Torcuil Crichton

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393 held · 384 searchable for Torcuil Crichton. The searchable lines are below in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 8.

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1. “There should be wide cross-party support for a review of the rural fuel duty discount, as my colleagues in Scotland have attested. I checked today, and the cheapest fuel I could get in Stornoway, the main town in my constituency, came in at £1.34 per litre. In Glasgow it is £1.28. Far from being a rural fuel discount, there seems to be an urban fuel discount in Scotland, and I am sure that is true of other parts of the UK. So I join colleagues from across the House in calling for a review of the scheme, and perhaps some gifts in forthcoming Budgets, or a signal from the Minister that such a review will be carried out.”

   House of Commons7 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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2. “Since then, duty seems to have been mostly frozen in Budgets, which means that the rural fuel duty discount has been frozen as well. As the hon. Member for North Devon correctly pointed out, had it gone up by inflation the discount would have gone up as well. I had the Library do some research, and it estimated that in 2021 the scheme cost the Treasury only £5 million. Had it been increased by the consumer prices index, it would have gone up by 2p—£2 million—to 7p a litre. It was extended by the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition in 2015 and now affects 12 seats. The hon. Member estimates 11, but I estimate 12: four Labour, five Lib Dem, two SNP and one Conservative. The Conservative one is the seat of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak).”

   House of Commons7 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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3. “It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss—apologies for not informing you of my intention to speak. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Devon (Ian Roome) on securing this important debate on an issue that affects lots of rural seats, including my own in Na h-Eileanan an Iar. The 5p a litre discount—“Danny’s discount”, as we called it on its introduction in 2012 when he was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, shamelessly promoting his own constituency and other rural areas—was widely welcomed in the Scottish islands, and it has been adjudged a success, although forgotten by many. If I had been a Lib Dem, I would have taken out posters at every rural fuel station affected to tell people that they were getting 5p off every litre.”

   House of Commons7 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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4. “I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and pay tribute to the role of the Royal Navy and RAF personnel in taking out this rogue tanker flying under the flag of a rogue nation. The Bella 1 was taken just a few hundred miles out into the Atlantic, which is too close for comfort for those of us who come from the Western Isles. I understand that we hosted the USAF maritime patrol aircraft Poseidon out of Stornoway airport and two V-22 Ospreys out of Benbecula. Can the Secretary of State give us more details on the role of Scottish airports in this operation? Does he agree that, yes, we have a frontline in the Donbas, but that the frontline for us against Russia is our backyard: the wild North Atlantic?”

   House of Commons7 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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5. “Similarly, BBC Alba has become the principal broadcaster for Gaelic speakers—except that in truth there is no similarity, because the UK Government generously funds Welsh language broadcasting while giving little or no support to Gaelic broadcasting. This year, the gap in the annual funding for Gaelic and Welsh television will widen to £100 million. Admittedly, there are more Welsh speakers—850,000 and counting—but even if we look at it proportionally, we have to ask why that remains the case. A previous Conservative Government set up the Gaelic television fund in 1991, with £9.5 million a year, and nowadays the UK contribution would be £25 million. But funding for MG Alba, the successor organisation, has been frozen for 10 years, and the UK Government contribution has fallen to zero.”

   House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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6. “It was the most successful of the BBC’s Gaelic programmes, drawing 1.6 million views on iPlayer, which was almost 20% of a record breaking 8.1 million total views for Gaelic content in the last year. Of course, it is not just about murder; it is about the children’s programmes, music and learning for the Gaelic communities and the worldwide diaspora that the BBC and BBC Alba—the channel co-funded by the BBC and MG Alba—provide. I will turn to funding in a second, but I am glad that the Green Paper acknowledges the importance of Scottish Gaelic as a cultural transmitter and a keystone of the language, as it does for Welsh. The Green Paper states: “Partnerships between the BBC and S4C have been a cornerstone of Welsh language media”.”

   House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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7. “It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) on securing this important debate, and thank him for his support for broadcasting in minority languages and for making programmes that would otherwise not be made. It was satisfying to see that Gaelic merited seven mentions in the Government’s Green Paper and public consultation on charter renewal. That is about one mention for every 10,000 speakers—that is how perilous the language is—but that represents only a tiny fraction of the viewers that Gaelic content attracts on the BBC and elsewhere. The most recent example is “An t-Eilean”, a gripping crime thriller filmed on location in Harris.”

   House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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8. “I do not require a figure, but I would like guarantees from the charter review and the Government that there will be certainty of support for the Gaelic broadcasting service, not just as an incredible cultural asset but as an economic dynamo that will help the language and broadcasting to continue and allow us to tell our stories to the rest of the world.”

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9. “That means that in two years’ time, Gaelic broadcasting budgets will be worth just 50% of the launch budget. S4C receives £7.5 million a year from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport for the transition to digital, while Gaelic gets nothing. In Ireland, TG Ceathair has €20 million for digital transmission; we have nothing. I do have hopes, though, because this is not about a begging bowl. Gaelic has created 320 jobs, and for every £1 invested, £1.34 comes back to fragile communities. I hope that the Culture Secretary and the charter review stay close to the language of the Green Paper, which promised to consider options to provide MG Alba with more certainty on its funding as part of the charter review.”

   House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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10. “I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I also echo the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Glenrothes and Mid Fife (Richard Baker) about the £100 million spent in Scotland and elsewhere to make sure not just that all voices from across all parts of the UK are heard and seen on the BBC, but that the production value, the jobs and the creative content are made in the regions. The BBC does quite well at that. As I said, it contributes £10 million a year, and the Scottish Government grant £14.8 million, including an extra £1.8 million, perhaps because the Deputy First Minister is a Gaelic speaker—tapadh leat for that, Kate. In reality, the budgets for Gaelic broadcasting have been frozen for 10 years, and in the case of Gaelic radio—the real mainstay of Gaelic-speaking communities —budgets have been worse.”

    House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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11. “When it comes to creating clean jobs and local wealth, there is no better example than the community-owned wind farm sector in my Na h-Eileanan an Iar constituency. I welcome what the Government have done to clean up the grid connection queue, but the community-owned wind farm sector in my constituency is still stalled and cannot get access to the national grid. The National Energy System Operator, Ofgem and private companies all want to promote community energy, but unless Ministers direct the regulators and grid operators to give priority to community-owned wind farms, that will not happen. I would like to discuss this issue with Ministers, but I also ask them to come and see how community-owned wind farms create wealth and clean jobs in my area.”

    House of Commons6 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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12. “Bliadhna mhath ùr—happy new year to you, Mr Speaker. Will the Minister update the House on Cameron barracks in Inverness and plans to move some asylum seekers to that town?”

    House of Commons5 January 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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13. “I thank the Foreign Secretary for her statement and her stamina. Over the past hour and 40 minutes, no one has regretted the downfall of Nicolás Maduro, but notwithstanding what the Foreign Secretary has said about the tension between practical, progressive realism and political principle, few of us can condone his kidnapping to stand trial in the domestic courts of another country. This has all the hallmarks of a treacherous deal between the remnants of the Maduro regime and the United States. Does the Foreign Secretary accept that it signals the end of the rules-based international order, and that the fraying of that order benefits not our friends in the west, but our foes in the east?”

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14. “I thank the Minister for the statement and the work his team and the Scotland Office team did in securing the 500 jobs at Grangemouth. I also pay tribute to the former Business Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds)—now the Chief Whip—for the work he did on this deal and on keeping the lights on last Christmas at Harland & Wolff in Arnish, Methil, Belfast and Appledore. Then as now, voters and workers expect the two Governments to work together, but the Minister will confirm that the SNP sat on its hands over Grangemouth. The SNP checked out—as it has checked out today—on standing up for Scotland’s workers.”

    House of Commons17 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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15. “He said that structure “means reforms and improvements are difficult to roll out at scale or pace, while accountability and transparency are easier to avoid.” Scotland is being ill-served in its health, and the ailing St Andrew is being ill-served by this SNP Government when it comes to health.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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16. “They have been waiting a long time through our revolving carousel of Health Ministers. A rotating carousel of 130 health strategies—one for every seven weeks of this SNP Government—has meant that 618,000 Scots are still waiting for specialist care in Scotland’s NHS. One figure is going up in Scotland’s health scene: the number of private health operations, which is up by 55% since 2019. Those are not just for those who can afford them, but those who need them because the waiting lists are so long that they have no alternative. Scotland has a large number of health boards, with 14 health boards, 31 integration authorities and numerous quangos, all under tight Scottish Government control. Mike McKirdy, an eminent surgeon assigned by the Scottish Labour party to assess the future of Scotland’s health, has said it is a “complex structure”.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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17. “But do not worry, because the SNP is coming to the rescue of Scotland’s ailing saint and ailing population—or it would do, if it could get ambulance waiting times in order. In January last year, one patient in Lothian on category red—that is a heart attack situation—had to wait more than 17 hours for an ambulance, and an individual in the highlands this year had to wait for 18 hours. It now takes a median wait of 22 minutes for NHS 24 to be answered in Scotland. The NHS app, which I have had for many years as a patient at the Royal London hospital, will not be available in Scotland until 2030. Why? Because the SNP Scottish Government refused the English NHS app, because the political optics of putting the St Andrew’s cross on an English app just would not look good, so Scots have to wait. Scots are being ill-served.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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18. “I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for securing this debate on St Andrew’s day and for giving us the opportunity to take stock of the issues and challenges facing Scotland. I will not detain the House for long, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you caught me on the hop—I had hoped to be writing my speech while others made theirs. I will plough on to discuss poor St Andrew. I have been checking in on Scotland’s patron saint, and he does not look very good. As a Scot, his average life expectancy would be just 77 years; his sister, Andrea, could expect to live to 81. Some 26 years into devolution and 18 years into an SNP Government who were meant to make things better, Scotland has the lowest life expectancy not just in the UK, but in the whole of western Europe.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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19. “On this week’s figures and at current rates, it would take 133 years to close the poverty rate attainment gap in Scotland—that is shameful. Scotland and St Andrew’s children are being let down again by this SNP Government.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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20. “Professor Lindsay Paterson, the esteemed Scottish academic, has said that the attainment statistics for Scotland’s schools “fail to capture the serious decline of attainment that has been picked up by PISA.” Of course, the Scottish Government previously used international assessments to measure the gap between teachers’ appraisals and real attainment, but those surveys were abandoned in 2008. Now Professor Paterson says: “What is euphemistically called pupils’ achievement of the curriculum levels is in fact teachers’ impressions of whether their own pupils have achieved the levels… They are simply hunches.” In 2016 the then First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, promised that her Government’s priority would be to close the education attainment gap.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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21. “Member for Clacton is appalled by the celebrated diversity of our great city, but I am not. I am very proud of the dozens of pupils at the Glasgow Gaelic school, and I am proud that dozens of pupils who speak Arabic, Urdu, Polish, Punjabi or Chinese are students as well, but these children—like St Andrew, ailing in his unhealthy bed on those waiting lists—are ill-served by Scotland’s SNP Government. As was pointed out by the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell), a former Secretary of State for Scotland, there is a statistical fiction in education as well as in health.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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22. “I do not think I will. Of course, St Andrew was bilingual, or trilingual or quadrilingual—as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson) pointed out, he is celebrated in Russia and Greece. He appears on the Basque flag, and Basque is the oldest language in Europe. If he and his children were living in Glasgow, they would make up that one third of Scottish schoolchildren in the “Dear Green Place” who speak more than one language—something that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage), in his desperate attempt to divide Scotland, found so appalling. To allay your fears, Madam Deputy Speaker, I emailed the hon. Member for Clacton—I assume the email went to his constituency office. I saw that the email received no reply, because he is rarely seen in this place or in Clacton. But he has been informed. The hon.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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23. “People in the Western Isles know that the S in SNP stands for “stunt”—the portholes had to be painted on to the ship so that Nicola Sturgeon could have a pretendy launch. That £500 million means that the S in SNP stands for “squander”, with millions wasted, affecting the ability and confidence of my constituents to stay in their homes and be connected to the rest of the islands. I hope that S will also stand for “swept away”, because in May that is what Scotland needs.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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24. “For that situation, Madam Deputy Speaker, I need no notes, because the ferry fiasco is writ large in the experience of all my constituents, who have suffered for years because this SNP Government did not manage to procure enough ferries and took their eye off the ball. This crisis, which they thought would affect a few hundred islanders, has become an international symbol of the failure of nationalism in Scotland. This week I welcomed the extra £820 million that the Chancellor found to give to the Scottish Government this year. In my book—in anyone’s book—£820 million is eight CalMac ferries, but the SNP Scottish Government can only manage 2.5 ferries for £500 million. It is a shame and a scandal.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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25. “I thank the hon. Member for that intervention, which allows me to highlight that some 95,000 children in Scotland are to be lifted out of poverty by our Chancellor’s Budget, which got rid of the two-child benefit cap. It is not just in terms of education and health that St Andrew’s children are being failed. St Andrew was a fisherman and was used to boats, as are many of my constituents in the islands, but these modern-day St Andrews are being let down. They see thousands of pounds of shellfish exports rotting in the harbour, or having to be deep-frozen at extra cost, because of the failing SNP’s ferry fiasco.”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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26. “My hon. Friend may well be right about that clock tower, but she will also know that Carlisle will always be a little bit of Scotland, because it was apparently in Carlisle that the Loch Lomond ballad, with its famous lines “You take the high road, and I’ll take the low road, and I’ll be in Scotland before you”, was written by a Jacobite prisoner facing the gallows. That song, which is much more fondly remembered than “Flower of Scotland”, was written in Carlisle, was it not?”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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27. “And the ’90s, and maybe until today. The SNP Government had the opportunity to put one in place when they auctioned the ScotWind licenses for offshore wind for £700 million—they would have done it for £70 million, but were given guidance on that. They had the opportunity to either invest that £700 million in a sovereign wealth fund, or to give it back to the coastal communities from which those revenues flow, but they did none of that. They have used half of that £700 million in day-to-day expenditure, have they not?”

    House of Commons11 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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28. “T3. Western Isles Women’s Aid in my constituency helped 180 women last year. The refuge is working at capacity, yet its funding is uncertain. That is why my fundraiser on Friday will seek to raise funds for the organisations. More than 1,800 women reported domestic abuse in the highlands 10 years ago; last year the figure was closer to 2,800. Does the Secretary of State agree that in rural and island communities it takes a lot of courage for women to report domestic abuse, yet we can see from the figures that domestic abuse is no less prevalent?”

    House of Commons10 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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29. “Has the Treasury made any assessment of the SNP’s plans to separate Scotland from its main market, the rest of the UK, which accounts for 60% of its trade? While I am at it, may I thank the Chancellor for the £820 million extra for the Scottish budget?”

    House of Commons9 December 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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30. “My friend the Scottish journalist Jen Stout has just returned from the grey zone between Russian and Ukrainian forces, where to try to evacuate the wounded or even to wander outside for a moment is to invite death from the sky by drones. The message she brings back from Ukrainians on the frontline is that they will not give up this territory that they have defended for years. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the message that comes from here—apart from the Lord Haw-Haws paid by Putin—is that their frontline is our frontline, that Ukrainian sovereignty must be respected and that we will stand with Ukraine?”

    House of Commons25 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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31. “The Yantar was intercepted in the north Atlantic, which is the UK’s new frontline but my constituents’ backyard. I was reassured by the preparedness of the RAF and the Royal Navy and grateful for their defence of our airspace and seaspace, but what assurance can the Minister give my constituents about our preparedness and resilience to meet these kinds of hybrid attacks? These cables do not just run across the Atlantic; they run between our islands, too.”

    House of Commons20 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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32. “Thank you, Mr Speaker. When the Prime Minister next meets the President of the United States, will he ask him if he knows any reasonably priced hotels near the MetLife stadium in New Jersey, where the world cup final is to be held, and, as we are about to provide the biggest boost to whisky exports since our trade deal was signed, will he gently ask the Chancellor to consider excise duties next week so that we Scots can continue celebrating at reasonable prices?”

    House of Commons19 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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33. “It is not easy to get there—it takes a stern four-hour crossing on a high-powered boat into an Atlantic swell—but the reward is magnificent.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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34. “It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) on securing the debate. We will hear a lot today about UNESCO world heritage sites across the UK, from the Giant’s Causeway to Saltaire and the Palace of Westminster itself. Magnificent as those examples are, I stand here today with the honour of representing the only part of the country with double UNESCO world heritage status for both cultural heritage and the surrounding natural environment. St Kilda, or Hiort, the remote archipelago, some 40 miles west of my own archipelago into the Atlantic, are the most westernmost islands of the UK apart from Rockall—perhaps its most taciturn Atlantic outcrop.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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35. “I appeal to the Minister and the UK Government to deploy the muscle of Government to fulfil their obligations not just as a custodian of this double world heritage site, but by using projects such as Ionad Hiort to show the potential of remote viewing, contain untrammelled tourism and breathe new economic life into remote communities like mine. I urge the Department, the Minister and colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to take the proposal seriously, to show how the UK can inform and lead the rest of the world—from the edge of the world—when it comes to world heritage sites.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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36. “Cruise ships now go there and the light-touch tourism that is essential for UNESCO world heritage sites is hard to achieve. Ionad Hiort, the St Kilda Centre project, aspires to construct a world-class visitor centre in Ùig, on the west coast of Lewis. It would offer visitors an opportunity to encounter St Kilda from afar. UNESCO has adopted the project as an exemplar of remote access to world heritage sites, many of which are already physically inaccessible or fragile. Funding is formidable, and a £7 million package has been put in place, but prices are increasing as time is flowing, and there is a considerable funding gap.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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37. “To stand with him outside his family home in Village Bay, and to hear him switch from his English Norwich accent into what that place evoked in him—his native Gaelic voice—was to walk across the bridge of time. It was quite a privilege. The remarkable story of St Kilda has been told and retold, from Tom Steel’s “Life and Death” to Roger Hutchinson’s “A People’s History”. There are about 700 books on St Kilda. We know more about the St Kildans than we know about the kings of Scotland. That is why we go back time and again: because when we walk in their footsteps, we feel for ourselves what it was like to live in a pre-industrial, communal, remote and co-dependent community as our ancestors must all have done. While St Kilda remains attractive, tourist traffic is increasing vastly.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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38. “People lived there for two millennia, eking out a very tough life harvesting seabirds and breeding sheep, but modernity, contact with the outside world, depopulation, emigration and illness brought that chapter of human habitation to a close. The final 36 St Kildans requested assistance from the British Government and were evacuated on 29 August 1930, bringing that chapter of inhabitation to a sudden and sad end. Although the community dispersed and the voices faded, you still get an echo of the human habitation and the people when you go there. I last visited with the late Norman John Gillies, the last of the male St Kildans. He left when he was five years old, but he still had an umbilical link to the island.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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39. “Even in the summer. The sea cliffs of St Kilda are among the highest in the UK. When you crane your neck up from the deck of what feels like a very small boat below those cliffs, it feels as if someone has dragged New York’s skyscrapers midway across the Atlantic. The sea stacks teem with bird life, giving an otherworldly atmosphere, and the power of that ocean, in summer and winter, below your feet—that relentless swell—makes you feel as if these islands are on the edge of the world. It is the surrounding ocean environment that gives it its UNESCO natural heritage status, but it is the human footprint—the two millennia of human inhabitation of the main island of Hirta, along with Boreray, Soay and Dùn, where people grazed sheep and hunted seabirds—that exert such a pull and give it its heritage status.”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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40. “I pay tribute to the Minister for his work, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for hers, in trying to engage regularly with ExxonMobil for the last couple of months. However, they failed to extract any viable proposal from the company on a way forward. Sharon Graham, the leader of Unite, has described ExxonMobil’s decision to pull out as “a disgrace”. It is a £25 billion company walking away from 179 jobs and 250 more contractors. Will the Minister ensure that, despite the axe-grinding that we hear from the Opposition, he works with the Scottish Government, Fife council and the community when he sets up the taskforce, to ensure a future for those workers?”

    House of Commons18 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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41. “Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, told the SNP conference that her Government would not allow Labour to turn Scotland into a “nuclear playground”. I guess she knew her audience, but given her reputation as the common-sense member of that Government, she should have known better. That kind of playground politics is an insult to Scotland’s nuclear workers, thousands of whom leave Scotland to work in highly unionised, safe, skilled jobs in England—and now Wales—to build the next generation of nuclear power stations. Does the Minister agree that Scotland could have these jobs—that Dounreay, Torness in East Lothian, and Hunterston in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Alan Gemmell) could have these jobs—if it was not for the Dr Nos of the SNP and their outdated opposition to nuclear power?”

    House of Commons17 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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42. “It is only with mandatory screening and training that this issue can be properly addressed in Scotland’s schools and schools across the UK, so that many children do not leave school unsupported and still suffering from the effects of dyslexia.”

    House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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43. “The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Jenny Gilruth MSP, recently wrote to all executive directors of education and children’s services in Scotland, urging them to provide appropriate support for children and young people with dyslexia in schools, but urging and issuing guidance is not enough. The Scottish Government do a lot of that—putting systems in place and thinking the mission is accomplished. Actually, the mission is accomplished only when we measure successful implementation and delivery. There needs to be far more scrutiny of the work of Dyslexia Scotland and of the work and support that the Scottish Government provide to pupils.”

    House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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44. “There is clearly a need for change, but in Scotland there is a lottery in the availability of support. While the Scottish Government publish statutory guidance for dealing with dyslexia under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and children with dyslexia are given additional support, there is no mandatory provision. There is support—£200,000 of core funding goes to Dyslexia Scotland to promote free online resources and a professional toolkit for teachers to support dyslexic learners aged three to 18—but Dyslexia Scotland and the Scottish Government both acknowledge that more must be done. Specifically, the Scottish Government must move away from guidance and towards mandatory support.”

    House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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45. “Donna MacLeod has not just worked tirelessly to have her own child assessed and supported, but, having witnessed at first hand how the education system can fail pupils, asked for mandatory screening for pupils and mandatory training for teachers in Scotland to recognise dyslexia in younger children. That would come through a dyslexia screening and teacher training Bill in Scotland of the sort that Jamie Oliver campaigns for here; Donna MacLeod would like to complete in Scotland the work that he has started, and for good reason. As has been pointed out, some 40% of the 70,000-odd schoolchildren in Scotland with dyslexia are not receiving support. Studies by Made By Dyslexia show that 80% of dyslexic children leave school undiagnosed, and only one in 10 teachers have a good understanding of dyslexia.”

    House of Commons11 November 2025Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗

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46. “Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) mentioned, being identified late in school is no good. We went to school at roughly the same time, although his skincare regime means that he looks a lot younger than I do. While there is no doubt that dyslexia did not go recognised in our school days, I was shocked to find out from Donna MacLeod of A Dyslexia Life, an advocacy group in my constituency, that young people and their parents, not just in the Western Isles but across Scotland, are still not dealt with properly in Scotland’s schools.”

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47. “It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) for leading on this very important issue. In the short time that I have, I want to give a perspective from Scotland, where the Government state that one in 10 children are dyslexic. I am so glad that we are joined by so many young people—I count 20 or more, which means that perhaps two of them suffer from dyslexia. I am sure that far more of us speaking today have encountered the condition. Dyslexia is widespread. We have a lot of data, but the gaps are quite wide in Scotland. We know that a boy who is fortunate enough to be diagnosed will be 13 before that happens, and a girl will be 15. That is too little, too late; as the hon.”

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48. “I hope the names of the Lewis men are inscribed on a new plaque or in some kind of accessible form—digital or in print—so their losses can be recorded and they can be accorded their rightful status among their comrades. I hope the same can be true of people across the UK and that we can make this a reality—that the Government can step in with an AI project to scour the archives, correct the records and bring back the names of all those who gave their lives for their island home, for this country. Lest we forget.”

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49. “Of course I welcome this week’s announcement of £2 million of funding for the restoration of war memorials across the UK, but I would urge Ministers to go a bit further. We could find funds to help communities complete their rolls of honour by discounting or reimbursing research costs, but not every community has a Stornoway Historical Society and not every one has a Malcolm Macdonald to hand. Looking for the forgotten fallen across the UK is a much bigger task, but one that could, with the cross-fertilisation of existing lists, archival research and the innovative power of artificial intelligence, become a project that would recover the legacy of service and sacrifice, and correct the draft of history inscribed on stone memorials across the country.”

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50. “In the first world war, headmasters compiled the names for memorialising, and emigration and a lack of definitive information would have contributed. In world war two, families were simply asked to submit names for the roll of honour, which we now know to be incomplete—389 forgotten war heroes from an island where people do not just know their own history, they know their neighbours’ history and everyone else’s as well. The kind of assiduous research that Mr Macdonald undertook does not come cheap. He spent years of his own time digging through the force records, looking for ships’ lists and overseas war records—and, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you are looking for one John Macleod in an island of John Macleods, you can see how that adds up. Three things struck me about this situation.”

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