Dave Doogan
MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens · Scottish National Party · United Kingdom
“Industrial hemp is at the forefront of innovation in agriculture, and my constituent Martin Cessford is a farmer at the forefront of that in Scotland. Hemp has great promise for industrial, health, climate and building applications.”
“In the coming weeks, energy bills will rise again for households across the United Kingdom; within the last few days, five major mortgage lenders have pushed up mortgage prices for households across the United Kingdom; and within the last few hours, the cost of a barrel of oil has gone to over $100, pushing up prices at the pumps for moto…”
“Just to develop the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee’s theme, the Minister is taking some steps to control foreign contributions and donations to politics, but why not just ban them?”
“I welcome the Prime Minister to his place. In so doing, I extend my best wishes not only to him but to his family, as he takes up the manifold burdens of his new role.”
“The Minister will know that the Secretary of State is regularly to be heard talking about his many, many good friends. Does she believe that the Prime Minister-elect is one of those good friends, and, while we are on the subject of young Scots, will it not be awkward when the Secretary of State’s job is taken by another young Scot in the…”
“I note the Minister’s doughty protestations on behalf of the Secretary of State, but noting that is one thing. What message does she have for the 800,000 young Scots who were unable to vote in the 2014 referendum about her party’s continued dogma preventing young people in Scotland from having a say on their constitutional future?”
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Every one of 605 lines we hold for Dave Doogan, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 11 of 13.
“We do want it to buy community energy from community energy generators and to introduce it into the market. And we do want it to enable community energy and to lower bills.”
“One of the things missing from GB Energy is a statutory responsibility to develop and accelerate community energy at pace in a measured fashion. Referring back to my opening remarks, I am supportive of the Bill’s outline ambitions, but I am worried about the lack of detail. The more we discuss and debate the Bill, the more I am concerned that GB Energy will end up doing lots of things that nobody particularly needed it to do, because they were all done by a department within the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. What we do not have is what people want GB Energy to do. We do want it to generate energy independently and to have an effect on the energy market in the United Kingdom. We do want it to sell energy to the retail market.”
“Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), which asks for basically the same thing. [ Interruption. ] The Minister is getting very excited. Of course, we would not have had to table an amendment if the Labour party had just put the measure in the Bill. It was in the leaflets, so I do not know why it was not in the Bill. It is also no longer £300 that we need to see reduced from hard-pressed working people’s bills. Since Labour made that claim, bills have gone up by £149, so the Government will need to get £449 off people’s bills before they can get back to where they started, certainly in terms of them having any credibility. The Liberal Democrats have a well-worded and noble ambition on community energy, and the SNP would have been pleased to support it.”
“I hope that the jobs associated with this implied investment do not go the same way as the budget, before they get the chance to take root in the north-east of Scotland and support my constituents and many others in that part of the country. It is a shame that the only person appointed to GB Energy is not working in Scotland at all. I am not sure that was on the script going into the election, but it seems to be what has happened afterwards. Amendment 1 from the SNP asks the Labour Government to deliver upon what they said they would do ahead of the election. That does not strike me as particularly unreasonable. I do not think our amendment will be selected for separate decision, so I think we will be forced to vote with amendment 6 in the name of the right hon.”
“I rise to speak in support of amendment 1, in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), and amendment 5, tabled by the Liberal Democrats. I am supportive of the Bill in the abstract, and I am certainly supportive of its headline ambitions, like many Members, but I trust that the Minister is hearing what the House is saying today about the substantive lack of information and detail, and the troubling direction of travel, which will place significant executive authority in the hands of the Secretary of State in discharging GB Energy’s responsibilities. It is a pity, too, that the attrition to the original budget of £28 billion has nearly quartered it to £8 billion.”
“I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but I politely disagree. No amount of emphasis on her part will change the detail in the Bill, and that is what MPs are concerned about.”
“When the Secretary of State was in opposition, he often made big play of the fact that there is a nationalised energy industry in the United Kingdom but that none of it is owned by the United Kingdom—it is all foreign. It seems a little odd that there is not the ambition, now that he is actually in power, to deliver that ownership.”
“No, I am going to make progress. The Minister has advised us that GB Energy will not seek to displace foreign-owned energy companies but will instead crowd in investment. In reference to the previously mentioned £300 bill reduction, he has also said that GB Energy will play a role in lowering bills but that that will not happen immediately. When he sums up, perhaps he can tell us when that will be, because it is not unreasonable for people to hear that ambition and to want to see a timeline attached to it. I also mentioned the attrition in GB Energy’s funding. Given its now drastically reduced funding, will the Minister advise us what challenges he sees GB Energy facing?”
“He can indeed. The hon. Member may think he is being terribly smart—he is a self-professed expert in the energy market—but he will know how difficult it is for someone to penetrate the UK energy market unless they happen to be a large plc or a multinational. When the Scottish Government took forward that noble ambition, they found precisely the same barriers to entry as community energy companies and trusts. If the hon. Member wants to get excited about that situation, I suggest he takes it up with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.”
“I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman is driving at, but if he wants to get in touch with me after the debate, I will be happy to discuss it further.”
“I do not want to condemn it as an election prop that is now desperately looking for some sort of function—I hope it amounts to more than that—but I will vote for the amendments, and so will my colleagues, to try to make some sense of the Bill.”
“Well, indeed. Will the Minister advise us whether we are talking about GB electricity or GB energy? I would be keen to know what investments and ambition this supposedly state-owned company—I have to grit my teeth when I say that, because it is actually little more than a trading fund—will be involved in? Will it be involved in carbon capture, utilisation and storage? Will it be involved in attenuated hydro? Will it be involved in pumped storage, geothermal or hydrogen? What are the limits of GB Energy? That is not in the Bill, and we do not understand what it will deliver. As other hon. Members have asked, what is the Government’s ambition on GB Energy when it comes to Grangemouth? Is it just limited to the common or garden production of electricity? I will not vote with the Government on the Bill.”
“In outline terms, we welcome what the Government are seeking to do. It is important to raise the ability to generate capital infrastructure investment. Scotland invests 42% more than the UK average, and the UK average is 50% lower than the OECD average. That issue is a priority, but the Government’s move will fall on stony ground if on Wednesday the Chancellor continues with her priority to not lift people out of poverty and to go by exception after small businesses that take an income from that business by raising the cost of employment. With the four signal capital investment projects all being in England, I am moved to ask: what’s in this for Scotland?”
“I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, its content and for advance sight of it. The additional funding for Ukraine is very welcome, but it is what matériel they turn the funding into that will have the effect on the battlefield that we wish to see. With the shell production of European partners still well short of a million units per year, will the Secretary of State indicate how UK shell production has grown, either in numeric or percentage terms? If he cannot share that with the House, will he give us an assurance that it is increasing?”
“After a bungled fraud investigation by Renault Crédit International, it, together with Renault-Nissan UK Ltd moved to seize the assets of a business in my constituency, Mackie Motors Brechin Ltd. This cost my constituent half a million pounds and 25% of his order book value. Will the Secretary of State meet me to discuss the finer points of this clearly very dubious act by a UK bank?”
“This week, we witnessed the unedifying spectacle of Scottish Labour MPs labouring under the misapprehension that if they put forward an idea that was to the benefit of Scotland, Ministers in the United Kingdom would take it forward. I am talking about the Scottish immigration visa system. Can we have a debate in Government time that lays bare the fact that when Scotland’s ambitions are at odds, or even at variance, with those of England, Westminster will put Scotland aside—not just sometimes or most of the time, but every time?”
“Can I share with the Secretary of State the plight of my constituent, who went without child maintenance payments for six months? That happened not because of anything done wrong by her, or the paying parent, or the paying parent’s employer, which processed the direct deduction of earnings order, but because the Child Maintenance Service misplaced the payments. Will the Secretary of State apologise for that mishap? What plans does she have to rectify that deeply flawed organisation?”
“People in Scotland remember well how eager the Treasury and the Westminster Government were to get their hands on revenues from North sea oil and gas. When will we see that returned with investment from Westminster into the north-east of Scotland to support the Acorn project?”
“The Secretary of State says he is absolutely committed to the Acorn project. Well, the way to show that would be to fund it, because yet again the UK Government have failed to announce funding for carbon capture utilisation and storage projects in Scotland. This is a disaster economically, industrially and environmentally. I am sure he will agree that without Acorn, the UK cannot meet its net zero targets and will miss them by some margin. The last Tory Government failed to back this project in Scotland for years, and despite offering change, Labour has done exactly the same thing, following the same path with broadly the same budget and prioritising less developed, less substantial and less deliverable projects in England while offering the Scottish cluster no funding at all to date.”
“The Secretary of State can look forward to the same support for Ukraine’s defences from the SNP that the previous Government enjoyed. He mentioned increased air defences coming from the UK and the United States that will be in Ukraine before the end of the year. Russia will not wait until the end of the year before attacking civilian infrastructure, particularly energy infrastructure, so will the Secretary of State advise of any steps that have been taken to accelerate that increased air defence to the benefit of the people of Ukraine?”
“I thank the Minister for giving way on the point about fiscal responsibility. I am not sure of the morality of trying to balance this country’s fiscal books on the backs of pensioners. He referenced the manifesto on which the Labour party stood at the election. “No austerity under Labour” was said in Scotland, so what should the 37 Scottish Labour MPs do in this vote? Should they bow down to the Chancellor, or should they stand up for their Scottish constituents?”
“I very much hope that when the Minister sums up the debate, she will estimate how many of the 209 extra Labour MPs in this House, including 37 in Scotland, would be here if cutting the winter fuel payment had been on the face of their manifesto. It would be very many fewer.”
“It is fiscally incompetent, because it does not take cognisance of whole-system costs—people presenting at hospital or going into care prematurely because they cannot stay at home, because of what they do to try to make ends meet. It does not take account of the cost to the supposed saving of £1.5 billion once pension credit is taken up fully, rendering the saving meaningless. It is morally incompetent because, as we have heard from professionals in the Chamber, as a result of this decision, people will die. Moreover, this measure was not in the Labour party manifesto, which is reprehensible, and it ignores the cultural sensitivities of older people, many of whom find asking for help anathema; they will never do it, no matter how entitled they are.”
“Some 19,500 pensioners in Angus and Perthshire Glens will be stripped of their winter fuel payment by this Labour Government. I cannot tell the House how cold it gets in Angus and Perthshire Glens in wintertime, but if anyone on the Labour Front Bench wants to come and sit in my garage on a January day, I will turn the heating off in the whole property and they can see what it will be like for some pensioners in my constituency. I will not be supporting this measure because it is incompetent. It is incompetent operationally, because it does not take cognisance of co-morbidities in already frail people, or of what will happen to those people as they budget to try to accommodate this unnecessary cut to their income.”
“I grateful to the Minister for giving way. On awareness, is she aware how much more it costs to heat a home in winter in Blairgowrie, compared with Brighton or Belgravia?”
“We know that subsidies for large-scale biomass generators in England will end in 2027—I know the Minister is up to speed on that—and the Government claim they are reviewing evidence on potential support beyond this. Will the Minister, in summing up, be clear with Parliament today? Does he believe that chopping down millions of trees on the other side of the world and shipping them to England, to then burn them to make electricity, is acceptable? If not, will he commit to ending public subsidies for large-scale biomass in 2027?”
“On a substantive note about the lack of detail in the Bill, it is a great pity that the Government want us to believe that clean energy means energy produced from sources other than fossil fuels. It is hard to imagine a more one-dimensional analysis and qualification than that. It is narrow and incoherent, and out of step with the science and the public. It does not really matter where or what carbon is locked into. If you burn it to release carbon dioxide in the process of making energy, then you are a carbon emitter contributing to the climate crisis. It is as simple as that. We should not be hostage to a technology where hundreds of millions of pounds in Government subsidies are used to create millions of tonnes of CO2 a year.”
“Why is it not considered a Government trading fund? It is not a company; it is a Government trading fund that they are branding as a company. It absolutely meets all the criteria of the Government Trading Funds Act 1973, so it would be interesting to know why that is. I do not doubt the Secretary of State’s commitment in this area. I have seen it over the past five years. I am sorry that his initial, much more ambitious plans for £28 billion have been torpedoed by the Treasury and his right hon. Friend the Chancellor. If he is feeling sorry for himself, he can speak to the millions of pensioners around these islands whose ambitions for the future have also been torpedoed by the Chancellor and the Treasury.”
“Talk about net zero—there is zero detail in the Bill to give us an indication of what will actually happen on the ground. It was going to sell energy to the public, and then it was not. It was going to generate energy. Then it was not, and now it will again. I think we are still in that space. I heard in the Secretary of State’s opening remarks that there has now been a modification to the brand: it is now GB Energy generating company. The “generating” bit has been shoehorned in there at the last minute to try to make it a little bit more believable. It that will not own any assets outright, but will make a return on the sale of energy from the wholesale market by the principal operator of the energy schemes it latches itself on to. Well, I can see why the Labour part never put that on a leaflet—goodness me.”
“I congratulate the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Jayne Kirkham) on a really wonderful maiden speech. It is heartening to see how much love and passion she has for her adopted home in Cornwall—and who does not like Cornwall? I am sure her constituents will be tremendously well served by the passion we saw just now. The Government must accept that the messaging around GB Energy was muddled at the very least during the election. It was almost as though it was rushed through as a manifesto headline, rather than resulting from the strategic development of careful, thought-out, optimised planning, but there we are. We understand that there will be limited co-production from the company, no retail arm and no public sector comparator role. It will be a provider that does not do much provision and a decider that does not make any decisions.”
“Pushing ahead, zonal energy is one of the most important transformations that can come into the energy market on GB. The Government advised that electricity market reform is key—”
“Ofgem has created an environment where one can deliver an extraordinary example of community electricity generation, but trying to connect with consumers is almost impossible. GB Energy, if it is nothing else—and it does appear to be not much else—could have been part of the gig economy. It could have been the Uber of retail energy. We could have bought community energy and passed it on to the consumer base, but that is not going to happen. The Government want to mirror the ambition of Vattenfall or EDF, but those companies, which are actually companies, sell to the retail market. Will the Government update us on the paltry amount that the previous Government allocated to community energy? It was £10 million just for England. What will GB Energy deliver?”
“The Bill sets out that it applies to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England. However, constitutionally and administratively, in policy terms I do not see how it can apply to Northern Ireland. If the Minister could update us on what possible role GB Energy has in the entirely different energy market that exists in Northern Ireland, that would be helpful. Community energy is essential to how we make our journey to net zero, but like much else there is scant detail on that. If the Government had properly consulted the community energy sector—they can probably still do that—they would know that access to consumers is one of the principal drawbacks to developing these schemes. It is disappointing that no lateral thinking is being applied on how to connect the will to create community energy with the market.”
“I hesitate to thank the right hon. Member for his intervention— [ Laughter. ] I will need to fact check his 13 million figure—I will get back to him on that. But let us be really clear—I will touch on onshore wind in a minute—that once those trees are burned in a former coal-fired power station, the only products are CO2 and electricity, but where trees have been cleared to create onshore wind in Scotland, there is a lifetime of renewable, clean cheap energy coming out the other side, so it is a false comparator if ever I saw one. Do the Government believe that waste to energy is also clean energy? That does not seem to be what GB Energy should pursue, and I am not certain there is much support for that in the country. Maybe the right hon. Gentleman should have made his intervention in a minute, because I remain unclear on this point.”
“I am fully aligned with the hon. Member’s priority for national security in energy not to rely on other nations. Of course, within the UK, Scotland generates vastly more energy than we can consume. Although we are in the same state—in the United Kingdom—Scotland is a different country and a different nation. Does he think it is appropriate that Scotland should reap no benefit whatsoever from its energy endowment relative to anywhere else on these islands?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State to his position. He will know that the Scottish Government have their own tax-raising powers. He will remember criticising the Scottish Government for not using them, then criticising the Scottish Government when we did use them. Nevertheless, this generates £1.5 billion of extra revenue in Scotland, and taxing those who earn more slightly more allows us to tax those who earn slightly less even less than is the case in the rest of the United Kingdom. What advice would he give the Chancellor to mirror those efforts in Scotland to have a more progressive and fair tax system for our workers?”
“In summary, there is nothing particularly to object to in this inherently ordinary and transactional provision in the Bill, except for the behaviour of the Government advancing it.”
“The double standards of it all are staggering. She wants the Scottish Government to raise income taxes in Scotland, which is precisely what she refused to do ahead of the UK general election. Why will she not mirror the Scottish Government’s progressive income tax regime to increase taxes slightly on those of us who are better off, and reduce taxes slightly for those on the lowest incomes? That would raise nearly £16 billion for the Treasury. If she had done that and followed the SNP Scottish Government’s lead, she would not have had to attack our pensioners’ winter fuel allowance. A significant element of budget responsibility is ensuring that people own their decisions and their own mess. Labour will find that SNP Members are keen to help them in that pursuit.”
“Before the general election, when Labour in Wales was facing NHS budget pressures, the now Secretary of State said that “all roads lead to the Tories” and Westminster, in accordance with those budget pressures. Now, after the election, we have a Labour Government, the SNP in Scotland is facing those same budget pressures, and it is the SNP’s fault. They cannot have it both ways. They have got the job and they need to own it. The Chancellor claimed that the SNP should raise income taxes to pay for her cut to the winter fuel allowance in Scotland. The cheek of it! I remind those on the Treasury Front Bench that 70% of taxes raised in Scotland go directly to the Treasury. We have paid our dues, and shame on the Chancellor for trying to get Scottish taxpayers to pay twice to compensate for her axe wielding.”
“I hope he has had a chance to reflect on the so-called fiscal lock, which is nothing more than an administrative assessment of Treasury plans on which nothing is contingent. The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy) said that she is keen for those on the Treasury Front Bench to be held to a higher fiscal standard. Fair enough, but the Bill will not do that. This is in abstract the narrowest one-dimensional protection from bad fiscal policy. Labour Members are seemingly addicted—the Bill evidences this—to some sort of pound shop exaggeration, and a troubling reliance on hyperbole when detailing something profoundly ordinary. The fiscal lock and the Bill will not protect the devolved nations and their budgets from the austerity of the Labour Front Bench.”
“It is unacceptable, and the Bill, if enacted, will do nothing to protect communities from that. I am also troubled by the language that those on the Treasury Front Bench seek to use to accrue some form of disproportionate credit for bringing forward the Bill. At its core, the Bill is nothing more than an additional provision to the existing Act, and the exaggerated language around it exposes the weakness of the Government’s position on this fiscal lock. Nothing is either locked in or locked out by the Bill. The OBR cannot stop any Budget or fiscal adjustment, good, bad or indifferent. That is Parliament’s role, as other right hon. and hon. Members have pointed out. On Second Reading I pointed that out to the Minister, who declined to concede on the absolute fact that the position is as I have just set out.”
“If that is not good enough, the SNP warned throughout the election that if Labour stuck to Tory spending plans, taxes would rise and/or budgets would be cut, and here we are. The SNP even challenged Labour in Scotland on that point during the election, and the leader of Labour in Scotland, Anas Sarwar, said, “read my lips: no austerity under Labour”. He is not saying that now is he, because he cannot. Perhaps the Chancellor, or those on her Front Bench, can advise us about whether Mr Sarwar was having a stumble with the truth that day, or whether they had forgotten to let their branch office in Scotland in on the plan. Despite all that, the Chancellor and her Treasury Front Bench persist in their claims about a £22 billion black hole to defend their indefensible attacks on the poorest in society.”
“The Office for Budget Responsibility will take no view on the qualitative merits or otherwise of any Treasury decision, but merely on the quantitative dimension in fiscal terms. There are no locks in the Bill to protect the people of these islands from this Labour Chancellor. We hear ad nauseam that the Chancellor had no choice in any of these actions, and the worst inheritance since the war, and it goes on and on. Well: “The numbers may be a little bit worse than they thought at the time, and I think there were some things that were hidden from view, but the overall picture over the next four or five years is very, very similar to what we knew before the election.” Those are not my words, but those of Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.”
“We could ask the millions of working poor across these islands, who are trying to do right by their children, their employer, and just pay their bills to get by, and who put their kids to bed every night and then sit up all night worrying about everything, what difference this fiscal lock will make to their lives. The Chancellor’s first two acts on taking up her role was to make life harder for the poorest families in society who have the least. Once she had dispatched them, she turned her fire on pensioners, removing their winter fuel allowance. Austerity 2.0—it does not matter to Scotland whether austerity comes in a Labour or Tory wrapper, it is still as caustic. That is relevant because the Chancellor wants us to believe that the Bill and the fiscal lock will make everything okay, but it does not.”
“I offer many congratulations, not least on a fantastic maiden speech but also on those exceptional shoes. I am concerned, indeed troubled as many people will be, about the role of the Treasury and Chancellor in the last couple of months. We are here to talk about budget responsibility, and I wonder what answer we would get if we were to ask the 80% of pensioners on these islands who are about to be stripped of their winter fuel payment what they think is responsible about that budget intervention. We could ask the millions living in poverty across these island—a disgrace in and of itself—what they think about budget responsibility in their lives, now double scuppered by Labour’s two-child cap.”
“It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) and that rundown of her fantastic constituency. I want to go there now that I have heard about it, although she might be surprised to know that I am quite familiar with that part of the world around Portsmouth North, Fareham, Gosport, Hayling Island and Southsea. It is a beautiful part of the world, and while it cannot compete with Scotland in scenery, it certainly wins the day when it comes to weather in the summertime. She might also be surprised to know that there is a fairly high concentration of Pompey supporters in Perthshire. That is a legacy of the Royal Naval aircraft workshops outside Perth, when people used to go down to the Royal Naval aircraft yard in Gosport, and picked up a loyalty to Pompey from there.”
“The Chancellor would have known, in advance of the cut to the winter fuel payment and the stripping of £160 million from pensioners in Scotland, that Scottish pensioners suffer the lowest temperatures, rural Scottish pensioners live in some of the oldest houses on these islands, and most Scottish pensioners in rural areas are off the gas grid. Knowing that, what discussions did she have with her 37 new Scottish Labour MPs about pushing Scottish pensioners into fuel poverty?”
“Fair play to the new Secretary of State: 5.3 GW of offshore wind is a great achievement, especially compared with the flat zero achieved by the Tories in auction round 5. It unlocks the vital Inch Cape array off my Angus constituency coast, and supports jobs in Montrose, as well as in Moray West, and there is also the game-changing Green Volt floating array off the north-east coast of Scotland. He highlights 1 GW of onshore wind, 8 MW of which is coming from England. Will he tell the House where the rest of that onshore energy is coming from? His target is 60 GW by 2030. How will he achieve that 9 GW a year from now until 2030?”
“From its beginning to its end, it is simply an impartial assessment leaving the hands of the Chancellor of the day free to prosecute whatever plan they wish, consistent with the OBR’s assessment or not. And so it should be, because Parliament is here to hold the Government to account—as are the people across these islands, which we have seen recently. To be clear, this provision is certainly no replacement for the rigorous parliamentary scrutiny of fiscal policy. That is a core function of this House, which I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, agree with. In the interests of consensus, will the Minister concede this minor point of detail—that “fiscal report” is far more realistic in terms of what it actually means than “fiscal lock”, for this nevertheless welcome measure?”
“If Labour is serious about restoring faith in, and the growth of, the economy, much more action is needed from the Government. No economy ever cut its way to growth; rather, growth is a function of investment. In closing, I greatly fear that the new Labour Government are getting a bit carried away with their own success and are sailing off from reality at some knots. I cite the nauseating “Government of service” hyperbole, the Potemkin energy company that is GB Energy, which is abject nonsense, and now the “fiscal lock” set out in the Bill. An assessment by the OBR is not a lock on anything. It does not enable or prevent anything. It does not confine, nor does it decide anything. Parliament will never allow it to be used as a shield for the Chancellor.”