Part of Debate on the Address – in the House of Commons am 4:25 pm ar 17 Gorffennaf 2024.
I begin by congratulating the Prime Minister on his first King’s Speech. I am sure it is an incredibly important moment for him and his family and I wish him well over the months to come. I am sure it will be an incredibly challenging time, but I repeat my best wishes to him and all his new colleagues beside him on the Government Benches.
I want to reflect first that, at Prime Minister’s questions on the day the election was called, I perhaps goaded the former Prime Minister in respect of calling a general election—indeed, I think I referred to him as being feart should he not do that. I am not sure entirely who out of the two of us fared worse from his decision to do so; maybe that is something we can both reflect upon in due course.
The opportunity now in front of this Labour Government is enormous. They have a parliamentary majority that will go down in history, and that majority affords them something incredibly important: the ability to deliver change. What that change looks like, and perhaps more importantly what it feels like, for people in their homes is so important. My colleagues and I on the SNP Benches will do everything we possibly can to be as constructive as we can—[Interruption.] We will! However, I was a bit disappointed today, not necessarily by some of the things that were in the King's Speech, but by some of those things that were not.
In that regard, I bring the House’s attention to the amendment that my colleagues and I, ably supported by other Members from across the Chamber, have tabled in relation to the two-child benefit cap. That iniquitous, heinous policy was brought in by the former Conservative Government in 2015. Each and every one of us in this Chamber notes that it retains children in poverty—hundreds of thousands of children across these isles. In Scotland alone, it impacts 27,000 households and it is estimated that 14,000 children would immediately be taken out of poverty were it to be scrapped, but it was not mentioned in the Government’s programme for government today.
Instead, all we have heard is that a taskforce will be created, with no timeframe for that taskforce and no indication when it will conclude. All the while, those children will remain in poverty. Surely it should be the bare minimum expectation of a Labour Government that they would seek to do everything they possibly can immediately to lift children out of poverty, and I am particularly interested in the views of Scottish Members of Parliament from the Labour party in this regard.