”

and rule 3.5 says:

“Marketing communications must not materially mislead by omitting the identity of the marketer.”

So let me ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in terms of the code: why have the UK Government, by omitting their own name, chosen to mislead the public?

[Michael Gove]

I am very happy to put my own name and that of the UK Government to all of this material, and I am also proud of the contribution that we have made to supporting independent press and media titles across Scotland. It is vital, as we move towards the Holyrood elections, that we have a strong and vital independent press and that newspapers such as the Glasgow Herald, The Press and Journal, the Dundee Courier and others should hold the Scottish Government to account for what has been happening over the last 14 years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Thursday 11th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend has been one of the doughtiest defenders of the fishing sector in this House for a few years now, and she is absolutely right to say that we need to ensure that any bureaucratic obstructions that individual EU member states may still be applying are lifted. As I mentioned in response to our hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Anthony Mangnall), we will reserve our right as an independent coastal state to do whatever is required to ensure that our fishermen are backed up every step of the way.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP) [V]]

The House of Commons Library described the EU trade and co-operation agreement by saying, as the Minister has:

“There will be no tariffs or quotas…provided rules of origin are met.”

However, it went on to say:

“There are increased non-tariff barriers, but measures on customs and trade facilitation to ease these.”

Given that 60% of companies have had difficulties importing from or exporting to the EU, and that 30% or more of companies have had their supply chain impacted in both directions, when will the measures to ease the problems at the borders begin to work?

[Michael Gove]

First, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to his new role in the recent Scottish National party Westminster reshuffle, and look forward to working with him across the Dispatch Box. He is right to say that a number of facilitations and easements have been put in place, some before the end of the transition period on 31 December, but we are providing more support, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises in order to enable them to take full advantage of their new opportunities.

[Stewart Hosie]

I am struggling to see the advantages and new opportunities. A firm in my constituency, Wilde Mode Ltd, imports, among other things, rolls of printed fabric from Poland. Before Brexit, the cost of delivery was less than €40, but because courier and other companies are no longer shipping to the UK the owners of that company are now being quoted €2,000 for the same delivery. As the Minister will know, that is completely unsustainable. So I ask again: when will the measures to ease these problems be put in place fully and actually start to work?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising the case of the firm in his constituency and will look specifically at that firm’s challenges, and the position of both the firm in Poland that supplies all those fabrics and the courier he mentions, in order to make sure that any interruption in the free flow of produce from Poland to Dundee is dealt with.

Oral Answers to Questions

Stewart Hosie Excerpts

Wednesday 9th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack]

The Union is absolutely firing on all cylinders, whether it is the support of over 900,000 jobs in Scotland, the UK Government procuring, supplying and paying for all the vaccines for the United Kingdom, or the armed forces helping with the roll-out. As regards the scare story the hon. Gentleman is trying to start over the MOD flying the vaccine into the United Kingdom, all good Governments have robust contingency plans. That is No. 5 on the list of contingency plans, and they are not just for the transition period outcome. Those contingency plans are made for potential strikes, weather events and so on. It is entirely responsible to plan that way.

[Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)]

The end of the transition period has been described by Scottish businesses as a “catastrophic” situation. Some have argued that if they cannot trade with the EU, they are out of the game—it is an existential threat. Can I ask the Scottish Secretary to actually show some authority in the Cabinet and insist on a minimum six-month grace period, so businesses do not fall foul of regulations which are not yet developed for a deal that is not yet agreed, but which is supposed to be in place in barely three weeks’ time? This needs to be done; it needs to be done today. Otherwise, businesses will struggle dreadfully on his watch.

[Mr Jack]

There has been a major public information campaign running for businesses and citizens, telling them exactly what they need to do. We have always been clear that, whether it is deal or no deal, there are steps that have to be taken when the transition period comes to an end. We are not going to delay the end of the transition period, because it is only by sticking to that date that people can prepare responsibly, and it also holds the EU’s feet to the fire in getting a deal. We have been clear what measures they need to take. They need to look at the UK Government website, where they can see very clearly what preparations they need to make for the end of this month.