Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Stewart Malcolm McDonald Excerpts

Monday 8th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP) [V]]

I am grateful that I can make some remarks in the proceedings this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Budget was obviously in the worst and most hellish possible circumstances, but I am afraid that the Chancellor and, indeed, the wider Government have failed to meet the moment and really go big on the economic recovery and stimulus that so many people need and had hoped for.

There are two egregious elements that many people, including many of my constituents, have commented on. One is, of course, the fact that even still, a year into the pandemic, so many people who are self-employed are left behind. The other is the utterly egregious way in which the Government are using the levelling-up fund as some kind of party political slush fund aimed at their own constituencies. This is deeply egregious and needs to be fixed.

I want to raise two quick issues in the short time that I have. I have raised one previously, and it concerns hospitality staff in Glasgow at two venues, Blue Dog and AdLib. We are talking about a lot of people here. Because of a dispute between their employer and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, all those members of staff have had no furlough since November last year—none, not a single penny. I raised this two weeks ago and, in fairness, the Paymaster General’s office contacted me and offered to set up some kind of meeting to try to resolve the fact that those members of staff are not only not getting furlough but not getting universal credit because their real-time information is being updated as though they were still being paid. However, I am afraid to say that I am still sat here waiting, and almost 200 people, many of whom are my constituents, are still without any support. I plead with those on the Treasury Bench tonight to get this resolved and to do so swiftly.

The last thing I will raise in the few seconds left to me is that it is three years ago this month—indeed, you were in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker—when I introduced a Bill to ban unpaid work trials, on that fateful Friday in March 2018. The then Minister talked the Bill out. Unpaid work trials are exploitative, they cost us around £3 billion per year and they unfairly target young people. As we go into the recovery, let us do something good, decent and right for people as they try to find work: let us ban the egregious use of unpaid work trials as we move into the recovery phase.