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Tag: Kirsty Blackman

  • Edward Leigh – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Edward Leigh – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    That was an interesting speech, although I am not sure that the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) carried the rest of the House. This is the iconic centre of the United Kingdom, and it is not surprising that the SNP wants to make it into a museum.

    I commend the Leader of the House for the moderate, sensible, open-minded way in which he opened the debate. I suspect that very few people would disagree with anything he said, and most of what the shadow Leader of the House the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) said was sensible, too.

    We all agree that we have to just get on with it. There have been too many delays, and—let us be realistic—they will probably still be working around us in 50, 60 or 100 years’ time. That is the way of these old buildings.

    I hope we will move on from this endless debate about whether or not we have a decant. I rather resent the fact that those of us who have been arguing the case against a very lengthy decant are accused by others of just wanting to live in a comfortable place. I serve on the Sponsor Body with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar). If we had proceeded with its plans, which would have entailed a decant of up to 20 years, that decant would not have started before 2031. I can assure the House that by 2031, I will certainly be retired and quite possibly dead, so it is nothing to do with me. What the Sponsor Body finally came up with might have been a fair evaluation of what it would cost to do a full singing-and-dancing renovation and change of everything, but it was totally unrealistic, and the Commission had to step in.

    There will be ways of working creatively around us. I accept that it may well be necessary to have a decant, but we have no idea how long that decant will last. If we get rid of the Daily Mail September sittings and stop sweating the building through the entire summer recess, there may come a point where we will break in July and not come back until the following January, or it may take longer—we have no idea. However, I say with the greatest respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) that we should not, I am afraid, accept an amendment that just lays down a set time. We have to look at the evidence. The new Commission will do its work, and will do whatever is necessary.

    There has been so much delay, and I think it is very unfair of the hon. Member for Bristol West who leads for the Opposition to blame the Government and the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), for that fact. The reason why we have had so much delay is that the Sponsor Body has come up with wildly expensive proposals, the first of which was the demolition of Richmond House. That would have been financially wasteful, with millions of pounds spent on a white elephant permanent replica Chamber; it would have been architecturally destructive, making a mockery of heritage laws; and it could have cost up to £1 billion. That proposal caused an enormous amount of delay, and I think there is a general consensus that it was right for us to do away with it. It has been delay, delay, delay.

    The plans for the Palace were not much better. The Sponsor Body was planning on removing 14 lift shafts, and wanted office space for MPs cut by as much as one fifth. The programme was in danger of becoming a vast feeding frenzy for contractors and consultants at the taxpayer’s expense. A lot of those ideas were simply unrealisable, so the plans for the R&R programme that have been put forward have failed. As the Leader of the House said, we need to look at working models that have been successful, such as that used for Elizabeth Tower, which has been beautifully restored—of course, that project went over time and over budget because too little preparatory work was done, but the result is magnificent. The cast-iron roofing that the Leader of the House talked about has been an immense success. It is the largest cast-iron roof in Europe. Each piece has been taken apart, restored or replaced, and put back with meticulous skill, so I do not think it is fair to criticise the estates programme.

    Chris Bryant

    One of the problems is that lots of people advocate for having lots more of those individual projects. Something like 32 or 33 projects are going on at the moment, and one of the difficulties with the estate is that it is very tight for space, with nearly every available inch already covered in a portakabin or some kind of contractor’s arrangements. We cannot do many more projects at the same time as the current ones, and the cast-iron roofs would have been done quite a bit quicker if the previous Speaker had not insisted that work stopped whenever he was in his house. That is what is going to happen if we keep on trying to do all the work around the building while we are still in it.

    Sir Edward Leigh

    The hon. Gentleman makes his point and we just have to learn to compromise. He mentions Mr Speaker. We should congratulate Mr Speaker on his own creative thinking. The Speaker’s house needed urgent repairs, which meant he had to be accommodated elsewhere. The R&R programme drew up plans costing £20 million, to tear up a Georgian townhouse on the estate and put a lift shaft through it. Mr Speaker and the previous Leader of the House grasped the nettle, visited the site itself, and decided it just needed a lick of paint and some basic work. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset, who is sitting in his place, reported that it cost just 5% of the planned £20 million to get all three empty houses back into use. That is exactly the kind of mentality we need. It requires good decision making, an eye for savings, and cutting out unnecessary embellishments.

    Serving on the sponsor body has been informative. The sponsor body’s job is to oversee and scrutinise the delivery authority, but I personally believe that the information provided to the sponsor body has often been mired in the worst kind of management speak. Operations are often totally opaque and lacking in clarity. I believe that our ability to thoroughly scrutinise work has not been fully facilitated. Every time it came across a problem, it reached for the most invasive and most expensive solution. I believe that in the end it was going to provide very bad value for money. Every time we proposed alternatives, ridiculous claims about costing and timescale were thrown back. Inadequate figures were given to us. There was a lack of awareness of MPs’ work. For example, it was suggested that MPs’ staff move to shared open-plan offices. Parliamentary politics requires privacy and discretion, and dealing with constituents’ cases even more so. Often, we deal with very sensitive information. We do not work like other entities and we have to accept that Parliament is a unique place.

    In conclusion, I believe that what the Leader of the House is proposing today is a sensible compromise. We are not ruling anything in or anything out. We are going to get on with it. We love this building. We are not going to put ourselves first and we are going to do the absolutely essential work to restore this Barry and Pugin masterpiece. We are not going to make it carbon neutral and fill in atriums and all the courtyards. All that sort of expensive stuff is for the birds. We are going to make this building safe and fireproof, and we will do it, hopefully, with good preparatory work, within time and within budget.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Restoration of the Palace of Westminster

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 12 July 2022.

    First, I want to note an interest, in that I am on the sponsor board; I have been the SNP’s delegate to it for a hugely long time now. I must apologise for the fact that I am not my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who is unfortunately on Committee business and cannot be here, so Members are stuck with me. I will do my best—probably not with quite the flair that he would normally bring to this—to fill his shoes in some way.

    I agree with the point that the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) just made. The fact that we are here—that this position has been reached—is indefensible. The SNP’s position has been that this is an absolutely horrible building to work in. It is dreadful for our staff, it is a grim place to work and it is not a nice working environment. As a result of that, of the colossal amount of money involved and of the fact that we do not want to be here—we are going to be an independent country, and we are going to toddle off and leave yous to it—we suggested that if others were going to do anything with restoration and renewal, they should build a new Parliament. That will cost far less money than anything they could possibly do with this one. For our staff and people who work in this building, and for future MPs and staff who work in this building, it would be a significantly better and safer working environment. However, that was rejected.

    We agreed an Act of Parliament—an Act of Parliament—about how this was going to work. The Act said, “Right, we’re going to have a sponsor board and a Sponsor Body, and we’re going to have a delivery board and a Delivery Authority. We’re going to have all of those things, and they are all going to work together in a groove and deliver what the House has said they are going to deliver.” The Sponsor Body, led by the sponsor board, came up with the memorandum of understanding between the Sponsor Body and the House, and that huge and massively detailed document explained exactly how things would work.

    It feels as though the House of Commons Commission—although not so much the Lords one—and successive Leaders of the House gave argued at every opportunity about how this was going to work. They have said, “Actually, we don’t really agree with the Act of Parliament. We need to do this differently.” It feels as though those on the Government Front Bench and, at times, other Members on the House of Commons Commission—this must have been the case—have ended up costing more and more by adding on so many extra things, coming up with new stipulations and having us do ridiculous surveys.

    One of those surveys was about making this bit of the House into a bubble so that we could continue to work in it, walking here from Portcullis House with hard hats and boots on, which I do not think anybody would have much enjoyed. This would have been a bubble where we could have continued to meet, because key people cannot bear to leave this awful, leaking room that is too small for 650 MPs to sit in. If this is going to happen, and we do not agree that it should, nobody could do it in a more cack-handed way than the way it is being done.

    This structure was agreed and set up by the Houses, and at every opportunity the Government and others have tried to dismantle the structure and then complained because it cost too much money. Of course it will continue to cost money if people keep moving the goalposts—if they do not really want disabled access, but they just said that in an Act of Parliament, and if they are going to complain when the Sponsor Body pitches up and says, “This is how much it will cost to have disabled access.” If they do not want it, of course what they to try to deliver is not going to suit the House. The governing structures have not worked because the Commissions want one thing, the pre-2019 Members of Parliament wanted a different thing from the post-2019 MPs, the Speaker wants something different, the Leaders of the House have wanted something different, and the sponsor board and Sponsor Body have been trying to serve all those masters, and it has proved to be impossible.

    The new structure that the Leader of the House suggests will have exactly the same problems as the previous one. It will have exactly the same number of people suggesting they are the right person to make all the decisions, and that person is going to change on a regular basis—even if it only changes once in every five years, that is still on a regular basis. Ever more money will be expended while bits of masonry continue to fall off, while asbestos continues to be in this building and while the fire risk continues to be massive for a UNESCO world heritage site. This building is a relic; it is not a suitable, appropriate working environment.

    Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    I apologise to the hon. Lady for stopping her in full rant, but does she not appreciate that this is a UNESCO world heritage site and a grade 1 listed building, and whether we are in this Parliament or not, this Parliament has a responsibility to maintain it properly? How does she answer that?

    Kirsty Blackman

    Maintaining this building properly, making it safe and making it so it does not burn down is a very different thing from making it safe so it does not burn down while thousands of people work here. The majority of the fire incidents here are caused by issues with people, as are many of the safety issues. If we take the people out of the equation, it is significantly cheaper to do all that; if we only have disabled access visitor routes, we take away a huge amount of the risk that is created. We could rip out almost all the services that go up and down the vertical risers if we did not need to keep them because we need internet in office T306. Clearly, we would not need internet in office T306 if there was nobody working in this place.

    Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown

    What does the hon. Lady envisage this building would become? Would it just become an empty shell, in which case it would certainly deteriorate quite quickly? What alternative use does she envisage for it?

    Kirsty Blackman

    Honestly, I do not really care: I am going to be out of here, the Scottish National party is going to be out of here, Scotland is not going to have any stake in this building, and the UK without Scotland can decide what it wants to do with the building. It is not my responsibility to make that decision; it is the responsibility of the people who will carry on being here after Scottish independence. I am not trying to dodge the question; I am just not fussed, as it is not my decision. Just as I am not really fussed about what happens with council tax rates in England, it is not my decision to make. It is the hon. Gentleman’s decision to make, and it is for the people who will be here to decide what this building should be used for in the future.

    I am testing your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker, as I have spoken for a bit longer than I had intended. I do not think this has been done well; in fact, I do not think it could have been done worse. I do not think what is being proposed is going to fix the issues, and in the meantime our staff, House staff and MPs are all working in a very substandard, dangerous working environment, and that is totally and completely unacceptable.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on the Cost of Living Crisis

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 5 July 2022.

    It is a pleasure to take part in this estimates day debate. I do love estimates day; it is wonderful every time that this rolls around—I am not being sarcastic, I promise.

    I will talk briefly about the shortcomings of the estimates process. We are discussing the DWP estimate today—which involves spending of £240 billion—under, I think, Standing Orders 53 and 54, which were written before I was born. We are unable to table meaningful amendments in relation to £240 billion of spending because of the way in which the Standing Orders are written. That is shocking. Has anyone here ever tried to explain the Budget process to people outside the House? Have they ever tried to explain the fact that we have to stand here and discuss hundreds of billions of pounds of expenditure without any meaningful way to amend that? It is absolutely ridiculous, flawed and deeply inadequate.

    The DWP’s objectives in the main estimates book are, first,

    “Maximising employment and in-work progression”;

    secondly,

    “Improving people’s quality of life”;

    and thirdly,

    “Delivering excellent services for citizens and taxpayers”.

    Those are the Department’s aims for the next year. I suggest that the Government have failed and continue to fail in what they are doing. I make it clear that that is not, for a second, the fault of DWP staff, who are working incredibly hard to make the social security additional payments.

    Chris Stephens

    Is it not ironic that the DWP says in the main estimates book that it wants to maximise employment when it is threatening its staff with redundancy?

    Kirsty Blackman

    It is, and it is ironic that the DWP is asking staff to step up and deal with its creaking, unfortunate, flawed computer system. It is asking them to do all this additional work to make that happen while failing to make the investment where it should be making it, in the computer system and in the people. I am also seeing a reduction in DWP office staff in Aberdeen. I very much hope that the Government change their mind about the direction in which they are going.

    We have heard from Members across these Benches about the issues affecting people’s quality of life as a result of the DWP’s failures and the failures of the Government’s policies. Loads of people have mentioned the safety net. The whole point of a safety net is that it catches people. The point is not to make the holes as big as possible so that as many people as possible fall through. I would rather have a social security system like the one that we are building in Scotland; a social security system that ensures that everybody is caught by the safety net, so that everybody gets what they are entitled to and people do not accidentally fall through. This Government’s policy seems to be to give social security payments to as few people as they possibly can and to try very hard to set the bar as high as possible so that people cannot meet the requirements.

    We have heard about the Scottish social security system and its openness compared with the DWP’s system, where the report on food banks and the equalities impact assessment were buried. Audit Scotland recently audited the Scottish social security system. It said:

    “The Scottish Government has continued to successfully deliver new and complex social security benefits in challenging circumstances. This is a significant achievement. There is a conscious focus on the needs of service users, building on the principles of dignity, fairness, and respect. People are positive about their experiences of engaging with Social Security Scotland.”

    How different that is from the views that we are hearing down here, from what is in our inboxes, from the absolute intransigence and the issues that people face every day when simply trying to get what they are entitled to.

    The social security uprating fails to get anything close to inflationary levels this year. We have seen an increase, but it is nothing close to the level of inflation. In fact, the £650 payment that the Chancellor announced does not even cover the £1,000 that was taken off people last year—never mind going any way to cover the increase in the cost of living. The Chancellor, the Minister and the Secretary of State have repeatedly said, “But people are getting more, with the £650, than they would have if we had uprated benefits”. We are asking them to do both. We are asking them to adequately uprate the benefits and backdate that to April as well as to make the additional payments. Only then can we get to a situation that is close to helping with the cost of living.

    This is a tale of two Governments. We can see that another country is possible. We can see the failings, with the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the two-child policy being carried on with. We have heard a lot about no recourse to public funds. When we discussed the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill last week, I mentioned that children were literally starving and I was scoffed at by Government Members. If we look at reports, we see that junior doctors talk about children presenting with rickets because of the level of malnutrition, because they have no recourse to public funds, because they have been sanctioned, or because they otherwise cannot afford to eat a healthy diet. Comments have been made about the lack of variety and the lack of healthiness in the diets provided by food banks, which try incredibly hard but just cannot meet the requirements. In addition, they cannot provide food for people who cannot afford electricity. If people cannot afford electricity to boil something in a pan, it is difficult for them to cook adequately.

    In the main estimates book, the Government talk about providing £5.6 billion—that is the initial spend—under the Social Security (Additional Payments) Bill. However, they mention providing £37 billion for increases in the cost of living. That £37 billion is made up of additional payments, as the Chancellor has stated, but can the Minister confirm that he is including things in it like the freeze on alcohol duty? It cannot be said that the freeze on alcohol duty relates to improving the cost of living for people who cannot afford to eat.

    I am pleased to have been able to talk about the DWP estimates today. What is happening is woefully, woefully inadequate. Our constituents are coming to us and we just cannot provide them with the hope that they need and want, because the Conservatives are digging their heels in and refusing to offer adequate support.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on Iran’s Nuclear Programme

    Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Speech on Iran’s Nuclear Programme

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 30 June 2022.

    I congratulate the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) on bringing this debate to the House, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for ensuring that it could happen. There has been an awful lot of accord across the House today; it seems that we are all raising similar concerns and we are all keen to find a way forward. It is not quite a matter of semantics, but perhaps there is just a slight disagreement about the way forward and the best way to tackle the issue.

    The joint comprehensive plan of action was never ideal, but it was better than no deal and we need to recognise that it was a major diplomatic achievement. The SNP joins Members across the House who have called for Iran to halt its activities that are in violation of the JCPOA. We hope to see detailed, precise and deep talks this week. There is an urgent need for a diplomatic solution and an urgent need to end Iran’s nuclear escalation.

    We agree with the concerns that have been raised about Iran’s stated intention to end all JCPOA-related transparency measures and about the action that it has already taken in that regard. Transparency is incredibly important, and any future deal needs to put that at the heart of the agreements made.

    There are other risks that have not been mentioned in the Chamber today. Bilateral work on tackling climate change and on tackling the Afghan refugee crisis is currently on ice because of the present situation. Regardless of escalation and nuclear uranium enrichment, the climate crisis and the Afghan refugee crisis are not going away. We must work to tackle them. As several hon. Members have said, we must ensure that we put people at the heart of our approach and that we work to improve human rights in the region, as well as ensuring that the people of Iran are decoupled from the action of their Government and given the opportunity to flourish.

    We agree with the calls for the UK to use our place to press the regime—and to press all regimes that have issues with human rights or are committing human rights abuses, whether that is Iran, Saudi, Russia or any of the countries committing human rights abuses against their citizens or citizens of other countries.

    I criticise the unilateral actions that Donald Trump took, on the basis that taking unilateral action on this is not the way forward. The way forward is for everybody to work together as international partners to get a settlement. The reality is that the situation is potentially worse than it could have been if those unilateral actions had not been taken. It is better to act in concert.

    We welcome President Biden’s commitment not just to returning to the deal, but to strengthen the areas in which it is defective and extend the JCPOA. I have not much mentioned wider regional security, but we need to ensure that action is taken and that there is international co-operation with respect to Iran’s issues, its causing of regional instability and the actions that it is taking to destabilise countries around the world, as several contributors to the debate have mentioned. That needs to be a matter of priority.

    As somebody who believes that we should not have nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, I am massively concerned to see the upscaling of Iran’s potential nuclear capabilities. We need to ensure that talks happen, whether that is around the table this week or in some future round of talks. We need to ensure that the UK’s international power is used to put pressure on, and to de-escalate the situation as quickly and as properly as we possibly can.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Commons Speech on the Economy

    Kirsty Blackman – 2022 Commons Speech on the Economy

    The speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 26 May 2022.

    It is quite amusing to hear the Chancellor talk about this announcement being timely. I mean, it is timely: it just happens to have happened in the week of the Sue Gray report. It just happens that that report came out yesterday and the Chancellor has suddenly realised today that people are really struggling. He has suddenly realised that he needs to announce something.

    At the spring statement, when the Chancellor announced the energy loan, he stood up and said, “Look at these amazing things that I am announcing.” He genuinely seemed to believe at that time that that was the best this Government could do. Now, he has changed his mind. He has listened to the calls of the Opposition and of the people up and down these islands who are struggling, in many cases more than they have ever struggled before.

    I do not understand why the Chancellor has announced only a £15 billion package. He has £28 billion of fiscal headroom in public sector net debt and £32 billion of fiscal headroom in balancing the current budget—those are the Office for Budget Responsibility’s figures from March—yet he is refusing to spend that money now in the timely and targeted way that is needed for people now.

    I am glad that the Chancellor announced money for the poorest households and that it has been targeted in that way, but it is not enough. What he has announced fails to uprate benefits; fails to account for the fact that the energy price cap that is coming in October will still be in place next year; and fails to ensure that benefits keep pace with inflation.

    I have to laugh at the Chancellor’s comments about inflation. Brexit has increased food prices by 6%. Brexit has done that. People who are struggling to meet the most basic costs—the majority of their costs are for energy and food—have been hit incredibly hard by Brexit. The poorest 10% of households are seeing a massive inflationary increase in comparison to the richest 10% of households, because of the percentage of their budget that is spent on energy and food. The Chancellor needs to uplift benefits as well as making payments.

    It was pretty cheeky of the Chancellor to choose to include the £150 council tax payment in all the figures he read out. That went only to people who live in homes in bands A to D. It certainly did not go to all pensioners and certainly cannot be included in the money that is going to all pensioners. It cannot be included in the money that is going to all universal credit claimants, and it cannot be included in the money that is going to all disabled people. It cannot be included in the cost of this support package because it is absolutely not universal. On that point, the payment that we made in Scotland went to a higher percentage of households than the payment made in England.

    This package does not go far enough. We are going to see an energy price increase of more than £1,000 for all households because of the increase in the energy price cap, yet the Chancellor is providing only £300 extra for pensioners. That will not even touch that £1,000 increase. He is only including these things. The uplift should have been 9%, to match inflation, and there should have been a further £25 uplift to universal credit and a further £25 uplift to legacy benefits. Lastly, he has failed in the uplift for disabled people, who face the very highest cost because of the increase in energy costs and in the cost of, for example, their diets.

    I am glad that the Chancellor has put in place the windfall tax. I am very disappointed that it covers only oil and gas companies. It should have gone much wider. We have been calling for this since 2020, with Kate Forbes and Ben Macpherson. [Interruption.] The Labour party failed to support our amendment on this last week, so Labour Members are a bit cheeky as well in suggesting that we have not moved on this.

    I would like the Chancellor to go further, to make a difference and to actually care about the poorest people in our society.

  • Kirsty Blackman – 2018 Commons Speech on Brexit

    Below is the text of the speech made by Kirsty Blackman, the SNP MP for Aberdeen North, in the House of Commons on 10 December 2018.

    I thank the Prime Minister for advance sight of the statement, and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for the benefit of your words on how we could proceed.

    The events of the past few hours have highlighted that this is a Government in a total state of collapse. The Prime Minister has been forced to pull tomorrow’s vote in a stunning display of pathetic cowardice. The vote tomorrow night would have shown the will of this House, but this Government are focused on saving the Prime Minister’s job and her party. Instead of doing what is right for these countries, she is abdicating her responsibility.

    The Prime Minister’s deal will make people poorer. It will lead to years of further uncertainty and difficult negotiation, with no guarantee that a trade deal can even be struck. It does not have the support of those on her Back Benches; indeed, it has no support from the majority of those on the Benches across this place, no support from the Scottish Parliament and no support from the Welsh Assembly. Why has it taken the Prime Minister this long to face up to reality? Her deal was dead in the water long before this morning. Last week, it was this deal or no deal. She now needs to be clear with this House about what has changed.

    Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU, but yet again our views are being ignored, as they have been throughout this disastrous and incompetent Brexit process. Back in 2014, Scotland was promised the strength and security of the UK, but the reality has been Westminster collapse and chaos. We were promised an equal partnership, but we have been treated with contempt.

    The Prime Minister has lost the confidence of those on her own Benches, and she has failed to convince this House of her plan for exiting the EU. We simply cannot go on like this. It is clear that the Prime Minister is incapable of taking decisions about the future and that Downing Street cannot negotiate any more—either with the EU or with those on the Tory Back Benches. What the Prime Minister is really scared of is allowing this House to determine the way forward and allowing the public the opportunity to remain in the EU. She knows she has lost, but she is still wasting precious time. We need the Prime Minister to be clear about when the House will vote on this deal.

    This Government and the Prime Minister have failed. It is time they got out of the way. Prime Minister, Members across this House do not want your deal. The EU does not want to renegotiate. Is not the only way to break this deadlock to put it to the people?