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  • Carol Monaghan – 2022 Speech on the Future of the UK

    Carol Monaghan – 2022 Speech on the Future of the UK

    The speech made by Carol Monaghan, the SNP MP for Glasgow North West, in the House of Commons on 16 May 2022.

    In this Queen’s Speech, I would have expected to see some radical interventions that are urgently needed to tackle the cost of living crisis, to tackle climate change and to properly support our elderly community, including elderly veterans, but there is a real lack of ambition in the speech, and this Government have done the absolute opposite of making Britain the best place to grow up and grow old. While they have lined the pockets of their cronies, they have limited the opportunities of young people. They have caused and then ignored the cost of living crisis, which has left many children and elderly without enough to get by, and delayed action on climate change, which arguably will have the biggest impact on our younger generations.

    For us in Scotland, this is a tale of two Governments. The Scottish Government are determined to make Scotland the best place in the world to grow up and grow old, regardless of household income or social demographic, but only as an independent nation will Scotland have the levers, the decision-making powers and the full fiscal autonomy to see that ambition fully realised. [Interruption.] There is heckling from those on the Government Benches. I would have thought that the results of the elections two weeks ago would have shown them something—perhaps they would have learned some lessons. People in Scotland more and more are waking up to this.

    Let us compare the two Governments. A woman in Scotland who is expecting a child is given a baby box filled with essentials for her baby—clothes, books, teething toys, blankets. The message is clear: your baby is important, your baby is valued and your baby is welcomed. At the same time as the baby box was introduced in Scotland, the UK Government introduced a two-child limit on child tax credit and universal credit. It is apparently okay to have up to two children. Beyond that if you are a low-income household your baby is neither welcomed nor valued by this Tory Government.

    The British Pregnancy Advisory Service said that over half the women it surveyed who had an abortion in the coronavirus pandemic and knew of the two-child limit said that that policy was important in their decision-making around whether to continue the pregnancy. That is pretty damning evidence. It is no surprise that, since 2016—since mothers have been expecting babies who would be born after that policy came into force—there has been a sharp increase in the number of abortions. Women are choosing abortions because they cannot afford to have a baby. The best place to grow up?

    In Scotland, the Scottish Government have introduced the Scottish child payment—£20 a week for every eligible child and that will be rising to £25 a week—and that is mitigating some of the worst impacts for families. Frankly, the progressive policies of the Scottish Government must be matched with similar interventions from Westminster.

    Last week, we were treated to the comments of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson), who said that people were only using food banks because “they cannot budget” and

    “cannot cook a meal from scratch.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2022; Vol. 714, c. 185.]

    Today, Gareth Mason, head chef at Absolute Bar & Bistro in Westhoughton, has said that the hon. Member’s comments were “tone deaf” and “insulting”. He has set about proving this by cooking seven everyday meals, such as spaghetti Napoli, beans on toast, baked potato—

    Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)

    Order. Can I just check that the hon. Lady has informed the hon. Gentleman that she was going to refer to him? That is perhaps just a reminder that that is what she would do.

    Carol Monaghan

    Madam Deputy Speaker, I have not. I was not making a point of order; I was referring to something that was said in a debate and has been said in the press.

    The chef, Gareth Mason, said:

    “I’ve come to the conclusion it’s a load of rubbish. These meals I’ve done, as soon as you put any protein or dairy into them, it’s not feasible to do it for 30p. If you eat beans on toast for every meal, it might work, but even if you did cheese on toast, the cost of cheese would be more than 30p on its own”,

    and that is before considering the cooking cost of the food.

    Dr Luke Evans (Bosworth) (Con)

    My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) was very clear that he offered anyone on the Opposition Benches to go and join him down in Ashfield. Given the problems the hon. Member has outlined, is she planning on going down to see what happens in Ashfield and how that food bank functions?

    Carol Monaghan

    I would love to do that, but more than that, I look forward to the cooking book from the hon. Member for Ashfield, because I am sure that will be a really popular volume. I will even buy some copies for my own food bank if we think we can be making meals for 30p a day—incredible!

    The fact is that people on low income or on benefits are far superior with managing their finances because they have to be. According to Jack Monroe, the bootstrap cook who gave evidence to the Work and Pensions Committee, the impact of the cost of living crisis on

    “millions of children living in poverty in Britain today”

    is

    “going to be, in some cases, fatal”.

    This is first and foremost due to the rise in the cost of everyday essentials, not because families on low incomes cannot budget or cannot cook a meal from scratch.

    But it gets worse. The Minister for safeguarding—the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean)—said on Sky News today that people struggling with the cost of living should just “take on more hours” or “get a better-paid job”. This shows how detached this Government are from the lived reality of so many people in our communities that we represent. Hunger impacts on the ability of children to learn. As one Member has said, they cannot concentrate and they cannot think. I know of teachers who are keeping cereal bars and snacks in their desk drawers to give to children to make sure they have something in their tummies.

    In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State talked about extracurricular activities, and I think every Member here understands the importance of these. But for families who are just about managing—they are just about managing to pay bills and to feed their children—the things that will go are the little extras. These are the sports clubs, the activities, the birthday parties, the days out, the holidays—in fact, all the little things that together make childhood so special, and that enrich their experience and their ambitions.

    It is good to hear the Secretary of State also talk today about the importance of teachers. As a former teacher myself, I know the difference that good teachers can make to young people. It is good to hear him talking about his ambition to make the starting salary for teachers £30,000 a year. That will only be £3,000 below what Scottish teachers currently start out on, with £33,000 a year.

    In Scotland, we want to create a more equal society. One way we aim to do that is through widening, rather than restricting, the opportunities for our young people once they leave school. The Scottish Government’s young person’s guarantee ensures that every young person from 16 to 24 has a chance to go to university or college with no tuition fees, or has a chance to secure an apprenticeship or high-quality job. It is significant that, of anywhere in the UK, Scotland has the highest proportion of young people with positive destinations post school.

    Time and again, we see this Tory Government undermining progress towards a better society for our young people. They talk of untapping aspiration, yet just a couple of weeks ago the chair of their Social Mobility Commission said that fewer girls than boys are studying physics because they dislike “hard maths.” That perpetuates outdated and harmful gender stereotypes about girls, particularly in science, technology, engineering and maths, which is close to my heart. That is no way to untap aspiration or ambition.

    Students in England are considering their career and whether they are willing to take on a lifetime of debt. The Government’s equality analysis found that their student finance reforms will likely have a negative impact on graduates from disadvantaged backgrounds, while benefiting those who are already more privileged. The reforms will not, in fact, increase social mobility. This Government are making policy decisions that will hinder opportunity, to the obvious detriment of so many young people.

    I could talk about Brexit and our lack of mobility across Europe, and about the international collaborations that have been lost, but I want to speak a little about our elderly community. According to the Centre for Ageing Better, one in five pensioners—more than 2 million people—is living in relative poverty. Worse than that, many are living in abject poverty. This represents an increase of more than 200,000 in just the last 12 months, and the problem will only get worse.

    The report also presents a stark picture of up to a 10-year difference in lifespan between wealthy pensioners and poor pensioners. Pensioners have been abandoned by this Government, who scrapped the pension triple lock. Pensioners will be among the hardest hit by the rising cost of living; some already have to resort to spending the day on buses or eating one meal a day just to keep warm, as we heard last week. “The best place to grow old”?

    Many UK citizens abroad, including a significant number of veterans, are living in poverty because of the freeze in overseas pensions. Their pension is frozen at the point at which they moved. Countries such as Canada have formally requested a reciprocal arrangement to cover pension uprating, but this UK Government have declined.

    Our pensioners include veterans who have given the very best of themselves through their service. We have a duty of care to them, and I will talk briefly about one particular group that I know has support from both sides of the House—the nuclear test veterans. Their numbers are dwindling and they have had a lifetime of health issues, yet they have received neither a medal, recognition nor compensation. This is the only country not to have compensated its nuclear test veterans. Surely we can do better for this small group.

    The SNP Scottish Government are doing what they can to support households during these difficult times—fully mitigating the bedroom tax; mitigating council tax; doubling the Scottish child payment; providing free tuition, free prescriptions and free school meals for all primary schoolchildren—but just as Scotland tries to mitigate the worst excesses of this Tory Government, the Scottish Government are suffering from budget cuts by them. A lack of powers for the Scottish Government means that we can only really deal with things around the edge—with the symptoms of poverty, not the deep-rooted causes of inequality in our society that deliver child poverty and pension poverty. Only with full independence can we realise our ambition for our children, our young people and our pensioners.

  • Carol Monaghan – 2021 Speech on Lords Amendment 2B of the Armed Forces Bill

    Carol Monaghan – 2021 Speech on Lords Amendment 2B of the Armed Forces Bill

    The speech made by Carol Monaghan, the SNP MP for Glasgow North West, in the House of Commons on 13 December 2021.

    There is a debt of gratitude that we owe to members of the armed forces, and we have seen that acutely over the last few days as they mobilised to help with the vaccine booster campaign. I received my booster on Friday, and there was certainly a large armed forces presence there. As well as thanking members of the NHS, I would like to extend my gratitude to members of the armed forces who are contributing to that campaign over the next few weeks.

    As we renew the Armed Forces Act, it would have been great if we had done so with some provisions that delivered a real impact for members of the armed forces. I suppose the litmus test for this is: will members of the armed forces notice any real difference as a result of this legislation? I think that for the majority the answer, sadly, is no, and that is disappointing.

    The Lords amendments today are a final attempt by those in the other place to flesh out the provisions of this Bill, and to attempt to improve what had been billed as a great opportunity to improve our offerings to those who serve. It is disappointing that the expertise of Members of the other place, which was mentioned by the Chair of the Defence Committee, the right hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has essentially been disregarded. That is not how this should work. I am not a great fan of the other place myself, but I must admit that there is real legal and military expertise there that was not listened to or paid attention to, which is disappointing.

    What would we have liked to see? We would have liked to see improvements in service accommodation. As the Bill progressed, the SNP put forward very modest amendments on this, such as asking that the basic standards of accommodation for social housing should also apply to members of the armed forces. That was a reasonable amendment, but it was thrown out. We saw no movement on visa fees for Commonwealth service personnel. There was the idea that they should serve for 12 years before we even consider this, but that is utterly unrealistic; it is not a reasonable position for us to take.

    Most disappointingly, there is very little improvement to service justice, particularly for rape or sexual assault. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Sarah Atherton), as I did last week, for the superb work she did in the Defence Sub-Committee report on the experiences of women in the armed forces, and I echo some of the comments already made. If we really want to increase the number of women who serve—as we should, because diversity is positive—we must look at their experiences as they go about their duties.

    To give the Minister his due, he has acknowledged that there have been failings in service justice in the past. It is important that that has been recognised. Conviction rates remain disappointingly low—a point I shall return to—but it is not just about conviction rates: it is also about those who made complaints and reports who were subsequently asked to withdraw those complaints. How are we going to deal with that? The data the Minister talks about will certainly shine a light on the issue, which is important, but we need to see what happens, because there are too many reports of people being asked to withdraw complaints.

    As I mentioned in last week’s Westminster Hall debate, some of these amendments, particularly on service justice, are so reasonable that many Members on both sides of the House question why they have been rejected. I am concerned that the Government are worried about the visibility of these issues, whereas I feel that the public spotlight must be shone on them, because that would be beneficial. We need to accept and admit what is going on before proper change can take place.

    Last week, the Minister said he would be

    “making non-legislative changes and enhancements in procedure so that the experience of the victim in the civil or military system has parity.”—[Official Report, 6 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 97.]

    That is positive. I also welcome his remarks today about the statistical data on serious crime in terms of reports, prosecutions and convictions, but I echo the concerns already raised this evening about what we will do if this data shows no improvement. I ask the Minister to accept that it is not enough just to publish the data, and to commit to making a regular statement to the House, preferably annually, based on the data, so that Members are able to scrutinise it and discuss how it is going to be used. Data on its own is of no use if we have no plan in place to actually use it.

    The Scottish National party will of course support the Bill, but as the Minister knows, this is a missed opportunity. Ultimately, it fails to deliver the changes required for those who serve.

  • Carol Monaghan – 2020 Speech on Education

    Below is the text of the speech made by Carol Monaghan, the SNP MP for Glasgow North West, in the House of Commons on 14 January 2020.

    I welcome you to your new position, Mr Deputy Speaker.

    I am slightly concerned by the closing remarks of the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) about not paying the blindest bit of attention to those on the Opposition Benches. The purpose of the Opposition is to scrutinise Government, and a Government that has a free rein to do what it wishes is a very dangerous tool, so we should all be aware that while we might not agree politically on different issues, we should be listening and paying attention to points raised, regardless of where they come from.

    On education, the Queen’s Speech had a lot of small promises that are not going to deliver the punch required. In our considerations, we have to ask whether education is about personal gain or societal good. If it is about personal gain, why should we be that bothered? If it is about societal good, education must be from early years to employment and must be provided by Government, regardless of the path a young person takes. Every year round about the time of national exam results there is a great campaign called NoWrongPath. There is no wrong path—different young people will take different routes to achieve what they want—but we must be there to support them, financially and in other ways, because this is not just about getting young people to university; it is about positive destinations and employment. Some 93% of young people in Scotland achieve positive destinations, which is the highest in the UK, and that means employment, training and tertiary education. I talk about tertiary education, rather than higher and further education, because in Scotland the lines are blurred, and should be blurred regardless of where someone lives in the UK. It should not be about HE being the gold standard and FE being something different. We need to work in collaboration, and all types of tertiary institutions have their place.

    The investment in FE in the Queen’s Speech will not have clout if FE is considered second best to HE. The £1.8 billion to upgrade the infrastructure does not come close to what is required for FE in England. Frankly, it is too little too late. A lot of that money will be used up dealing with a backlog of maintenance problems and ​ongoing issues. Given the huge number of locations delivering FE in England, what has been proposed is merely a small sticking plaster to cover a huge, gaping wound.

    City of Glasgow College, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), is one of the institutions that have benefited from the £810 million invested by the Scottish Government since 2007. That is approximately 45% of the amount that the UK Government are proposing to invest in FE in England, which is far closer to the figure that is required. Scaled up, it would be £8 billion, not £1.8 billion.

    City of Glasgow College benefited hugely from the Scottish Government’s investment, receiving £228 million to create a “supercampus” for 40,000 youngsters in Glasgow. The college sits between two higher education institutions, Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian Universities. For a long time, youngsters attending colleges felt second best because their institutions looked second best, but City of Glasgow College is the absolute jewel of Cathedral street in the centre of Glasgow, and no young people studying at that college consider themselves to be second best.

    Let me say something about schools. School funding is an ongoing issue. In England, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, school spending per pupil has fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010. That entirely contradicts the Prime Minister, who has said that school spending is at record levels.

    Sir Desmond Swayne

    The two are not mutually exclusive. School funding is at record levels, although pupil numbers grew faster during that period, putting pressure on and reducing the amount per pupil. Will the hon. Lady accept that, even given that reduction, we still spend more per pupil than any other rich nation in the world—more than Japan or Germany—with the exception of the USA?

    Carol Monaghan

    But you spend significantly less per pupil than we spend in Scotland. Even with the Government’s proposals—even with the increase in per-pupil funding—you are still not coming close to what we are spending per pupil.

    Sir Desmond Swayne

    And the results in Scotland are not as good as those in England. Not every problem is solved by throwing more money at it. Just look at the studies by the Programme for International Student Assessment which were released only recently.

    Carol Monaghan

    I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the PISA studies, because that gives me an opportunity to talk about them. Let us talk about PISA. What exactly is it? It is an extremely crude metric that looks at very particular things. What it does not look at are communication skills. It does not look at problem-solving skills, and it does not look at employability skills. Those are the very skills that employers have been asking for, which is why we transformed our curriculum in Scotland. Countries that do well in PISA, such as China and South Korea, also have extremely high levels of student suicide. I do not want that for my young people in Scotland, and not one of us should. China also selects the pupils whom it puts forward for PISA. So there are many things that are wrong with it.​

    These are the questions on which we should be judging our young people. Are they in employment? Yes. Are they having a positive experience? Yes. Are they developing the skills that employers and businesses are asking for? Absolutely.

    Jonathan Gullis

    The hon. Lady has mentioned PISA. Does she not share the concern of Conservative and, I hope, Opposition Members about the decline among students in Scotland in maths and science—which provide the vital skills to which she referred—in comparison with their compatriots in England?

    Carol Monaghan

    When I look at the tiny differences between students in England and students in Scotland—and there are tiny differences—and at the holistic education that has been developed in Scotland, no, I do not share that concern. Scottish students are developing a broad range of skills. Unlike youngsters in England whose curriculum is being squeezed and narrowed, they still have a broad range from which to choose. No: I absolutely defend our Scottish education system. In the last 10 years, our attainment gap has narrowed, while we are still battling with the effects of austerity. The hon. Gentleman is a teacher. I am a teacher too. I have been there, trying to teach children who have had no breakfast. How can we deal with an attainment gap when the kids who we are teaching are so hungry that they cannot concentrate? That is what we should be looking at.

    I mentioned teachers’ pay earlier. It is a bold statement that, by September 2022, the Government will increase teachers’ starting salary to £30,000. Great; fantastic; but Scotland is already there. From this year, after their initial probation year, Scottish teachers will be earning £32,994. That is happening now, but unfortunately this Government are miles behind. If we are talking about teaching as a profession—if we are talking about valuing the very people who make the difference to our young people—we need to pay them properly.

    The Secretary of State did not answer my question about the guaranteeing of teaching salaries in academies. For too long, academies have been able to set their own pay scales, and to work outside the scales that are negotiated with teachers’ unions and the profession. Academies pay what they want, and that means, once again, that they are able to pay salaries that are below the nationally agreed levels. Yes, in some cases they may pay above, but they often pay below, and that is certainly not the way to encourage others to join the profession. In Scotland we have more teachers per pupil, and that too must be looked at: while the Government are sorting out the salary, they might deal with that as well.

    Let me now say something about tertiary education. We in Scotland are often attacked about the number of youngsters achieving entry to university. As I have said, I do not make the distinction, but for the benefit of those who do, I will say some things about universities. The largest-ever number of Scottish students are at universities, and record numbers of our poorest students are going to them: 15.6% of full-time first-degree entrants are from the most deprived areas of Scotland. That is tackling inequality in a real way.

    In January last year, the Commissioner for Fair Access, Sir Peter Scott, said that “significant, and welcome progress” had been made on access, and that

    “Scotland is now the pace-setter among UK nations in fair access to higher education”.​

    He went on to say that Scotland’s improving widening access figures vindicated our free tuition policy. He said:

    “The latest figures vindicate Scotland’s policy of free higher education, which of course has other aims apart from making universities more socially inclusive—not least the commitment that higher education should be seen as a public good from which society as a whole benefits and not just as a private investment producing higher earnings for individuals.”

    Sir Desmond Swayne

    I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again. She is most generous. How can it be a vindication for a Scottish university such as St Andrews—a Scottish university—to limit its intake of Scottish students to 20% of the university population?

    Carol Monaghan

    Despite that, more Scottish students are achieving a university education than ever before. I am happy with that. There has again been a nod to the Augar review, which was mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State. “Considering thoughtfully the recommendations made in the Augar review”: what does that mean? What does it mean for the higher education institutions that are thinking about their funding for August and September this year? Will it be £7,500, or will it be £9,250? What will the fees be?

    Of course we would welcome any reduction in fees for students in England. That would be of benefit, but it will not be of benefit to have student loans with no time limit. At the moment, we write them off after a period of time, but to allow those student loans ad infinitum, as is being suggested, is extremely worrying. We would be burdening young people not with 30 years of debt but with a lifetime of debt.

    Scotland’s universities are internationally successful but we know that Brexit threatens that, and we have not had the assurances we need at this stage to put our minds at ease.

    Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)

    Does the hon. Lady agree with my concern that institutions such as Aberystwyth University in Wales still have no clarity as to whether they will receive the same level of investment for research and innovation as they did under the European structural funds?

    Carol Monaghan

    Yes, absolutely. We have had these generous promises of money to match European funds. I would like to see us continuing in Horizon 2020 or the next version of it. That would be the best way. I am concerned about the funding, because it is important for any research group or higher education institution. However, this is not just about the funding; it is about the collaboration. When we start removing European funding, we also remove the infrastructure around rich collaborations that have been going on for many decades. Also, EU staff account for about 11% of our staff in Scotland, but they are still not sure what their position is.

    A recent report from the Royal Society has shown that the UK’s share of EU funding has fallen by €500 million since 2015. There has also been a drop of 40% in UK applications to Horizon 2020. We are still in it just now, but we have had that drop because people do not have any certainty. The UK is now seen as a less attractive place to come and do research, with 35% fewer scientists coming to the UK through key schemes. That is ​of concern, as is Erasmus and what Brexit will mean for that programme. We know about the benefits of young people coming here on Erasmus and of our young people managing to travel throughout Europe on Erasmus. They are young people for whom this opportunity would not historically have been available, and it will potentially not be available again. It would be useful if the Minister could confirm whether it is the Government’s intention for us to continue to associate with Erasmus and whether we are going to pay into it.

    David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)

    When the Secretary of State opened the debate, he spoke about the importance of Erasmus, but does my hon. Friend find the Government’s warm words about Erasmus bizarre, given that they voted against the amendment to the Brexit legislation last week that would have committed them to working with Erasmus?

    Carol Monaghan

    Yes, and we are talking about very little money. It really is a small amount of money that would allow our continued participation and that valuable and rich experience for young people to continue, so this makes absolutely no sense to us.

    I have yet to see any evidence, in the few years that I have been a Member of this Parliament, of this Government really considering education to be a societal good. We saw the abandonment of the nursing bursary. Obviously, we then had a drop in applications. The Government then partially went back on that, but nurses will still have to pay them £9,000-odd a year, regardless of the nursing bursary, so I am not seeing that.

    The Secretary of State also talked of collaboration and the sharing of best practice between Scotland and England. That is brilliant. I am really pleased to hear that, and I hope that he is going to match our per-pupil funding, our teacher-pupil ratio, our teachers’ pay, including for teachers in academies, and our commitment to further and higher education. I also hope that, rather than giving young people debt through fees of £9,000-odd or £7,000 a year, this Government will look at abandoning tuition fees altogether. Let us look to best practice: look to Scotland.