Stuart McDonald: It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I welcome the new Minister to his place and wish him all the best in his new role. I certainly foresee this experience as being thrown in at the deep end, but it is a Bill on which there is broad consensus, so I hope that it is not too much of a baptism of fire and that he enjoys it. It is nice to be able to join colleagues. I was...
Stuart McDonald: Very good.
Stuart McDonald: The foreign power condition includes activities carried out with the financial or other assistance of a foreign power. The concern is that if an NGO gets regular funding for environmental or human rights work, it would be accidently caught by the foreign power condition. A journalist who works for a friendly state broadcaster would also be caught by the foreign power condition. We still think...
Stuart McDonald: Just go with Cumbernauld, if that helps.
Stuart McDonald: To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what his policy is on funding any potential shortfall in rent in the event that Afghans resettled under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme are placed in properties where the rent is higher than the Local Housing Allowance rate.
Stuart McDonald: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the guidance document Affordability fee waiver: Citizenship registration for individuals under the age of 18, published on 26 May 2022, for what reasons her policy objectives in that assessment do not include reference to the objective in the British Nationality Act 1981 that British citizenship is held by all persons...
Stuart McDonald: In his answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), the Chancellor seemed actually to be boasting that unlike the Scottish Government he is not willing to invest in tackling child poverty or in supporting carers. May I therefore suggest that instead of boasting about his poverty-inducing social insecurity system he tries looking at and replicating the Scottish...
Stuart McDonald: What recent discussions he has had with elected members in the devolved Administrations on the (a) equity and (b) transparency of the (i) levelling-up fund and (ii) UK shared prosperity fund.
Stuart McDonald: The recent Public Accounts Committee report reminds us: “Economic development is a devolved power”, but decisions that would previously have been made according to Scottish Government priorities are now “based entirely on UK Government’s assessment of priorities.” In short, that is not decentralisation; it is a power grab. What will the Department do to address the PAC’s...
Stuart McDonald: It was a great privilege to join the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson), last week in meeting Ukrainian MPs who had arrived in London after meetings in Dublin. Given nobody had checked their passports between visa-free Ireland and here, they rightly asked, “How on earth can the UK’s visa scheme possibly be justified on...
Stuart McDonald: On World Refugee Day, we pay tribute to all the fantastic refugees who have made utterly amazing contributions to our society and who were, thank goodness, able to have their claims heard here and rebuild their lives here instead of being dumped and offloaded thousands of miles away. The full hearing on whether the Home Secretary’s policy in Rwanda is lawful will take place in July, as the...
Stuart McDonald: My party continues to deplore this unworkable, illegal and immoral policy. It does nothing to stop smugglers and it inflicts serious harm on victims, despite the Home Secretary’s cloud cuckoo land description of it. We wholeheartedly welcome the cancellation of this flight, and we condemn the reckless approach that the Home Secretary has taken to taxpayers’ money and, more importantly, to...
Stuart McDonald: Wait for the ruling!
Stuart McDonald: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, with reference to the Answer of 25 April 2019 to Question 245815, when British National (Overseas) Passport Holders from Hong Kong will be able to use the United Kingdom’s e-passport gates.
Stuart McDonald: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications have been received under the Ukraine Extension Scheme; how many of those applications (a) are from people in the UK on seasonal workers visas and (b) have been (i) successful and (ii) refused.
Stuart McDonald: (Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary whether she will make a statement on the planned removal of asylum seekers to Rwanda.
Stuart McDonald: I sincerely thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. This is not world-leading policy. If anything, this leads to the total shredding of the refugee convention. This cash-for-deportations policy is akin to state-sponsored trafficking and transportation. What is more, it is a grim political stunt being rushed out to shore up the Prime Minister again. Why else was this flight...
Stuart McDonald: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps his Department is taking to help protect the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Stuart McDonald: We fully support all the Government’s efforts to properly arm the Ukrainians with the equipment and weapons they need, but the Secretary of State has alluded a couple of times to the fact that there is also the corresponding challenge of training. Will he say a little more about his discussions with colleagues and allies about maximising opportunities for Ukrainian personnel to be able to...