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Tag: Kirsty Blackman

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2024 Speech on the Economy, Welfare and Public Services

    Kirsty Blackman – 2024 Speech on the Economy, Welfare and Public Services

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 22 July 2024.

    I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today, particularly the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who gave an excellent speech. As with many of the maiden speeches, now I really want to visit his constituency. It just sounds like an absolutely amazing place. I particularly congratulate all the new Members who have come from a council background. Being a local councillor sets them up fantastically for coming here. It means they are under no illusions about the hard work that is required to be put in for their constituents and the people who live in their area. Congratulations to all of them.

    I also congratulate the Chancellor on being the first female Chancellor. As the first woman in this place ever to lead on the economy, although I have been followed by a number since, I am incredibly glad to see one on the Government Benches. I hope that, as she said, her tenure lasts significantly longer than those of some of the Chancellors we have seen in recent times.

    Today’s debate is taglined “Economy, welfare and public services”. Apart from the maiden speeches, speeches focusing on anything other than economic growth have been fairly few and far between. I will not for one second deny that economic growth is important, but the whole point of it is what we then do with it. It is about what we do with the extra tax take generated from the growth we have created. There is no point in having growth for growth’s sake. There is no point in having economic growth, and no point in the Conservatives saying how fast the UK is growing compared with other countries in the G7, if the same handful of people are getting richer and richer and the vast majority of our constituents are struggling harder than they ever have before.

    We need to ensure that the economic growth and the increase in the tax take that the Labour party is hoping to deliver involves a benefit for all those who live in these islands and in our constituencies. It is massively disappointing to hear that the five pledges and priorities for the Labour party in government do not have eradicating child poverty at the heart of them. I am really glad the Government are bringing together a discussion taskforce to reduce child poverty, but today they could bring 300,000 children out of poverty and move 700,000 children into less deep poverty simply by scrapping the two-child cap.

    One of my previous colleagues in this place, Alison Thewliss, campaigned incredibly hard on the rape clause—everybody will know of the work she did on that. There are 3,000 women across these islands who are eligible for an exemption from the cap because they have applied under the rape clause. They have had to tell the Government they were raped in order to get an uplift in their benefits. That is horrific, and even if the Government are unwilling to move on the two-child cap they should be doing something about the rape clause and what people are having to prove in order to get the exemption.

    It would be very easy to increase growth, again overnight, by increasing migration. Migration to these islands increases the amount of growth. The economy would immediately have grown if the Prime Minister had gone to the summit with the EU leaders this week and said “Yes, free movement benefits us: it benefits our economy, benefits our society, benefits our young people, benefits our musicians, and benefits so many different groups and individuals. It benefits our culture; it makes this place a better place to live. Therefore we are signing up again to free movement.”

    We need only look at some of the past Budgets, such as a Budget George Osborne gave from the Dispatch Box, when it has said in the Red Book that increasing migration will increase the tax take because of the economic growth it will bring. My constituents and people across Scotland recognise that, and we will always argue for a better migration policy—and if the Government are not willing to do it for all of these islands, we will argue for one tailored specifically to Scotland so that we can make our own decisions that suit the needs of our communities and encourage that economic growth.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    Kirsty Blackman – 2023 Speech on the Budget

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 16 March 2023.

    I can understand why, when it comes to policies on spending, on tax and on the Budget, we have an ideological divide across this Chamber. I can understand that the Conservatives want to go down a different route to those of us who are left of centre, but I cannot understand the experiential divide that seems to occur. I do not understand how those of us on the Opposition Benches are being approached by constituents who have lost all hope, who have nothing to look forward to and who are looking at their energy bills wondering how they are possibly going to make it through the next few days, let alone through the next few months, yet those on the Government Benches do not seem to be experiencing that. The hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) said that her constituents had not lost all hope. A number of Members seem to be standing up talking about things that do not affect or are not the highest priorities for our constituents.

    I have been representing communities and individuals in Aberdeen in an elected role for the past 15 years, and I have never seen such levels of desperation as those we currently face. I have never seen the numbers of people who are contacting our surgery or our office talking about suicide. I have never seen these levels of worry and debt—and I was an MP for Aberdeen when the oil price crashed, when we saw major impacts and job losses in our city.

    The fact is that an absolute lack of hope is being offered, and this week’s Budget could have done something to alleviate that. The Government should have gone far further than a freeze on energy prices. They should have been looking at what people’s energy bills were previously and working to reduce them, not simply freezing them. As our leader in Westminster, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn) said yesterday, the reality for people in Scotland is not that an average household is paying £2,500—in Scotland, it is £3,500. One of the Conservative Members yesterday stood up and talked about the fact that we had had a warm winter. It was -8˚C in Scotland this week in some places. It absolutely has not been a warm winter. People are freezing, unable to afford their energy bills.

    If we want to talk about and think about boosting employment, boosting jobs and boosting growth—boosting employment and boosting jobs are two different things—we need to make changes. The UK Government need to make changes in their approach. The first thing they could do, given the amount of in-work poverty, is increase the minimum wage to something that people can actually afford to live on and pay their bills with.

    The reality is that that real living wage is going to have to go up, because inflation is going up. We can take the total measure of inflation and look at that, but food prices are going through the roof. The Government and the Bank of England can do what they like to reduce inflation, but no matter by how much mortgages are rising and how much people are squeezed, they will still have to buy pasta, rice and potatoes. They will not be able to stop buying those things. Inflation will continue on the things that matter the most to people, even if we manage to discourage some incredibly rich people from buying yet another fancy sports car—that is brilliant; that will really reduce inflation! That will not reduce the costs for our constituents that are currently spiralling, and it will not reduce the costs where it matters.

    We need to see a proper increase in universal credit. We need to see that money that was taken away—the uplift introduced during the pandemic—reinstated. We need to see proper decision making by this Government, not their saying, “Universal credit is broken so we will increase the number of sanctions.” That does not help my constituents who are having to go to food banks or those who are working and having to have their wages topped up by universal credit. It costs the Government money to top up those wages, by the way. We could be in a situation where they increase the national minimum wage to a better level, and then they would get more tax as a result and end up in a situation where fewer people required universal credit. I do not see why that is not a win-win for the UK Government.

    To create the jobs and growth that we need to see, one of the biggest things that the UK Government could do is to encourage immigration. Brexit has done what it can to reduce the number of people working in our NHS. People are talking about not being able to get a doctor’s appointment, but that is not because too many people are coming into the country; it is because of the exodus from our NHS as a result of Brexit and the way that the UK Government continue to treat doctors, nurses and anybody who comes here from another country. The Illegal Migration Bill will only add to the hostile environment that has been created.

    The changes to post-study work visas will do the same. They create investment in our country, which is wonderful, so reducing them would be a significant problem. We need the Government to rethink immigration. For example, if asylum seekers, many of whom are highly qualified, are escaping desperate circumstances and want to work, were allowed to work, it would help some of our communities where there is a lack of people working.

    I am pleased to see the changes that allow NHS doctors to have their pensions, but those changes should have been restricted to NHS workers—not for all doctors in the private sector or people in other roles. All the issues that I have heard from my constituents relate specifically to doctors, and that is the issue that we have raised.

    On CCS, I am pleased to hear that something is happening, but the previous version of the Acorn Project was pulled by the Chancellor during a Budget speech 10 years ago. We need investment in the Acorn Project in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2023 Speech on the Procurement Bill

    Kirsty Blackman – 2023 Speech on the Procurement Bill

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 9 January 2023.

    Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to everyone in the Chamber. Thank you for calling me to speak on Second Reading of the Procurement Bill.

    I will take the tiniest bit of leeway at the beginning of my speech to thank my predecessor as the SNP Cabinet Office spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara), for his hard work in this role. He does not leave an easy gap to fill as he moves on to lead for us on international development, but I will do my best to learn as quickly as possible, and what better way than with the Second Reading of the Procurement Bill and the subsequent Bill Committee. That is not a joke—the Minister will be totally fed up with me by the time the Bill Committee has ended.

    Both the SNP Westminster group and the Scottish Government have significant concerns about the content of the Bill as currently written. I am disappointed by how the Paymaster General put forward his views on the Scottish Government’s action, given that constructive discussion is going on about how best to amend the Bill. I hope he is going into those discussions in a more constructive manner than it sounded like from his tone at the Dispatch Box when he spoke about the views of the Scottish Government. Corrections need to be made before the legislation can be considered acceptable, because the Bill undermines the devolution settlement.

    We have not tabled a reasoned amendment to the Bill on the basis that the Scottish Government hope they can resolve the issues with the UK Government. However, should the UK Government fail to fix the Bill, we absolutely will oppose the legislation at future stages. The Bill seeks to confer a power exercisable concurrently by UK and Scottish Ministers to implement the Government procurement chapters of the agreements with Australia and New Zealand by secondary legislation. Although the negotiation of international agreements might be a reserved matter, their implementation in devolved areas, such as Government procurement, is a devolved matter.

    The correct constitutional solution would be to amend the Bill to grant the implementation powers solely to Scottish Ministers in Scotland—obviously not in the rest of the UK. If the UK Government refuse to make that concession, at the very least the Bill must be amended to require the consent of Scottish Ministers when UK Ministers act in devolved areas to implement international agreements. It is a vital issue of principle. Devolution must not be undermined every time a sitting Westminster Government fancy doing so.

    The Scottish Government are working to resolve these issues with the UK Government, and that is why we have not tabled a reasoned amendment to reject the Bill, but I and my colleagues urge the UK Government to continue that work. They often claim that they want to work with the Scottish Government, and we want to ensure that this Bill is not added to the litany of devolution-undermining legislation that has been put through since Brexit.

    We have further concerns about the Bill, and I hope the Minister will accept them in the constructive spirit in which they are meant. We believe that the UK Government must ensure that supporting environmental objectives is clearly and explicitly included in the Bill’s objectives. Those objectives should be compatible with the Scottish Government’s more ambitious climate change reduction targets. If the UK Government are to act in such a way on reserved matters, they need to take account of the fact that the devolved legislatures have different and more ambitious climate change targets.

    Robin Millar (Aberconwy) (Con)

    The hon. Lady referenced the devolution agreement, and she has just mentioned reserved matters. Can she clarify whether she is referring to the Scotland Act 1998 and devolution as set out within its terms?

    Kirsty Blackman

    Yes, I am referring to the devolution settlement and how devolution works. Within the Scotland Act, there are matters that are the competence of the Scottish Government and ones that are the competence of the UK Government. In that regard, the implementation of international agreements in relation to how public procurement works is a matter for the devolved legislature, and we would prefer that the UK Government recognised that, rather than giving a power in this Bill that could overrule that.

    The Bill includes a discretionary exclusion group for environmental misconduct, but I am not clear why that exclusion should be discretionary. The UK Government are failing time after time to embed environmental objectives in legislation. They refused to do so with the Subsidy Control Act 2022 or with the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, despite the Opposition pushing them to include it. It is as if they are keen to have big headlines on climate change targets, but not actually to embed them and do the actual work, and not to put those targets where it matters, which is explicitly in legislation that this place is putting forward, without exclusions and without discretionary rules. It should be embedded in every single thing we are doing, because it is the most important issue for this generation and for future generations. The Bill must explicitly commit to taking environmental considerations into account when awarding contracts, and that should be a core consideration, not a pointless box-ticking exercise.

    We welcome the retention in the Bill of the principles that underpin EU procurement rules: transparency, equal treatment, non-discrimination and proportionality. However, having the principles included in the Bill is utterly meaningless if they are not upheld. It is vital that the principles are practised. As was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), the UK Government’s shambolic handling of the covid contracts is a stark reminder of the danger of not upholding these principles. Transparency International’s report on the public contracts awarded during the pandemic noted that critical safeguards to prevent corruption were suspended “without adequate justification” during the pandemic procurement processes. It also found “systemic bias” towards those with connections to the UK Government. The rush to try to get more PPE has already been mentioned. It was vital that PPE was procured; the issue is how that was done, which explicitly favoured those who had close links to the UK Government. That is not how it should have been taken forward.

    We need measures in the Bill to ensure that the UK Government cannot unilaterally decide to suspend the safeguards and principles that are in place. The horrendous nepotistic waste of taxpayers’ money should not have happened once, and we absolutely cannot allow it to happen again. The opportunity should have been taken to include the measures put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson) in his Ministerial Interests (Emergency Powers) Bill.

    Lastly, but no less importantly, the UK Government should take this opportunity to ban malicious actors and organisations involved in human rights abuses from the supply chain. During the Bill’s passage in the other place, several peers tabled amendments that sought to cut companies responsible for or complicit in slavery, genocide and crimes against humanity out of the supply chain. That is a noble principle and it should be adopted regardless of circumstances. It is unfortunately necessary that this needs to be explicitly included, as products from companies with horrific records are widespread through UK procurement chains.

    The UK Government have shown that they can, after delaying, dithering and being publicly shamed, remove Huawei from the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure, and there is no reason why they cannot do the same with other companies, such as Hikvision, which is directly involved in the Chinese Government’s detention of Uyghur Muslims. More than a million cameras from Hikvision are present in the UK and they are used by as many as 61% of public bodies. The US Government blacklisted it in 2019; the UK Government have not yet taken comprehensive action against this company, despite making clear that they are aware of the issue. The SNP would like to commit to working with others across the House who seek to protect the supply chain from harmful actors and ensure that public procurement does not work to enrich those who profit from crimes against humanity.

    I look forward to the Public Bill Committee—I really do—and I hope we can hear evidence from those who are expert in public procurement. I have no doubt that we will table amendments to ensure that the Bill respects devolution, that human rights are protected and that environmental priorities are actually prioritised.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2015-11-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to his Answer of 4 November 2015 to Question 14206, for what reason his Department’s quarterly report of transparency information from July to September 2014 was not ready for publication until 15 October 2015.

    David Mundell

    The Government publishes an unprecedented range of Transparency data. This is a significant task across all Departments, and Information is published as quickly as is possible.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2016-06-08.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many unaccompanied asylum seeking children were denied permanent asylum having applied as an adult in 2015.

    James Brokenshire

    When a child passes the age of 18 and their Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) leave expires, they are no longer considered to be a UASC and are therefore required to take steps to return voluntarily or seek further leave to remain. Our records show that the number of main asylum claimants under the age of 18 years of age, who were granted UASC leave based on an asylum claim made on or after 1 April 2005 , who went on to submit a further leave application in 2015 and were refused is 311.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2015-11-04.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to his Answer of 4 November 2015 to Question 14206, for what reason his Department’s quarterly report of transparency information from January to March 2015 was not ready for publication until 15 October 2015.

    David Mundell

    The Government publishes an unprecedented range of Transparency data. This is a significant task across all Departments, and Information is published as quickly as is possible.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    Kirsty Blackman – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2016-06-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what discussions he has had with the devolved administrations on implementation of the Apprenticeship Levy.

    Nick Boles

    We are working closely with the Devolved Administrations and Territorial Offices, regularly meeting with officials and Ministers on levy implementation. The last Skills Ministers meeting was in February.

    We want to ensure the levy works for employers wherever they are in the UK and will be publishing further information later this month.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2015-11-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the Answer of 9 November 2015 to Question 14925, what for reason his Department’s quarterly report of transparency information from July to September 2014 took four months longer to prepare than the report on that information from January to March 2015.

    David Mundell

    I refer the hon Member to my answer of 9 November 2015 (UIN 14925).

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2015-11-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the Answer of 9 November 2015 to Question 14925, on publications, what deadlines his Department places on its publication of transparency information.

    David Mundell

    I refer the hon Member to my answer of 9 November 2015 (UIN 14925).

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    Kirsty Blackman – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Scotland Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Kirsty Blackman on 2015-11-25.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, pursuant to the Answer of 4 November 2015 to Question 14206, when he first saw draft copies of his Department’s accounts for (a) July to September 2014, (b) October to December 2014 and (c) January to March 2015.

    David Mundell

    This Government publishes an unprecedented range of data. This represents a significant task for Departments. We remain committed to publishing data in a timely fashion, and further transparency data will be published in due course.