Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to provide a substantive answer to Question 16155 on Blood: Contamination, tabled on 28 February 2024 by the Hon. Member for Glenrothes.
Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, when she plans to respond to Questions 17752 and 17753 on Hydrogen: Heating, tabled on 8 March 2024 by the Hon. Member for Glenrothes.
Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what psychological support is available for people (a) infected and (b) affected by contaminated blood and blood products in Glenrothes constituency.
Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what recent progress her Department has made on the roll out of the Hydrogen Heating Town pilot.
Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, when she plans to make an announcement on the funding applications from the four Gas Distribution Networks for the Hydrogen Heating Town pilot.
Peter Grant: H100 in Methil is making good progress towards delivering the biggest green hydrogen domestic heating network that the world has ever seen. The Government promised that by March 2023, they would have announced the successful applicant, somewhere in the UK, in an even more ambitious project to provide green hydrogen heating to potentially tens of thousands of homes, but a year later, we have...
Peter Grant: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whether funding will be made available through the Green Industries Growth Accelerator for the manufacture of wind turbine jackets.
Peter Grant: What recent assessment he has made of the implications for his policies of the Israeli occupation of the west bank.
Peter Grant: The Minister forgot to mention that this is one of the rare occasions on which the United Kingdom Government have a long-standing position that Israel is acting unlawfully in the west bank. Some 700,000 separate criminal acts of unlawful occupation have been endorsed and instructed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Because that illegal occupation has gone unpunished, we now see extremists, with the...
Peter Grant: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. One of the remaining injustices with the high-income child benefit charge is that a single person earning £60,000 will have to pay the charge, but a couple earning £59,000 each will not, because it is assessed on a single earning. Do the Government have plans to amend that anomaly? If so, when can we expect to see that happen?
Peter Grant: The hon. Member mentions the specific case of nurses. His colleagues were reluctant to acknowledge the fact that nurses in Scotland start off with much higher pay than those in England. I did some checks while others were speaking. A newly qualified ward sister in Scotland on 2023-24 rates, even allowing for slightly higher income tax on part of their earnings, is taking home £31,884 a year....
Peter Grant: The hon. Lady’s account is completely inaccurate. Often UK employers have employed workers from the European Union because the labour has not been available here. That is why, for example, we now have a crisis in recruitment to social care professions; we have stopped the Europeans coming in and there is nobody in the UK who is able to do the work.
Peter Grant: I thought it was interesting when the topics for these Budget debates were set, because those topics are what the Government want us to believe the Budget is all about. There is no mention of public services, the cost of living or climate change and net zero for any of the three days. We are talking about rewarding work, and I want to talk about rewarding not only those currently in work, but...
Peter Grant: I will come on to that in a minute. The Scottish Government are perhaps not reducing child poverty as much as they could, because nobody is ever perfect, but they are doing a blooming sight more than any Government down here ever will. As I said, we have free school meals for everybody in the first five years of primary school and for a great many children right up until they leave school....
Peter Grant: I am not saying that a Government here cannot do it—in fact, I am saying that a Government here can do it. The problem is that the Government, which the hon. Member’s party said we could trust with the welfare system, are not doing that. We have also introduced free bus travel throughout Scotland for 2 million people, including all young people up to the age of 21. That is important,...
Peter Grant: I read that in Private Eye—
Peter Grant: It is in Private Eye and therefore it must be true. I do not know if that has been fact-checked. If the hon. Gentleman can provide me with evidence from something other than Private Eye, we will certainly look into it. I should say, incidentally, that the Labour party’s record of industrial relations in its own workforce is nothing to boast about. He might want to have a look in his own...
Peter Grant: I completely agree that deliberately leaving tax thresholds untouched at a time when pay and prices are increasing is a stealth tax. It is a stealth tax when this Chancellor does it, but it was also a stealth tax when Gordon Brown did it.
Peter Grant: Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Peter Grant: Does the shadow Chancellor not understand that the SNP’s position is that there should not be a single windfall tax that punishes only north-east Scotland? A windfall tax should be applied to every sector that has profiteered from war, covid and price increases. Does she not understand that the SNP’s income tax policy means that low-paid workers—the people the Labour party is supposed...