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14 July 2015

Watch: SNP MP Mhairi Black’s killer anti-austerity maiden speech to the House of Commons

“I am the only 20-year-old in the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing.”

By Media Mole

Mhairi Black has had a busy first ten weeks in parliament since the general election, as well as graduating with a First Class degree in Politics from Glasgow University.

The 20-year-old’s first speech in the Commons shows that her young age places no limits on her ability to deliver a killer line, as she told the House: “I am … the only 2o-year-old in the whole of the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing.”

Watch it here:

Her speech covered benefit cuts (“When the Chancellor spoke in his budget about fixing the roof while the sun is shining, I would have to ask, on who is the sun shining?”) to the proliferation of food banks in her constituency (“Food banks are not part of the welfare state, they are a symbol that the welfare state is failing”), Black laid into George Osborne’s latest budget.

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She also pointed out the hypocrisy of Osborne’s views on housing benefits for young people:

Now the government, quite rightly, pays for me – through taxpayer’s money – to be able live in London whilst I serve my constituents. My housing is subsidised by the taxpayer. Now the Chancellor in his budget said, “It is not fair that families earning over £40,000 in London should have their rents paid for by other working people.” But it is ok so long as you’re an MP? In this budget the Chancellor also abolished any housing benefit for anyone below the age of 21. So we are now in the ridiculous situtation whereby, because I am an MP, not only am I the youngest, but I am also the only 2o-year-old in the whole of the UK that the Chancellor is prepared to help with housing.

She added: “We now have one of the most uncaring, uncompromising and out-of-touch governments that the UK has seen since Thatcher.” 

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