← LEADERSHIP TERMINAL

UK PARLIAMENT · SITTING

Dave Doogan

MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens · Scottish National Party · United Kingdom

IN THEIR OWN WORDS

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.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE · 2026-09-10 · READ IN HANSARD

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…

ENGAGEMENTS · 2026-09-09 · READ IN HANSARD

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?

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE BILL · 2026-09-02 · READ IN HANSARD

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.

DIRECTION OF GOVERNMENT · 2026-09-01 · READ IN HANSARD

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…

YOUNG PEOPLE · 2026-07-15 · READ IN HANSARD

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?

YOUNG PEOPLE · 2026-07-15 · READ IN HANSARD

The complete record

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 7 of 13.

  1. The shadow Minister says it is inexplicable, and I agree that on the face of it, it is. However, is one possible explanation for fiscal misadventure on this scale not that the Government Benches are filled with people who have scarcely any understanding of the real economy, much less what it means to try to start, run and sustain a business?

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  2. But even fiscally incompetent Unionists—a cadre in whose number I include the Minister—must realise that the Scottish Parliament cannot exist simply to ameliorate and protect Scottish public services from the United Kingdom’s decisions. Devolution can only ever be a temporary face-lift for the crumbling foundations of Unionism. As the Union crumbles, I shed no tears, but I wish it was not ripping the economic heart out of Scotland on its way down.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  3. The Government regularly attack us by saying, “What would you do?” I will tell them what I would do: £30 billion by rejoining the single market; £16 billion by introducing Scottish income tax rates; and £43 billion from a wealth tax of 1% on assets over £10 million. But this Labour Government will not go after multimillionaires. They would far rather go after the disabled, hospices, family businesses, GPs, farmers, councils and charities. That is what these so-called socialists are intent on doing. In conclusion, Labour’s fiscal bonfire is what my colleagues in the Scottish Government have had to deal with to try to ameliorate and protect communities from Labour’s economic ineptitude.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  4. There are 7,000 charities in Scotland at risk from this Labour Government. Marie Curie faces a £2.9 million inflation to its costs, with £75 million across the charitable sector in Scotland. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals alone is exposed to a £400,000 recurring pressure from this Labour Government. Scotland’s public sector faces a £700 million recurring pressure, which, with the Government’s compensation, still leaves a £200 million shortfall. Scotland is again being punished for choosing to invest more in its public services and paying people who deliver those services better.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  5. What the Minister detailed as an impact assessment was in fact an analysis. An impact assessment deals not with the numbers, but with output in the real economy—the effect on business. The Minister knows fine that that is not what he is talking about. On GPs and Lords amendments 1, 4, 5, 9 and 13, the Scottish Government will be investing—or compensating, rather—£13.6 million in general practice this financial year to support GPs in Scotland alone, obviously, to retain and recruit staff in the face of the change. But Scotland’s GPs, any more than England’s, Wales’s or Northern Ireland’s, should not be paying the price for UK Government decisions. Labour’s decision to increase national insurance contributions is a catastrophe for GP practices and for charities across Scotland—the relevant Lords amendments are 2, 7, 12 and 16.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  6. If we want the evidence of what business thinks of this change, it is there in the figures: 300,000 small business owners surveyed last month said they intend to lay off employees in order to cope with Labour’s national insurance increase. The economic impact is now becoming absolutely clear. Last week’s GDP figures show the UK economy shrinking in January. On Monday this week, the OECD downgraded the UK growth forecast for both this year and the next. The reality under Labour is that economic growth has fallen in four of the past seven months. The national insurance grab represents an extraordinary and unforced error in fiscal policy. If Labour genuinely has confidence in this move, then it should have no issue whatsoever in agreeing to Lords amendment 21 and publishing an impact assessment of its national insurance increase.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  7. It is almost three months to the day since we were here in this Chamber on Third Reading. The SNP and other parties warned at that stage of the very real, dire consequences for organisations, businesses, charities, hospices and so on. It certainly does not give me, or anybody else on the Opposition side of the House, any pleasure that those threats have come to pass. There is no pleasure in that whatsoever. The British Chambers of Commerce spoke last month of a “powder keg of costs” for businesses, with 82% of firms surveyed saying that they faced the potential of staff lay-offs, wage freezes or cancelled promotions in the workforce, which will be a terrible drag on the economy. Last month saw vacancies in the UK contract at the second-fastest rate in nearly five years, while wage growth has slumped to an almost four-year low.

    NATIONAL INSURANCE CONTRIBUTIONS (SECONDARY CLASS 1 CONTRIBUTIONS) BILL · 2025-03-19 · READ IN HANSARD

  8. I agree with those sentiments. This week’s ceasefire negotiations are a cause for great optimism, and I welcome the efforts of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, in leading on that priority. However, last week the Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box, in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), that he had no knowledge of the United States’ planning to withdraw military aid from Ukraine, which the United States did the following day. It is against that backdrop that I ask the Prime Minister—because I know he wants a just and lasting peace in Ukraine that respects Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity—what reassurance he can give the House that when he is impressing that priority on the President of the United States, the President is actually listening.

    DURABILITY OF UK-US RELATIONS · 2025-03-12 · READ IN HANSARD

  9. The Secretary of State will be well aware of the manifold range of family-owned businesses in Scotland, many of which are very large and trade with multimillion-pound balance sheets every year. The Chancellor’s move to change the rules on business property relief threatens at best these businesses being sold off to plcs and at worst their being liquidated to pay their liabilities to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. What assessment has the Scotland Office made of the potentially catastrophic implications for Scottish enterprise of the BPR changes in train from the Treasury?

    ECONOMIC GROWTH · 2025-03-05 · READ IN HANSARD

  10. We can listen to the braying of Labour MPs from Scotland or we can look at the fact that the Scottish economy grew 12% more than the UK economy in 2024. That is because of the SNP Scottish Government’s forensic focus on making Scotland the most attractive place in the UK for foreign direct investment year after year, having a progressive taxation system, rewarding our public sector workers properly and investing in our communities. What difference does the Minister think agricultural property relief and business property relief will have on the Scottish economy—positive or negative?

    ECONOMIC GROWTH: SCOTLAND · 2025-03-04 · READ IN HANSARD

  11. The Minister spoke appropriately about the protections that will, quite rightly, be afforded to members of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom, and previously, in response to the urgent question, he spoke about the protections that will be afforded by the UK state to Hongkongers against foreign state actors acting against their best interests. Will he tell the House what the UK state will do to protect Iranians and Persians living in the UK who are the subject of malign foreign state action against their interests?

    IRANIAN STATE THREATS · 2025-03-04 · READ IN HANSARD

  12. I welcome the content and nature of the Minister’s statement. He says that he is considering new ways to enforce robust immigration rules specifically to address threats from Iran. Can he flesh out what that means, specifically on the Government’s stance about proscription of the IRGC? I know he is reluctant to talk about that, but he may sense the frustration among right hon. and hon. Members that zero context has been given and the Government are standing behind a veil of obscurity about how that might happen.

    IRANIAN STATE THREATS · 2025-03-04 · READ IN HANSARD

  13. An architect constituent of mine alerted me to his concerns about Camden council’s approach to fire safety in an application to construct a 400-guest underground hotel. At the planning stage, the London Fire Brigade expressed serious concerns that the proposed safety features would be difficult to maintain and dangerous were they to fail. A freedom of information request revealed that the London Fire Brigade’s fire safety compliance team felt that their concerns were ignored by Camden council at planning. Will the Minister commit to reviewing regulations to see whether they are sufficient to ensure that local authorities in England properly attend to serious concerns raised by local fire brigades?

    FIRE SAFETY: LOCAL AUTHORITY PLANNING · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  14. With those changes to the EPL, Labour will have created a worst-of-all-worlds scenario whereby it starves industry of investment, sacrifices the jobs that we need to deliver net zero, puts at risk our energy security, will not bring down energy bills, and harms the economy of Scotland, while failing to invest the money required to truly deliver the benefits that we all need to see from the just transition.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  15. That reflects a political choice by the Labour party to deprioritise investment in the decarbonisation agenda. Rather than allow a more valuable decarbonisation relief as the solitary positive by-product of its tax hike, Labour has ensured that there can be absolutely no silver lining to this policy cloud. The simple truth is that the UK cannot meet the net zero targets or create green growth if the Labour party’s policies hack away at both investment and the domestic workforce that we need to deliver the energy transition. It is clear that the Labour party is abandoning Scotland’s existing energy sector, and putting at risk the just transition in the process.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  16. Through its changes to the EPL, the Labour party jeopardises investment and, in doing so, the future of our skilled offshore energy workforce and our ability to hit net zero. Analysis from Offshore Energies UK shows that the increase to and extension of the EPL risk costing the economy £13 billion, which will in turn cost up to 35,000 jobs. The analysis also shows a reduction in viable capital investment offshore from £14.1 billion to £2.3 billion in the period 2025 to 2029 as a result of the changes that the Government are planning in the EPL. That loss of economic value impacts not only on the core sector itself but on the domestic onshore supply companies, many of which are in my constituency, and many of which will have a role to play in the just transition.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  17. I will crack on with new clause 2, as it relates to the Government’s catastrophic management of the fiscal regime for Scotland’s oil and gas. In December, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund touched €1.7 trillion, but Scotland is no wealthier now in real terms than we were when North sea oil and gas was discovered in the 1970s. More than £400 billion has flowed from Scottish waters to the Treasury over the years, with very little coming back the other way. Rather than reverse that trend, the Labour party has chosen to accelerate it with an increase in the energy profits levy. The windfall tax was supposed to apply to the extraordinarily high profits from the high global oil price that preceded its introduction, but that level has long since gone.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  18. They are doing nothing of the sort, and if they stick with this Bill and the Budget on which it is predicated, they never will. Finally, is it not astonishing that when farmers push back on agricultural property relief, family businesses push back on business property relief, pensioners push back on their winter fuel allowance, the Scotch whisky industry pushes back on duty hikes, the North sea oil and gas industry pushes back on the EPL, and when the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign pushes back, they are all told, “No. The situation is too bad. You’ve just got to suck it up,” but when the non-doms push back, they get swept right to the heart of the Treasury and the Chancellor, and they get whatever they want? That is the Labour Government.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  19. It is impossible to do all those things at once, and it is astonishing that the Government seem to persist with this wilful ignorance. A Government may increase spending to kick-start the economy and deliver growth and public services, but that requires tax increases and/or deficit spending, both of which the Labour Government are too scared to pursue because of their short-sighted election promises to abide by fiscal rules and not increase the highest-revenue sources. We are therefore stuck in the worst of all possible worlds, with insufficient growth—especially green growth—insufficient investment, a deficit causing a rising debt burden, and no way to increase revenue meaningfully. The UK Government are bizarrely persisting with gaslighting themselves in thinking that they are “fixing the foundations” and delivering growth.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  20. Rather than further damage from the UK Government, the industry needs support, starting with the reversal of the plans to hike duties still further. It is high time that Westminster finally listened to organisations such as the Scotch Whisky Association and stopped discriminating against Scotland’s national drink, which supports more than 40,000 jobs and delivers more than £7.1 billion to the London Treasury every year. The SNP will support new clause 8 if it is pressed. I have spoken consistently about what is under debate in the Bill, but the wider context cannot be ignored. Labour has no cogent plan for reforming the economy. It seeks to reduce the deficit and not raise taxes, and it wants to stimulate growth with large investments.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  21. On top of that, we now have a UK Government plan to grant a different definition of a single malt to English producers than that of Scottish single malts. The definition is entirely inconsistent with the global reputation of the quality of single malts, and seeks to tear up a well-established dictionary definition of a single malt while pulling the rug from underneath Scotch whisky producers. The Government must listen to warnings from the industry, the Scottish Government and those from across the political spectrum, and scrap the plans and duty hikes, which are an act of sabotage to Scotland’s world-class industry. The industry already faces the risk of Trump tariffs, which cost over £600 million in exports the last time they were applied under his first presidential term.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  22. In Scotland, there is a clear distinction in educational law between grant-aided special schools and independent schools, and the UK Government’s policy regrettably does not reflect that. I know the Minister studiously avoids almost everything that I say, but I hope that he heard that, and I would be very grateful if he could address it when he sums up. On Scotch whisky, when the last Tory Government hiked whisky duty, the tax revenue raised from the industry fell by £300 million. That should have been a salutary lesson to any Government who came afterwards. The sensible option for both supporting Scotch whisky and Treasury receipts would have been to cut whisky duty. Instead, the Labour party is raising it again.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  23. The VAT exemption offered to private schools costs the UK taxpayer £1.6 billion annually—money that could be invested in other public services. However, the SNP also understands that for many parents whose children are enrolled in private schools the UK Government’s decision to remove that exemption will be extremely worrying. The Scottish Government have sought to ensure that the distinctive nature of the Scottish education system is understood by the UK Government in this transition. In particular, the Scottish Government have raised concerns with the UK Government about the decision to include grant-aided special schools in the policy. In Scots law, they are not considered independent schools.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  24. The analysis shows that while the expected tax take from UK oil and gas producers would increase in the very short term, ultimately it will result in a £12 billion net loss to tax receipts compared with the current regime. If the Labour party does not care about the jobs that the policy will cost, the harm it will do to the just transition or the damage to the economy of Scotland, surely Labour can accept that a tax increase that actually reduces the amount of tax received is, at best, counterproductive. That is why the SNP will support new clause 2 if it is pressed to a Division. The SNP appreciates the many and varied reasons why parents choose to use private schools, but it is not fair or sustainable to treat private school fees differently from other discretionary spend for the purposes of VAT.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  25. The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: wherever we look, the fiscal ambitions of the Labour Government on North sea oil and gas, or energy more generally, seem to be counterproductive. They are introducing a policy that anybody with a passing understanding of the industry realises will have precisely the opposite result of its stated aim, but the Government will not listen, much to my regret. Analysis from OEUK shows that the oil and gas sector’s total tax yield will peak in 2026 under Labour’s increase in the EPL before declining, compared with the previous scenario, in which Treasury receipts continued to increase over the period.

    FINANCE BILL · 2025-03-03 · READ IN HANSARD

  26. When he goes to Washington on Thursday and gets his pat on the back from the President of the United States, will he spare a thought for those—predominantly women and children—who will suffer immeasurably, and some of whom will die, as a result of his decision today?

    DEFENCE AND SECURITY · 2025-02-25 · READ IN HANSARD

  27. The Prime Minister knows that he can rely on the support of the SNP when it comes to efforts to restore Ukrainian sovereignty in the face of Russian aggression, despite the baseless rhetoric from those on the Benches behind him. I would like him to acknowledge that. I welcome the Prime Minister raising defence expenditure to 2.5%, albeit by 2027, which will be three years after the election, despite the pledge being in the Labour party’s manifesto. However, it cannot be right to balance the books at a cost to the poorest in global society, when there is a Government Budget of £1.1 trillion.

    DEFENCE AND SECURITY · 2025-02-25 · READ IN HANSARD

  28. Why is that an announcement? Thirdly, when will consumers in GB finally see some response from this Government about higher energy bills?

    WARM HOME DISCOUNT · 2025-02-25 · READ IN HANSARD

  29. Yet again, an Energy Minister comes to the House to tell us that they are moving at pace. The only thing moving at pace is the last shred of credibility from that Department as it talks about protecting consumers from higher energy prices. Let us not forget that this is the Labour party that stripped 900,000 Scottish pensioners of their winter fuel payment, and that told us that fuel prices would go down £300, when they are now £600 higher than the level it promised they would be ahead of the election. Can the Minister explain three things to me? Did the Labour party profoundly misunderstand how energy in the United Kingdom works, or was it misleading the electorate? Why is it that the Minister is making such a big deal about Ofgem doing its actual job of getting after back billing? Should it not be doing that anyway?

    WARM HOME DISCOUNT · 2025-02-25 · READ IN HANSARD

  30. The Minister is all over the place on this. In her opening remarks, she said that the United Kingdom has a world-leading renewable energy industry. If we did, we would not be having this discussion about foreign imported infrastructure. Notwithstanding the Tories’ total failure over 14 years to invest in the industrial base for renewable energy manufacturing across the United Kingdom, what is the Government’s strategy to get in front of this, not just in manufacturing but in resource supply, enterprise resource planning and intellectual property? What is the big shift that the Government have planned? I just hear jibber-jabber.

    ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE: CHINESE COMPANIES · 2025-02-12 · READ IN HANSARD

  31. Let me echo the chorus from the National Farmers Union Scotland that this policy must be paused and the industry must be properly consulted. The outcome must be the removal of this iniquitous threat to all that we hold dear in our agricultural and rural communities and economies. On behalf of the agricultural sector in Angus and Perthshire Glens and across the whole of Scotland—in fact, the whole of the United Kingdom, to which I do not often make reference in a speech—it is not too late to do the right thing. I implore the Minister to do so.

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  32. It is not just farmers who will be undone by this policy; it is the entire agricultural supply chain. This policy undermines the reinvestment model from generation to generation. It ignores the societal benefit of agriculture to our rural communities. With BPR, it is a betrayal of the divestment drive to which farmers have so dutifully been applying themselves over the past 20 years. It risks the sell-off of family farms across places such as Angus and Perthshire Glens to faceless international corporations that will not leave anything positive behind—certainly not any profit. This policy is anti-growth. As I suspect the Government now fully realise behind closed doors, it is a disastrous mis-step. It plays fast and loose with the mental health of farmers.

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  33. It is diametrically opposed to current tax advice, which is grossly unfair. It ignores the fact that there is no actual financial enrichment; farmers simply become the custodian of an asset. It does not go after the non-farming interests that are avoiding tax. It ignores the disproportionate effect on Scotland. It ignores the fact that a quarter of Scottish farms are tenanted—it has zero provision for those—and it does not take cognisance of the 15,000 Scottish crofts that are grossly adversely affected by it. This policy is economically incoherent. It is a tax on the production of food. It will precipitate a reduction in investment. That will mean lower yields, which will mean higher prices. That will be inflationary, which is the last thing that this economy needs.

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  34. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I rise to speak for the 468 signatories to this petition who are residents of my constituency. I have to tell you that that is about 11 times more Angus and Perthshire Glens constituents than have signed any other petition from this place. Never in my time in this Parliament have I seen MPs perched on windowsills to be in the room for a debate. There are mass demonstrations outside, and there was a demonstration on the South Inch in Perth at the weekend. This policy is fundamentally unjust. The Government said that they would not do it, and they have gone ahead and done it. They have applied it without any warning. There is no taper into the new regime. It gives no time for farmers to adjust their tax arrangements.

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  35. For very good reason, we do not apply tax to food. Does the hon. Lady agree that for the same good reason, we should presumably not apply tax to the production of food? Does it not amount to the same thing?

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  36. The shadow Minister is articulating the substance of the issue with great passion. Does he agree that at the heart of this fiscal misadventure is classic Treasury dogma, whereby the principal objective is to quantify the price of something and take no cognisance of its value? APR and BPR will unravel for this Government. Does he agree that it would be far better for them to take steps to row back on this policy now, rather than waiting for it to go absolutely pear-shaped?

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  37. On the point the Minister just made about the notional value of estates, I think I can help him, because that is where he is going wrong, and where he has taken his Government up an agricultural cul-de-sac. When it comes to agriculture, what is important is not the notional value of the estate, but how someone came by that estate—whether they used billions of pounds of money on which they should have been paying tax in order not to pay tax, or whether they inherited the family farm from the generation that went before. That is the differentiation that the Treasury should be making. The value is irrelevant; the Minister should focus on the nature of the inheritance or acquisition.

    INHERITANCE TAX RELIEF: FARMS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  38. T7. Do the Secretary of State, his officials and his chiefs have a plan to implement the additional resource from 2.5% of GDP when it arrives? If they do not, we will be faced with lengthy delays while procurement plans are put in place. Is this a case of ministerial prevarication, or is there a serious plan? If 2.5% arrives but there are no plans for procurement ready to hit the ground running, we will actually be no further forward than we were at 2%.

    TOPICAL QUESTIONS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  39. What will workers in Scotland be thinking right now, as they watch the UK Government, and a Scottish Minister, going out of their way to accelerate the decline in North sea oil and gas jobs, in advance of replacement jobs coming onstream, as they can see at Grangemouth? Does the Minister not understand that the reduction in attrition to North sea oil and gas production must be commensurate with a reduction in demand and an increase in renewables jobs? He has got that mix all over the place.

    ROSEBANK AND JACKDAW OILFIELDS · 2025-02-10 · READ IN HANSARD

  40. No amount of rowing back by the US State Department can change the fact that what the United States President intimated earlier this week amounts to ethnic cleansing. Are the UK Government of the same view that, if prosecuted, his plan would amount to ethnic cleansing? If not, what do the UK Government understand ethnic cleansing to be? I have heard an awful lot of warm words from the Government and ambition about what we believe in, what we stand for and what we have delivered around the immediate humanitarian crisis, but let us not forget that the horrors that have happened over the past 18 months are due to the vacuum created by international inaction over the plight of the Palestinians for the last 50 years. What will this Government do to change that drastic situation?

    ISRAEL AND THE OCCUPIED PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES · 2025-02-06 · READ IN HANSARD

  41. Interestingly, the Prime Minister could not tell me when he will next be visiting Scotland, but does he agree with the withering assessment of the eminent politics professor Sir John Curtice, who says that the current UK Prime Minister is “the worst thing that ever happened to Anas Sarwar”? If he does not—and he should—does he think that it is stripping Scottish pensioners of their winter fuel payment, abandoning workers in Grangemouth or attacking the national insurance payments of farmers that has catastrophically torpedoed Labour in the polls in Scotland? When he does get a date, he can even bring his Chancellor with him to back him up on the numbers—assuming that she is still Chancellor by then.

    VISIT TO SCOTLAND · 2025-02-05 · READ IN HANSARD

  42. This matter must be so important if it consumes so much of the Minister’s credibility and £18 billion of taxpayers’ money. One would think there would be more than four Government Back Benchers here to speak about it. Is it that they do not care, or do they lack the literacy to discuss these issues? The Minister said on the “Today” programme this morning that we have passed the situation on to the White House, that we await its feedback and that, when we receive it, we will know exactly where we stand as a Government. Is that the type of sovereignty he is after?

    CHAGOS ISLANDS · 2025-02-05 · READ IN HANSARD

  43. What would help bill payers is the £300 cut to energy bills that the Labour party promised in its manifesto. Instead, bills went up £149 in October, they went up £21 in January, and they are going up again by £99 in April. Can the Minister explain where the source of this departmental ineptitude lies, and would she like to apologise to the people of these islands for writing cheques that her party cannot cash?

    ENERGY SUPPLIERS: WINTER SUPPORT FOR CONSUMERS · 2025-02-04 · READ IN HANSARD

  44. It says on the cover that this is about growing the UK economy, but the statement’s substance is much more about growing the English economy. It has a passing reference to Wrexham and a nebulous acknowledgement that the Government will “build a pipeline of investable propositions…starting with strategic partnerships in the Glasgow city region”. Will the Chief Secretary perhaps flesh out what that means and, at the same time, explain why he did not allocate any funding to reimbursing Edinburgh University for the supercomputer, invest in SAF in Grangemouth, or invest in the Acorn project in the north-east?

    GROWING THE UK ECONOMY · 2025-01-29 · READ IN HANSARD

  45. Let me try to help the Minister understand where the Opposition’s concern is coming from: it is because of the realisation, or suspicion, that the arbiter of when and how 2.5% is realised is not the Secretary of State for Defence but the Chancellor. This is a Chancellor who scarcely understands the fundamentals of economics, much less the fundamentals of defence and the threat environment that these islands face. What will the path to 2.5% look like? Is there a date, or is it when certain criteria are met? Also, the Minister be clear on who the final arbiter will be? Is the Treasury saying, “2.5% when you need it,” or “2.5% when we decide it”?

    FISCAL POLICY: DEFENCE SPENDING · 2025-01-27 · READ IN HANSARD

  46. Will the Minister please respectfully pause the measure, take some time to think about this, and come up with something that will actually deliver for the Treasury but not push our family farming sector under.

    AGRICULTURAL AND BUSINESS PROPERTY RELIEFS: OBR COSTING · 2025-01-23 · READ IN HANSARD

  47. This measure is now revealed to be spectacularly ill-considered, leaving aside the fact that it is also a breathtaking betrayal of farmers, who were promised before the election that this would not happen. The measure groups intergenerational farmers with speculative millionaires seeking to dodge tax by getting involved in farming. It has put an immediate brake on investment in farming, which threatens to lower yields and drive up food prices. That then threatens to put inflationary pressures on the UK economy, which is already in a perilous state. This Government cannot just agree with the OBR when it suits them. They must agree with the OBR regardless of what it says.

    AGRICULTURAL AND BUSINESS PROPERTY RELIEFS: OBR COSTING · 2025-01-23 · READ IN HANSARD

  48. That follows a previous investigation showing that goods, including luxury cars, fossil fuels and items that can be weapons—or whose components can be converted into weaponry—have been flowing between the UK and Russia since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Surely the Secretary of State must be concerned that inaction elsewhere in Whitehall is potentially putting men and women in uniform in the UK’s armed forces at risk from Russia’s malign aggression.

    RUSSIAN MARITIME ACTIVITY AND UK RESPONSE · 2025-01-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  49. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the actions it details to intervene in Russian activity in the waters around these islands. I also commend the diligence and professionalism of those men and women in uniform in the Royal Navy, Royal Fleet Auxiliary and the RAF. He said in his statement, though, that the UK will “continue to lead the way” on sanctions against Russia’s shadow fleet, but the UK is not leading the way on sanctions, is it? A Sky News investigation last week found out that the Government have no record of how many investigations they are carrying out into breaches of Russian sanctions.

    RUSSIAN MARITIME ACTIVITY AND UK RESPONSE · 2025-01-22 · READ IN HANSARD

  50. Neither the US Federal Reserve nor the EU Central Bank are engaged in active quantitative tightening, but the Bank of England is. The Bank of England is costing the public finances in the region of £13 billion a year as a result of a fire sale of UK Government bonds. Last time I spoke to the Chancellor about that, she said that that was because of the Bank of England’s operational independence, which we all value, but that is not a licence for impunity. What discussions will she have with the Bank of England about releasing UK Government debt in a way that benefits everybody in the UK?

    TOPICAL QUESTIONS · 2025-01-21 · READ IN HANSARD