Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Quigley]

Indeed I do. For example, will there be immigration checks at the border? What happens when someone granted immigration status in Scotland seeks work in Newcastle, Manchester or London? Will employers in those cities suddenly be tasked with verifying whether an individual is subject to Scottish immigration rules? These are not just theoretical concerns; they are real logistical and administrative challenges. Without clarity and co-ordination, businesses across the UK could be forced to navigate a confusing patchwork of immigration rules that add unnecessary complexity and cost to the workforce.

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He talks about the challenges of operating a system across the Scotland-England border effectively. That is not difficult in an age of digital technology. Does he agree that it could be easily achieved? If we can achieve the arrangements that we have with Ireland and a common travel area, why could it not work to have a regional immigration system?

[Mr Quigley]

The hon. Gentleman is asking us to take a leap of faith. The Bill is one line. If he had the answers to those questions already, the referendum result might well have been different. [Interruption.] Sorry, the Bill is two lines.

The Bill could create uncertainty for employers, particularly in sectors that rely on a flexible and diverse labour market, such as construction, healthcare and agriculture. I have outlined the similarities of my constituency to those of my Scottish colleagues, but were I to suggest that the Isle of Wight had its own immigration laws to help correct our demographics and workforce, they would beg me to talk more about ferries.

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[Tonia Antoniazzi]

Which part of the Scottish Labour proposals do I find attractive? Well, this is your Bill, mate. I do not have any comment to make there.

I am the chair of the APPG on beer, which I mentioned, so I have many thoughts on hospitality. The hospitality sector has struggled across the board, particularly in recovering post covid. Growing the sector cannot simply be resolved by changing immigration rules: this is a multifaceted issue. In fact, so many of the areas of change that could help the sector to grow, such as business rates, apprenticeships, tourism and tax, are already devolved to the Scottish Government.

[Graham Leadbitter]

I welcome the fact that the hon. Lady enjoys coming to Scotland for rugby games. I have a Welsh great-uncle who once had a try out for the Welsh national team, so it is a great passion within my family.

On hospitality, however, will the hon. Lady concede that although immigration might not be the only part of the problem, it is a significant part of the problem and we need to deal with it? That is what the Bill is for. There are other things that can be done and that are being explored and worked on by the Scottish Government and other Departments in the UK Government, but we are talking about immigration today. Will she concede that it is a significant issue and that this Bill could help to deal with it?

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[Ian Murray]

My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. All the Scottish National party debates that I have seen in this Chamber since I was lucky enough to be elected in 2010 have been predicated on independence. There have been no positive debates about what we can do to make things better for people in Scotland, increase economic growth, create skills and opportunities for the future, tackle inequalities in health or close the attainment gap. Those are all failures of the Scottish National party, but SNP Members do not want to talk about them. I am sure you do not want me to continue to talk about them either, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Graham Leadbitter]

The point that the Secretary of State makes about the oil and gas sector is very pertinent. At Ardersier, the First Minister of Scotland and a representative of the UK Government met with Haventus relatively recently to support the investment there with joint efforts from both Governments. That was very welcome, but to support that we need a thriving service and hospitality sector, which is a real problem in my constituency. In parts of the highlands in Moray, in places such as Nairn and Aviemore, there is a growing population. Despite that, there are hospitality businesses that are open only five days a week out of seven, because they cannot staff them—they cannot get the staff. How does the Secretary of State suggest that we deal with that?

[Ian Murray]

As I have said throughout this debate, this is a really complex area. We cannot deal with it by just pulling on one lever and with a separate immigration system. We can deal with it by providing proper pay in the workplace, which is what we have done through our new deal for working people. We can provide housing, so that people can live there and afford to live there. We can provide connectivity, so that people can move around. A very practical thing that the Scottish Government could have done was to pass on the full rates relief that English hospitality businesses had, which was not passed on to Scottish hospitality businesses. Indeed, despite this Government legislating for a 40% reduction in perpetuity, the Scottish Government still refuse to do that.

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[Dame Meg Hillier]

I plan to do so later in my speech, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Modifications under section 30 of the Scotland Act 1998 —that is, Orders in Council—require Scottish, as well as UK, parliamentary approval. However, modifications via primary legislation only require approval from both Houses of the UK Parliament. By taking this approach, the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry is saying that this is a matter entirely for this Parliament—this House and the other place—cutting out his colleagues in Holyrood. That is an interesting take on events, given that we already have a good relationship between Holyrood and Whitehall on many of the issues we are discussing today.

The most significant and long-term changes to the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament have been made by Acts of Parliament, rather than Orders in Council. That is also interesting; we could have a long discussion about that, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I suspect that I would be trying your patience if I started discussing the constitutional settlement for Scotland, so I will resist that temptation. However, the Scotland Acts 2012 and 2016 implemented recommendations made by the Calman commission and the Smith commission respectively, so there has been change along the way. Devolution was never intended to be a static thing; it was intended to reward the competencies, skills and needs of our devolved bodies, but those bodies need to play properly and professionally, not engage in cheap political gimmicks. I enormously respect the hon. Member for Arbroath and Broughty Ferry, but the flimsiness of this Bill suggests that it has not been properly thought through.

If the Bill were to omit some or all of paragraph B6 of part II of schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998, it would transfer responsibilities for those matters to the Scottish Parliament. There is a really big issue here, which is why I believe we should not adopt the Bill. We have seen how the different tax rates in Scotland can create challenges, for example with how the armed forces are paid. The Ministry of Defence has a formula for different branches of the armed forces, so someone on a tour in Scotland is paid more to take account of the tax rate. We cannot have two members of our armed forces personnel doing the same job with the same title but earning differently. They are UK armed forces.

[Graham Leadbitter]

Will the hon. Member concede that the current situation in that regard is unacceptable? There are many thousands of personnel working in my constituency who now pay less tax in Scotland; if they get transferred to a base in England they pay more tax, but there is no mechanism in the other direction. It is completely discriminatory against the people of Scotland.

[Dame Meg Hillier]

Dare I say it, on the hon. Gentleman’s head be it. It was the Scottish Government who introduced the variation in taxation, which has left a challenge for anybody working in a UK-wide public body or UK-wide company. I repeat that personnel who are doing the same job on the same headline salary are ending up paying different taxes because they are working in different jurisdictions. That has caused a big headache for the Ministry of Defence and has been quite complicated to deliver. That is just one example—we could go into others, but we are here to discuss immigration—of what happens if we heedlessly and recklessly dive into changing something without proper preparation, thoughtful discussion and agreement.

Draft Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018 (Scottish Adult Disability Living Allowance) (Consequential Modifications) Order 2025

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2025 General Committees

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Hobhouse. We fully support this order to support the ongoing work of Social Security Scotland and the Scottish Government.

I was not planning to speak for long, but the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, has opened a few doors for me so I might as well take them. Although Scotland may be the highest taxed part of the UK overall, 51% of its workforce pay less tax than they would in the rest of the UK. It is simply a more progressive system than the rest of the UK.

The Scottish social security system is based on dignity and respect. Many Government Members, and some Opposition Members, will probably welcome that. The UK social security system is incredibly complex—benefit advisers and experts within the system struggle to navigate their way around, never mind the claimants. With this order, there is an opportunity to simplify how people apply for benefits from Social Security Scotland, especially if they have conditions that are not going to improve. People who move on to this benefit in Scotland have the opportunity potentially to apply for the Scottish adult disability payment rather than Scottish adult disability living allowance. That is a choice for the individual, but people have that opportunity and there is dignity and respect at the heart of the process—something that needs to progress much further in the social security system.

My final point is that there is one way to resolve the complexity that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine, mentioned: to devolve all the powers of the UK Government to Scotland. I reserve the right to continue to campaign for that circumstance.

Scotland: Transport Links

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Lewell-Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on securing this important debate.

As the SNP’s transport spokesperson in Westminster, cross-border connectivity issues are high on my agenda. A lot has been said about the strategic trunk roads—the A74(M), the A1, the various border routes, the A68, the A7 and suchlike—and about the vital investment that our road network requires. Colleagues in the Scottish Government are very much aware of the pressures on the core roads network, and of the work required to maintain and upgrade it.

The hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk referred to the Scottish Government’s alleged failure to invest in trunk roads. It is a statement of fact that the capital provided to the Scottish Government was among the worst settlements ever made under the previous Government, which was of course a Government of his party.

[Dr Arthur]

The hon. Gentleman speaks with some knowledge on this subject, but he will know that the Scottish Government have wasted hundreds of millions of pounds on ferries, about which there are major questions. Would he rather that money had been spent on the trunk roads he referred to?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I accept the point about ferries, and I would rather they had arrived on time and that the overspend did not exist, but we can compare that with High Speed 2, which is billions of pounds overspent, and the benefit to Scotland has diminished to near zero. There are other examples, including the Scottish Parliament building in Edinburgh, which was signed off by a Labour Government and was massively overspent. It was not the MSPs who supervised or had oversight of that, so there are examples from across all parties of issues with infrastructure projects. The important thing is obviously to learn from them and stop them happening again, which I fully support.

Looking to the south-west of Scotland, I stayed in Galloway for a couple of years and I know very well what the A75 is like. It is a vital link to Northern Ireland, through the port of Cairnryan, and there is ongoing work there. I welcome the cross-party work on that and hope it can continue, with design improvements to the road. I very much support that, and I know that colleagues in the Scottish Government do as well.

There has been a lot of work and discussion between the Scottish Government and the UK Government on rail issues. I very much welcome the Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Act 2024, which we fully support. Rail was already in public ownership in Scotland but, in fairness, that legislation has enabled us to ensure that that will continue—public ownership was the operator of last resort, so there was no surety about that, but now there is. There is a lot of mutual interest in getting this right, so will the Minister give an assurance that there will be strong engagement with the Scottish Government as the legislation develops? I hope that much of that can be addressed prior to publication.

Finally, it is vital that we retain the protected slots at the key hub airports, which are critical to our onward connections to the rest of the world. Also, to pre-empt a question of mine that has been selected for tomorrow, and to use this opportunity to give a bit more context, EGNOS, the European geostationary navigation overlay system, is very technical—

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order.

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[Andrew Bowie]

Of course, ferries are increasingly important. I did not want to embarrass the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) by dwelling too much on ferries, because that is something on which the Scottish Government have such an embarrassing record. The ferry links between our islands and the mainland—be they the links with Orkney and Shetland, the Western Isles or across to Northern Ireland—are vital to the economic success of our country, linking communities and providing essential routes for health, leisure and tourism and to export the goods that are produced in those communities.

The way that those communities, especially in the Western Isles, have been let down by SNP ineptitude to deliver new ferries on those routes has been embarrassing. The sight of windows being painted on the side of a ferry just so that it can be launched in a PR stunt by the former First Minister will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing moments for the Scottish Government in recent times. Frankly, they owe an apology to those communities who have been so let down by their failure to invest properly in the future. It is not only the Western Isles; other communities rely on ferry connectivity, and it is essential that they get the funding they deserve.

We do not only have questions to ask of the Scottish Government, whose record on transport is dismal. We also have questions for the UK Labour Government about their own record, the decisions that have been taken and their future plans.

[Graham Leadbitter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Bowie]

I would be delighted to give way to my SNP friend.

[Graham Leadbitter]

I just wanted to ask the hon. Gentleman to put on the record that he was part of the Government for a significant period of the past 14 years of austerity, during which there were significant reductions in overall capital expenditure. Does he think that helped or hindered investment in strategic capital transport projects?

[Andrew Bowie]

I think what most hindered investment in strategic transport projects was the ineptitude of the Scottish Government. Colleagues and I have already gone through the SNP’s litany of broken promises to communities across Scotland, be that on the A96, the A9, the A90, the work on the A75, the new ferries to the Western Isles or the protection of air routes across Scotland. It is quite rich for a Scottish National party Member to talk about under-investment in transport when his party’s own record is so woeful in that regard; it might be one of the reasons that he and his colleagues number only nine Members of Parliament, compared with the large number that the SNP had in the previous Parliament.

Let me move on from talking about the SNP and focus on the UK Labour Government, because we also have plans for them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

A decade on, I am sure the thoughts of the whole House remain with Hollie’s family and friends. I join my hon. Friend in commending the vital work of the Hollie Gazzard Trust. In relation to the steps we are taking, we have a mission to halve the levels of violence against women and girls within a decade. That is really tough to do—nobody has ever committed to that before. I invite everybody across the House in join us in that. That will include, among the steps we are taking, placing domestic abuse experts in 999 control rooms, to ensure that abuse is picked up early; launching a pilot of new domestic abuse protection orders; developing a national framework to track and target high-harm offenders; and strengthening stalking prevention orders. We will take other measures to make good on that commitment.

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

Q12. A WASPI—Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign—woman dies every 13 minutes. That is two women since the Prime Minister took to the Dispatch Box today, and it is 111 women every day, and nearly 17,000 since he took office. How many more WASPI women have to die before the Government take action to give them the financial redress and justice that they are due?

[The Prime Minister]

We are moving at pace on all relevant issues. We passed the Budget to provide the baseline for what we need, and we will continue to do so.