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Katy joined the Labour Party in the 1980s on a demonstration
against pit closures. At the time she was at school in South
Ayrshire and 10,000 jobs were at threat in the Killoch pits (which
was the only coal mine in Ayrshire at that time) and those jobs
were lost. Her decision to join the Labour Party at that time was
influenced by these local and national events.
When asked what had prompted her to stand as an MP, Katy replied
"Lots of things. I was involved in politics, I was involved in the
Labour Party and I was involved in lots of campaigns and it seemed
to me that if you are involved then you might as well try and have
as strong a voice as you can and standing to be an MP was one of
the ways to do that, to try and get my voice heard." Whilst
acknowledging that sometimes being an MP feels like she is banging
her head against a brick rather than making a different she remains
convinced that it is a way of getting her voice heard.
As a teenager Katy wanted to be an airline pilot. She gave up
this ambition when, aged 14, she was first told that she would not
be strong enough to be an airline pilot and then became short
sighted. She later discovered that it was possible to wear contact
lenses and be a civilian airline pilot and muses how different her
life might have been had she known this at the time.
Citing family members as one of her most significant influences
Katy explains that she was brought up listening to stories about
how her family had struggled to try and make things better for
their communities. She is also conscious of the struggle for
women's rights; from the suffragettes to the ways in which women
have fought have a say and influence. However, she reflects "I
suspect that if I hadn't come from a family that was quite
political it might not have occurred to me that I could get
involved too."
Regarding the role of churches in politics Katy thinks that
churches "should play a strong role in fighting for what they
believe in and for their values. I think it's always difficult for
the churches because the reality is that people of all sorts of
different political persuasions are … members of each church and
that's completely correct so I think it's dangerous territory if
churches start telling people how to vote." She would like to see
churches more actively involved in the political process on issues
that are important to them. Categorising these as the fight against
the huge levels of poverty seen both in this country and
internationally, and the huge inequalities in wealth and power;
Katy sees a huge role for the churches speaking on those issues of
social justice.
Looking at the list of Early Day Motions that Katy has tabled or
signed a strong theme of consumer protection emerges. When asked
what led her to be interested in these issues she replied that "you
get interested in anything that affects your constituents" and
because she represents an area in which there are high issues of
deprivation, high levels of unemployment and all the social
problems that come with that, she sees a lot of people who do not
have access to bank accounts or to credit cards or loans. She
explains that "takes you on to the whole agenda of consumer rights.
I suppose I am coming at it very much from the perspective of
individuals who are really at the sidelines of a lot of these
issues." Acknowledging that consumer rights affect people of any
income she emphasises that she is most concerned with helping
people who are on the fringes of society.
The Big Society is a cause of concern for Katy as thinks it may
be a distraction from the reality of the spending cuts that we are
about to experience. Her expectation is that the spending cuts will
target some of the poorest and most vulnerable in our society. She
feels that the reality is that many voluntary organisations in
Scotland are heavily dependent on public sector grants for support
saying "(w)e are going to see those kinds of cuts in public
spending, that's going to affect those voluntary organisations and
really talking about a Big Society is therefore going to become
quite irrelevant."
Moving on to discuss welfare reform Katy considers how the
impact of the proposals will vary between different communities,
"there is no doubt … that the experience in London is going to be
very, very different to the experience on Arran". In particular
Katy highlights that the impact of the housing benefit cap will be
irrelevant to large parts of Scotland because rents are not at the
level which will be affected by the cap. She contrasts this with
the potentially devastating impact of taking 10% off someone's
housing benefit if they become long term unemployed in areas of
high unemployment including the West of Scotland and North
Ayrshire.
Katy went on to explain that the Government's emergency budget
affects women disproportionately because "(t)he reality is that
because of the way women live their lives, because of the fact that
they tend to be on lower incomes and the discrimination there has
been against women for such a long time, the fact that women have
children and that women disproportionately take time off work to
care for those children, and indeed to care for others in the
community, whether they are relatives or not it means that they are
disproportionately reliant on the public sector." Overall, Katy
suggests, the expected cuts in public spending will mean that women
suffer the most.
Becoming an MP rather than an MSP was a decision taken because
of a feeling that Westminster was were the decisions were made,
which is not to say that she sees herself as the decision maker -
"I think wherever you are you feel the decisions are made somewhere
else"; in this case by a centralisation of power in the Executive
who, Katy suggests, are curtailed by other forces in society such
as the influence of big business and the financial sectors.
However, she stands by her decision because "at the end of the day
it's up to Westminster how much money goes to the Scottish
Parliament and you know I think most of the decisions here actually
have a bigger impact because it's about whether we have the money
there, whether we have the framework there that's actually going to
make a difference." While agreeing that the Scottish Parliament
does incredibly good work she sees differences between the two
Parliaments saying "(a)t the end of the day I felt that I would be
of most use here, but I think I also felt that I would be more
likely to be freer to have political views that perhaps might be
more difficult to have in the Scottish Parliament." Katy considers
that as a Westminster Member of Parliament there is a tradition of
having more freedom and being less heavily whipped than the
Scottish system, where it is generally expected that MSPs do what
their parties tell them to do; very few MSPs break the whip on the
basis of their conscience.
When asked for her views on the forthcoming Scotland Bill she
responded that she hoped the Scottish Parliament would "have some
guts and use the Scotland Bill." Highlighting that the Scottish
Parliament has had access to tax raising powers for the whole
period of its existence, although she does note that perhaps the
powers had been given away for a period of time, she is interested
that there has never been a serious debate about their use: "I
support the Parliament getting more powers but I think we really
need to think about why they've not used the powers they have
already."
And what is Katy's biggest passion outside politics? Her 18
month old daughter!