Kirsty Blackman MP: speeches

Speeches

• 23 Jun 2025 · Pride Month · Hansard source

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  Happy Pride to everyone in Aberdeen, in Scotland and in every part of these islands. The world is a pretty scary place right now in a huge number of ways. As the Minister said, LGBT people are normal just like the rest of us, and they are similarly feeling scared about the state of the world, not least in the wake of the Supreme Court decision and the impact that is having on trans people. The Minister said: “Our hard-won freedoms are never won in perpetuity”, and it is the case that trans people’s rights—their right to a private life, and their right to human rights—have been rolled back as a result of this reinterpretation of the Equality Act 2010. People are less able to live their lives with the freedom they should be able to have, and the Government need to do something about that. People keep using the word “clarity” about the EHRC guidance, but there is no way that it provides that. It requires trans people regularly to out themselves. They may still have protection on the basis of gender reassignment, but trans women no longer have protection as women as a result of this reinterpretation of the Equality Act, and that is not the way it should be. All I can say to my trans constituents and people across the United Kingdom is that I am sorry; we need to get this sorted and we need to keep fighting. On the decision taken by a number of Pride organisations, we have no entitlement to be there. There is no entitlement for political parties to be allowed to take part in Pride. For all that that we have done great things 50 years ago, 25 years ago, five years ago or two years ago—for example, there were the changes with the recourse provided to LGBT veterans—that does not mean that we should not be held to account for our lack of action, for failing to protect trans people properly or for the increase in hate crimes that we are seeing. It is absolutely right that Pride organisations should be able to use their voice to say to every one of us in this House, “You are not doing good enough. You need to do better. We need you to do more in order to protect the community.” If that is the way they choose to use their voice, they should absolutely go for it. I took part in our Pride in Aberdeen, as I have done on many occasions, including the first one 25 years ago. I marched with the crowd, as I always do in the Pride parade—not with Out for Independence, but with all the people I represent. It is the case that every one of us in this place needs to do better. We need to improve lives for our trans constituents. We need to fight this rolling back of rights, because people are terrified, and they are right to be pretty scared right now.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Devolution: Crown Estate · Hansard source

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  1. What recent discussions she has had with the Welsh Government on the potential merits of devolving the Crown Estate.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Devolution: Crown Estate · Hansard source

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  In contrast to that, recent research by the Crown Estate Scotland has revealed that in one 12-month period, the Crown Estate helped its tenants to generate an economic impact of £2.1 billion, and supported almost 17,000 jobs. A decade on from the devolution of the Crown Estate’s assets and revenue, Scottish voters are enjoying the benefit. How can the Secretary of State continue to justify withholding the same profits from Wales, when in Scotland, those profits are being put back into the Scottish purse, where they belong?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds · Hansard source

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  My understanding was that there was some flexibility and that the Young Scot website stated that, if somebody did not have a birth certificate, they could go in person to speak to the local authority. I still disagree that that should be the case; there should be more flexibility. There are issues with birth certificates, particularly for children born in other countries—for those born in Ukraine, for example, the birth certificate might have been left behind when they fled. That is a problem. All young people in Scotland should be able to get the Young Scot card and the free bus travel that it entitles them to. I have actually been in touch with my local authority about the issues with applying for those cards, so I agree that there needs to be more flexibility. Lastly, there is the issue of legal aid and the geographical spread of legal support. Despite the increasing numbers of people applying for visas in Aberdeen, we do not have much in the way of immigration lawyers, and we are Scotland’s third city—we are not a small place by any means. A lot of the Home Office infrastructure, for example, is in Glasgow and Edinburgh. People need to go down there to get their biometrics done, which is an expensive three-hour journey on public transport. Much more could be done in terms of legal aid immigration lawyers and the Home Office’s own infrastructure so that people can better access the visa systems. Today I would like a commitment from the Government that they will try to make the system better. It does not feel as though any Government that I have been faced with have tried to make the immigration system work for people who want to come here, live in our country, contribute and be part of these islands. Rather than the Home Office, under Governments of any colour, continuing to penalise people for having the audacity to want to live here, it should support people, welcome them, get rid of the hostile environment and say, “We welcome people to come and live here. We want you to be part of our communities.” People will never be able or willing to integrate if we keep saying, “We do not want you here”, and taking three years to decide on visa applications. Anything the Government can do to reduce child poverty would be incredibly helpful. I hope the child poverty strategy can include children whose parents have no recourse to public funds.

• 11 Jun 2025 · Child Poverty and No Recourse to Public Funds · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to take part in the debate and I appreciate your chairing of it, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake) on securing such an important debate. The subject has been one of my hobbyhorses for a significant number of years. In Aberdeen, we have seen a massive increase in the number of people who have no recourse to public funds. Despite the fact that Aberdeen is not a dispersal authority, a few years ago, third sector providers and those who provide licensed support found that they were struggling with new issues that we had not seen before. We started a volunteer group called the No Recourse North East Partnership, which is now run by the Grampian Regional Equality Council, whose purpose was to see what support could be provided to people who have no recourse to public funds. It looked at issues mentioned by the hon. Lady, including what local authority support is supposed to look like and the consistency of that support. I agree that there is still inconsistency in local authority support. Local authorities are often not being funded for the support that they provide. In some cases, they are terrified that they will upset somebody’s immigration status and the person or family will be deported because the local authority has provided them with some level of housing or financial support. The landscape is incredibly messy. It would be great if the Local Government Association and COSLA in Scotland could get together with the Government to agree what pathways should be in place. Local authorities have a responsibility to protect children and to ensure that they are not suffering from the extremes of poverty, for example by being homeless, but they are unsure exactly what action they can take when somebody has no recourse to public funds. If we had an agreed pathway, everybody would get a consistent level of support, but we would also need funding to flow from the Government for that to happen. Although I do not think it should be down to local authorities to have to fill that gap, such an agreement would be a step in the right direction. If it were up to me, I would get rid of no recourse to public funds entirely. I do not think it is a status that anybody should be faced with. As the hon. Member for Sheffield Hallam said, none of us wants any child to be living in poverty. That is not the future and that is not why any of us is here in Parliament; we are here to make our constituents’ lives better. I do not see how having the status of no recourse to public funds, which ensures that children are growing up in poverty, is a good thing for anyone. As the hon. Lady said, it does not discourage people from coming here from other countries, and those children are not responsible for which country their parents were born in.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Bank Closures and Banking Hubs · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery) and the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) for bringing this debate before us today. I want to make a few comments. I agree with the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) that access to banking services is a major issue in rural constituencies, but it can also be an issue in urban constituencies. In parts of my constituency, which is wholly urban, some communities have been left without banks. Owing to the way public transport works and its unaffordability in some places, accessing banks can still be hard, even if people live in a community that is part of a city, so we need to make sure that we are looking at this issue as a whole in all the communities affected. Public transport can be a significant issue. Where capitalism fails, we need market intervention—that is what should happen. We need more market intervention to ensure that there is at least a minimum, if not a universal, banking service. A number of the banks that have closed in my constituency have said, “It’s okay, because people will be able to go to the post office.” However, the post office in Seaton has closed, and we have been fighting for years to get a new post office in the community, but nobody is willing to take it up. That community is left without either of those services, and people have to travel. In common with the hon. Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), a significant proportion of my constituents—at least a third—do not have access to a car, and getting around the city and to the bank can be pretty difficult for them. We have universal service obligations when it comes to broadband and to Royal Mail delivery, but we do not have them when it comes to post office services and banking services, yet cash is incredibly important. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) mentioned access to cash, but that is not the only reason we need banking services. There are some things that can only be done in a bank—whether that is businesses depositing the cash that they have taken, people taking cash out of a cash machine, or individuals signing forms to approve a loan or a mortgage. Some of those things can only be done physically in the bank, including things that people need to do only once a year. Someone living in Banff, Aberdeenshire, will have to spend an hour and a half to two hours on public transport to get into the city—a significant length of time. As the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) said earlier, we are charging people for that privilege. Even though it might be free to withdraw cash, the public transport that they need to take in order to get to a bank is not free. I urge the Government to look at the minimum services that people need in order to access cash and banking services that are close to them, and that they can access by whatever method of transport they happen to have. Could the Government please take action on this?

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing this important debate. Some of the newer Members may not know quite how much I love the geekiest possible debates. I have not had as much time since I became SNP Chief Whip, so I cannot reach the geeky heights managed by the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) in reading the International Fire and Safety Journal . I commend him on that, but I want to bring the debate to another geeky level and talk about the mechanisms by which the Government should take action. There has been a lot of talk today about planning mechanisms and regulations, but I urge the Government to look at health and safety regulations. I am from Aberdeen and a number of years ago we had the Piper Alpha disaster. The Piper Alpha disaster and the Cullen report that came afterwards resulted in a massive step change in safety. It was a huge, drastic change in how those things worked, with health and safety regulations that apply across the whole of the United Kingdom. Planning, for example, is devolved to Scotland and a lot of environmental rules are the preserve of the Scottish Parliament. Currently, there are no health and safety rules in this area. The House of Commons Library briefing for this debate states: “There are no laws that specifically govern the fire safety of battery energy storage systems”. It also states: “There are no specific health and safety laws relating to BESSs.” I have written to the Health and Safety Executive, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks, the city council and the Scottish Government about this issue. I have done a lot around battery energy storage sites. The HSE wrote back to me saying that it is a member of the cross-Government group on battery energy storage, so it is working on that. It has a landing page on its website that brings together some of the regulations of battery energy storage, but most of them were written for the safety of individual batteries rather than for the safety of these storage sites. That, specifically, is what is missing: the health and safety guidance for battery energy storage sites. A number of Members have spoken about local or UK-wide issues, but across the world there have been 85 fires at battery energy storage sites. That is not a small number or a small percentage. This is a risky business. I do not disagree with those who say that these sites are necessary. We absolutely need them for our energy systems in the future, but they need to be safe. We need regulations in place. We should bring them together, even if it is just the best practice from all different places, to ensure that there is one place where the health and safety guidance is held. I would be even more flexible than having it updated by Parliament. I would give the HSE a level of control over changing and flexing that guidance, should more best practice come through. Again, that would apply across the whole of these islands, and I think that would be the best way forward. I want to mention two other things. First, an earlier speaker mentioned that we have extreme weather events—once-in-a-generation events—just about every week at the moment. It is really important that we look at both the extreme temperatures and the flooding events that may occur, as flooding events at battery energy storage sites are an issue; whether or not there has been a fire in advance of a water leakage, there could still be concerns. Secondly, I want to talk about the money. A number of people are looking at these sites with dollar signs in their eyes, thinking, “We can build these things and make a whole lot of money.” Actually, we should be telling the organisations that are creating the battery energy storage sites that they will need to pay for the fire safety assessment, consult the local fire service, and pay for the training of the local fire teams on tackling fires at these sites. I think that would be the most reasonable way forward. We should ask them to pay for that training, because it is those organisations that will be making a huge profit from the sites. It should not just be the public services that have to train up and increase the number of hours that retained firefighters, perhaps, are working. I think that is really important. I urge the Minister to look at HSE guidance as the method and mechanism for taking this on. I have pushed the Scottish Government to change some of their planning guidance already—particularly around notification of local community councils, for example—but that health and safety guidance is, I think, the key place to take action, make that change and bring it together in one place, so that all our constituents are safer as a result.

• 6 May 2025 · Poverty: Glasgow North East · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke) on bringing forward this debate. I particularly liked her driving force, which is: did I make life in my community better? That should be the driving force of all MPs and I commend her for taking that stance. I want to say a couple of things about the social security safety net, and what is being provided to protect people from the worst of poverty to ensure that life expectancies are equalised. Those of us who are lucky enough to live in a level of privilege have the luxury of being able to make mistakes and cope with a few rough barriers in our way. We can cope with our washing machine breaking down and our child needing a new pair of shoes in the same month, whereas people who are living on the breadline do not have that level of privilege and luxury. If two of those things happen at once, through no fault of their own, then getting through that and working out whether to buy a washing machine or a pair of shoes for the child—when someone is struggling to make ends meet as it is—is the most difficult choice. If we can get to a position where people have the luxury of being able to make some choices, and are able to ensure that their children can thrive and not just survive, then we have done a good thing and made life better for our communities. There are issues with the social security safety net. The essentials guarantee has been put forward by the Trussell Trust and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation among others. In order to pay for an essential basket of goods, someone needs about £120 a week. That includes the most basic food, ensuring an internet connection, heating and rent—it covers those basic things. The universal credit standard allowance is only £92. Most people agree that the essential basket is a reasonable level for the social security safety net to be at. It would be sensible to look at where we are with the universal credit standard allowance, and whether it does meet basic needs. That is before we talk about things such as the child poverty strategy, and the possibility of cancelling the two-child cap, which people are asking for across the board, as well as scrapping the total benefits cap. In Scotland we are doing what we can to mitigate some of that. We have managed to ensure that child poverty in Scotland is reducing rather than increasing, but it is much more stagnant than we would like it to be because we are having to mitigate some of these cuts. I echo the views of the hon. Member for Glasgow North East on disability payments; 55% of children in Scotland who live in poverty have a disabled family member. We do not know how the cuts to eligibility in the personal independence payment are going to interact with the Scottish benefits system. Will people have to do assessments for both adult disability payment and PIP in order to ensure their eligibility for the UC health element, or will the UK Government work out the UC health element on the basis of the ADP assessment? I am not clear on how that will work, or on how the welfare Bill that is hopefully coming in the near future will make it clear. For my constituents, and for those people in Glasgow North East, how those things will interact and what difference it will make to their lives is really key. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us clarity as soon as possible on the interaction between the welfare Bill and the Scottish Government systems on, for example, adult disability payment. I again commend the hon. Member for Glasgow North East on raising this really important issue. I understand why it is the most important issue in her constituency, and more power to her elbow for making life better for her constituents.

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Doing your bit!

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  When I came into this debate, I did not expect the main thrust of the Labour party’s argument to be a concession that it will not win the next Holyrood election. Labour Members have consistently said that this is about handing powers to the SNP. Do they understand how democracy works? Or are they looking at the polls and saying, “Oh my goodness, we are totally in trouble before 2026, so it’s got to be an SNP Government next year”?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Immigration!

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State is laying out that the Government are not considering this—that, basically, it is not Government policy for Scotland to have control of migration or for there to be a specific Scottish visa. I assume therefore that he is happy for there to be a vote, and that he is going to encourage a vote, so that he can walk through a Lobby opposing this Bill. If he feels so strongly about it, why is he not pushing for there to be a vote?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is making an important case about Scotland’s unique needs and the way that our democracy differs. To go back to the economic point, the founding mission of this Labour Government is about growing the economy, so will my hon. Friend explain the impact of increasing migration? What is the impact on the economy of bringing more people in to do more jobs in the economy?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Around the turn of the millennium, I remember hearing Lord Jack McConnell, the First Minister of Scotland at the time, talking about that iconic 5 million mark. I was only 13 or 14, but I remember it being so important, and it was so important to Labour that immigration happened in order to keep that population. Why does he think Labour has changed its position so drastically in a relatively short space of time? Why is immigration now apparently bad?

• 19 Mar 2025 · Ethnic Minority People: Discrimination · Hansard source

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  Aberdeen mosque and Islamic centre in my constituency was vandalised while worshippers were inside. I am pleased that the local community came together and helped with the clean-up. The University of Glasgow has published a report that says that one in three Muslim students are victims of Islamophobic abuse. Does the Minister agree that the Government and the House have a responsibility to ensure that racist stereotypes are not putting our Muslim community at risk of a rise in hate crime and far-right extremism?

• 23 Jan 2025 · Holocaust Memorial Day · Hansard source

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  It is not often in this House that everyone from every party speaks with one voice, and it is not often that we stand here and do not have political arguments, and that we all listen, nod and agree with all the speakers we are hearing. The Minister who introduced the debate did an excellent job laying out some of the cold, hard facts, and making clear exactly why we have Holocaust Memorial Day. The hon. Member for Hendon (David Pinto-Duschinsky) brought humanity into that with his own family’s story, and we have heard from Members across the House about their personal views, the views of Holocaust survivors and the reading they have done, and about genocides and massacres that have taken place not just in the wake of the second world war but more recently. It is important that we remember all that. It is important that we use the privileged position that we have here, and the platform we have in this House. We are incredibly lucky that we can stand here and amplify the voices of our constituents. Right now, we have more of a responsibility to do that than ever. We are seeing the rise of antisemitism. In the wake of what happened on 7 October, we are seeing that on our streets. The Antisemitism Policy Trust has published two reports about the rise of antisemitism online and the inability of AI systems on some websites to find antisemitic posts. I urge the Government to look at those reports, particularly when it comes to the rise of issues on X. We are seeing the rise of Islamophobia. I am seeing constituents who are refugees and asylum seekers facing discrimination and prejudice that I had not seen in the 20 years I have been supporting and dealing with the public. It is new. It feels like we have tipped into a different world. We are seeing a rise in anti-trans, anti-gay and anti-lesbian hate on our streets as well. Now is the point when we all have to take action. We all have to recognise that whatever we have been doing to try to tackle this—whatever voices we have used and whatever moments we have taken—we have not done enough. We are not there yet. We have not managed to tackle this. Whether as a group of 650 individuals with a platform we are capable of sorting it out does not matter; what matters is that we try every single day to make that difference. The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) and a number of hon. Members have said that a holocaust does not happen overnight. We do not go from having a happy community to mass murder in a couple of days. We go through stages, with a rise in hatred and the dehumanisation and othering of people. We go through a situation—like there was in Germany after the first world war—where the population feels hard done by, their lives are not as good as they could be and they want someone to blame. They have politicians, the media and people standing up and saying, “There are people you can blame for this.” In that case, the population were being told, “The Jews are the people to blame. The Jewish people are less human than you are, and they are to blame for your life being a struggle and for you finding things difficult right now.” We know that that divisive rhetoric is being used around the world right now. It is being used here. I am sure that all hon. Members have seen a rise in the number of emails to them saying, “I cannot afford to pay my energy bill, and that is because of the number of illegals in this country.” We all need to stand up against that. It is not just about countering the explicit hate that people come up with and the obvious racism and antisemitism that people send us in emails; it is about countering the people who will say, “Yes, but you have to allow us our free speech. You have to allow us the freedom to say things that dehumanise others.” We must counter that chipping away at the hard-won rights of minority groups. We need to stand there and say not just, “You’re wrong,” to people behaving in a racist way and using racist rhetoric, but, “No. We will not reduce the rights that trans people have. We will not reduce the rights that gay people have. We will not reduce the rights that Jewish people, Muslims and people of all faiths should have to practise their faith.” We should make a stand for equality and the rights that people have as well as against the hatred. Reduction in those rights is how we got to the far end of the road in Auschwitz. The beginning of the road is reducing rights, taking up a Sharpie and writing that trans people are no longer to be recognised, and saying that people who riot against democracy are fine, cool and should carry on. Many of us are using our platform to say these things, but we are not winning. We need to tackle disinformation and misinformation, online and in person, and the diminution of rights that people have fought for. This is an incredibly poignant debate. I am proud of all the MPs who have stood up and argued against dehumanisation, and have related their experiences and those of constituents and survivors. We need to do that, and not just on Holocaust Memorial Day. Every one of us needs to work for a better future every single day. There are so many good people out there who care a huge amount about this. We need to mobilise them and take them with us, ensuring that we amplify their voices as they speak in favour of the better future that we all want.

• 21 Jan 2025 · Community Engagement Principles and Extremism Definition · Hansard source

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  We know that a number of the individuals who are radicalised are encouraged to find that radicalisation by high-risk platforms on the dark web. Will the Minister and the Home Secretary ensure that they work together with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure that the Online Safety Act 2023 does as it was intended to do, which is to regulate those high-risk platforms, rather than the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport just allowing Ofcom to step away from them and let them do what they like?

• 12 Dec 2024 · LGBT Veterans: Etherton Review · Hansard source

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  Like the Front Benchers, I want to start with an apology. I am sorry that anyone had to go through this. As has been said, the compensation does not make up for the treatment that victims received or fix the situation. It still happened, and I have been pleased to hear, from everyone who has spoken so far, the recognition that it happened but should never have happened. I will talk a little about some of the speeches that have been made, but first I have a number of questions for the Minister about the compensation scheme. I listened carefully when the Secretary of State talked about how the scheme will work. I understood from what he said—although I may be wrong, so it would be helpful if the Minister clarified—that there will be two pots. One pot will be for flat payments of £50,000 to people who were dismissed or discharged. The Secretary of State used the words “instructed to resign”. A little clarity on what that means would be helpful. If people were sat down and told, “You must resign,” does that count as an instruction, or would it be an instruction only if they were given a letter formally telling them to resign? Where is the bar by which the flat payment of £50,000 is judged? The Secretary of State seemed to suggest that the other payment was for two different groups. It is for those who have suffered hardships in addition to the discharge—imprisonment or additional discrimination, for example—but I was not sure whether it is also open to those who were not discharged but did suffer discrimination as a result of their sexuality. Does it fulfil those two purposes of being both a top-up payment and a payment of recompense for those who experienced more minor suffering than a discharge? Some clarity would be helpful. The scheme’s two-year time period has been mentioned. Although I appreciate that people need to know the closing date, it would be helpful if the Government committed to undertaking some sort of review at, say, the one-year point to ensure that the scheme is operating as intended, that as many people as possible have applied and that the process is going smoothly. This would allow the Government to say, “We think two years is adequate, because we reckon that 90% of people have applied in the first year,” or, “We don’t think two years is appropriate, and we therefore think the scheme should be extended to ensure that everyone who is entitled to this compensation can get it.” Will people who are currently overseas be able to apply? The hon. Member for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven (Chris Ward) talked about people losing their sense of self, and the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) said that some people had to flee because they wanted to leave their trauma behind, and may now be overseas as a direct or indirect result of their treatment. Will they still be able to apply to the compensation scheme and to receive compensation, regardless of where they currently live? Can the Minister assure us that the charitable support will have a geographic spread? For instance, if there are charities that work only in England, will other charities be funded to provide support to veterans in other parts of these islands? The citizens advice bureau in Aberdeen has something like a 14-week wait for people to get any advice. Although it is a national charity, it has different waiting times in different places. Will the Minister look into whether the charitable support has the geographic spread to ensure that everyone can get the help and support they need? We have heard about people’s sense of self, and about what they lost as a result of either being discharged or having their life made so difficult that they could no longer remain in the armed forces. The immensely powerful speech of the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Elaine Stewart) set out the trauma her constituent went through, and it echoed the evidence given to the review. It is very difficult for us, sitting here, to listen to such accounts, never mind for all those people who had to go through those horrific experiences. People lost not only their career or their standing in the community; they lost a part of themselves when they were told, “You cannot be both a soldier and gay.” These people had dreamed forever of joining the armed forces, and they served with incredible bravery and honour, only to be told, “We don’t want you.”

• 12 Dec 2024 · LGBT Veterans: Etherton Review · Hansard source

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  It is not my place to comment on individuals who perpetrated such abuses, nor to judge whether these were systemic issues or whether personal gain was received. However, I understand that people want redress. The Minister has recognised that, above and beyond the pot of money specifically for those who were discharged, there is another pot for those who faced additional hardships. One of my constituents has been in touch to say that he had intended to be in the armed forces for life. That was his plan and he had never wanted to do anything else; his aim was to be a member of the armed forces. When he was ejected, his hopes, dreams and sense of self were all gone from him, and recovering from that trauma is incredibly difficult. I appreciate the work that the Minister and the Secretary of State have done, as well as the work done by the previous Government, in order to ensure the compensation scheme has come forward, and I appreciate that the amount of money in the pot has been increased. I have already asked some specific questions, but on the family of veterans, it is incredibly important that there is follow-through. For example, previously, the medals sent to some LGBT veterans were posted in the normal post and fell through the letterbox on to the carpet, along with bills from BT and energy suppliers. I do not think that was appropriate or provided the same recognition that other people received when they got their medals. More can be done to ensure that being part of the family of veterans is not just warm words, but a reality. People should be provided with a welcome, as well as being told that they will provided with a welcome to that family. I thank the Minister and everyone who has spoken today. I thank all the organisations and individuals who have been fighting for this outcome. I also thank those who have not been brave enough to tell their stories, and who are going through such difficult times that they are not able to do so. Those who are in the Gallery today have been able to give voice on behalf of themselves, but also on behalf of their friends and colleagues who are not able to tell their stories to us today or to the review. I thank those who have told their stories for being the voice for the community. I hope the Minister is able to answer some of my questions, in order to ensure the compensation scheme works as the Government intend and gives an amount of recompense for the extreme trauma and suffering that people have been through.

• 22 Jul 2024 · Economy, Welfare and Public Services · Hansard source

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  I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today, particularly the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who gave an excellent speech. As with many of the maiden speeches, now I really want to visit his constituency. It just sounds like an absolutely amazing place. I particularly congratulate all the new Members who have come from a council background. Being a local councillor sets them up fantastically for coming here. It means they are under no illusions about the hard work that is required to be put in for their constituents and the people who live in their area. Congratulations to all of them. I also congratulate the Chancellor on being the first female Chancellor. As the first woman in this place ever to lead on the economy, although I have been followed by a number since, I am incredibly glad to see one on the Government Benches. I hope that, as she said, her tenure lasts significantly longer than those of some of the Chancellors we have seen in recent times. Today’s debate is taglined “Economy, welfare and public services”. Apart from the maiden speeches, speeches focusing on anything other than economic growth have been fairly few and far between. I will not for one second deny that economic growth is important, but the whole point of it is what we then do with it. It is about what we do with the extra tax take generated from the growth we have created. There is no point in having growth for growth’s sake. There is no point in having economic growth, and no point in the Conservatives saying how fast the UK is growing compared with other countries in the G7, if the same handful of people are getting richer and richer and the vast majority of our constituents are struggling harder than they ever have before. We need to ensure that the economic growth and the increase in the tax take that the Labour party is hoping to deliver involves a benefit for all those who live in these islands and in our constituencies. It is massively disappointing to hear that the five pledges and priorities for the Labour party in government do not have eradicating child poverty at the heart of them. I am really glad the Government are bringing together a discussion taskforce to reduce child poverty, but today they could bring 300,000 children out of poverty and move 700,000 children into less deep poverty simply by scrapping the two-child cap. One of my previous colleagues in this place, Alison Thewliss, campaigned incredibly hard on the rape clause—everybody will know of the work she did on that. There are 3,000 women across these islands who are eligible for an exemption from the cap because they have applied under the rape clause. They have had to tell the Government they were raped in order to get an uplift in their benefits. That is horrific, and even if the Government are unwilling to move on the two-child cap they should be doing something about the rape clause and what people are having to prove in order to get the exemption. It would be very easy to increase growth, again overnight, by increasing migration. Migration to these islands increases the amount of growth. The economy would immediately have grown if the Prime Minister had gone to the summit with the EU leaders this week and said “Yes, free movement benefits us: it benefits our economy, benefits our society, benefits our young people, benefits our musicians, and benefits so many different groups and individuals. It benefits our culture; it makes this place a better place to live. Therefore we are signing up again to free movement.” We need only look at some of the past Budgets, such as a Budget George Osborne gave from the Dispatch Box, when it has said in the Red Book that increasing migration will increase the tax take because of the economic growth it will bring. My constituents and people across Scotland recognise that, and we will always argue for a better migration policy—and if the Government are not willing to do it for all of these islands, we will argue for one tailored specifically to Scotland so that we can make our own decisions that suit the needs of our communities and encourage that economic growth.