Debate on the Address — House of Commons, 2019-10-14
Topic: Immigration
Angela Crawley (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): As I was saying, EU citizens from outwith the UK who are living in Scotland make up just over 3% of our population. They enrich our culture, strengthen our society and boost our economy. Leaving the EU and ending freedom of movement could cost Scotland up to £2 billion in tax revenues. I would like to understand how MPs who also represent Scotland on this side of the House intend to answer to their constituents when the general election comes. For Scotland that is not a price worth paying, and Scotland is not willing to pay it In my constituency, thousands of EU nationals are anxious about their future. I recently held a surgery specifically for those who are concerned about their future in the UK post Brexit, and the response was heartbreaking. Women in their 80s are planning to leave the place they have called home, families fear that they will have to return to a place that their kids will not recognise because they have never lived there, and young people are angry about the fact that their opportunities are being removed by this Government. Their anxiety was not relieved when the Minister for Security threatened EU nationals with deportation from the UK if they did not apply for settled status. We all know that the Government’s response has been woeful Europeans who work in our health service, support local businesses and help to grow our economy now face the full force of the Tories’ hostile environment. As if it were not bad enough to be happy to target anyone who does not look like a British citizen, they now want to target EU nationals who contribute to healthcare, contribute to the economy and contribute to Scotland. They are happy to tell us that those people must apply for settled status in a home in which they have lived for most, if not the entirety, of their adult lives I cannot support a Queen’s Speech that is inward-looking and ignores the problems that my constituents face. Rather than focusing on blocking EU nationals entering the UK, the Government could have used today’s events to announce a halt to universal credit, a failed policy that has been wreaking havoc in my constituency, causing people to turn to foodbanks and crisis grants just to feed themselves. That is this Government’s record. That is the record that we are not hearing about from the Prime Minister, but that is the record that the Government will face at the ballot box: a policy that is leaving local authorities out of pocket by millions of pounds, and picking up the pieces for a private sector that is increasingly reluctant to accept universal credit claimants The Prime Minister could also have announced compensation for the 1950s women whose pensions were removed from them with no consultation, or he could have called an end to the benefits freeze—another policy that has been in our manifesto for quite some time. Instead, in a room full of lords and ladies, the Queen, sitting on a golden throne, read a party political broadcast written by an unelected Prime Minister with no working majority, announcing the continuation of punitive policies that have harmed the most vulnerable in society Today has proved again how out of touch this place is. Scotland deserves the choice of a better future than the one that is being imposed upon it. It is clearer than ever that the only way to protect Scotland’s interests properly is for it to become an independent country.