Pete Wishart MP: speeches

Speeches

• 6 Nov 2024 · Small Boat Crossings · Hansard source

  More

  Sometimes, when listening to the exchanges between Labour Front Benchers and the Conservatives, we can forget that we are dealing with real people who are fleeing the most unimaginable horrors. Aside from the bizarre Rwanda plan, why is the Minister continuing with the same failed approach as the Tories? The Government continue to spend millions on hotels, drones and various bits of high tech; how about trying something different? How about looking at safe and legal routes, in order to smash the gangs? And how about showing some compassion?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of speaking in a Budget debate. Usually there is a bit more competition for the opportunity to speak, but given the much-diminished numbers present, I got this chance today. Having been more of an observer in the past few years, I have noticed one aspect of the Budget: the form, the tempo and the rhythm that seem to be part of every single Budget debate. It always starts with a high, fevered crescendo of excitement. The Government reel off all the staccato of freebies and giveaways. Cheers come from the Back Benches, Order Papers are waved, and the nation feels bamboozled by this apparent avalanche of largesse. Then, of course, the first cracks appear—a negative forecast from the OBR here, bad news on the gilt markets there. Beyond that, it all starts to fall apart. Once the public realise what the Budget means to them and get over the intoxication, the hangover starts and the first opinion polls start to come out. There was one in Scotland at the weekend, and it showed a calamitous decline in Labour’s fortunes, just as the party was measuring up the curtains for Bute House. It is not so straightforward for Labour any more. I want to do something different and actually praise the Labour Government. I want to thank them and say, “Well done for getting that funding for infected blood. That’s great!” I also thank them for the extra funding that Scotland will get—it would be churlish not to do so. It is what we asked for, and I am really glad that they have started to listen to us. I just wish they would do a little bit more of that. However, there are issues with all of this. One of the main issues is the change in employer’s national insurance contributions, which has caused a real problem for some of our colleagues in Scotland, because we do not know what we will get as a block grant. Will we be fully funded for the national insurance contributions in our health and policing budgets? We need to have clarity, and the money has to be in addition to the block grant funding, not in place of it. I would like clarity from the Minister on that issue. There is one local issue that I want to raise: the levelling-up funding for Perth. Levelling-up funding was pork barrel politics at its most gratuitous, and we were the only city local authority that did not get one penny from the Conservative Government. We finally got a paltry £5 million, and we were so excited about that. We had three shiny projects in Perth city centre that we were going to develop. Then, of course, the Budget came along. After we secured practically nothing from the Conservatives, a Labour Government are taking the money away from us. I want to hear the Government say that they will give Perth what it is due. Budgets are like fireworks on bonfire night: they go up like a rocket, with lots of noise and colour, then they come down like a damp squib. Today, the Government’s Budget feels very much like that damp squib.

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  Look at what they have done in Wales.

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  We thank the Minister for that, but will he reassure the Scottish Government right now that their £500 million of national insurance contributions for public sector employees will be given back in full compensation to the Scottish Government, rather than being put into the block grant?

• 5 Nov 2024 · Income Tax (Charge) · Hansard source

  More

  I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his place. I was waiting for the Health Secretary to turn to devolution issues, but he never quite did. We have a particular issue in Scotland: up to £500 million of extra costs will be forced on to the NHS there because of that national insurance hike. We have heard no commitment from the Secretary of State that he will meet those costs in full, and we look forward to hearing such a commitment. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will share my concern about what this is doing to devolved services across the United Kingdom.

• 30 Oct 2024 · Economic Growth: Scotland · Hansard source

  More

  The Secretary of State boasted of a £150-million investment fund, only to contradict himself, bizarrely, and say that no such figure existed. Is this Scottish Schrödinger’s funding? Is it perhaps the levelling-up fund referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law)?

• 23 Oct 2024 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  I am to grateful to the Minister for his response. I look forward to his summing up, as I know that he will sincerely try to address these matters, but I say to him that all I am doing is reflecting the concerns that I have heard from the groups that I have worked with so closely over the years. There is a sense that they are not being taken all that seriously and that they are not getting the responses and the information that they think are important. The Minister mentioned Sir Robert Francis. There has been nothing other than glowing praise for the way that Sir Robert has carried out his business. I know that he had a useful and productive meeting with representatives of Haemophilia Scotland where everything was aired and properly discussed. There is absolutely no complaint from anybody in this House about the way that Sir Robert Francis has gone about his business. He has been up and down the country listening to the groups. But there are certain things that only the Minister can respond to, particularly when it comes to policy decisions. That is why I encourage him to hold a debate on them. He has said that he is prepared to do so, which I am grateful for, and that he has perhaps been misunderstood. The community must be given the information and advice that they require. There are a couple of matters that I hope the Minister will address in his closing remarks. I will not repeat some of the points that have already been raised, as I know he has taken a note of them. Sir Robert Francis proposed an additional autonomy award under the supplementary route for those who had been subjected to the unethical treatment and experiments that have been described. Although that is welcome, it is not clear how the figures have been arrived at, so I would like a little more clarity on that. How have these figures been calculated? One issue that possibly has not been raised today is those with hepatitis C who were treated with interferon. Early treatment methods for the eradication of hepatitis C had many negative side effects, which were extremely difficult to go through and had a lasting effect on those treated. Is that a group that the Minister will consider? The future operation of support schemes is also important. The decision to continue existing support scheme payments for life for those who were registered with a scheme before 1 April 2024 was a welcome development. The House will know how important that is to me as a Scottish Member of Parliament, as we had a very effective, productive and useful support scheme that I think will now be concluded and no longer open to new members. I would like to hear a little more on that point. Sir Robert’s report said: “The benefits offered by the scheme to eligible recipients for financial and other support services should be no less than those offered by any of the current support schemes.” I want to know whether that is still the Government’s position. It is also assumed, based on Sir Robert’s recommendation, that all the benefits of the support schemes will continue. It would be good if the Government could confirm their position at an early date so that individuals have clarity on their future entitlements. Under the regulations, the Minister has the power to make arrangements for the provision of support and assistance to applicants or potential applicants for compensation under the infected blood compensation scheme. Sir Robert Francis has identified three groups to which the Minister might usefully apply that prerogative: IBCA-funded legal representation, IBCA-funded financial support from an independent financial adviser and IBCA-funded legal support to executors of estates where there are complex matters to resolve in determining entitlements and access to an independent mediation service. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) spoke about the need to ensure that representative groups are properly supported and resourced to continue their vital advocacy work on behalf of so many in the community. I would like the Minister to say a little more about the willingness of the Government to ensure that those groups are properly funded. The effort that they have put in over decades—sometimes in a solitary exercise by two or three people—is extraordinary and should be recognised as part of the scheme. We are looking forward to the next round, and it is important that we go forward. I have queries, which I know the Minister will probably address, about why only 20 people have been contacted, as the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst mentioned. I have no idea why it is only 20, so perhaps the Minister can tell us a little more about the rationale. It is right that the system be tested to see whether it is robust before it is opened to a wider community, but he has to say a little more about why it is those 20. I am not having a go at the Minister, who I think is doing a good job; I am here to congratulate him and encourage him ever so gently to get moving just that little bit faster. We have had decades of obfuscation, a lack of progress, and people dying as they waited for compensation. This matter now sits on the Minister’s shoulders. We will be watching him and keeping an eye on it. I know that there will be regular updates to the House. Believe me, we will all be here to ensure that he is doing the right thing by the victims.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  I will give way to the Minister if he will explain to me exactly why that is happening.

• 23 Oct 2024 · Infected Blood Compensation Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst (Clive Efford). In me, he has another willing volunteer to assist him in the group, as he knows. He is absolutely right to pay tribute to our former colleague, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North and Cottingham (Dame Diana Johnson), who led the group with such distinction and energy in the last Parliament. She was almost personally responsible for ensuring we had the legislative solution to take forward the compensation schemes. I also pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen), who made a significant difference when he took leadership on this issue for the last Government, after years of obfuscation, delay and dithering. The right hon. Gentleman got to grips with the matter and all the campaigners recognise what he brought to the role. I hope that this Minister does the same. We all acknowledge that he has made a good start. The points that the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst makes as chair as the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood are absolutely right. If he continues in that curious and investigatory style, we will continue to encourage the Government to do the right thing by the infected and the affected. I am happy to say, with a great deal of satisfaction, that we have made significant progress. We are at the point of being able to deliver the scheme, and we will start to see payments to those who have needed support and compensation so badly throughout all these decades. My only slight criticism of the right hon. Member for Salisbury is that it is a pity that we did not get the opportunity to debate the issue in the last Parliament. There was an unsatisfactory statement from the former Prime Minister, who then just disappeared. There was no real opportunity to ask questions properly. I know he made an effort to address some of the concerns, but it would have been good to hear more at that point about how the schemes were being taken forward. The general election created a massive gap, after all the energy and activity that had been summoned up to resolve the issue, but we are where we are. The final report by the infected blood inquiry was a fantastic piece of work. I pay tribute to everybody involved in it. They went about their jobs diligently and comprehensively, and we ended up with a wide-ranging report that shed a dramatic light on all the things that had gone wrong. It paved the way to create a positive way forward that is now beginning to deliver. We must remember why we are here: thousands of people were caught up in probably the worst health scandal this country has ever endured. It is a failure of the British state that we ended up in a situation where people, through no fault of their own, contracted HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C. When those who were caring for them raised concerns, they were constantly ignored and told, “There’s nothing to see here.” The inquiry was unequivocal that a compensation scheme must be set up immediately. The regulations we are debating today are essential for delivering that compensation scheme as quickly and effectively as possible. I have been supporting victims of the infected blood scandal for about 20 years, since it was first brought to my attention by a constituent, who died about 10 years ago and is no longer with us. I remember the frustrations of those early years when I was constantly writing on behalf of this constituent just to be stonewalled—to be told that there was nothing to see and nothing further to be considered. It was that reluctance to take these issues seriously that defined those early years. I said to the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Salisbury, that I hoped we would get some sort of separate investigation into why Members of Parliament were consistently deceived and—I shall say this—lied to by people working in the Department of Health. We were constantly writing letters on behalf of our constituents, and the replies were clearly rubbish. As a recipient of several of those letters from Ministers, I want to know why I was deceived in the way that I was. I pay tribute to Andy Burnham: he recognised this and he actually signed many of those letters as the former Health Secretary. I want to know how this came to his desk and why he actually did this. The key thing is, as other Members have said, that the groups that are representing the community are properly listened to and are engaged in the construction of the regulations. It is too late for the regulations we are debating, but when it comes to the affected, the representative groups have to be central to the design of the new regulations. I say that because they have real life experience of this matter. They know what the issues are. They have fought for decades to get to this stage to secure this justice and compensation. I know that there is frustration. I saw the Minister screwing his face in response to the hon. Member for Eltham and Chislehurst, but those groups do feel frustrated. They feel that they are being ignored, that their concerns are not being taken seriously, and that they are getting generic general replies from the Minister instead of detailed, proper responses to their issues.

• 21 Oct 2024 · Scottish Visa Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  I thank the Minister for her tiresome and repetitive response. She will know that Scotland has a whole range of demographic and population difficulties that need to be urgently addressed, with every sector from social care to hospitality, including business leaders, calling out for drastic action. Even her Scottish Labour colleagues are beginning to understand the enormity of this task. Today we find that Labour’s grotesque two-child benefit cap is now having an impact on Scotland’s birth rate. Instead of slapping down her Scottish colleagues and rejecting this idea out of hand, why does she not work with us just to see if it might actually work?

• 21 Oct 2024 · Scottish Visa Scheme · Hansard source

  More

  1. What discussions she has had with the Scottish Government on the potential merits of devolving the power to introduce a Scottish visa scheme.

• 17 Oct 2024 · Business of the House · Hansard source

  More

  The Labour and Conservative parties are getting down to the business of deciding who should serve on Select Committees. That is an important task and good luck to those who get those jobs. However, one group is effectively excluded from participating in cross-party scrutiny in this Parliament: Members of the smaller parties of this House. For the first time since Select Committees were established, there is no place for Members of any of the smaller parties, except if the Government gift us a place through their largesse and generosity. We are effectively barred from participating in Select Committees. How can that be right or acceptable?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am glad that, at last, somebody else has mentioned the donors, because to me they are the biggest problem we have with the House of Lords. Will the right hon. Gentleman back an amendment that says something along the lines of anybody who has given any more than, say, £20,000 to a political party should not be able to get a place in the House of Lords?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Will she tell the House whether it is still Labour’s ambition to abolish the House of Lords in its current condition and set up a democratically elected Chamber, yes or no?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is there anything within your power or your gift that can make the right hon. Gentleman stop with this inconsequential rubbish?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Maureen Burke). I listened with great interest to her personal journey and her remarks about the transformative power of education, and she gave a very touching tribute to her brother, which I am sure the whole House appreciated. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), whose speech was a tour de force around his constituency and all the things he hopes to achieve in this Parliament. I wish him personally all the best for his time in this place. I thank the other Members who made maiden speeches: the hon. Members for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Claire Hazelgrove), for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell) and for Knowsley (Anneliese Midgley). I say to the hon. Member for Knowsley that if she gets the decks out again, we will see if we can get the Deputy Prime Minister to come and join her; and to the hon. Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire that it is maybe not best to tick off your dad in the Chamber—that is a little tip as the hon. Member goes forward in this parliamentary Session. The first thing we have to try not to do when we consider the Bill is laugh. We have to try not to laugh out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of considering in 2024 whether places should be reserved in our legislature for a curious subset of a particular class of person, based on birthright. We have to try to stifle the guffaws that accompany the fact that a modern, complex, industrial, advanced democracy such as the United Kingdom can still have barons, dukes, earls and various other aristocrats deciding the laws of the land because they are their fathers’ sons. They secured that right in medieval times, perhaps because one of their ancestors won a decisive battle. This is parliamentary participation defined by the “Game of Thrones” principle, in which the great houses of olde England or olde Britannia knock seven shades of whatever out of each other for the right to run the country by breeding. In some way, they are our own Baratheons and Targaryens, but without the fun, the dragons and the box office appeal. It is time to break the wheel. For those down the corridor, winter must be coming. There is no other legislature in the world that comes close to having people there through birthright, save perhaps the Senate in Lesotho, where I believe there are still places reserved for the tribal chiefs. That is the sort of company we keep. My other initial main thought about the Bill is: is this it? We have heard about other things to come, and have been told that we should be patient because other Bills will be introduced. We have heard that from the Labour party for 100 years. For more than 100 years, Labour has promised to abolish the House of Lords, but there it sits, bigger and more bizarre than ever, awaiting the arrival of the new Labour Lords. Where is the Brownian vision of a senate of the regions and nations? Where is the “almost federalism” that we in Scotland were promised during the independence referendum? It is certainly not in the Bill. This meagre rubbish has not even got the credibility to call itself a reform. We will probably have to wait about the same amount of time that has elapsed since the barons and earls won those decisive battles for the Labour party to introduce meaningful reform. We are getting not abolition of the House of Lords, but the long grass from the Labour party in this Parliament. A consultation is about to be embarked upon as Labour prevaricates once again. Nobody in this country believes that the Labour party is remotely sincere about abolishing the House of Lords. From the contributions we have heard so far, no one can believe that Labour Members are in favour of genuine reform of the House of Lords. Even the watering down of the watering down has been watered down, as the proposal for a mandatory age limit of 80 for House of Lords Members has been dropped. That happened because the Government found that they are disproportionately hit by the proposals; their cohort in the House of Lords is older than that of the Conservatives. It is no wonder that few people take them seriously. What we have down the corridor is an embarrassment, an unreformable laughing stock, a plaything of Prime Ministers and the personification of a dying establishment that represents another age. With all its ridiculous cap-doffing deference, it represents almost the exact opposite of the values of my country. I am so proud that my party will never put anybody in that red-leather-upholstered, gold-plated Narnia. While we can laugh at the hereditaries, the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and other Conservative Members are quite right to point to the ridiculousness of having 26 places reserved for Church of England bishops. We are the only legislature in the world that has places reserved for clerics other than the Islamic Republic of Iran. We can take comfort from the fact that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not going to embark on some sort of religious jihad, but what strange company to keep. If there was an intra-parliamentary union of serving clerics, it would be exclusively comprise Church of England bishops and ayatollahs. It is not even the hereditaries or the Church of England bishops that concern me most. The group that concerns me most in the House of Lords is the appointees—the donors, the cronies and the placemen who end up with a role in running our country and making the laws of this land because of prime ministerial patronage. People have a place in our democracy whose only qualification seems to be an ability to give substantial amounts of money to one of the three major establishment political parties in this House. We have evolved a legislature that is at least partly designed by one person: the Prime Minister decides who has the opportunity to take a role in running this country by appointment, based on lists drawn up by him and other British party leaders. No other party leader or Head of State has this power anywhere in the world. It is a prerogative that would make a tinpot dictator in a banana republic blush, yet we on these Benches lecture the developing world about good politics and democracy. The temptation is to stuff the Chamber full of friends and the politically useful. It is a place to reward the servile, thank the time-servers and compensate the downgraded. Only this week, we are considering such an example; there is talk of Sue Gray ending up with a place in the Lords as some sort of compensation for her sacking. I suppose that when she goes down there, she will get an ermine coat to accompany the envoy’s ostrich feather for when she visits her most northern territory, Scotland, as the British envoy. Already, her loyal subjects are practising their haka to welcome their new envoy when she makes that journey north. To see how bad things could get, we need only remember Boris Johnson’s list, which was full of friends, donors and former staff—a list that could not be more gratuitous. Notionally, there is a House of Lords Appointments Commission, but it is an utterly toothless body that Boris Johnson simply ignored. It has done nothing to stop the accumulation of cronies and donors: 68 out of 284 nominations from political parties between 2013 and 2023 were political donors handing over £58 million to the political parties, and 12 of those appointed gave over £1 million. That was the price during “cash for honours” in the early 2000s. We might think inflation would at least be factored in when it came to getting a place in the House of Lords, but not a bit of it: the going rate is still £1 million. “Cash for honours” led to one of the most dramatic police investigations during the 2005 to 2010 Parliament, when a sitting Prime Minister was questioned by the police under caution. Some of his staff were actually arrested. We might think that, after all that, the establishment parties would be a little more circumspect, but not a bit of it; the cash keeps coming in, and the peerages keep getting rolled out. Even as recently as 2021, I asked the Metropolitan police to investigate the Conservative party when we found that 22 of the Conservatives’ biggest financial contributors had been made Members of the House of Lords in the past 50 years. This Government have no plans whatsoever to do anything about the appointees in the House of Lords, save to make more of them. One of the reasons we are getting this Bill so early in this Parliament—the Conservatives are possibly right about this—is to clear the place out, so that the Labour party can put in more of its donors, cronies and place men. It is making sure that there are spaces available, and that the other place does not look so big. The House of Lords is the most absurd, ridiculous legislature anywhere in the world. Famously, it is second in size only to the National People’s Congress of China. Bloated, ermine-coated, never been voted—it is the antithesis of everything we know about democracy. Increasingly embarrassing, probably corrupt and certainly rife for all sorts of abuse, it is an institution whose time has surely come. We put forward a reasoned amendment to the Bill, because we want to hold the Labour party to its historical commitment to abolishing the House of Lords. Unfortunately, that amendment was not selected, but there will be opportunities as the Bill goes through the House to come back to the issue. I say to the Government, “Yes, bring forward your step-by-step incremental changes, but what the general public want is meaningful action on the House of Lords.” A YouGov poll out yesterday showed that the vast majority of the British people no longer want the House of Lords. They specifically and defiantly want it reformed. It is not good enough continuing to pass the buck for another 100 years; something has to be done. I say to Labour, “Pick up Gordon Brown’s report, for goodness’ sake, and have a look at what he says.” The Labour Government should try to enact some meaningful reform. Who knows? It may even make them popular again. It seems to be what the public want. This could be something that they do that the public would actually genuinely support. We have waited centuries for action from the Labour party and we have got next to absolutely nothing. Now is the time for action. No more prevarication—take real action, and get dealing with that place down the corridor.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  One of the dates the Minister missed was Labour’s pledge, which has stood for over 100 years, to abolish the House of Lords. That pledge was reiterated by the Prime Minister only a couple of years ago. Is it still Labour’s intention to abolish the House of Lords? Does he understand the cynicism about further progress, given that the pledge has not been honoured in over a century?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The only other group that seems to reserve a place in the House of Lords is millionaires—party donors. Sixty-eight out of 284 political appointees between 2003 and 2013 gave £58 million to political parties. What will the hon. Gentleman do about them?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  The right hon. Gentleman has been on his feet for five minutes and I am finding it difficult to follow him. Can he answer me directly: is he in favour of getting rid of hereditary peers and people who are in the House of Lords on birthright—yes or no?

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  Oh, please not! [ Laughter . ]

• 14 Oct 2024 · Points of Order · Hansard source

  More

  Further to those points of order, Mr Speaker. It was with a sense of disbelief that we heard the news on Saturday afternoon; we all had to double-check that people were referring to the Alec Salmond whom we have all got to know so well. In 50 years, he has become a colossus—a huge political figure in Scotland. It is almost impossible to think of Scottish politics without Alec Salmond. Alec recruited me to the Scottish National party in the 1990s; he was a fan of a band I played with. I was able to return the favour some time later when I recorded him; another passion Alec had was singing. Let us just say that it was not exactly a huge hit and that it did not bother the charts. Alec was a man of many talents—there were many facets that made up Alec Salmond. Watching Alec conduct political debate and work a room was to watch a political masterclass in engagement and communication. He could do that with a charm that was so effective and beguiling that people naturally felt that they wanted to contribute and be with Alec Salmond. Scotland will miss Alec. We will all miss Alec in the Scottish National party. We must always remember that he came close to delivering what many people thought was almost impossible—Scotland becoming an independent nation; a nation of our own. He took the Scottish National party from a fringe interest—when I was first elected it had five MPs and we had 18% of the vote in Scotland—and we came so close to securing an independent nation of our own, which would never have been possible without the energy, charisma and dynamism of Alec Salmond. We are all hurting in the Scottish National party today. We have lost one of the giants of our political movement. I hope that everyone extends their sympathies to Moira and the rest of the family, to his colleagues in the Alba party, and to everyone who worked with him throughout all these years in a mission that Alec helped to shape and design.

• 14 Oct 2024 · Terrorism (Protection of Premises) Bill · Hansard source

  More

  I am loath to interrupt the Home Secretary; she is making a passionate and clear case for why the Bill is necessary, and the SNP will be supporting her. Is she aware of the concerns from the live music sector, which will be most burdened and most impacted by this particular Bill? Is she in constant contact with the live music sector, and can she offer any reassurance on the number of issues that I know it has raised with her?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

  More

  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairing this afternoon, Ms Vaz. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) on securing this debate and on the eloquent way in which he introduced it. He said that it was like coming to a birthday party; the only problem is that he did not think to bring any cake for all of us attending. Depopulation in rural areas is, of course, a live and pressing issue. The hon. Member captured most of the real issues that we constantly live with in rural areas across Scotland. We took this issue very seriously on the Scottish Affairs Committee in the last Parliament, and we produced two reports on the subject. One was about Scotland’s population and demography, and the range of issues that the hon. Gentleman presented came up regularly in our proceedings. And, just before the Dissolution of the last Parliament, we concluded a report on the cost of living crisis in rural areas, which was very gratefully received by a number of people who were looking at this as a means to address some of the issues that he raised. We have known our problem for a while: Scotland is facing population decline. We are the only part of the United Kingdom that is projected to have a population decline. By 2033, our population will start to go down again. That is after making a bit of progress in the last 20 years, which I think everybody welcomed. Most of that was down to people coming to Scotland from eastern Europe, which boosted so many of our communities. The hon. Gentleman was right to reference the contribution that so many people made to our communities, right across Scotland, under freedom of movement. It is an absolute disaster—a tragedy—that we have lost the ability to get that type of immigration going because of the refusal to review the disastrous consequences of leaving the European Union. Particularly, the opportunities of freedom of movement have left us. In Scotland, we have a falling birth rate and an increasingly ageing population, and the issues following Brexit have created particularly difficult issues. We have acute labour shortages in all sectors, whether that is in our NHS, our care sector, hospitality, tourism or agriculture, and that is even more pronounced in Scotland’s rural areas. The declining population makes it harder to fill the available vacancies that are available. Even if every school leaver opted to work in Scotland’s social care sector, there would still be vacancies left for people to fill, such is the scale of the difficulties that we have. I am not sure what Labour’s new policy is on immigration. I have listened very carefully to the Home Secretary when she has spoken about this in debates, and I have followed what the Prime Minister has been saying, but I am still not sure what Labour is trying to achieve. I think that they understand, respect and get the problem, but it is just that they are not prepared to do anything about it. We still hear the same old language that immigration is a burden and asylum seekers are to be demonised. No clear and concise routes to UK citizenship are being offered and opened up to people who hope to come to our shores. Labour really has to do better on this issue. It has to acknowledge the value of immigration. For goodness’ sake, look what it has done to our communities; look how it has driven economic growth. I was here when Tony Blair opened up the route to the UK to the accession nations. It was a massive success, and, if anything, it contributed to the economic growth that we got in the late 2000s before the economic crash, such was the vision of the previous Labour Government. Please show us some of that same vision, too. The hon. Gentleman is quite right to reference the Fresh Talent scheme. A Labour Government delivered that fantastic innovation, in partnership with a Labour-Liberal Executive in Scotland. Fresh Talent gave us some advantages over the rest of the United Kingdom. It allowed us to retain Scottish-educated foreign national students so that they could stay and consider Scotland to be a home. If only we could see that type of imagination being deployed once again, but even introducing something like Fresh Talent would barely touch the sides of the difficulties that we have just now. There is general consensus among all the political parties of Scotland and across Holyrood that something needs to be done and that we need to address this issue as a priority. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar referred to some of the welcome things that the Scottish Government have done, but the one thing that we need—I cannot for the life of me understand why this has not been seriously looked at—is a Scottish visa. We need to look at the option of a sub-national immigration system that caters for the nations and regions throughout the whole United Kingdom and allows the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and other constituencies around Scotland to get the immigrants they require. Such systems work perfectly and effectively in other nations. The Scottish Affairs Committee visited Quebec last year and saw its system working perfectly. Quebec has an arrangement with France and is able to recruit people in shortage areas. Montreal is now one of the fastest-growing cities and economies in the whole of North America—imagine having just a bit of that in Scotland. I was immensely encouraged during the general election campaign to hear Labour talk about a Scottish visa; I listened carefully to Labour’s deputy leader, Jackie Baillie, talk about the idea glowingly. I spoke to representatives of businesses and sectors in my constituency, who really appreciated that and thought, “Maybe at last we will be able to make some sort of progress,” but that has all gone. What has happened to it? What happened to this idea? Now all that Labour talks about is tinkering with the shortage occupation list. That will help, but it will not do anything to address our real needs, so we need some serious solutions. People tell us that we need to get more people from the United Kingdom to come to Scotland. I remember being lectured by previous Scottish Conservative Members of Parliament, who said that people will not come to Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom—apparently, they are put off by our lower council tax, free prescriptions, free childcare and lack of tuition fees. Apparently, that was also a disincentive to immigrants from eastern Europe and further afield. Those MPs said that people refused to come to Scotland because they would pay a few pounds more in tax. That was absolute and utter rubbish, and we now know that because the latest figures from the National Records of Scotland show that there is net migration to Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom. We need to do more, but let us get away from that nonsense. I hope we do not hear anything like that from the Labour Government. Yes, there are problems; yes, there are real difficulties. Rural Scotland is suffering, but it is now in the hands of a Labour Government. It is not the Conservatives any more, with their cultural resistance to things like immigration. Labour has the opportunity to respond with its values. Please, for goodness’ sake—for the hon. Gentleman’s constituency and for all of us who represent rural constituencies—do something about it. Get it fixed. Help us. Bring forward the solutions.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

  More

  Will the Minister give way?

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

  More

  I will take the chance to add to his list. He knows that immigration is a matter exclusively reserved to the UK Government. When he was special adviser, what did he recommend to one of his Secretaries of State about how immigration routes to Scotland could be improved?