Drew Hendry
Main Page: Drew Hendry (Scottish National Party - Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey)Department Debates - View all Drew Hendry's debates with the HM Treasury
(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I have to say that my wee heart skipped a beat with delight when I saw that finally, in an Opposition day debate, the Scottish National party was going to talk about something that mattered to the people of Scotland: the cost of living crisis and the problems our constituents face. Surely few of us would dispute that the cost of living crisis being faced by our constituents is a constant and overriding concern for far too many households in this country.
I have often stood here and criticised the Conservative Government, on their energy price hike; inflation; interest rates; and the situation that faces our young people throughout the UK, where too many of them live with the fear that they will never be able to own the house of their own that they would like or that the ever-increasing rent rates in this country, which in my city of Edinburgh are outrageous, put too many options beyond their reach. We must then consider the fact that the Chancellor did not listen when the Liberal Democrats asked him to cut energy bills by £500 per household, which would have made a significant difference to so many families; that the growth in the economy in the first three months of this year was only 0.1%; that, according to the Office for National Statistics, average pay, after taking inflation into account, fell by 3%; and that the take-home salary fell by more than £1,400.
I was delighted when I saw this motion, because our economy in the UK is on its knees and so are far too many families, and not just in Scotland. My disappointment is that SNP Members do not seem to appreciate that they in a unique position, of which I, like many other Members, are jealous, as their party can do something about it in Scotland. By that, I do not mean independence, which it turns out this debate is actually about after all.
Christine Jardine
I will give way in a moment. In Scotland, and particularly in Edinburgh West, I hear every week from my constituents. I hear from business people who managed to make it through the pandemic but are struggling with energy costs and with the burden of business taxes, which the Scottish Government could alleviate but choose not to—
Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)
The cost of living crisis is not really a cost of living crisis; in reality, it is a cost of greed crisis. It is greedflation driven by a lack of political interest in protecting ordinary people. As with any crisis, it is the most vulnerable in our society who suffer most, and there are few more vulnerable and more unsupported in our society than those with a disability. Disabled people are no strangers to poverty and crisis. Under 13 years of Tory Government, they have faced constant cuts and conscious cruelty at every turn, sharpened by punitive and pointless assessment regimes, conditionality and sanctions. We live under a Government who responded to the UK’s mass crisis of debt and hunger by suggesting that people should work more hours or take a second job to help with their finances, but many disabled people face huge challenges to work a single job, let alone a second, and they are even harder hit by the soaring costs of energy, fuel and other essentials.
As the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) has highlighted, according to research by disability charity Scope, disabled households in the poorest fifth spend twice as much of their household budget on energy bills, are twice as likely to have a cold house and are three times more likely to be unable to afford food. The heat or eat scandal is a mark of disgrace on this country, not just because people cannot afford to do both, but because disabled people suffer the worst of it. It shames us as a nation.
Again and again, for well over a decade now, the heaviest burden is placed on the shoulders of those least able to pay, while the wealth of the rich piles up. In a constituency such as mine in Leicester East, where we suffer some of the worst health and lowest incomes in the country, the evils of our unequal system hit especially hard. In my constituency, far more children—37% compared with 26% nationally—live in a family with at least one disabled member than live with none, piling yet more hunger, ill health, stigma and misery on children in a country that is already failing them.
The median annual wage for workers in Leicester East is £19,960, compared with an average of £25,837 in the east midlands and £27,756 in the rest of the UK. The level of poverty in my constituency is stark. My community is hurting. The level of suffering is deep. I am witnessing that daily, and it is painful, yet the Conservatives continue to offer at best a sticking plaster for the grievous wounds they inflict on the poor and vulnerable. In 2017, the United Nations condemned the UK Government’s treatment of disabled people as a “human catastrophe”, and it has only grown worse since then. The abuse and abandonment of our disabled people is an international disgrace and a stain on the UK’s standing among nations. Until this cruelty towards disabled people and all our millions of poor and vulnerable citizens is reversed, the UK cannot consider itself a civilised nation. Every day’s delay in putting it right means more lives lost and ruined.
The Government need to tackle prices and address the inequality of extra costs that disabled people face. They need to work towards the redistribution of wealth and establish a welfare system that provides an adequate level of support for disabled people. We need radical transformational change.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The wind-ups will begin immediately after Mr Hendry sits down.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
I thought you were going to give me an instruction to sit down there, Mr Deputy Speaker, but thank you for allowing me to speak in this cost of living debate.
The shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) and I share an allegiance to a football team, and when we go to some stadiums, particularly for the big events, we often look across and see the empty seats, and go, “Did the opposition come dressed as seats?” I look behind him today, and wonder if the rest of his party have done the same. But no—they have not bothered to turn up because, as the hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) has just pointed out, this is an issue about whether people can afford to heat their homes or to eat. In fact, it is worse than that, because in Scotland during the winter we had people who could not afford to heat their homes or to eat. This is an important thing that we should have seen the Labour party turn out for, but of course we did not.
When it comes to Brexit, what about the harms? We have heard about quite a lot of the harms today in this Chamber. My colleagues have covered a number of them—from the economy and trade to the impact on our population, education, rights and devolution, as well as on the cost of living and the cost of food. As my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) pointed out, when food price inflation goes up, it disproportionately hurts the least advantaged in our society and the poorest. However, it is worse than that, because food price inflation on basic foods is actually higher than the headline rate. It goes up even more, and these are the basic staples that people rely on, yet Labour Members could not even bother to turn up to discuss that with us in this debate.
The Brexit that has been forced upon us is the gift that Scotland didnae want and that keeps on giving misery. It keeps on delivering misery across Scotland for people. I will just mention some of the things it affects. Of course, Labour Members now support Brexit. In fact, as we heard from the Labour leader, if that “sounds Conservative”, they just “don’t care” about it. Brexit has made sure that GDP is 4% lower across the UK. There has been an £800 per year increase, on average, in the cost of living. By the end of last year, according to the London School of Economics, Brexit had already cost nearly £6 billion across the UK in higher food bills, and some £100 billion in lost economic input. When it comes to business, the British Chambers of Commerce has said that more than half its members have faced difficulties because of Brexit. It quotes one of its members saying:
“Leaving the EU made us uncompetitive”.
That is the fairly standard comment that it gets from its members.
The cost in human capital has been tremendous for us. Before Brexit, 6% to 9% of care home staff used to be EU nationals, and now we are struggling to find spaces in care homes for people because we cannot get the staff. The UK Government are doing nothing—nothing—about getting that sorted out. They are doing nothing to solve the misery for people who need that kind of support. Of course, we have the unemployment rate at a record low in Scotland, at 3%, so where are we supposed to get the people? Brexit has starved us of the human capital we need.
We have heard the I-word, and I thought the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) was going to talk about Ireland—independent Ireland—which over the next two years will have a €27 billion surplus, but no, she did not want to do that. She did not want to talk about the success stories of those small independent countries with fewer resources than Scotland that have stayed in the European Union and grown as a benefit of that.
On energy, I want to reflect on an issue I raised with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero about the higher energy tariffs we face in the highlands and islands of Scotland. I said that we needed to do something about that, and I offered to work with him to see what we could do. But no—the answer I got back is that geographic circumstances are the issue: the distances involved result in higher costs of distribution than in other places in Britain. Well, that is rich, because we export our renewable energy around the UK. The distances do not matter when that advantage is being taken, do they? It only matters that it costs us more in Scotland, and the Government are not willing to do anything about it.
Similarly, people are struggling in rural communities with the off gas grid regulations, because they pay a much higher premium for their energy than anywhere else and probably have to use more electricity at a higher rate than for mains gas, and of course face higher costs for liquid petroleum gas and for heating oil as well. The answer I got back on that from the UK Government was, no; their aim is to protect suppliers before people. It is not good enough for them to just wash their hands of a situation where people are struggling, particularly in rural communities, with exorbitant costs to heat their homes during the winter.
I am grateful for the mention earlier of my campaign on credit balances. People are struggling, but electricity companies hold on to their money, in credit, sometimes thousands of pounds—one pensioner in my constituency was nearly £2,000 in credit, yet the company was looking to increase her direct debit even though she had that money with them for safekeeping or use. That money should be returned to people—but, no, that is not going to be done either. What we get back is, “Customers can ask for that money back.” Some people are of course too frightened to look at their bills because of the costs they are facing, while others do not know about this or are intimidated, and some people are told by electricity companies that they cannot get that money back or they can get only a portion of it back. People have rights, and they should be fulfilled. They should be able to get their money automatically returned; it should not be kept on credit balances for companies to use for their own ends. That is exacerbating poverty for people.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West for raising the issue of business rates. The small business bonus has been mentioned, and we have 100,000 businesses in Scotland that pay no rates whatsoever; if our aim is to help people in Scotland, including small businesses, we should realise that there are a lot of micro and small businesses across rural communities, and that directly assists them.
So too do the actions we take on child poverty. The child poverty rate across the UK is 27%: in Wales it is 34%; in England it is 29%; in Northern Ireland it is 24%; and in Scotland it is 21%. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that among the poorest 30% of households, incomes are boosted by around £2,000 per year in Scotland compared to England and Wales.
There are transformational policies to help people: free bus travel for young people in every part of Scotland; the expansion of free high-quality childcare to 1,140 hours, available for three and four-year-olds, and to two-year-olds from lower-income households; the best start foods grant, which helps with the cost of buying healthy food for families with young children; and three best start grants, which could be pivotal in a child’s life—for low-income families, £600 for the first child and £300 on the birth of a later child. There is also the Scottish child payment, the baby box, the free childcare extension, free school meals, free bus passes and much more from the Scottish Government to help out.
Dr Whitford
Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with 13 years of austerity is that austerity may make the Treasury balance sheet look good in the first year but it starves local economies because people have no money to spend, so we see boarded-up high streets, and in the end that reduces the tax take to Government, so it simply does not work?
Drew Hendry
My hon. Friend is exactly right that it starves communities, and, worse than that, it starves families—it starves children. It starves people of the opportunity we could give them, because we do not have the advantages that we should and would have if we had the powers to make the decisions we need to make.
Drew Hendry
No, I am about to conclude.
The supports that I have laid out are the kinds of policies that we put in place in Scotland to try to help and to mitigate measures such as the bedroom tax.
Drew Hendry
No, I am going to finish in just a second.
Those are the things that we try to do in Scotland to help to mitigate the harms from this place, but we could do so much more. We could do things very differently, but we need the powers of independence in order to do that.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
We are moving on to the wind-ups. I anticipate Divisions in 20 minutes.