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.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,119 lines we hold for Kirsty Blackman, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 64 of 103.
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) on securing this urgent question. The issue of transferring funds to an organisation such as Cerberus is far from the only one. The hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) mentioned businesses that did not have any debt issues whose loans were restructured and who were offered incredibly high and arbitrary repayment terms with incredibly high interest rates. That was completely inappropriate. The restructuring of debt should be tackled in the first place, and not just the transferring over. Nobody should be in the situation in which my hon. Friend’s constituent found himself.”
“Yesterday, a majority of Scottish MPs put their names to an amendment saying that the best future for Scotland would be as an independent country within the EU. With independence, we will be able to encourage immigration, recognising the benefits brought by those who come to live, love and work in our country. We will be able to reject austerity, supporting our citizens when they need it most. We will be able to increase productivity, improve participation in our workforce and encourage and support companies to grow. We will be able to trade frictionlessly with Europe, a market eight times the size of the UK. Scotland has been badly served by consecutive Westminster Governments. We need to take our lifeboat and get off this sinking Brexit ship.”
“Scotland’s resource block grant for 2019-20 is almost £2 billion lower in real terms than in 2010-11. That is a direct consequence of the Chancellor’s continued obsession with austerity. He has created the stronger towns fund, pumping money into leave-voting areas as yet another bribe. How well did that work this week? The Chancellor has not yet announced details of the shared prosperity fund. Especially important is whether it will replace the £2.4 billion a year that communities across the UK currently receive as a result of EU structural funds. Will he provide us with full details now? Will he give a cast-iron guarantee that the Scottish Government will be treated as equals and will continue to distribute the funding in Scotland, as has been the case under the EU programmes?”
“FTSE 100 CEO pay has gone up by 66% while the Tories have been in government, while wages for the rest have failed to reach 2008 levels. The Chancellor has had many opportunities to press his colleagues to halt the roll-out of universal credit. The system is broken and it must be fixed before more misery is inflicted. His emergency Budget should end the benefits freeze and halt the roll-out of universal credit. He has managed to find money for plenty of other things—he has allocated billions of pounds to the Democratic Unionist party to buy its support, but he has failed to allocate the £3.4 billion to Scotland that should have been our share of that largesse. Will the Chancellor ensure that the Barnett formula is properly applied to the new funding he has announced today, unlike his actions regarding the DUP deal?”
“This week the New Financial think-tank said: “Our conservative estimates show that banks and investment banks are moving around £800bn in assets; asset managers have so far transferred more than £65bn in funds; and insurance companies have so far moved £35bn in assets.” That appears to have entirely passed the Chancellor by. People who live in these islands have suffered through a decade of austerity. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the current benefits freeze has made life harder for more than 27 million people across the UK. It is the biggest policy behind rising poverty, costing families an average of £340 a year. If the freeze continues, by 2020 it will have driven 400,000 people into poverty. It must end now. While the poor get poorer, the rich get richer under this Government.”
“We need the Chancellor to explain how he will fix the fiscal gap created by discouraging immigration. We know that the average EU citizen who chooses to live and work in our country contributes £34,400 annually to the Scottish economy. How will he plug that gap? Will he exempt those coming for PhD-level roles from the salary cap, as well as from the visa numbers cap? We need the Chancellor to provide funding to small businesses that are not prepared to cope with Brexit. Only 8% of Scottish firms feel fully ready. We need concrete action to tackle the lack of productivity growth. It was woeful anyway, compared with our European neighbours, but over the past two years business has been so focused on Brexit damage limitation that it has lacked the resources to increase growth and productivity.”
“He told Radio 4: “The economy will be slightly smaller in the Prime Minister’s preferred version of the future partnership.” We now face the prospect of a no-deal Brexit, which would have a severe impact on the economy, people and businesses across Scotland. It could push the Scottish economy into a deep recession, similar in scale to the financial crash of 2008. The British Retail Consortium estimates that no deal could hike food prices by some 29%. My constituents cannot afford that. Will the Chancellor commit to voting against no deal tonight? Given such massive uncertainty, we needed a bit more than this damp squib of a statement. It is a laudable aim to have only one Budget a year, but in these circumstances, the Chancellor should have brought forward an emergency Budget, and I call on him to do so.”
“There is no certainty about the future health of the economy. Whatever happens regarding the Prime Minister’s deal—whether this House eventually accepts or continues to resoundingly reject it—we are still not clear about what the UK’s future trading relationship with the EU will look like. What is clear is that Brexit is bad for the economy. So far, the picture is bleak. Key economic indicators show that the UK economy grew by a meagre 0.2% in the fourth quarter of 2018. The OBR previously forecast growth of 1.6% for 2019. Even with the assumption of a smooth Brexit, it has downgraded that to 1.2%. Whatever the Chancellor’s spin, is that not the cost of Brexit? Of course, the Chancellor predicted that himself.”
“Given that we are just over a fortnight away from Brexit day and the Prime Minister’s deal has again been resoundingly rejected by this House, it is absolutely necessary that the spring statement tomorrow is upgraded to an emergency Budget. Will the Leader of the House ensure that that happens?”
“The Government intend to publish a motion, an agreement and legal advice on that agreement. Can the Minister commit to ensuring that we have all of this before the beginning of the debate tomorrow? Will he also ask the Attorney General to come to give a statement about the legal advice, so that we can ask questions on it in advance of tomorrow’s debate?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not aware of any point during my time in Parliament when statements have not come one after the other. My understanding of what you said is that there will now be an urgent question and then three statements; the first two will come straight after the urgent question, but the third might not. How will it be communicated to Members at what time that statement is likely to come? Is it possible that it will come in the middle of the debate on the Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill, or will it come before or after that? When will we know, and how will we find out?”
“This House needs to see how the deprivation powers have been used, and the letter of the law in the 2014 Act needs to be carried through.”
“Section 66 of the Immigration Act 2014 requires the Home Secretary to commission a review of the use of deprivation powers. That was done for the first year, but it has not been carried for the period between July 2015 to July 2018, and the Library confirmed to me that there is no requirement for that to be done by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. I am pleased that the Home Secretary mentioned the review today, but how has it taken me asking a written question and receiving an answer from the Immigration Minister that a review will not be commissioned until we have a new independent reviewer of terrorism legislation for the Home Secretary to confirm that one will happen? What is the timetable for the review?”
“It is absolutely necessary that the Government change the programme motion before the rise of the House so that tomorrow we have protected time, rather than having to make a choice between questioning the legal advice and having time for debate.”
“This feels like neither democracy being done nor democracy being seen to be done. I cannot imagine that anybody watching thinks it is anything other than a shambles. The statement is taking place incredibly late at night. It is being added to as the Minister stands on his feet. The motion has only just been laid. We are being asked to deliberate on and debate legal advice and documents that we have not yet seen. Worst of all, there is no protected time for the debate tomorrow, so if Members have the ability to question the Attorney General on the legal advice he has provided, that will eat into the time for debate.”
“Q6. In January, 83% of Scottish MPs voted against the Prime Minister’s deal. Last night, an historic vote took place in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament, with both Parliaments simultaneously rejecting the Prime Minister’s deal. Is it not the case that the Prime Minister has no mandate from Scotland either for no deal or for her deal?”
“In a recent survey by the Fraser of Allander Institute, 62% of Scottish businesses said that they did not feel ready for Brexit. Will the Chancellor bring forward an emergency Budget to provide support for small and medium-sized enterprises so that they can cope with the Brexit that he proposes?”
“I was specifically talking about the Brexit that the Chancellor is proposing, which is presumably not a no-deal Brexit, although it looks like 100,000 jobs could be lost in Scotland as a direct result of no deal. However, in relation to the deal Brexit, the Bank of England has said that unemployment could be up to 4% higher by 2023 if the Prime Minister’s deal is approved. Does the Chancellor believe that keeping his job is worth costing thousands of others?”
“This is Schrödinger’s analysis—even the Minister does not know whether or not it exists at this moment in time. Will he answer a simple question: does he believe that the UK would be better off if it were to leave the EU with the Prime Minister’s deal or if it were to stay in the EU?”
“If significantly more has been put into Brexit, is now really the right time to be trying to make changes around MTD when there is potentially not enough HMRC resource to go around, never mind enough resource within businesses to try to deal with both these things coming down the line at once?”
“On penalties on businesses, I understand that when businesses sign up to MTD, their previous records are transferred from the old system to the new one and are lost from the old system. Can the Minister confirm that businesses that hold out until later than April but before their filing date will not be penalised for holding out in order for them to make sure the system is working properly and to make appropriate software choices before they make that switch, and potentially lose all their old records? On Brexit staff and the changes HMRC has been making to focus on Brexit, can the Minister confirm how much resource has been put into MTD and communicating this to taxpayers compared with how much resource has been put into preparing for Brexit?”
“It would be useful for the Minister to provide more information around what HMRC is doing on that. The Minister said 81% of the businesses that are expected to sign up by April are aware of MTD. It is a damning indictment that only 81% are aware of it; HMRC and the Government should be doing a better job of making sure these businesses are aware of it, because 19% are not aware, and in fact a significant number of businesses are hearing about this potentially for the first time today. Because there is no one approved software provider recommended by HMRC, I am concerned that 160 choices is a baffling array that businesses will have to decide between with no idea which of these software choices will work, which will work well and which will suit their business. It is not helpful to have that many software choices.”
“There is a lot going on in HMRC just now: MTD, the incredible number of additional staff being put in to deal with Brexit, and the downsizing and changing of HMRC offices. It is interesting that the Minister says he is not in favour of centralisation in the provision of software but is in favour of centralisation in relation to closing all the offices so that there are only super-offices, not local ones. HMRC has not yet provided even the most basic information that taxpayers will require in order to take part in MTD. Some have received a letter—an overly complicated and fairly cursory letter—telling them of the start date, but they have not received information on their specific queries about how to sign up to MTD and how it will work for them.”
“My hon. Friend is making a great speech. On the lack of certainty beyond 2022, are not those in farming communities planning a long way ahead for what they intend to do with their land? Certainty beyond 2022 would help them in their long-term planning for their stewardship role as well as for trying to make money.”
“My hon. Friend is making a great point about funding. Does he share my concern that these communities will be hit doubly, because there will also be changes to immigration, which may mean they do not have access to labour? Given that some of our areas are suffering from depopulation, which we have worked very hard to counter, does he feel this is a double whammy that rural communities cannot afford?”
“It would be helpful if the Minister told us what the Government are doing to protect slots at Aberdeen and other regional airports after Brexit and what they are doing to ensure that airlines are encouraged to use those slots and that our regional airports have access not only to hub airports but to destinations.”
“Our thoughts at this time are with the staff, whose future is uncertain, and with those who have had their travel plans thrown into disarray, who are out of pocket or who are stranded as a result of the collapse of Flybmi. I am pleased that Loganair has announced that it is stepping in to cover the routes from Aberdeen to Bristol, Oslo and Esbjerg from 4 March. At a time when Aberdeen is feeling the impact of the loss of easyJet flights, the news of Flybmi going into administration is deeply worrying, particularly because it explicitly mentioned Brexit uncertainty as one of the reasons for this happening. Recent studies have shown that Aberdeen is set to be the UK city that will be the hardest hit by Brexit.”
“I am seeking some clarity on the first of these SIs and which day the Minister expects the disclosure of information regulations to come into operation. Am I right in thinking that exit day means exit day unless there is an implementation period, in which case it means at the end of the implementation period?”
“With respect, that is not what it says in the explanatory memorandum for the first SI, which suggests that it is needed in the event of any Brexit and not just in the event of a no-deal Brexit. The second one covers a no-deal Brexit, but I had understood that the first one was needed for any Brexit.”
“The regulations were published in draft on 9 January this year, but the corrections were made less than a week ago, on 12 February. The copy that I got from the Vote Office did not include the corrections, so I had to find them online. I am interested to know why corrections were needed.”
“I have a question about the co-operation agreements that will potentially be signed for the disclosure of financial information. I am interested to know how much work will be involved in negotiating those co-operation agreements. Clearly we do not have to do any such negotiating with the EU currently because we are part of the single market and of that framework. Brexit will be overwhelmingly bad, whatever happens. Even if we have a deal, we will end up at a huge disadvantage, compared with our current position. On this specific point, how much additional work will be generated as a result of having to negotiate and sign those co-operation agreements, and at how much of a disadvantage will we be put as a result? I am still dealing with the first SI, on the disclosure of information.”
“The Prime Minister certainly seems keen to reopen negotiations on the withdrawal agreement, so surely it cannot possibly have been agreed at this point. The explanatory memorandum states: “The powers in the EUWA”— the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018— “are not intended to be used to make policy changes”, yet the powers in both SIs are being used to do just that, by changing how the law operates, and not just replacing EU regulators with UK regulators. They contain more wide-ranging changes. The explanatory memorandum states that it would be “inappropriate” to continue sharing information. I am not sure how that would be inappropriate. If we are switching from “shall share information” to “may share information”, surely there will be cases in which it would be appropriate to continue sharing information.”
“In some cases, the UK seems to be agreeing on reciprocity—my understanding is that it is on a case-by-case basis by whoever happens to be heading the Department’s SIs and there is no overall policy from the Government on whether they will agree EU reciprocity on such matters, but will the EU change its law? Has it signalled its intention to change its law and is that why we are seeking to change our law? The explanatory memorandum states: “The UK and the EU have agreed the terms of an implementation period”. I am little confused about the definition of “UK” in this regard. The House certainly has not agreed to the terms of an implementation period. The Prime Minister’s deal lost by 230 votes, so we cannot say that it has been agreed. It may have been negotiated, but I would not go so far as to say that it has been agreed.”
“How does that accord with the UK being keen to have a deep and special partnership if it is removing the requirement to seek consent? Removing a requirement to seek consent seems like a bit of an odd thing to do, given that the requirement to seek consent presumably ensures that there are more safeguards in place. We seem to be reducing the number of safeguards in relation to EU countries but not in relation to third countries, because currently we do not need to seek that consent. It is a bizarre thing to do. My other question is whether the EU has announced plans to change its legislation so that it does not need to seek consent from the UK to pass on financial information. I have raised this issue before and the Minister will know what I am about to say.”
“The instrument redesigns the requirements on EU member states in various pieces of EU legislation that are to be read as applying to the UK after exit, according to a line in the explanatory memorandum, which did not make a huge amount of sense to me. The explanatory memorandum seems to suggest that this UK SI is amending EU legislation that applies to EU countries, which it clearly cannot do, because the UK Parliament does not have the power to amend EU legislation as it applies to other EU countries. The SI contains some interesting stuff about the requirement to seek the consent of EU organisations and countries before disclosing information. There is currently a requirement for the UK to seek the consent of EU countries before passing on the financial data that it may need to pass on. The SI would remove that requirement.”
“I am impressed by the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) making a valiant attempt clearly not to stretch the time out, but to make an excellent speech. It was unfortunate that he did not listen a little more carefully to the speech by the Labour spokesperson, who raised the issue of powers that were being changed beyond the scope of simply rewriting the EU law into UK law. Powers are being changed in that regard. In relation to the disclosure of information SI and to be fair to the people who wrote the explanatory memorandum, there are two whole pages on the deep and special partnerships that the UK desires to have with the EU, although not on the substance of the information in the SI. I commend them for including all that information, although it could have been written in any SI, to be honest.”
“If they are only for the event of no deal, what information will the Minister provide about that? What information will he provide about the powers of the FCA and what it will look like in future? How will he ensure that the FCA is adequately funded to fulfil its obligations? Lastly, these two SIs and all the other financial services SIs we have seen have not been adequately consulted on, and I would appreciate it if the Minister commented on the consultation process.”
“There have been screw-ups of monumental proportions in relation to everything to do with Brexit. Specifically in terms of the SI process, we have not seen all the SIs for a no-deal scenario. Apparently we will not even see some of the SIs for a deal scenario until the Prime Minister manages to get something through the House, and who knows when that may be? Are we going to continue with this shambles? For people who are interested in House of Commons procedure, it is wonderful to see it not working. It is great to see the millions of places where House of Commons procedure is completely deficient, and it is particularly great to be able to discuss these SIs and raise those issues on the Floor of the House. I understood that the disclosure regulations were for the event of any deal or no deal.”
“I am not sure what will happen if there is a deal now, because I do not know how the disclosure of financial information will work, because we have not been provided with an SI that works in the event of a deal scenario—surely we should have been, because there would be deficiencies in EU law. What happens in that event? How do the Government decide when to make these SIs? If there is a deal, will they suddenly rush through provisions? The House of Commons has so many SIs in front of it, and we are now only dealing with no-deal SIs. In the event of a deal, will we have a mad situation where the Government have to make edits to each of these SIs and bring them through the House again so that we can approve them, followed by some sort of procedure to put them in place?”
“We are being asked to approve the money market funds regulations, which the explanatory notes state will come into effect only if there is no deal, but there is nothing to stop the Government from making this SI, or indeed any other, at a time of their own choosing; it would then apply after exit day. The House of Commons is basically being asked to agree to all these SIs coming into force on exit day, and then the Government have carte blanche to make any of them whenever they desire. The Minister and I were both a little confused about the provisions of the disclosure of information regulations, given that I thought they applied in any circumstance.”
“The process is as follows. If an SI is approved, it does not get Royal Assent—that is not something that happens to SIs. Instead, it basically sits in a pile of SIs that are waiting to be “made”, and they are “made” at a date and time of the Government’s choosing. I was unable to get any further information on that, other than that it is the Government who decide—is it the Cabinet Office or the Prime Minister? When we were asked to approve these SIs, I genuinely thought that the first one was not to do with a no-deal Brexit, because nowhere in the explanatory memorandum could I find the words “no deal”. The second SI, however, is very clearly to do with no deal.”
“It would be useful if Parliament were across this, given that it is an area that Parliament is not in the habit of dealing with, because it has been an EU area. I think that, in the event of no deal, Parliament would benefit from having some input into those requirements on MMFs. The commencement provisions for both SIs state that they will take effect on “exit day.” Now, I understand that exit day is defined in the European Union (Withdrawal) Act, which sets out a definite date and time. I am told that the SIs that refer to “exit day” mean that date and time. However, the withdrawal Act also gives the Government the power to vary exit day. If the Government vary exit day, presumably the SIs would come into effect only on the day that they have decided is to be exit day. I want to know what will happen if we approve these SIs.”
“I know that the FCA can request more money from Parliament, and I assume that it will have to do so in order to carry out the additional functions that are being delegated to it as a result of all the SIs coming through. The explanatory memorandum for the money market funds regulations states that HM Treasury will have “the power to make delegated acts specifying quantitative and qualitative liquidity requirements on MMFs.” I would appreciate it if the Minister could seek some divine intervention on this and let us know how those delegated acts will be introduced. Will SIs be introduced under the affirmative or negative resolution procedure, or will the Treasury simply be allowed to make its own regulations without any recourse to Parliament?”
“Member for Thirsk and Malton said that we were doing so at a critical point in the negotiations; we have been asking them to take no deal off the table pretty much since the Brexit process started, because it should never have been an option in the first place. We are not asking for it to be done now; we were asking for it to be done almost three years ago. The regulations also change the powers of the Financial Conduct Authority. I have raised concerns before about the powers of the FCA, and the fact that the Government are making piecemeal changes without any kind of overall strategy on what they expect it to look like at the end of the process.”
“It strikes me that, according to the Government’s own better regulation guidance, this process is entirely unfit for purpose, given that it involves literally hundreds of SIs coming through, many of which could do with an impact assessment. I will move on to the Money Market Funds (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, which is a no-deal SI. The Labour spokesperson made a comment about taking no deal off the table. [ Interruption. ] Mr Deputy Speaker, it would be easier to speak if it was a little quieter in the Chamber. We are not asking the Government to take no deal off the table now—the hon.”
“I do not know what a de minimis impact assessment is, and I do not know where I could find it, because it is certainly not provided on the website. I can find no further information on this thing that has apparently been done to assess the impact. We have criticised the Government before for not carrying out impact assessments. I think that it would have been useful to have an impact assessment on this. In fact, I fully intend to challenge the Government on this. They carry out an impact assessment only when there is likely to be an impact of £5 million or more on businesses. They do not carry out impact assessments when there is likely to be an impact of millions, or indeed hundreds of millions, on consumers or individuals living anywhere in these islands.”
“If they simply correct typos, that is absolutely fine. I was worried that they might have been the result of concerns raised about the legislation. I welcome that clarification. The explanatory memorandum states that no consultation was undertaken. Once again, I think that consultation should have been undertaken on the SIs, and particularly the one that makes changes to the legislation. The explanatory memorandum states that no impact assessment was done, but it does say that “a de minimis impact assessment has been carried out.” This is the first time that I have seen that phrase used in an explanatory memorandum on a financial SI, and I do seem to be spending quite a lot of my life dealing with them—I am sure that the Minister is spending even longer.”
“The hon. Gentleman is making a great case for his local area. Will he join me in welcoming the £5 million top-up that is coming from the Scottish Government, in addition to the city deal funding? Will he also join me in pressing the UK Government to match the Scottish Government’s funding for city deals across Scotland?”
“In the unlikely event that the Prime Minister’s deal is agreed, the EU is going to write to the countries that it has agreements with and say, “Please could you agree to treat the United Kingdom as a member of the EU for the transition period?” Will the Secretary of State now admit to the House that there is no guarantee that all those third countries will agree to that request?”
“The Minister mentioned the number of consultation responses; were they from throughout the EU or just from companies and organisations in the UK?”