Delivery of Public Services — House of Commons, 2022-06-28
Topic: Immigration
Steven Bonnar (Scottish National Party, Centre-left): I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the motion today. The official Opposition termed the subject "Backlog Britain", but "Backlog, broken, Brexit Britain" would have been a more apt and relevant title—they should shoulder their portion of responsibility for much of that, given their leader’s weakness and their inability to hold this shambolic Prime Minister and his Government to account The UK is the sick man of Europe, with a despot leader who does not rely on the rule of law to keep order—quite the opposite; he chooses to break it freely and consistently, whether international or domestic, with nothing limited or specific about it. As with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that came through this place last night, laws are being broken knowingly and willingly If I were to throw out the figure of tens of thousands, I would be speaking not about the opportunities made available to us via a post-Brexit bonanza, but the number of people waiting for their passports to be processed by this Government’s Passport Office—a number that grows by the hour. It is frankly staggering that this Tory Government have sunk to this new low, such a low that they now cannot even get the most basic of tasks, arming our citizens with their passports, sorted out. The reality is that I could have picked any Government Department to focus my comments on today. The DVLA, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the Home Office, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Passport Office—the whole Government are in complete disarray Everyone could see that in excess of 5 million people would be applying for passport renewals this year in the wake of a pandemic which saw two lockdowns where people could not leave their house, far less the country. The impeccable foresight of this Government led them to do what? To create more backlogs than necessary by cutting the number of civil servants staffing those Departments by more than a fifth in the past couple of years. They have plunged the entire travel industry even further into chaos in the wake of their incompetent pandemic border policy, with people now forced to cancel flights and travel plans due to the delay in issuing passports It would be remiss of me, when touching on transport matters, not to put on record my solidarity with and support for the workforce and the members of the RMT union striking for a fair pay for a fair day. I also place on record my admiration for Mick Lynch, leader of the RMT union, in how he has handled the heavily slanted media reporting we have seen from some commentators across the Brit-Nat media outlets—for the avoidance of doubt, I am talking about Sky and the BBC. I also noted with some admiration his choice of socialist revolutionary Issuing passports and driving licences and keeping people on the move via public transport are the very basic asks of any Government. Yet this Government, led by a law-breaking Prime Minister, have utterly failed our constituents on every count. Families across the four nations of the UK, as we all know well, are already suffering under the turbocharged Tory cost of living crisis, and yet this Government are completely failing to even acknowledge their mismanagement of the situation Blissful ignorance works well for the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, and it looks to be catching right across that Government Front Bench. The Government know fine well that the cost of living is rocketing and that, for the vast majority of those we represent, every penny is a calculated and measured spend. Yet my constituents have been left with the only viable option of paying extra of their hard-earned money, in the hope of obtaining their passport in time for travel. It is completely unacceptable—but, of course, an inhumane policy such as the despicable Rwanda plan, which costs half a million pounds for every empty plane sent, must be funded somehow, mustn’t it My constituency office in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill has been inundated with hundreds upon hundreds of passport, visa and immigration related inquiries. I have constituents who need to spend whatever little time is left with a terminally ill parent in Australia, met with intransigence; another who needs to access urgent specialist cancer treatment in Canada, met with intransigence by this Government; and another who needs to attend their brother’s funeral in India, met with inaction from the Government. Those are real concerns, real problems, real emergencies and real people that this Government do not have a shred of compassion for, let alone any attempt to understand or accommodate. While we focus on trying to sort this stuff, highlighting individual Government inadequacies along the way, that leaves less and less time for the long list of other issues that we need to deal with that are once again at the heart of this Government’s "steal from the poor and give to the rich" agenda.