Business of the House

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Thursday 25th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Scottish National party spokesman.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

I associate myself with the comments about the dreadful news from Wales, and of course those about Frank Field.

I make no apology for starting this week where I finished last week. The Leader of the House may recall that I asked for a debate on the new Brexit border controls due to come into effect next week. Answer came there none, but things became clear later on, as the Financial Times reported within hours of my question:

“The UK Government has told the country’s port authorities that it will not ‘turn on’ critical health and safety checks for EU imports…because of the risk of ‘significant disruption’… the new border systems will not be fully ready.”

It is being called a phased implementation approach—very “Yes Minister” speak from some hapless civil servant trying to excuse the sixth such delay. More delay, more confusion for business, but no statement from the Minister.

Scotland’s importers, exporters, agricultural and hospitality sectors and businesses large and small are all at their wits’ end because the Tories insist on imposing their Brexit folly on us. Brexit is estimated to be costing salmon producers—the largest food exporters in the UK—up to £100 million a year. Tourism in the highlands and islands has been devastated, with staff shortages affecting 45% of businesses to date. Brexit was named as the main difficulty for 44% of businesses in Scotland trading overseas.

Before the latest delays were announced, the chair of the Chilled Food Association, which represents 30 trade and professional organisations, said that every time there is a proposal from the UK Government, people invest in paperwork and computer systems and then the Government change the rules again. Since 2021, £200 million will have been spent on just one export health certificate. A recent report found that the UK economy had shrunk by £140 billion, with the average citizen around £2,000 worse off—thanks to good old Brexit that Scotland did not vote for.

Yet this place shuts its eyes to the devastating impact that Brexit has had on people’s lives and businesses. Scots are accustomed to being ignored, overruled and treated with disdain by this Government, but being dragged out of the EU against our will has been an economic and social disaster for us. No party can claim to be the party of business and back Brexit, so I urge the Leader of the House to overcome the vow of silence—an omertà between the Tory and Labour parties—and tell us when we can have an urgent debate on the effect of Brexit, starting with this disastrous delayed Tory trade tax.

Business of the House

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Thursday 18th April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

May I associate myself with the remarks about Passover and about Mr Speaker’s late father, and send my sincerest condolences to him and his family?

Since we last met for business questions, the Leader of the House has been keeping busy, and I thought that one of her social media posts on X during the recess was particularly eye-catching. Indeed, it was unique because it asked her constituents to contact her directly, so outraged was she by a burning injustice. It started:

“Damn right. I know many people will have strong feelings on this…email me…and I will make sure your concerns”

are heard. Those are such strong feelings that you may wonder, Madam Deputy Speaker, what caused that righteous anger, which was not just from the Leader of the House but from Members across the Chamber.

Was it children getting sick swimming through human faeces in the rivers of England, or perhaps the endless strikes in the NHS in England? Was it arms sales to Israel, or an economic crisis that was triggered by a former Prime Minister, now saviour of the west? Was it the cruel, immoral, illegal and ruinously expensive Rwanda scheme? Perhaps the angry post was just a response to the Leader of the House’s constituents in Portsmouth, who are now furious—rightly enough—about the likely demolition of the brand new border control post in Portsmouth, which is among a herd of such white elephants around the UK, and a direct result of the right hon. Lady’s ongoing Brexit confusion that will cost a fortune. No—that was not what prompted the outburst. The Leader of the House and many of her colleagues were furious about England’s new football top—“damn right” they were.

So, no, the farce of the doomed border post on the right hon. Lady’s doorstep has not figured in the busy social media output we see from her. Her Government’s disastrous Brexit import charges are none the less coming in on 30 April, causing even more costly confusion and raising very real concerns about food shortages, as well as her own local difficulties. May I ask the Leader of the House for an urgent debate on these new Brexit charges and the ongoing catastrophe of Brexit, which Scots rejected, yet are forced to suffer the ill effects of? Her constituents will be interested to hear an answer—ideally before she wastes more time launching into another anti-Scotland video script.

Business of the House

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Thursday 1st February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the Scottish National party spokesperson.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Meal do naidheachd, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We saw a softer side to the Leader of the House last week. “The Prime Minister is a great dad”, she loyally read out from No. 10’s script. “He gives a lot to charity”, she whispered. Then, right on cue, normal service resumed and she was thundering fury at the Scots for not voting Tory. She asked me a question that got quite a response in Scotland: “Why do you think us Tory ‘rotters’”—her word, not mine—“are so desperate to keep Scotland in the Union?” Why, indeed? It is generally though that Conservatives act in their own self-interest. Anyway, Scots have been totting up all the great things about being in the UK: the gift of Brexit making us poorer faster than even the worst forecasts predicted; 14 years of grinding, endless austerity; and a crippling debt burden of more than 100% of GDP, just for starters.

However, the Leader of the House is not alone in her desperation to keep Scotland lashed tight to Westminster. She will remember seeing a secret document presented to the Cabinet in July 2020 by her colleague the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. The existence of that document was revealed at the covid inquiry this week. Finalised at the height of the pandemic, it was entitled “The State of the Union” and was a blatant attempt by her Government to politicise the pandemic and undermine the Scottish Government when trust in Government messaging was crucial. It asked the Cabinet to endorse some sort of strategy, most details of which sadly are missing from the inquiry’s version. It required polling, research and data analysis, all at a time when Scotland’s First Minister and Government were focused on and doing their damnedest to protect the people of Scotland.

No. 10 was slithering from one scandal to another. We know that a Union strategy committee and a Union operations committee were set up to mimic the strategy and operations committees that helped create the monster of Brexit. The right hon. Lady will agree that considerable resources were required, diverting cash and personnel from fighting the pandemic. It must be made clear to the public who funded that. Will she ask her colleagues to give a statement on the project, laying out why it was an appropriate use of governmental resources, what it did and what it is felt to have achieved—its key performance indicators, let us say—particularly given the times in which it was conceived? Finally, the Leader of the House will recall that the state of the Union report found, among many things, that 82% of young voters in Scotland want independence. Is she surprised?

Nuclear Defence Infrastructure: Parliamentary Scrutiny

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Wednesday 24th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend give way? [Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but I must say to other Members present that it is simply rude to talk. If whispering has to be done, then whisper.

[Deidre Brock]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on a crucial issue. He talks about secrecy. Does he know about the MOD’s response to my recent questions on safety at its nuclear bases? The response confirmed an alarming trend, with the number of incidents at Faslane and Coulport jumping by a third in 2022, and the figures for the start of 2023 suggesting further rises. Does he agree that surely we have a right, as Members of Parliament, to know why safety records are not improving, as well as the nature of these incidents and their effect on local residents and the environment?

Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Report stage
Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

I thank the many animal welfare organisations that have been in touch with me, and the many constituents—I am sure this has been the experience of Members on both sides of the House—who have also been in touch because they really care. I thank all the House staff; I thank the Clerks for all their efforts, and for their patience with all of us during the relatively short period for which the Bill has been in the House and in Committee.

I wish the new Animal Sentience Committee well in its deliberations, and I look forward to seeing those deliberations bear fruit in the form of real, positive actions from the Government in the years ahead. We are known throughout these islands for having the greatest regard and love for animals. Let us do our level best by them, and show just how much we care through the regard that the Government show for the committee’s actions.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, without amendment.

Business of the House

Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 15),

That, at this day’s sitting, the motion in the name of Mark Spencer relating to Adjournment of the House (Today) may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour and Standing Order No. 41A (Deferred divisions) will not apply.—(Mark Spencer.)

Question agreed to.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

We now come to the motion on the Adjournment of the House. This is not the Question that the House do now adjourn—[Interruption.] I must inform the enthusiastic group sitting on my right that this is in fact the motion entitled “Adjournment of the House (Today)”.

Adjournment of the House (Today)

Ordered,

That, at this day’s sitting, the Speaker shall not adjourn the House until

(1) any Messages from the Lords relating to the Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill shall have been received and disposed of; and

(2) he shall have notified the Royal Assent to any Act relating to Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) agreed upon by both Houses.— (Mark Spencer.)

UK-French Trading Dispute

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Thursday 28th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Lady has only to ask the basic urgent question; I will come back to her for a supplementary question after the Secretary of State has answered.

[Deidre Brock]

Excuse me, Madam Deputy Speaker; this is my first urgent question.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will make a statement on how the UK will work with French officials to mitigate a trading dispute.

Fisheries Bill [Lords]

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Report stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

There are always conditions attached to interventions when the hon. Gentleman allows them—very male, Madam Deputy Speaker. He clearly has ambitions to one day lead in the Scottish Parliament and become the First Minister of Scotland. He always references his constituency and the fact that a large percentage of his constituents voted for Brexit, but when will he accept that Scotland voted 62% to remain, and rejected Brexit? If he has ambitions to be the First Minister, how will he reflect that when he is making his pitch to voters?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. We will be rather careful here. This is a narrow Bill, specifically about—

[Deidre Brock]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have just had to endure a personal attack from the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross). I was making the point that if he wants to make those sorts of attacks, he has to be prepared to take it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

That is not a point of order for the Chair. I assume that every Member can take it when they are having an argument. Let me just take a step back to the hon. Lady’s intervention. It was an interesting political point, but I want to ensure that in answering it the hon. Gentleman does so in terms of the Bill that is before us tonight.

Exiting the European Union (Agriculture)

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Tuesday 1st October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I appreciate that the hon. Lady is being straightforward in what she has just said, but I am afraid she cannot speak to all of the instruments at once. They are being taken separately. There is provision, quite often, to take these matters all at once, and the occupant of the Chair will say, “Everyone may speak to everything at once”, so it is not the hon. Lady’s fault for assuming that she might be able to do that, but I am afraid that it is a pretty strict rule. She has to speak only to the first one, and then later she can speak to the second, and then later to the third and then later to the fourth.

[Deidre Brock]

Those joys await me. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. You would almost assume that the instruments have been split just to fill the time while the Government are off playing in the delights of Manchester. But that would be very cynical of me.

I find myself on my hind legs again talking to statutory instruments that will be necessary as part of the eye-wateringly enormous effort to replace the sensible functioning of the European Union with domestic legislation that seeks to do the same thing. In the bonkers Brexit boorach, this all makes sense to someone, somewhere. I cannot help noticing, however, that if the Prime Minister’s cunning plan had succeeded and Scotland’s Court of Session had not reeled him back in—something that of course the UK Supreme Court agreed with—this place would be empty now. None of us would be here and the very important pieces of legislation that the Minister has brought to us today would still be sitting in a DEFRA drawer somewhere. Well, that is the optimistic view; they would more likely be headed for the shredder, with all the rest of the legislation that was being dumped on Prorogation.

We still await the return of the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill, as well as the environment Bill in this portfolio and scores of other pieces of legislation in other areas, all of which we have been told are needed to keep the UK functioning after Brexit. We have been told by, in my view, the worst Prime Minister in living memory that Brexit day is a mere 30 days away, come hell or high water, deal or no deal, give him ditches or give him death, but we have only these pieces of secondary legislation now, and the other pieces of secondary legislation and large chunks of primary legislation that we have been told so often are necessary for the proper functioning of the UK post B-day are still missing.

It would seem that this Government are determined to rip the UK out of the EU on Halloween, but do not give a flaming flamingo about getting the shop ready for opening day. For sure, there has been a very expensive advertising campaign telling everyone else to get ready, but the UK Government have stood steadfast too long in their refusal to prepare themselves, and we are now looking at a disaster of the Government’s making, while they insist that we are walking out that door no matter what. This legislation should have been prepared and presented a long time back, along with all the other pieces that should have been presented in an orderly fashion. Instead, it comes bundled on the back of a Prorogation that never was, half-formed and very late.

The Government are not prepared for Brexit, as was pointed out in the Brexit Secretary’s letter to Michel Barnier recently. I particularly appreciated his remark that

“there will be insufficient time to complete such work if left until the last days of October”,

as if there currently exists an enormous reservoir of time to do all that should have been done in the last three years. This Government appear to be just getting around to noticing what is coming. I hope that it will not be too long now until they realise what it means. I have to say that I have a great deal of sympathy for the civil servants who must be working flat out trying to get some sense of order into the chaos, because they appear to be getting absolutely no guidance from the politicians who should be pointing the way—led by donkeys, indeed.

So to this statutory instrument, and I will shorten my contribution at this point, Madam Deputy Speaker. On this particular one, the substitution of the role is largely to do with the timing and such things and it is relatively minimal. I will speak at some length on the pesticides instrument and to a degree on the CAP one later, but I will end my contribution at that point.

Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock]

Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that it is a Union of two countries? He is suggesting that Scotland is the same as Birmingham or any city—well respected as they are—within England, but that is not the same thing. We are talking about a Union supposedly of equals, that is anything but. I would suggest that the people of Scotland have every right to make a decision against—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order.

Agriculture Bill

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I appreciate the point made by the hon. Gentleman, but the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock) is her party’s Front-Bench spokesman. She is therefore not subject to a time limit. I am quite sure that, being an hon. Lady and a good orator, she will not take more time than is suitable, but it is up to her to decide what that is.

[Deidre Brock]

Thanks for that, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is always a delight to hear just how warmly we are welcomed by Members in this place from other parties, especially those on the Government Benches.

Returning to my point, these are plans made by England’s Ministers for England’s industry: policies created by English Ministers to be English solutions to English problems. The sensible approach, I would argue, is to embrace Scottish solutions to Scottish problems and Welsh solutions to Welsh problems. Ministers in the Scottish and Welsh Governments should be in full control.

Government’s EU Exit Analysis

Debate between Eleanor Laing and Deidre Brock

Wednesday 31st January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

This has been an interesting debate, and I appreciate the intent behind it, but we have to be a bit more basic in our expectations. Everybody with any sense of how the world works, or even the tiniest ability to listen to experts, knows that leaving the EU is a disaster in slow motion. It is an omnishambles.

Like a train in a spaghetti western running on to a half-collapsed bridge, we know that the plunge is coming, but the people driving the train are shovelling more coal into the boiler—they have never looked over the side and they are fairly sure the train can make the jump to safety on the other side. Frankly, the blank refusal to look at what is actually happening makes blind faith look like scepticism.

The assertion that we will trade jam with China and scones with Brazil to make up for loss of access to the world’s biggest barrier-free marketplace, and the claim that 27 countries will be crippled without our expertise, is madness, as the right hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who is no longer in the Chamber, said.

I do not know what is in the tea in Whitehall, but it is pretty strong. If the analysis is anything like as rubbish as the policy position, its value, as has already been said, will be questionable, but I agree with Labour that it should be published. I am happy to hear that we will get to see the analysis, but it should go further. The people who put us here, and who pay for everything that gets done here and in our names elsewhere, are entitled to know just how much ignorance is at the heart of Government strategy and what the Government’s best forecast is of just how much disaster we are facing.

We all know there is a cliff edge, but none of us knows how high the cliff is. We have seen some analysis, most pertinently from the Scottish Government, and no one is predicting benefits. The best that anyone says is that there might be some way to ameliorate the worst effects, some way to make the pain a little less.

Leaving the EU is bad; walking away from the customs union and the single market is worse. Voters had many reasons for voting to leave. I have heard people offer different reasons, but none of them reckoned that we would end up with better trading relations. The people who will have to suffer the blunt trauma of this exit deserve the scant respect of having these forecasts opened up to scrutiny.

Labour’s motion calls for Members to be allowed to see the forecasts, and I acknowledge the Government’s movement, but I regard that movement as only a good first step on the way to everyone having sight of the forecasts. Frankly, I do not understand why the Labour motion is so narrowly drawn. In fact, I cannot for the life of me understand why there is so little opposition to exiting the EU, the single market and the customs union among Labour Members.

I appreciate there was a substantial leave vote in many of the seats that Labour worries about, and that there was a bit of a UKIP vote against a fair number of Labour MPs, but I cannot understand why an entire party would abdicate the responsibility of leading. Contrary to the Tony Blair doctrine, politics is not always about finding out where people are already heading in order to try to lead them there; sometimes we have to stand and say, “It is this way.” Sometimes we have to say that we believe something is the right thing to do, and the right thing to do now is surely to seek to protect, to the greatest extent possible, our membership of the single market and the customs union.

As we are where we are—heading down a track that comes to an abrupt and uncompromising end—the Government should at least have the courtesy of letting us see what they think are the best-case and worst-case scenarios. On courteous behaviour, I ask the Government to confirm that the analysis will be sent to the devolved Administrations at the same time as it goes to the Chair of the Exiting the European Union Committee.

The public should also be offered the courtesy of a glance at the research. We are told by the Brexit Department that everything is going swimmingly and will be all right if we just have enough faith and patience, so I cannot see why there would be any reluctance to publish the intellectual musings of the Brexit Secretary and the underpinning, in-depth research that I am sure went into those musings.

All might be for the best in the best of all possible Brexits, but we have no way of knowing what kind of Brexit is heading our way, what the great vision of the Government is or what kind of economic disaster zone is heading our way. I have seen nothing plausible to counter those who say that the economic outlook is almost apocalyptic—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I call Geraint Davies.