Peter's constituency contains Cardenden and Kinglassie.

Time to End Brexit Secrecy

'LAST week’s leaked papers from the UK Government confirmed what they had been trying to hide. Leaving the EU will be bad for the economy and bad for jobs. Only a tiny minority of MPs support a hard line “no deal” Brexit but with the help of the right wing press they’re the ones the Prime Minister is listening to.

The Government’s own secret analysis backs up the figures produced by the Scottish government and show that a no-deal Brexit could knock nearly 10 percent off Scotland’s economy, costing us around £2,300 each per year.

The SNP has consistently argued that leaving the EU does not mean we have to cut ourselves off from the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union. Although Labour say this is now their official position, most of their MPs still abstained when Parliament voted on it recently.

Victory for Welfare Campaigners

The Government’s welfare cuts suffered another humiliating defeat when the courts ruled that the new “Personal Independence Payment” system was illegally discriminating against hundreds of thousands of people with mental health problems.

The Speaker gave me permission to ask an “Urgent Question” in Parliament to ask the Government what they intended to do to put this right. The minister admitted that the number of people affected was much higher than they originally thought. About 220,000 people may have been getting paid less than they were entitled to.

The Government can’t give any guarantee as to when they’ll get their money back. It’s a safe bet that if these same people were suspected of claiming benefit illegally the government would find them quickly enough.

Not Fit For Purpose

Parliament has voted to plough ahead with plans to spend around £60 billion to repair the crumbling houses of parliament. Despite this massive bill, there will be no improvements to the antiquated way our laws are made. For example they have refused to install the technology for electronic voting. This means that while modern parliaments such as Holyrood can go through a full day’s votes in about twenty minutes, at Westminster the same process can take two to three hours per day and cost millions of pounds per year in staff time.

The SNP wanted to at least examine the possibility that Parliament should move permanently to a new home, possibly in another English city. The other main parties refused even to let this be discussed. So for a big chunk of the 21st century we’ll be spending billions to recreate a parliament that was already out of date when it was built in the 19th'.