Graham Leadbitter MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Mar 2025 · Women’s Changed State Pension Age: Compensation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Edward. The latest figures suggest there are over 6,000 WASPI women in the Moray and Highland region, and they are an active and vociferous group. Of the 650 constituencies, my Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey constituency is in the top 25 for signatures on the petition. Women from my constituency regularly travel the many hundreds of miles to London to demonstrate and demand fair recompense from this Government and from previous Governments. Sadly, they are being thwarted at every turn. All the while, every day over 100 WASPI women die having seen no justice. WASPI women have proven that the communication with them was dire—the ombudsman’s report made that very clear, after very thorough investigation —yet not even a hint of recompense has been given. It is an utterly appalling situation. Let us be clear: the millions of women affected are of a generation of women who have been discriminated against throughout their working lives. They have been victims of getting lower pay than their male counterparts doing the same job, as has been well evidenced by equal pay settlements with numerous bodies. They have been victims of the glass ceiling, victims of both casual and overt sexism in the workplace, and victims of a patriarchal society that, although much diminished, still creates a major imbalance today. Women are far more likely to be worse off as pensioners than men and have, on average, much smaller pension pots when they come to retirement age. Ministers continually refer to the £22 billion black hole left by the previous Government. I accept that the financial legacy they have been left is pretty grim, but let us be clear: that refers to recurring spend and absolutely not to what would be a one-off compensatory spend. Financial experts, professionals and auditors take a very different view on one-off spend compared with recurring spend. We need to keep that in context, and I hope the Minister will reflect on that. Justice is justice, and it must not depend on budgets for it to be served. It is in that context that the vast majority of Labour MPs refused to vote in the recent Division on this issue that was forced by my party. I commend the small number who stuck to their principles and voted with us, and I urge the large majority who did not to consider their position on this matter seriously, and get back behind the campaigners they were happy to pose with for campaign photos in the run-up to last year’s election. I am humbled by the determination and drive of those campaigners, as well as the dignified way in which they continue to make their point. Campaigners from throughout the UK are once again here in numbers, and I commend and fully support their efforts to get the fair and just compensation they deserve.

• 25 Feb 2025 · Draft Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 (Scottish Adult Disability Living Allowance) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Hobhouse. We fully support this order to support the ongoing work of Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government. I was not planning to speak for long, but the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, has opened a few doors for me so I might as well take them. Although Scotland may be the highest taxed part of the UK overall, 51% of its workforce pay less tax than they would in the rest of the UK. It is simply a more progressive system than the rest of the UK. The Scottish social security system is based on dignity and respect. Many Government Members, and some Opposition Members, will probably welcome that. The UK social security system is incredibly complex—benefit advisers and experts within the system struggle to navigate their way around, never mind the claimants. With this order, there is an opportunity to simplify how people apply for benefits from Social Security Scotland, especially if they have conditions that are not going to improve. People who move on to this benefit in Scotland have the opportunity potentially to apply for the Scottish adult disability payment rather than Scottish adult disability living allowance. That is a choice for the individual, but people have that opportunity and there is dignity and respect at the heart of the process—something that needs to progress much further in the social security system. My final point is that there is one way to resolve the complexity that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, mentioned: to devolve all the powers of the UK Government to Scotland. I reserve the right to continue to campaign for that circumstance.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Outsourcing: Government Departments · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) on securing this debate. I want to take the debate in a slightly different direction, as there has not been much mention of national security so far. I am a Member for a constituency that has a large Ministry of Defence footprint, particularly in the RAF. Outsourcing of catering and mess facility management over many years has had a significant and detrimental impact on the cohesion of our fighting forces, not just on bases in my constituency, but in every base where outsourcing has occurred. The reason is because we have a two-tier workforce. We have people who have been TUPE-ed across from the civil service, who started their career as MOD civil servants. They are now working alongside people who are on considerably lower pay for doing the same job. That creates division in the workplace. People who are getting paid less, and are valued less, then do not value their employer. This is understandable: why should anyone value an employer that does not particularly value them? We end up in a situation where there is less attention paid and standards fall. There are situations where a contract is ending—with maybe six months left to run—and, for the sake of argument, let us say that the staffing complement for the team should be about 25 but it is now down to 15. Does the employer have any intention whatsoever of bridging that gap with another 10 people, when it is struggling to make a profit in the last six months of a contract? Absolutely not. It will be sucked up by the 15 people doing the job of 25. That is a totally unacceptable way to work. If we parliamentarians and the civil service believe that the people who work directly for them are worth a living wage, they should believe that for every single person that is doing a job that facilitates what that organisation does. It is a simple act of fairness. In the military, they talk about the esprit de corps or a single-force approach; if there is that separation, then that is not there. If people are not getting the quality of food or accommodation they want, they will not stay. We can spend a fortune training them, and they can be very good at what they do, but they will not stay in because the facilities are not good enough for them. If we want a coherent military, people who are dedicated to it and good national security, we must treat all the workers, whether they are service personnel, civilians or contractors —and I would rather they were not contractors—with the same degree of respect and with the same degree of rights. The other problem that I want to highlight is that people who have been TUPE-ed across when contracts have been put out may, broadly speaking, retain their pay and conditions, but what they do not tend to retain is their pension. That is an absolute travesty because it is completely mortgaging their retirement life and their right to a decent retirement. Many of them, particularly in more rural areas where our services are being provided, may not have other opportunities to move into another role within the same organisation to avoid being contracted out. I want to pick up on a point that was made about radical socialism. There is nothing radical about paying a fair wage for a fair day’s work. It is just a matter of human decency. I will leave it at that.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Scotland: Transport Links · Hansard source

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  I accept the point about ferries, and I would rather they had arrived on time and that the overspend did not exist, but we can compare that with High Speed 2, which is billions of pounds overspent, and the benefit to Scotland has diminished to near zero. There are other examples, including the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, which was signed off by a Labour Government and was massively overspent. It was not the MSPs who supervised or had oversight of that, so there are examples from across all parties of issues with infrastructure projects. The important thing is obviously to learn from them and stop them happening again, which I fully support. Looking to the south-west of Scotland, I stayed in Galloway for a couple of years and I know very well what the A75 is like. It is a vital link to Northern Ireland, through the port of Cairnryan, and there is ongoing work there. I welcome the cross-party work on that and hope it can continue, with design improvements to the road. I very much support that, and I know that colleagues in the Scottish Government do as well. There has been a lot of work and discussion between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on rail issues. I very much welcome the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, which we fully support. Rail was already in public ownership in Scotland but, in fairness, that legislation has enabled us to ensure that that will continue—public ownership was the operator of last resort, so there was no surety about that, but now there is. There is a lot of mutual interest in getting this right, so will the Minister give an assurance that there will be strong engagement with the Scottish Government as the legislation develops? I hope that much of that can be addressed prior to publication. Finally, it is vital that we retain the protected slots at the key hub airports, which are critical to our onward connections to the rest of the world. Also, to pre-empt a question of mine that has been selected for tomorrow, and to use this opportunity to give a bit more context, EGNOS, the European geostationary navigation overlay system, is very technical—

• 17 Dec 2024 · Women’s State Pension Age Communication: PHSO Report · Hansard source

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  I do not think I have ever seen quite so many glum faces on the Labour Benches, not for the two-child benefit cap or the winter fuel payment—this is beyond the pale. A handful of Labour Members have stood up and spoken their mind on this issue, and I commend them on that, but the Secretary of State has not answered the question of whether this House will be given a debate and a vote, which should happen in Government time. It is not just Scottish MPs who are asking for this; other MPs from other parties have done so. I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider.

• 4 Dec 2024 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q12. A WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—woman dies every 13 minutes. That is two women since the Prime Minister took to the Dispatch Box today, and it is 111 women every day, and nearly 17,000 since he took office. How many more WASPI women have to die before the Government take action to give them the financial redress and justice that they are due?