Watching Westminster From Scotland
For the Excluded Scotland community, this dynamic is all too familiar. It was after all the Westminster Government, not the Scottish devolved administration, that excluded them from Covid-19 financial support.
Attention is now focused on the Backbench Debate being brought to Westminster on 15 January 2025 by Dr Manuela Perteghella MP of the Liberal Democrats, on behalf of the ExcludedUK community. The timing matters. It falls one year and one day after the inaugural meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Gaps in Covid-19 Financial Support.
The current APPG, effectively the second Gaps in Support incarnation, has 77 members and was formed to acknowledge the challenges faced by UK taxpayers excluded from Covid-19 support, to address the failures of previous schemes, and to develop fair solutions so that no one is excluded in future crises. It has taken a full year for the issue to reach the floor of the House in this way.
That year has not been empty. It has been shaped by sustained advocacy led by ExcludedUK’s loudest and most consistent voice Tim Pravda @ExcludedFighter, continued work by the Excluded team, lived experience by the Excluded community and the emerging evidence from the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, particularly through its Economic Response module. That evidence has added further clarity and weight to what excluded individuals have been saying for years.
The significance of this debate is underscored by what came before. The original Gaps in Support APPG had 261 supporting members, making it the largest APPG in Westminster’s history. Despite public statements and the introduction of a Ten Minute Rule Bill, that APPG folded without notice and without delivering tangible action, despite a great deal of work and a whole lot more discussion on very possible and plausible solutions. One of the most notable being Directors’ Income Support Scheme thanks to the brilliance of Rebecca Seely Harris and Glenn Collins the DISS proposal authors / architects. The motion was sponsored by 6 MPs and supported by 22 signatories 15 of them from the ever supportive SNP. { Northern Ireland had already launched a similar scheme – LCDSS.}
Against that background, this Backbench Debate is, quite simply, a VERY BIG deal for the entire ExcludedUK community . It will be interesting to see what new brilliance is being brought to the table by those on the new APPG;- can they invoke the change that the fist APPG were unable to realise?
Many within the Excluded community remember clearly that Labour MPs spoke strongly and were supportive of their plight while the party was in Opposition. Those interventions mattered and offered recognition. Since Labour’s election win in July 2024, however, those public voices have largely fallen quiet, despite the APPG being chaired by Labour MP Steve Withdean, who raised the issue in Topical Debate in Westminster on 21st January 2025  saying,
“I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the register of all-party parliamentary groups. During the covid-19 pandemic, 3.8 million self-employed UK taxpayers were shamefully excluded from Government financial support. Many, including pregnant women and war veterans, were forgotten about by the Conservative party. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how to address the unfairness faced by so many during the pandemic?”
and basically got fobbed off by James Murray of his own party, who was at that time Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury.
“As my Hon. Friend set out, decisions on eligibility for covid-19 financial support were taken by the previous Government. “The current Government have no plans to assess the financial compensation scheme, but the covid-19 inquiry has recently launched its module to investigate the economic response to the pandemic. The Government are committed to learning from its findings.”
Here in Scotland that was a huge disappointment and remains so.
The Excluded remember with absolute clarity the UK Tory government putting the nation into lockdown in March 2020 and Rishi Sunak declaring on national TV,
“No one will be left behind.”
Their experience was entirely different;- discrimination as a policy decision. The consequences of that policy decision are still negatively impacting lives almost 6 years on.
As the Backbench Debate approaches, we are almost a year on from James Murray’s fob off; the structures are in place.
The evidence is stronger than ever.
What remains uncertain is which MPs will show up and speak out at the debate on 15th January 2025 and which ones will continue to toe the party line.
