Watch: SNP’s Mhairi Black delivers incredible maiden speech in Parliament
Out 20-year-old MP Mhairi Black has delivered a fiery maiden speech in Parliament.
Ms Black, a former politics student, became Parliament’s youngest MP in May when she unseated Labour’s then-Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander, in Paisley and Renfrewshire South.
The Scottish National Party politician – who is one of just a handful of openly LGB women to have been elected to Parliament – delivered her first speech in the Commons today.
In her speech during the budget debate, she launched an attack on Chancellor George Osborne for stripping housing benefit from under-21s – remarking that as an MP, she is “the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK the chancellor is prepared to help with housing”.
She said: “The government quite rightly pays for me, through taxpayers’ money, to be able to live in London whilst I serve my constituents.
“The chancellor in his budget said it is not fair that anyone earning over £40,000 in London should have their rents paid by other working people. But it is okay if you’re an MP?
“The chancellor also abolished any housing benefit for anyone under the age of 21… so we are now in the ridiculous situation whereby because I am an MP not only am I the youngest but I am also the only 20-year-old in the whole of the UK the chancellor is prepared to help with housing!”
Elsewhere, she lashed out at the government’s treatment of the welfare state, and paid tribute to her predecessor Douglas Alexander – as well as calling for the Labour party to return to its core values.
Her speech was met by rapturous applause from her SNP colleagues – a practice that saw them again scolded the Deputy Speaker.
