Standards are different for elite and us
It’s been yet another month of contrasts between the high standards at Holyrood and the Westminster gutter.
Our First Minister published her tax returns and challenged other party leaders to do the same.
We already know that until recently Rishi Sunak’s wife had“non-dom”status, meaning that she was not taxed on her foreign earnings. It is claimed this resulted in her avoiding paying £20m tax to the country her husband claims to love.
Nadhim Zahawi, Conservative party chair, was eventually sacked after it was revealed that whilst Chancellor, he had paid a £1m fine to HMRC for tax avoidance.
Laughably he tried to pass this off as“carelessness”. That he was unsuited for public office should have been obvious when he was caught claiming expenses from Westminster to heat his horses’stables!
Again we see the different standards applied to the elite and to the rest of us.
Entitlement, hypocrisy, a lack of integrity, and blatant disregard for the wellbeing of normal people are at the heart of the Westminster system.
The £1M fine for Zahawi is a minor inconvenience to him. He won’t go cold or hungry as a result. But compare that to the harsh sanctions meted out to benefits claimants, people who have nothing. In a Westminster debate secured by SNP MP Chris Stephens, MPS learned that the number of sanctions was two and a half times higher now than before the pandemic, with the Department of Work and Pensions comparing different offices and pushing for higher sanction rates.
Then we have the scandal of energy companies breaking into the homes of poor and vulnerable people to forcibly install prepayment meters, whilst Ofgem, the Government watchdog, said nothing.
Undercover reporters witnessed these meters being installed in the homes of vulnerable people, in below-freezing temperatures. These meters come with far higher energy costs, and of course mean that people are left without power when they can’t afford the exorbitant bills.
Women face disproportionate impacts in times of crisis and the most common group to have a pre-payment meter forcibly installed is single mums.
At times like these, it is important to remember that British Gas, like SSE, BT, BP, and the rest of our public utility companies, was built by the taxes paid by ordinary working people. Everyone in Britain used to own a stake in these companies, and the Government could control them. Until the Tories decided to sell them off to their cronies. And Labour not only failed to renationalise any of these companies, but instead fully embraced privatisation, for example, increasing the role of expensive private hospitals in the NHS.
British Gas revealed profits of £3bn this week – and its chief executive claimed to have no knowledge of the forced pre-payment meter policy. You can see where their priorities lie.
Just imagine what the UK could have been like if all the state-owned companies were still in public hands. For example, the French Government owns most of the energy supplier EDF, and kept energy costs rises to a fraction of those in UK.
And once again, it is left to the Scottish Government to try to protect ordinary people from Westminster. Millions of pounds are spent ensuring people don’t lose their homes because of the Tory bedroom tax. Now the Scottish Government is providing a Winter Heating Payment to around 400,000 Scottish households – 4,600 here in Stirling. And Scottish parents have also gained more support with the child payment being expanded to children under 16.
Instead of mitigating the worst impacts of an out of touch elite in Westminster, Scotland needs the full powers that only independence can bring to stop once and for all these attacks on ordinary people.