Cost of Living
Debate between Douglas Ross and Ian Murray(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Douglas Ross
The point I was moving on to is that there is not a single mention in the SNP motion about the oil and gas industry, heating homes, and making sure people have affordable energy in their homes and businesses. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) says we should wait for his speech, but why not put it in the motion? Of course, the SNP cannot speak about oil and gas because it is in government in Scotland with the extremist Greens, who are against the oil and gas industry. The only reference to it in the opening speech by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South was in response to my intervention. I asked specifically about oil and gas, but I got an answer about nuclear. The SNP has given up on the north-east of Scotland and the 100,000 people employed across the UK in the oil and gas sector, because it would rather have the Greens in government and be anti-oil and gas. It would rather import oil and gas from other countries with a higher carbon footprint and a higher cost than support our oil and gas industry and those who work in it in Scotland.
Another issue that leads to problems with the cost of living in Scotland is taxation. Scotland is the highest taxed part of the United Kingdom. Indeed, the Scottish Fiscal Commission estimated that the divergence of Scottish taxation from the rest of the United Kingdom between 2017-18 and 2023-24 means that people in Scotland will have paid £1 billion more in taxation than their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom—£1 billion more in tax because the SNP has made Scotland the highest taxed part of the United Kingdom.
The SNP often likes to claim that the majority of working Scots pay less income tax than those south of the border. That has now been proven to be completely false. [Interruption.] I am sorry if I am keeping up the hon. Member for Glasgow East, but his constituents are paying more tax in Scotland because of decisions his Government have taken. If he thinks that is something to yawn about, I am pretty sure his constituents do not.
By not increasing tax thresholds with rising salaries, the Scottish Government have confirmed that anyone earning more than £27,850 in Scotland will pay more tax than those in the rest of the United Kingdom. We have calculated that the average Scot will earn £29,095 in 2023. Because of SNP policies and the taxation plans of the SNP Government at Holyrood, we are all paying more in taxation—more than £1 billion over that period. The majority of Scots and the majority of constituents represented by SNP MPs will be paying more in taxation because of the decisions taken by the SNP Government at Holyrood.
Ian Murray
The hon. Gentleman is rightly pointing to the high tax burden. I think he said—I apologise if I am paraphrasing—that we have the highest tax burden in Scotland because of decisions made by the Scottish Government. Does he therefore agree that we have the highest tax burden on working people in the last 80 years across the UK as a result of his own Government’s decisions?
Douglas Ross
I know we cannot have that conversation. The hon. Gentleman mentions 80 years. I am not sure what timeframe he is speaking about, but I was looking at the Scottish Fiscal Commission, which looked at the differential from 2017-18 to 2022-23. It said that people in Scotland paid £1 billion more in taxation than they would have done if they lived elsewhere in the United Kingdom. That is a damning indictment of the Scottish Government, who are not interested in growth and not interested in supporting people through the tax system. They are now making sure that a majority of Scots pay more in tax than people elsewhere in the country.
The final point I want to focus on is growth. The Government amendment rightly prioritises growing the economy. Of course, that also could not be included in the SNP motion because it does not support economic growth. It has brought Ministers into the Scottish Government from the Green party to serve alongside its own Ministers, and the Greens—they are quite open about this—are anti-economic growth. They do not believe in it. But we need our economy to grow. We need a growing economy to pay for the services that people across Scotland and across the United Kingdom rightly want and expect.
We also know that GDP grew more slowly in Scotland than in the rest of the United Kingdom during the period when Nicola Sturgeon was in office. From 2014 to 2021, GDP grew at a slower rate in Scotland than in other parts of the United Kingdom. The SNP has always been anti-economic growth. It has shown that with its previous policies and its previous performance. Now, by bringing the extremist Greens into the Government, it is continuing on that trend.
When we speak about the cost of living crisis and the issues affecting all our constituents, I hope that the SNP reflects more on what it could and should be doing with the powers and the finance it has in the Scottish Parliament. It should be looking to the future to grow Scotland’s economy and ensure we can fulfil our potential for all of Scotland, our constituents and our businesses. If we had a Government who were more focused on economic growth and on delivering for the people of Scotland, rather than on division and independence, Scotland would be a lot better off. I hope we will soon see the SNP Government in Scotland suffer for their repeated failures over 16 years, letting down young people, letting down taxpayers, letting down the health service, letting down education and letting down the justice system. This is a Government in Scotland who are tired and out of ideas. The sooner they are replaced, the better.
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill: Section 35 Power
Debate between Douglas Ross and Ian Murray(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Ian Murray
Let me make some progress. I wanted, because of accusations that have been made, just to go through a little of the Scottish Labour party’s response to the Bill in the Scottish Parliament. We had a multitude of concerns about the initial Bill. Nobody could have said that the Bill that was presented in draft to the Scottish Parliament was in any way fit to become final legislation, but we worked constructively with the legislation, with the UN rapporteur for women and girls, with the LGBTQ+ community and with women’s groups, which were raising concerns about the Bill. We tabled amendments. We got the Equality Act on to the face of the Bill, which is referred to in a lot of the adverse effects in the Government’s document. We made many other amendments to that Bill to help alleviate concerns, but, unfortunately, the only way we are going to settle these arguments now is through the courts.
Douglas Ross
I am grateful to the shadow Scottish Secretary of State for giving way. The leader of the UK Labour party said at the weekend that he had serious concerns about reducing the age from 18 to 16. However, when my Scottish Conservative colleague, Rachael Hamilton, moved an amendment to keep the age at 18 rather than reducing it to 16, Labour MSPs joined the SNP to vote the amendment down. What is the shadow Secretary of State’s position on the age limit in Scotland?
Ian Murray
We put in protections on the age limit in Scotland. We have the leader of the SNP at Westminster accusing the Scottish Labour party and the UK Labour party of different positions on this. There is nothing between the positions, but we should have devolution at the same time. The leader of the UK Labour party has made his position perfectly clear, and Anas Sarwar, the leader of the Scottish Labour party, and his team put in significant protections for 16 and 17-year-olds, including the notary public measure, which means that a person has to swear in front of a notary public for this to take effect and they have to get a responsible adult over the age of 18 to be able to do any of this under the age of 18.
Essentially, the hon. Gentleman is challenging people not to have different views on this, but two of his Front-Bench MSPs voted for the legislation. People are entitled to have slightly different views on what is an incredibly important subject. He has managed to do only one thing in the past week, which was not to get both Governments together to try to resolve this, but to write to me to ask my position on the Bill. I would rather that the two Governments came together. [Interruption.] We want the Bill passed and we want section 35 resolved; it is as simple and as straightforward as that. It has been our position for some time that we should modernise the GRA. That position has been eloquently expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda, and it is still the one that we hold.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) made the crucial point—and this goes back to an earlier intervention—that gender recognition certificates can already be issued under the Equality Act. As we sit here today, single-sex spaces are protected by exemptions under the Equality Act. The adverse reasons that the Government are giving us on that are not about the process of getting a GRC, but about the process that is currently already in place. The Government are all over the place on this, and it is little wonder that the only result is to fan the flames for people who wish to break up the United Kingdom.
Cost of Living Increases
Debate between Douglas Ross and Ian Murray(2 years, 3 months ago)
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Douglas Ross
I have listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, and I make this point: the tax rises that his Government are introducing in Scotland have made Scotland the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom, and that is affecting nurses, teachers and police officers. That is who it is affecting right now in Scotland.
Ian Murray
Does the hon. Gentleman think that his Government’s national insurance tax rise in April helps or hinders that?
Douglas Ross
We have been clear, as my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said, that the Government have taken a difficult decision to focus that vital funding on health and social care—an issue that has not been grappled with for decades by parties on either side of the Chamber. It certainly has not been grappled with by the Scottish Government. Sometimes difficult decisions must be taken to ensure that we have a health service and support for older people in this country that has not always been available.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East mentioned local government, and I suddenly got excited, because I thought we were finally going to hear an SNP politician standing up against the disastrous cuts that Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP are imposing on local government, but he said “local government”—Hansard will show this when the report is published—and then did not say another word. The SNP has the highest ever block grant since devolution. Since 1999, more money than ever before has been going from the UK Government to the Scottish Government, and what do they do to local councils? They cut the local government budget by £371 million. That is a cut from the SNP Government to local government, when the UK Government are giving them more money than ever before to spend.
Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK
Debate between Douglas Ross and Ian Murray(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
May I start by paying tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), who set out the severe impacts that this Brexit proposition is having on the Scottish economy? It is a shame; the title of the debate is “Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK”, but I think we will need more than one debate to go through all the impacts. She ran very quickly through a lot of the impacts that are affecting Scottish business.
May I take Members back to Christmas eve? I am sure we can all just about remember that. We were all turning our attention to our family Christmas traditions. We were putting on our Christmas jumpers, double-checking we had everything for Christmas day, cutting sellotape with our teeth, examining the TV guide to see when we could watch “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and perhaps even thinking about a small libation or two. I am sure our thoughts would have been turning to family and friends who were unable to celebrate Christmas with us due to the lockdown. Then, out of the mulled wine haze appears not Santa Claus but the Prime Minister, sitting in front of the Downing Street Christmas tree delivering an “all I want for Christmas is as an EU trade deal” address to the nation.
The Prime Minister gleefully proclaimed that the UK and the EU had come to a last-minute trade and co-operation agreement, there would be no tariffs on goods, the Northern Ireland protocol would be maintained so the Government would not break international law, and, rather surprisingly,
“there will be no non-tariff barriers”.
I hope Santa was listening very clearly, as he really should not be delivering gifts to those who do not tell the truth. Going all the way back to the day after the EU referendum, it was always going to be the case that the cold reality of Brexit would one day disinfect all those undeliverable Tory promises given to the British people at the time and since, and that is exactly what has happened.
The bare-bones Brexit deal that was so lauded by the Prime Minister falls way short of what was promised and what was needed. It is not “get Brexit done”, as the Minister said; it is “get done by Brexit”. With our country facing one of the biggest economic recessions of any developed nation and with our businesses under increasing strain from the pandemic, they have to try to navigate new trading rules with the UK’s largest trading partner that have reduced exporting output by 60%. What will happen when the EU economies start to reopen fully? That is when the deal will truly be tested. It is holding back British businesses with reams of new red tape and unnecessary bureaucracy. Businesses were promised no non-tariff barriers, but the Government’s lack of leadership and clarity and their constant dither and delay mean that businesses are facing challenges that they certainly were not prepared for.
It did not have to be this way. The Government, instead of sticking their head in the sand, could have worked with industry to get ready. They could have focused on practical action to support businesses—measures such as recruiting and training the promised 50,000-plus customs agents we knew were needed to get the checks done. They could have used the transition period for what it was designed for—transitioning to the new arrangements. Instead, they wasted that period on negotiating the deal.
The Government think that the deal they got on Christmas eve is the end of the matter, but sectors of the economy know that this is just the beginning of huge difficulties and challenges, and for some it is unfortunately the beginning of the end for their business. It is certainly the beginning of the end for many that export, none more so than the Scottish fishing industry. That the Brexit deal is neither what Scotland’s fishing sector needed nor what it was promised will not surprise anyone. The devastating delays that the sector is facing were entirely predictable. There is anger and frustration from our fishers, who have been very badly let down. Elspeth Macdonald, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation chief executive—I am glad I was not drinking at lunch time, Mr Deputy Speaker; that was my impression of Sean Connery as well—was scathing:
“This deal falls very far short of the commitments and promises that were made to the fishing industry by those at the highest level of government.”
It is a pattern, isn’t it?
What about Scottish agriculture? There has been nothing positive for farmers in leaving the EU with this deal. They are happy that no deal was avoided, but where are the sunny uplands they were promised? They, too, see something familiar. The Prime Minister is getting a reputation not just for overpromising and underdelivering, but for overpromising and then delivering nothing.