Kirsty Blackman
MP for Aberdeen North · Scottish National Party · United Kingdom
“I first raised the issue of self-generated images in Parliament more than four years ago. I have asked almost every single Culture, Media and Sport team about the issue of livestreaming. I am pleased to hear from the Secretary of State that action is being taken, and about the belt-and-braces approach that is coming in.”
“Labour promised £200 million for Grangemouth, none of which has materialised. Labour promised 1,000 jobs for GB Energy, and it turns out that a third of the 130 delivered so far are not actually in Scotland.”
“There is a geographical divide on this issue starker than I have ever seen in this place. Across all parties, every Member representing a Scottish constituency has stressed the issue of jobs, and how important this is to the north-east of Scotland.”
“There is a fundamental question here about what our priority is. Is it to reduce the bill, to reduce the amount of money that we are spending, or to ensure that disabled people can access all the human rights that the rest of us can, access society and be supported? We must recognise the extra costs of disability. What is the priority?”
“May I continue to encourage the Minister to talk to Social Security Scotland and our colleagues in the SNP Government about their experiences of the adult disability payment and whether the changes that have been implemented in Scotland would make a positive difference to those claiming PIP?”
“I will point out where things are today and how we can improve them, rather than looking at what was done in the past, but first, I recognise that although Pride is about celebration, it is also about being angry. We should be angry about the injustices.”
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“I want to speak about quite a few matters, but first I want to focus in the plight of younger people—and by “younger people”, I mean people under 40, not just people in their 20s. I am talking about everyone in that younger slice of the population. We have talked about the last massive increase in inflation, which, in 1992, reached the same levels of increase that it has reached in recent times. I am 35; in 1992 I was six, and I did not know what the rate of inflation was because it did not really matter to me. For a significant period I have been living in a property that does not belong to my parents, and I have a 10-year-old and an eight-year-old.”
“Yesterday one of my constituents, Anish Subramaniam, visited Parliament in his role as the youth ambassador for ONE, which, along with ActionAid, was making the case for vaccine equity. Will the Leader of the House make time for Parliament to debate how we can do more to ensure that everyone, everywhere in the world, receives a covid-19 vaccine?”
“How can the Secretary of State and his Cabinet colleagues who paid nothing to attend university justify burdening those who go to university now with lifelong debt?”
“So the tax will hit hardest those who are already struggling to make ends meet. If new students will on average pay £6,000 more back, where is the money going to come from? Has the Secretary of State done any assessment of the effect on those people’s pension pots as they approach retirement age, given that £6,000 less disposable income will be available to them? If half the students will be paying back the loan for almost their entire lifetime, it makes little difference to them what the total value of the loan is. The changes proposed benefit those who are already paying back, not those who have no hope of doing so. In Scotland we believe in free education. We believe that it is important, and we will keep tuition free. I make no apologies for that position; it is the right thing to do.”
“I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement; I recognise that a lot is going on this morning and that not everything has happened on the normal timeline, so I appreciate it. I add my voice to those expressing solidarity with the Ukrainian people as the horrific events unfold. The UK Government are presiding over a cost of living crisis, yet they are pursuing policy after policy such as the national insurance hike, the universal credit cut, the mandatory energy loan—even for students without a permanent address, who will have to pay it back despite not necessarily getting it this year—and now this. The UK Government’s decision to create a lifelong graduate tax by increasing the number of years in which graduates pay back will affect only those who are not well off enough to pay it back already.”
“We awoke this morning to images of innocent families cowering in tube stations. We know the Putin regime’s propensity for oppression and tyranny, particularly when it comes to minorities. Will the Prime Minister ensure that humanitarian aid is delivered in concert with not just other international partners, but third sector organisations?”
“For example, young people in out-of-authority placements have significant problems, which make it much more difficult for them to achieve their potential in life. Kinship care is one of the elements that results in the best outcomes for young people. Why should kinship carers get paid? That was mentioned earlier. They should get paid because what has happened is not what they planned for. The system is difficult, which is necessary—I understand why: some sort of legal system needs to be in place around how kinship care works. But navigating that system, when people did not expect to have to navigate it, is expensive and difficult. We owe the people who choose to be kinship carers or foster carers looking after young people who are in corporate care. We owe them, and therefore we need to do better than we are currently doing.”
“Whether children are raised with either or both of their birth parents, in foster care, in placements or in kinship care, or if they have a looked-after order in place, surely what we should want for all of them is that they should be raised with love and compassion. It is incredibly important to ensure that that is front and centre. Previously, I was the looked-after children’s champion in my local authority, when I was a councillor. The issue is therefore pretty close to my heart. We need to do a significant amount more. In talking about the benefits of kinship care, there is the comparison with the other elements of the care system. It is important to have those other elements, but it is clear that some of them have comparatively very poor outcomes for children.”
“In Scotland, we have given huge attention to ensuring that looked-after children get the best possible outcomes. The situation brought up by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) is an illustration of how much the system has absolutely failed if that is the outcome he has seen for the young people he worked with. In Scotland, we have made a promise to young people that we plan to keep: by 2030, all those young people involved in the care system will not be faced with a care system, but will be raised with love and compassion, which is what every young person should be raised with.”
“In Scotland, people who are kinship carers of babies can get the baby box. Provided that the baby is under six months old, a family involved in a kinship-care relationship can ask their social worker to ensure that the baby box is delivered. They can get that box if the child is under six months old. That is important in levelling the playing field and ensuring that everyone gets the universal entitlement that there is in Scotland, whether or not the baby is with the birth parents or in a kinship-care arrangement. In Scotland, children are also eligible for the best start grants, for the Scottish child payment and for the twos provision—the provision in nurseries for children under three years old. They are eligible if the young person is a looked-after child, subject to a kinship care order or something related to that.”
“Unfortunately, my understanding is that kinship carers are not entitled to the child element of universal credit if the child is a looked-after child. Clearly, that needs to change. There needs to be a recognition that although the children—babies, in the case we are talking about—are looked-after children, in a lot of cases the kinship carers are going through a significant number of difficult legal processes, as well as financial expense. Those carers probably did not plan or arrange their lives for this to happen. I do not see why the child element of universal credit should be excluded just because the children have the title “looked-after children”. We have to remember that for some people involved in kinship care, the children are not classed as looked-after children, so they are in a different category.”
“Sometimes it is some of those younger kinship carers, who are in work, who are struggling to get the understanding, rather than the people on pensions, for whom there are more systems in place. In one of the families that I spoke to, the adults looking after the children went along to a meeting and everybody was 30 years older than them. They felt, “Well, we’re not going to get very good help, assistance and support from our peers here, because these people don’t seem to be our peers.” There was a gap there; they felt that something was missing. Throughout Scotland, kinship carers get the same allowance as foster carers. That is important, because we are recognising the importance of kinship care.”
“I wanted to make a few comments, particularly from the Scottish point of view. I do not know very much about how the care system works in England, and may use terms that are Scottish-specific, and are not as relevant in England. I begin by apologising for that. First, kinship care is absolutely not just about grandparents. It is important to recognise that. As the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire said about the family that she talked about, it was not the grandparents who were caring for the baby. Some of the people who have come to me in my constituency, who have been involved in kinship care, are concerned that everything that relates to it is set up expecting the kinship carers to be grandparents.”
“Thank you very much for chairing this debate, Ms Fovargue. I give massive thanks to the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who I know has worked in this area, particularly on improving the life chances for babies, for a significant time, and has done a massive power of work on it. I am glad that she has brought this debate today and given us the opportunity to speak about it. I particularly recognise the speech given by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). It was a brave speech to give, but not an easy one. Nothing compares to lived experience in these debates. We are so often talking about things that an awful lot of us do not know enough about, so it is hugely important to have that experience. I thank him very much for bringing that to us.”
“This was Mr Elliot’s submission to the Women and Equalities Committee when it called for evidence: “I had to send several private documents to a group of strangers, at the cost of £140, to let them decide whether I am man enough to marry as a husband, be declared a father to my future children or simply die with the respect of being remembered as a man. I was a boy, and I am now a man, and for six years I have been living that truth outwardly and proud with no rejection of this fact from my loved ones, yet I could still be denied my truth by strangers.” We need change. The Gender Recognition Act needs to be reformed.”
“In the past week I have been approached by three 50-plus women who wished to speak to me about trans rights. They approached me about the issue; it was not an issue that I had raised with them. All three of them had read about the proposed changes, and all three were baffled by the extreme reaction to a simple administrative change. One of them, who has daughters, said to me, “People should be allowed to live their lives. It makes no difference to me what it says on someone’s birth certificate.” That is the reality. I want to end on a quote that makes it clear why we need change.”
“The increase in the number of hate crimes with a trans aggravator neatly illustrates that. We must be more honest. We must not allow those in positions of power to mislead the public about the impact of the proposed reforms. The reforms will only affect birth certificates and pensions—not access to spaces, not passports, not names, not driving licences, not access to surgical interventions, not swimming pool changing rooms, not prisons, not hospital wards and not sports. All those are dealt with under the Equality Act or other Acts. I do not understand why people keep going on about swimming pools. I have been in so many swimming pools with my kids, and almost all of them have mixed changing rooms. That is already a thing. They all have cubicles as well.”
“Like most feminists, I have always been bothered by gender stereotypes and gendered expectations. I can entirely understand how and why people come to the conclusion that they do not comfortably fit in either a male or a female box. None of the Government proposals I have seen go far enough, or sometimes even acknowledge the existence of non-binary people. That has to change. If we want the legislation to be fit for the future, we need to consider the needs of future generations. Many more young people are uncomfortable with established gender stereotypes and moulds. We must therefore allow non-binary people to identify as non-binary. The extreme level of misinformation and lies pedalled about GRA reform has created an incredibly fertile ground for hate and abuse.”
“Although it is a small change, it is important for the human rights and the dignity of a significant minority of our population. Birth certificates have an impact on death certificates and marriage certificates. Imagine approaching the end of your life knowing that your death certificate would have the wrong gender on it and that your friends and family would have to live with that, and spending the last moments of your life worrying about that death certificate being incorrect. We need change for that reason alone, let alone the other compelling reasons we have heard. We have heard about the number of systems with self-ID. I want to talk about the growing number of individuals identifying as non-binary, because it is specifically mentioned in the petition.”
“That is not the case. I have a passport because I recognise the rights that the passport gives me. I applied for that passport because I did not have to give a detailed description of my genitals in order to get the rights that come along with it. The intrusiveness of the procedure for getting a gender recognition certificate puts off a significant number of people, as do the bureaucracy and the fact there is no appeal process and no ability to find out what has gone wrong if an application is rejected. Changing the system has no impact on the ability of trans people to correct their gender on their passport or their driving licence; it simply and exclusively applies to birth certificates and issues with pensions.”
“That must change, but until it does, it is incumbent on those of us with platforms to make the case for reform on behalf of our constituents and other trans people across the UK. The current system for obtaining a gender recognition certificate is a failure. The UK Government estimate that there are 200,000 to 500,000 trans people living in the UK, but fewer than 6,000 of them have obtained a gender recognition certificate. Those who have managed to have had to jump through unreasonable hoops in order to get a GRC, and they are in the tiniest minority. The process is bureaucratic, takes too long and includes many outdated and unreasonable requirements. People have to put in reams and reams of paper to do it. It was said that the reason for those statistics might be that people do not want a gender recognition certificate.”
“In Scotland we are undertaking reform, and legislation will be brought forward very soon. As I stand here making this speech, I am acutely aware of my privilege. I will do my best to amplify the voices and concerns of those I have had the privilege to listen to over the last few years, but that is not a substitute for hearing trans voices directly. We do not have trans people in Parliament. As was mentioned, some of our MPs are unaware of ever having met a trans person. They most certainly have; they are just unaware of it. People who have never met, spoken to or heard from a trans person are not the right people to be making decisions about how gender reform should work. Trans voices are significantly outnumbered in the media on any issue relating to trans rights.”
“Thank you, Sir Christopher—I thank Sir George, too—for chairing this debate. I also thank the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn). He commented that he needed to be brave to bring forward the debate, or words to that effect, and I appreciate that he chose to do so—it was indeed a brave thing to do. This is a really important issue. We must make change, especially for the around 500,000 trans people in the UK and their friends and family. What is proposed is a small administrative reform that will have a huge and lasting impact on the lives of trans people in the UK. Clearly, there are differences in the system to obtain a GRC in Scotland—not least that we do not have the spousal veto—but the problems with the two current systems are largely the same, and the changes that need to happen are therefore broadly similar.”
“In Scotland, we have committed to bringing gender identity healthcare into line with national waiting time standards, which we have put in place. I know it is slightly outside his remit, but will the Minister consider bringing in waiting time standards for healthcare?”
“I appreciate that there is a huge number of organisations, such as Rainbow Migration, that are doing a great job, but they do not have that significant presence in my constituency; they do not have that significant presence in Aberdeen; they do not have the ability to assist the refugees in explaining their case and making that clear. I would ask the Government, at this moment, particularly where non-dispersal authorities are having to support refugees, what slack will be cut? What support will be given to ensure that people can make the proper claims? We all agree that there are a number of people who should be able to make these claims and should be granted asylum. How will we provide them with the support that they need to make those claims when we are already failing to do so within the current system?”
“We have hardly any immigration lawyers who deal with asylum claims in Scotland—never mind Aberdeen. We are looking at raising this bar when the situation has already been made more difficult because of the lack of support. Given that in Scotland, we do not have the systems in place outside Glasgow, refugees in Aberdeen city and Aberdeenshire are finding it more difficult because they cannot access the systems that they would normally get support from, so why are we not cutting them slack? These people should be cut slack at this moment, rather than having the bar lifted and things made more difficult.”
“How can we expect these people to be able to sit down in a room with Home Office officials and say, “Yes, absolutely. I am gay,” when they have spent their entire lives hiding it? I do not understand how the bar can change on this issue when it has been made clear that it is difficult enough under the current route. I also want to highlight, and I will not talk for terribly long about it, that there is a significant number of asylum seekers in the UK at the moment. That means that a number of non-dispersal authorities have asylum seekers placed in them. In areas, such as mine, and in areas outside Glasgow, which is a dispersal authority that is used to dealing with and supporting refugees, there is not the infrastructure to provide that level of support.”
“I would like the Government to explain why they have chosen to go down this route when so many organisations have raised concerns, made it absolutely clear and provided evidence about how much more difficult things would be as a result of the Government’s actions. I want to focus on a couple of things. If somebody is coming from a country where they have had to hide their sexuality or gender identity from the Government, officials and everybody in authority they have ever had a conversation with, how can we expect them to sit down with Home Office officials and openly talk about it? They have spent their entire lives having to hide it from officials for fear of being imprisoned, being killed or facing incredibly serious prejudice and discrimination from those authority figures.”
“That is demonstrably the case. It is especially the case for those who live in a country that has systematic prejudice built into the authority systems and also into the family system and the traditions. That makes it even more difficult for an LGBTQ+ person to live their life. As has been said, it is not something that someone grows out of and they suddenly forget that it is a part of their reality; it is that person’s self for their entire life. Why would the Government decide to make it more difficult for LGBTQ+ people to claim asylum in the UK? I cannot get my head around it.”
“Thank you, Mr Sharma, for the excellent job you are doing chairing the debate. I extend genuine thanks to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake). I am not just going through the motions of thanking the Member in charge; this is a hugely important debate, and I particularly enjoyed the video that she put on Twitter earlier, which clearly laid out the information and I thought it was incredibly helpful. My colleagues have covered some of the detail and some of the clauses of the Nationality and Borders Bill. We disagree with the entire Bill, but I want to talk specifically about the issues facing LGBTQ people. I do not get why the UK Government have chosen to take this direction in the Bill. We all agree that life is more difficult for someone who is LGBTQ+. They are more likely to be persecuted or discriminated against.”
“When they hit 14 or 15 and go out by themselves, they will not have the same level of terror about the water as I have when they are near it. As a parent, I think schools need to ensure that young people are educated and have a reasonable awareness. It is okay to go into the water, but they need to have awareness of the danger it can pose, so that we see fewer fatalities and so that people can enjoy the outdoors safely in Scotland, England or Wales.”
“It should not take those fatalities for us to realise the issue. We should increase the amount of education and safety equipment. We should ensure that people know how to use that safety equipment and that it is kept up to date and looked after. All of those are incredibly important. By 2026, we will hopefully see the number of people drowning in open water reduced. We all want to get there, and we are all pushing in that direction, but I think we particularly need to see education in schools. I have young children aged eight and 10. As we quite often do in Aberdeenshire, whenever I go to a harbour, I am terrified that either my or somebody else’s children are going to fall into the water. My children probably do not realise, but I am hyperaware of it.”
“Given that in Scotland we have a different education system and a different police and fire system, as well as having a massive number of bodies of water, there needs to be a unique strategy, and we are taking that forward in Scotland in an attempt to make a difference. In July last year we saw a doubling in the number of fatalities in Scotland’s waters, which is a big issue. As a result of that, particularly around Loch Lomond, the amount of safety equipment has massively increased. Several organisations, including the council, have worked together to increase the number of throwlines and safety signs and to increase the presence of the lifeguard boat at that side of the Loch to ensure that people can be saved, should they get into difficulty. That should not happen only after the fact.”
“It does not matter how strong a swimmer someone is and how many times they have been in that water before, hitting the water and getting the shock of the cold can mean that they freeze up, are unable to rescue themselves and get into real difficulty. It is really important that we ensure that as many people as possible are aware of that campaign. In Scotland, we had our own response to the drowning prevention strategy in 2018. It included a number of things, but one of the key measures was to develop and promote water safety education and initiatives in primary and secondary schools.”
“We have seen in the course of the pandemic, as was mentioned, an increase in the number of people wild swimming, paddle boarding and canoeing. I cannot claim to do any of those. I have tried sea kayaking and I am never going again—I was so seasick it was ridiculous. I did not expect to get seasick while sea kayaking, and it is not a thing that I will carry on with. The increase in the number of people going out and enjoying the water and having a good time in the water in Scotland is brilliant, but we need to ensure that we increase the education as well. We need to ensure that, when people are going into the water, they are doing so while understanding the risks and what they need to do should they get into difficulty. The RNLI’s incredibly important “Float to Live” campaign was mentioned.”
“Thank you, Ms Ghani, for chairing this sitting this afternoon. I also thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) and the Petitions Committee for ensuring that this issue has been brought to the House for debate. It is incredibly important that we debate it, and the debate is very timely. My thoughts are with the family of Mark Allen—I applaud their bravery and tenacity in taking this issue forward and bringing it here today. Hopefully some change can be brought about to ensure that other families do not go through what they have gone through. In Scotland, we have a pretty specific situation in relation to open bodies of water: we have lots of open bodies of water, and our open bodies of water are very cold.”
“He is strengthening the case for the people of Scotland to vote for independence, because they do not want to see that gender pay gap widen; they do not want to see insecure employment continue; they do not want to see the age discriminatory national living wage; and they do not want a Prime Minister suggesting that they are not working hard enough, which is why their wages are not growing. Independence is the way for us to solve that, because the Conservatives continue to refuse to take action that will make a real difference to our constituents.”
“We will ensure that we put workers at the heart of the decisions that we take on employees’ rights. We are showing that within the limited powers that we have. Imagine how much more we could do if we devolved those rights. If the Minister is unwilling to concede that devolving those powers would ensure that the Scottish Government could provide a better service for the Scottish people than the UK Government, then he is strengthening the case, once again, for independence.”
“We need a proper real living wage that is not discriminatory on the basis of age. We are doing what we can in Scotland with the fair work action plan. We have had that argument with the Government about freeports. We have a higher level of people paid the real living wage than elsewhere in the UK. That is mostly due to the action we have taken, particularly the requirement that people working in adult social care are paid the real living wage, not the national living wage. We have taken a lot of action in that space. The Government are refusing to bring forward the employment Bill. It would be great if the Minister could tell us when it is coming. In the absence of that, devolve employment rights and workers’ rights. We will do a much better job of it than the UK Government. We will do it properly.”
“I want to highlight a couple of other matters. In 2021, the median hourly earnings gap between men and women grew. Something is going wrong if the Government are putting measures in place to fix the gender pay gap and it continues to widen. There needs to be immediate, urgent action to ensure that the gender pay gap does not continue to widen. We need to see flexible work requests from day one. People who are pregnant, carers or disabled need to be able to make a flexible working request to their employers on day one of their employment. We know that many of those are refused anyway. The employer does not have to concede to the flexible working request, but the person needs the right to make that request, at the barest minimum. We need the employment Bill and we need the Trade Union Act 2016 to be rolled back.”
“In Scotland, we are doing everything we can to put it first. We had a discussion with the Government about freeports. When freeports were being created in Scotland, the Scottish Government wanted two things: to prioritise green jobs and fair work. The UK Government disagreed and said, “No. You cannot prioritise those two things in freeports. You cannot prioritise tackling climate change and fair work.” As was said, those should be the most important things. This Government have got their priorities all wrong. There is a timing issue, but it is still possible to prioritise workers’ rights, when we have seen our constituents’ savings fall. There has been some increase in savings, but that has been for those people who were already earning plenty of money. There has been a massive hit on the finances of those earning the least.”
“The Prime Minister somehow thinks that people who are on low wages and zero-hour contracts are not putting in any effort. I think he will find that actually all of those people we have relied on the most during the pandemic—carers, hospital porters and cleaners—are likely to fall below the real living wage, because they are getting the Government’s national living wage, if that. Those folk are incredibly hard-working and are having to rely on universal credit in order to get even the most basic living standards. So many people on universal credit, whether or not they are in work, are actually living below poverty lines. It is a devastating situation. I get that the Government have had other priorities, such as Brexit and covid, but, as has been said, this is the most important issue.”
“It is a pretendy living wage that does not meet the bar of a real living wage. The Child Poverty Action Group has said that, in 72% of families, with children, struggling to afford food, at least one parent works. That should not happen. The Government keep talking about hard-working families, but what they really mean are people who work and do not get benefits. Actually, there are so many hard-working families and people in low-paid jobs who rely on social security because the jobs are not paying them enough. The jobs are inflexible and insecure, and those people are not getting the hours they need. The Prime Minister said: “My strong preference is for people to see their wages rise through their efforts rather than through taxation of other people put into their pay packets and rather than welfare”.”
“The Taylor review said: “Individuals can be paid above the National Living Wage, but if they have no guarantee of work from week to week or even day to day, this not only affects their immediate ability to pay the bills but can have further, long-lasting effects, increasing stress levels and putting a strain on family life.” If the Conservatives do not step up and bring in an employment Bill, workers are more likely to be off sick. They are more likely to struggle to pay bills. Therefore, presumably, the amount the Government have to shell out on universal credit—which they so resent—will increase. Bringing forward an employment Bill is a win-win situation for the Government. I want to highlight a few issues—some of which have been mentioned today. The Government brought forward their national living wage.”
“We do not have very high hopes for what a Conservative employment Bill will contain, but once it comes we have the opportunity to amend it and make cases on behalf of our constituents and all those in insecure and low-paid work, so we can try to improve that work. Surely that is what the Taylor review was about. If the Conservatives want to put the views of employers ahead of the views of employees, they should note that employees work better if they are in secure employment. We know that they are more productive and less likely to be stressed.”
“Thank you for chairing the debate today, Mrs Cummins. We hugely appreciate it. I would like to congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) on bringing this debate. This debate is really important and timely, given that we are five years on from the Taylor review. We need to see progress; there has not been enough. There is no point in commissioning a review if it is just going to be ignored. What is the point in doing all that work and coming up with these excellent recommendations that are going to make a real difference to people’s lives to then put the report on a shelf and do nothing about it? It seems like a bizarre waste of effort for everybody. The consistent call that we are making is not a high bar. We are asking for an employment Bill. The Conservatives have promised an employment Bill, and we are asking for it.”
“I am no fan of the regressive licence fee, but the Secretary of State saying on Twitter that this will be “the last” licence fee announcement is discourteous to this House, to all the many people who watch and listen to the BBC, and to all of those who are employed by the BBC. How does she believe that the 50 BBC employees based in my constituency are currently feeling because of the announcement she made on Twitter over the weekend?”
“The Government and this Department have a track record of having to be dragged to the ombudsman or dragged to court to make the most basic human decisions. In Scotland, we put dignity and respect at the heart of everything we do with regards to social security. Does the Minister not agree that that would be a much better approach than having to be dragged to court or the ombudsman to make decisions that should have been made in the first place?”
“We are not asking for anything strange or unusual; we are not seeking some sort of power grab; it is simply to do with parity.”
“Amendment 10 relates to streamlined subsidy schemes. The change for which we are asking would allow devolved Administrations to make such schemes. Given that those Administrations have devolved competences by law, it makes no sense that the schemes can only be made by the Secretary of State in the UK Government. Obviously we would like Scottish independence, but in the absence of a vote on that, we are not asking for devolved Administrations to be able to overstep their devolved competences. We are merely asking for parity—for the ability of devolved Administrations to create streamlined subsidy schemes. They would still only be able to do that within their areas of devolved competence, and they would still only be able to do it within their limited financial envelopes.”