Cost of Living Increases
Debate between Stewart Hosie and Angela Crawley(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
As the motion makes clear,
“households will soon be suffering the worst income squeeze since the 1970s”.
The Bank of England has said that inflation could reach more than 7% in April. Households’ average energy bills are forecast to rise by 54%—almost £700 on average—and there is a very real fear that energy costs could rocket again by a comparable amount in October.
Let me put that in context. One in seven people in Scotland are already finding household energy bills unaffordable. That is 640,000 people, and equates to 7 million people across the UK. Whether the cause of these difficulties is simply inflation, the massive hikes in energy costs themselves, low pay or underemployment, the fact that 68% of working-age adults in the UK who are in poverty live in households where at least one adult is in work—the highest figure on record —speaks volumes about the Government’s failure even to understand, let alone take seriously, poverty and what it means in this country. What else could explain their hiking national insurance contributions, removing the universal credit uplift, and allowing energy companies to impose brutal increases on people many of whom were already having to choose between heating and eating? According to the Resolution Foundation, those ill-conceived policies could lead to a fall in real household income of £1,000 per year for working-age households.
Of course, what successive UK Governments have not done simply makes the situation worse. We have all seen—and have just heard about—petrol and diesel approaching £2 per litre, and in some cases it already costs more than that. That is £9 or £10 a gallon, which essentially means that it costs over £100 to fill up an average saloon car tank. That is prohibitively expensive for someone on modest wages who simply wants to fill up the car in order to get to work. Yet every Tory Government I can recall has set their face against a “fuel duty regulator”, which would at least have moderated some of these obscene increases. May I just respond to something that was said by the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray)? Let us remind ourselves that Shell alone made £4.7 billion of profit in the final quarter of 2021, and £14 billion in the entire year. So someone is doing very nicely out of these rising costs.
I now wish to turn to a slightly different energy-related matter. Yesterday I received an email from my constituent Elisabeth Walton. She wrote:
“I am writing to you as, being my representative in the House of Commons, I am hoping you will be able to seek an answer for people like me who have been unable to heat their homes as a result of rising prices. I live in an electric-only home, and chose so in an effort to reduce my reliance on fossil fuels.
While I have done everything in my power to reduce the amount I spend on heating (switching from a prepay meter, insulating windows, draught excluders, blankets and hot water bottles), as a single income household with a disabled partner I simply cannot turn on my storage heaters due to the sheer cost.
Could you please explain to me why, with such investment in renewable energy, that my electric standing charge could have more than doubled despite the only price rises affecting oil and gas...
Why is VAT not being cut? Presumably this is one of the actual benefits Brexit could offer us? What is the government doing besides forcing repayable loans onto us?
Why are energy business profits not being controlled to avoid the exploitation of powerless people?
Is there anything I can do to apply pressure to these companies and ease this hardship?
I have gone to my employer to plead for a raise or increased responsibility to meet this increase in living expenses, particularly as I continue to work from home, but this has been flatly denied.”
This is someone who has already done everything she can, and yet is being hammered with energy price rises.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
Many of my constituents have written to me expressing the same concerns. Furthermore, the majority are members of single-parent families, particularly women, who have already borne the brunt of austerity and the worst effects of the changes in universal credit. They will not now benefit from the £20 uplift that the Government have removed from so many families who needed it. Does my right hon. Friend agree that more needs to be done to support those families?
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Stewart Hosie and Angela Crawley(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
Stewart Hosie (Dundee East) (SNP)
Future Free Trade Agreements
Debate between Stewart Hosie and Angela Crawley(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Stewart Hosie
I am going to say more about the ISDS component—the arbitration competent—of these things later. I do not want the public sector to be impacted on in any way by trade globalisation with the US. If there is to be some deal cut, there is language that can be used—for example, that used to exempt military and intelligence operations. That should be included rather than the vague protections for the NHS that many of our constituents simply do not believe are robust enough.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
One of my constituents’ biggest fears is that private companies will be able to buy off parts of the NHS in future deals with the USA. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be catastrophic for our NHS to be sold off to the highest foreign bidder?
Stewart Hosie
That demonstrates that it can be done and there is nothing to be afraid of. It is vital so that Scotland’s national interests, as well as those of Wales and Northern Ireland—all the devolved nations—are given equal weight to the needs and ambitions of exporting companies in London and the south-east.
Angela Crawley
To pursue that point, the increasingly broad scope of modern trade agreements is such that often we will have to deal with a wide range of reserved and devolved policy areas. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the UK Government consider Scotland to be an equal partner in the Union, they must commit to allowing legislative consent in the Scottish Parliament for any deals that affect Scotland?
Stewart Hosie
Yes I do. That ties in directly to the powers the UK Government have seized over public procurement. In Scotland, we have a fantastic record of small and medium-sized enterprises winning public sector contracts. The Westminster figures are rather less compelling. We could lose that advantage because of what has happened in Westminster; equally, we could lose it if foreign companies were able to challenge the way in which we currently do our public procurement.
Trade deals need to be fair, not only to every partner in the UK but to every citizen. That means we cannot accept deals that allow secret investor dispute courts where taxpayers can be put on the hook or public services subjected to forced privatisation and competition in a one-way ratchet, limiting the ability of any Government to deliver services the way they feel is best for the benefit of their public, not for the profit of international businesses.
Even excluding the EU, many of the UK’s biggest trading partners already have or will soon have a free trade agreement with the UK via the EU, so it is unlikely—perhaps even impossible—that net trade with those countries could be increased as a result of the UK leaving the EU. It is far more likely, because the UK will be in a weakened position, that the terms of trade will be less advantageous, but even if they were not, any new FTAs would simply be filling the gaps in trade left behind, and that gap is likely to be very wide indeed.
I intervened on the Secretary of State to ask about the NIESR report published in 2017, which showed a 22% to 30% fall in total UK trade, depending on the type of Brexit. It also suggested a total rise in UK trade of about 2.6% from an FTA with the main English-speaking economies, and a similar rise with an FTA with the BRICS countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China and South Africa. That is nowhere near close to filling the trade gap that Brexit will cause. It is hard to believe that the deals being discussed today with the main English-speaking economies, plus the CPTPP deal, would do any better.
My key questions today are mainly about process. Current procedures are such that this could be the only opportunity MPs have to debate four major trade deals. That would be woefully inadequate. General debates unaccompanied by objectives, strategies or impact assessments, and lacking a vote or the possibility of tabling amendments, do not provide adequate scrutiny and could lead to trade deals being signed that are bad for the UK, contain controversial provisions, or do not have public support. Is this, in effect, the debate on the mandate for these trade deals, or will other debates follow? If they will, how will they be conducted? Will there be a public set of negotiating objectives and comprehensive impact assessments?
Modern trade deals can have major implications across the economy and society. They can touch on financial regulation, public services, environmental policy, intellectual property and Government procurement—all areas where sovereignty normally resides with the legislature. A vague proposal to initiate negotiations is, therefore, concerning. We know that the US is insisting on an agriculture chapter, which would seriously affect UK farming. The US also wants to change chemicals regulation and access to public service contracts—potentially locking in contracting out for public services such as the NHS.
The CPTPP is already written. It contains worrying provisions, including ISDS mechanisms that allow investors to sue Government in secret arbitration courts. Have the Government produced impact assessments of the CPTPP and other deals, and when will Parliament see those assessments? Will they include consideration of third country impacts? Will the Government accept ISDS provisions in any trade deal they sign? Will they promote such provisions? Will the Government exclude public services from future trade deals, and will they use the same strength of wording as is used for military and security exemptions?
It is encouraging that some 600,000 individuals have contributed to the consultation so far, but it was woefully inadequate because it failed to give any sense of negotiating objectives or red lines. What steps will the Minister take to address the serious public concerns raised in the consultation? Will there be a further consultation based on the negotiating objectives accompanied by impact assessments? Will this consultation be a model for future consultations on other trade deals?
My final substantive remarks are more about ISDS or equivalent arbitration. The SNP and many members of the public have real concerns about the impact those provisions could have on Governments. I will give two brief examples.
In the first case, between 1995 and 1997, the Canadian Government banned the export of toxic PCB— poly- chlorinated biphenyl—waste, in order to comply with their obligations under the Basel convention, to which the United States was not a party. Waste treatment company S. D. Myers then sued the Canadian Government for $20 million in damages under chapter 11 of the North American free trade agreement, which is a similar arbitration scheme. The claim was upheld by a NAFTA tribunal in 2000, even though Canada had taken action to remain in compliance with an international treaty.
In the second case, in April 1997, the Canadian Parliament banned the import and transport of petrol additive, MMT—methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl—over concerns that it posed a significant public health risk. Ethyl Corporation, the additive’s manufacturer, sued the Canadian Government, again under NAFTA chapter 11, for $251 million, to cover losses resulting from the “expropriation” of both its MMT production plant and its “good reputation”. That was upheld by the Canadian dispute settlement panel, and the Canadian Government repealed the ban and paid Ethyl Corporation $15 million in compensation.
Those cases involved toxic PCB waste and a petrol additive that was deemed to have a public health impact. It is quite wrong for large corporations to be able to sue Governments simply for taking steps to protect the wellbeing of their citizens, or for enacting public health measures which they believe to be right and for which they may well have an electoral mandate.
While we will welcome new trade deals, whether the United Kingdom cuts them or, better still, they are cut by the EU—for those would be better deals—they need to be fair, and the process of agreeing them needs to be transparent and inclusive, with, for instance, the formal involvement of the Scottish Government and other devolved Administrations at all stages. There needs to be an honest appraisal by the UK Government of the fact that no number of new FTAs can possibly compensate for the damage to trade that will be done by Brexit. There also needs to be a clear understanding that FTAs that include secret ISDS-type courts, which limit the ability of Governments to act in the best interests of their citizens, are simply unacceptable.