Harriet Cross
MP for Gordon and Buchan · Conservative · United Kingdom
“The pig sector in Scotland is down £5.7 million since January this year, with continued losses almost guaranteed if prices remain suppressed. Almost half of those losses—more than £2.5 million—are in my constituency.”
“The changes will include principles such as mandated written contracts, a clear pricing mechanism, mutually agreeable term lengths and fair notice periods. Those regulations will not immediately resolve every challenge facing the sector.”
“While I absolutely understand and appreciate the fine margins in hospitality, not least due to rising costs and seemingly ever-increasing taxation, and the tight budgets of our local authorities, more needs to be done to ensure that local British produce, be that pork, beef, lamb or other farm outputs, can be prioritised and offered to Br…”
“The Scottish pig industry is facing even more acute pressures than those in England. With just one single processor in Brechin and distances too large to transport the pigs for processing south of the border, Scottish pig farmers are seeing an even lower standard pig price than their English counterparts.”
“It feels like we have been lucky not to see cases of African swine fever, foot and mouth or any other significant livestock disease enter the UK. The UK’s biosecurity system cannot rely on luck, because the consequences of any of these diseases entering the UK and our livestock is hard to overstate.”
“There is real and growing concern about the emergence of diseases such as African swine fever and about foot and mouth entering the UK and infecting our livestock—no one needs reminding of the devastation that the 2001 foot and mouth outbreak had.”
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“The Minister just referred to the oil and gas sector as “the status quo” or something that we should be moving away from. Does he also mean the 100,000 jobs supported by that sector, the millions in investment and the billions that we get in revenue from that sector? Which part of that does he not support and which part of that does he not want to protect while we transition to new energies? It sounds to me like he wants to shut it down tomorrow. Those are my constituents, the local economy in my area and energy security for the country. He seems to be very willing to get rid of them.”
“Projections show that if we fully utilised the oil and gas in the North sea we could cover half our energy needs up to 2050, so there is a lot more in there than five years-worth, but even if it were true that there was only five years-worth, why would we be increasing our imports to cover it? Why would we not be using what we have, given that we will be a net importer for years to come in any event? Why are we closing down the North sea if, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, it will all be gone in any case? It makes no sense.”
“Family businesses are crucial to our high streets, including mine in Inverurie, Ellon, Turriff and Huntly. Indeed, they are the backbone of our high streets, yet this Government’s national insurance contributions changes and Employment Rights Bill, and their slashing of business property relief, will have a huge impact on them and employment in them. What does the shadow Minister think of that, and what can we do to help our high streets and, in particular, family businesses in them?”
“We urgently need to restore confidence and stability in our oil and gas sector, or we will be here again and again as more and more businesses suffer and more and more jobs are lost, whether in my constituency, across north-east Scotland, in Scotland as a whole or in the UK as a whole—there are oil and gas and energy jobs everywhere in the UK. The future of Petrofac’s 2,000 skilled and expert staff, as well as the indirect jobs that rely on them, are now at risk and reliant on Petrofac being able to find a buyer for its North sea assets. Does the Minister think that the job of finding a buyer has been made more or less likely, given that the Government have created, in the industry’s words, “the most unstable fiscal” environment “in the world”?”
“This fund was set up to act as a sweetener to our fishing communities after they were completely sold out in the Government’s EU-Brexit reset. In that negotiation, 12 years of access to our seas were given away. Scotland lands three-quarters of the tonnage of fish in the UK and 60% of the value of UK fishing comes into Scotland. However, of this £360 million fund, Scottish fishermen will get only £28 million—7.7% of the fund. Does it really make sense to the Minister that Scotland gets 8% of the fund, when Scottish fishermen bring in so much of the value of fishing? If it does not make sense, what is she going to do about it?”
“The Government’s pride in place initiative—their equivalent of levelling up—should be great and should be felt across Scotland, but unfortunately we are feeling the opposite in north-east Scotland because of the Government’s energy policies. Our high streets need regeneration after a decade of disastrous decline in the sector, whether that is from SNP or Labour policies. How will the Government act to ensure that our high streets in north-east Scotland will not be further decimated?”
“I sometimes find myself watching Holyrood TV, and most of what happens after the electronic voting is endless people checking whether they have voted—wanting to clarify whether the machine has worked. Given that there are 120-odd Members in Holyrood and 650-odd Members in this place, I am not entirely sure that that is the best plan for Westminster voting.”
“If what I describe had happened, or even begun to happen, over the last 25 years, maybe devolution could be seen as a success for Scotland. Until that does happen, I struggle to accept that it has been.”
“There is chronic underfunding and under-investment in our roads, including the A96 and the A90 in Gordon and Buchan. Scotland’s employment rates are lower than those in the rest of the UK. Why are local authorities on their knees due to a lack of funding? If devolution had been made to work for Scotland, it would surely be at least equal to the rest of the UK in all those regards. If successive Scottish Governments had focused on their job and on actual devolved competences, maybe—just maybe—Scotland would have outperformed the rest of the UK, but it has not. Why? Because since devolution, successive Scottish Governments have not wanted to take the responsibility as well as the power. They have preferred to point fingers to cover their own incompetence, rather than hold themselves accountable.”
“I know there have always been those saying and pointing out that we get things for free, like free prescriptions or certain bus travel or university education, but these are not free; they are taxpayer-funded—funded at the expense of something else and funded at the cost of higher taxes for people and businesses across Scotland. The Scottish Government are receiving from the UK Government over £2,500 more per person to spend than is the case in England. Why then are our outcomes not streaks ahead of those south of the border? Why is our education system failing children? Why are universities almost at the point of collapse? Why is life expectancy lower in Scotland and our drug deaths the highest in Europe? Why are NHS capital projects being paused, including the Ellon health centre in my constituency?”
“Pensioners in Scotland with an income of £35,000 are considered to have a low enough income to be eligible for the winter fuel payment, which of course is welcome after Labour decided to balance their books on the back of our poorest pensioners, but how does this square with the SNP Government considering workers on a salary as modest as £30,000 to be wealthy enough to be taxed more than those in the rest of the UK? Was devolution really set up as a vehicle to see teachers and doctors and police officers based and working in Scotland taxed more and taking home less pay than those doing the same job in the rest of the UK? For devolution to be considered a success, we should be able to see it and feel it, but even objectively these benefits are very hard to find.”
“But now, after years of the SNP curriculum for apparent excellence, our PISA score has plummeted by 35 points and we are trailing well behind England. That is a generation of young Scots being failed by the SNP. Why in Scotland, after almost 20 years in office, has the SNP seemingly been so content to let education standards slip and slip while over the past decade, when Conservatives were in government at Westminster, we saw standards and international rankings rise south of the border? Why, other than for the need to just do things differently, would we not look at the rising standards elsewhere in the UK and think for just one minute that maybe for the sake of the next generation of Scots we could learn from what is happening elsewhere in the UK? There is also a huge amount of incoherence between different policies in devolved areas.”
“The result is that since its creation over 140 stations have closed, creating what the Scottish Police Federation has itself called policing deserts and an “almost invisible policing presence” across great parts of the country. There are also of course endless examples of devolution putting our businesses at a disadvantage compared with others across the UK, including on business rates. Business rates are devolved and when the last Conservative Government introduced 75% rate relief for hospitality south of the border, that was not replicated in Scotland. Businesses in Scotland had to wait years for a similar relief, which, when it was finally introduced, was less generous than elsewhere. In education we have seen years of decline in Scottish standards. In 2006, Scotland proudly had students who were the best in the UK at maths.”
“What we see in Scotland is a level of bureaucracy, red tape and top-down decision making that stifles any opportunity for devolution to properly trickle down to benefit all regions and communities across Scotland. We can look at the evidence. In Scotland, 53% of planning decisions appealed to the Scottish Government are overturned by Ministers; in England, by contrast, local decisions are upheld 70% of the time. On policing, the SNP merged eight regional police forces into one nationalised central body. In doing so, it scrapped local police boards run by local councils and replaced them with a single national authority appointed by, and accountable to, Scottish Ministers.”
“Devolution sounds like, and should be, a fantastic opportunity. It should bring decisions closer to home with policies that fit the uniqueness of local areas and communities such as mine, where accountability and impact are more closely linked. That is the theory but in practice, certainly in Scotland’s case, the reality is very different. Devolution has become a fight for power—for the power, but not for the responsibility—and it has become about pushing party and personal ideology rather than what is actually best for the public and the businesses which we are meant to serve. Since 1999, we have seen so much power, indeed more power than any other devolved nation in the world, devolved to Scotland, or more specifically, as others have mentioned, to Holyrood, because that is where in Scotland devolution ends.”
“I want to pick up on the point about working with other parties to get a majority. The first thing that comes to mind is the SNP’s venture with the Scottish Greens after the last election in Scotland. Would the hon. Member reflect on how damaging that was, particularly for north-east Scotland, whether we are talking about upgrades to our roads, or the impact on our oil and gas sector?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his contribution. Although he is speaking about the Borders, we are seeing something similar in the north-east. We have a huge amount of energy infrastructure across our region, whether that be pylons, batteries or substations, and the communities feel like things are being done to them. Our agricultural land is vanishing. Housing are having substations put right outside—I have heard from one household who have a substation right outside their child’s front window. There is no planning or organisation. Things are being imposed on communities who have very little say. The ways in which consultations are done are not up to scratch. It seems that there is nothing communities can do to have a say and actually be heard.”
“The Minister has been asked by numerous people, not least by the shadow Home Secretary and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), when the Home Secretary knew that this case was going to collapse. We have not been given an answer. The Minister has also been asked by numerous people if the Home Secretary made representations; again, we have not been given an answer. These should be relatively straightforward questions with straightforward answers. Will the Minister answer those questions or give a reason as to why he cannot do so?”
“Energy companies of any kind, whether oil and gas or renewables, need certainty to plan to invest, whether it is onshore or offshore. The Government’s consultation on the North sea’s energy future closed on 30 April, almost six months ago, and the industry is still awaiting an outcome. The only guidance on timing on the Government’s website is to “Visit this page again soon to download the outcome to this public feedback.” The ongoing delay is causing huge uncertainty for sectors of all types of energy investment. Can the Minister confirm when the outcome of the consultation will be published with a date or a week, not a vague timescale?”
“That is a 28% and a 51% drop on the 2022 averages, and oil this week is at a six-month low. The energy profits levy has ceased to be a windfall tax. The windfall has gone, and the prices have returned to normal levels. The Competition and Markets Authority found that in 2025, oil markets are now relatively stable, and exceptional circumstances seem to have receded.”
“That is 1,000 livelihoods, 1,000 mortgages and 1,000 families facing uncertainty every single month. OEUK also projects that 42,000 jobs are at risk between now and 2030. Energy workers in north-east Scotland feel like they are on borrowed time. No one really celebrates when they manage to survive a round of job cuts, because they know it is likely just to be short-term relief, with more cuts coming soon. The energy profits levy was introduced in 2022, at a time when oil and gas prices were spiking after Russia invaded Ukraine. At that time, Brent crude peaked at over $130 a barrel and averaged $99 a barrel in 2022. Similarly, in 2022, gas peaked at 640p a therm and averaged 165p a therm that year. Let us compare that with this year. In August 2025, Brent averaged $71 a barrel and gas 81p a therm.”
“I secured this debate because what is happening in north-east Scotland simply cannot go on. Hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs are being lost on a regular basis across our region from the world-class energy sector that we are so proud of, not least because of the energy profits levy. These are geologists, engineers, technicians and project managers—highly skilled workers who are nothing but of value to the UK—but they are also people with mortgages, people with families and people who have given decades to an industry that this Government are now destroying through deliberately punitive policies. Offshore Energies UK warns that, largely because of the EPL and other Government policies on the North sea, almost 1,000 direct and indirect jobs will be lost every month.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will come on to talk about the drain of investment and other things from north-east Scotland because of the levy. It feels as if it is a particularly punitive tax on north-east Scotland, given that our region is the energy hub of the UK. Even though the windfall no longer exists, at the Budget last year the Chancellor still decided that she would increase the EPL from 35% to 38%, giving a headline tax of 78%.”
“The Chancellor also extended the levy until March 2030. Just to ensure that the industry was hit from all angles, she abolished the investment allowance, removing the very mechanism that keeps companies investing.”
“I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. At no point have I ever said that we should be persisting with oil and gas at the expense of renewables. We 100% need both, but both means both sides: we do not need to tax the oil and gas industry out of existence in the North sea in order to scale up renewables, because that will do the exact opposite, as he knows. I appreciate his point that jobs have been lost in the past—I know that because I live in the north-east of Scotland—but what happened to oil and gas prices during that time? Were they at a peak or in a trough? They were in a trough but they are now not, yet we are still seeing jobs cut and production decreasing faster than it needs to because of decisions made by this Government.”
“I agree that we want to keep the workers that we have, and the skills and expertise that they have developed, in north-east Scotland because they are of huge value to north-east Scotland. They will not stay in north-east Scotland out of virtue but only if the jobs are there for them and it makes economic sense for the companies to keep them there. That is not what is happening at the moment, and we are losing a crucial asset to our energy transition at an extraordinary rate.”
“The result is that Norway attracts 3.8 times more investment than the UK into the same mature North sea basin. Norway’s North sea will see around £35 billion in exploration and production investment through to 2030; ours will see just £10 billion.”
“Some 90% of OEUK’s member companies are now seeking opportunities overseas, and Aberdeen and Grampian chamber of commerce agrees, warning that the EPL is “eroding investor confidence and driving capital to rival overseas regions.” Shell’s finance chief has called for certainty and a “stable environment”, noting that the UK’s 78% tax rate is “larger than most” other countries and makes it difficult to have confidence in long-term investments. Although Norway, which the Government love to use as a comparison, has a similar tax rate, the Government know that this is a false comparison, because Norway also offers full capital cost deductions. It refunds almost 72% of losses to companies and gives a 24% uplift on investment over four years.”
“Exactly—I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. On that point, I will skip forward a little bit to my first question to the Minister, which is when the Treasury will publish its consultation outcome on the future fiscal regime for the North sea, and whether the Government will wait until 2030 to implement that new regime, or whether they will implement it straightaway. Investment decisions worth billions are being put on hold waiting for that answer. They need to know a month, or ideally a week—not just a vague “in due course”. Capital investment forecasts for the North sea have fallen by 84%, from over £14 billion to £2.3 billion for the period 2025 to 2029, and Offshore Energies UK calculates that £26 billion of economic value will be lost under Labour’s EPL extension.”
“I and, more importantly, the oil and gas sector have four questions for the Minister. First, when will the consultation outcome be published? Secondly, does the Treasury recognise the damage it is inflicting? Thirdly, when was the last impact assessment carried out by the Government? Fourthly, will the Government de-link oil and gas in the energy security investment mechanism? The north-east of Scotland has powered Britain for 50 years. We have contributed hundreds of billions in tax revenues. We developed expertise that is renowned around the world. We have so much more to offer to meet the UK’s current and future energy needs, but only if we are given the chance. Scrapping the EPL is a vital part of that chance.”
“If we drive investment away, we will leave that resource untapped, only for imports from elsewhere to cover them. That is a huge loss of economic opportunity for the north-east of Scotland and the UK as a whole. That brings me to my final question, and I will soon conclude. Will the Treasury please commit to de-linking oil and gas pricing in the energy security investment mechanism so that both commodities are assessed on their individual market conditions? Time is running out, and that is not an exaggeration. Every month of inaction means another thousand jobs gone. Every delayed investment decision means less energy security for Britain. Every skilled worker who leaves to go overseas is one we will struggle to get back when we need them for the energy transition.”
“The policy is also undermining our energy security at a time of global instability, suppressing domestic oil and gas production and increasing our dependence on foreign imports. We are now 42% dependent on energy imports. By 2030, it is projected that our reliance on imported gas will increase to 80%, and our liquefied natural gas imports have increased by 40% in the past year alone. Those changes are partly down to geology, but the decline is accentuated by the punitive tax regime for companies operating out of the North sea. Estimates suggest that there could be 7.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent remaining in the North sea that could be recovered with the right investment. We could cover half our energy needs to 2050 with North sea reserves.”
“Forecasts show that the policy could ultimately cost the Treasury £12 billion in lost revenue by 2050. We have reached the point where the level of taxation means less money. The Government are taxing the North sea so heavily that tax revenues are being lost. We cannot tax jobs that no longer exist, we cannot tax production that no longer exists and we cannot tax businesses that no longer operate in the UK. There is something else that the Government are ignoring. From the early 2030s, the Treasury will face a £2 billion to £3 billion cost each year in decommissioning rebates, a decade earlier than expected. The premature shutdown of fields, driven by the EPL making them too unviable to continue, makes that liability ever more imminent.”
“The irony is that this policy is failing on its own terms, in shrinking the very economic activity that it seeks to tax. The Office for Budget Responsibility originally forecast that the energy profits levy would raise more than £65 billion between 2023 and 2028, but the revised forecast is £21.1 billion. We are on track to miss the target by £44 billion, and revenue from the EPL fell from £4.2 billion to £2.7 billion between 2022-23 and 2024-25. His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs figures show that revenues from oil and gas production were down 27% last year. When did the Treasury last carry out an impact assessment of the EPL’s impacts on production, jobs, economic activity and tax receipts? Have those assessments been revisited following those recent HMRC figures showing the downgraded forecast?”
“As I am sure other Members do, I regularly visit companies in the north-east of Scotland whose order books for offshore work have completely dried up, forcing them to adapt their business models to other sectors just to keep afloat. Many of those companies do not know whether they will be here in 12 months’ time. They are not hiring, they are struggling to justify investments, and in many cases, they can do nothing more than hope for a change in Government policy. These companies are owned, grown and run by some of the most innovative and entrepreneurial people I have ever met. They are not afraid of branching out or trying new things—they have done so for their whole business careers—but they are being backed into a corner and are running out of options.”
“Hunting in Aberdeenshire laid off 143 employees; Wood Group cut 200 jobs last year; Belmar Engineering entered liquidation this year, with 48 redundancies; Beam in Westhill collapsed, with 100 jobs lost; Well-Safe Solutions cut about 45 jobs; and Harbour Energy has cut 250 jobs, which is 25% of its onshore workforce. I keep coming back to the words that the Chancellor said when Harbour Energy announced its job cuts earlier this year and cited the EPL as a principal factor. She said that this was just “a commercial decision by one company”, but the list I have given—which is not exhaustive—is evidence that that is not the case. It shows that the Chancellor either does not understand, or does not want to understand, the impact the EPL is having.”
“It is absolutely the case—my hon. Friend is completely correct. We are forgoing so many opportunities in the North sea to secure energy for our country and safeguard the skills and jobs that we will need for the transition. There are endless opportunities that, for some reason, we are willing to leave under the North sea. That brings me to my second question for the Minister. Does the Treasury recognise the damage that the EPL is doing to the North sea? We know that the decline in the North sea did not start with the EPL—it is a mature basin—but the EPL is accelerating that decline. Its ripple effects go far beyond the energy producers themselves. The supply chain is haemorrhaging jobs.”
“What lower revenues from the EPL mean is that oil and gas companies are not investing in the North sea, that production is falling in the North sea, and that, for example, revenues from income tax—which the Scottish Government might quite like—are falling as well. There is nothing welcome about the Government not meeting their forecast. It is complete madness even to believe that.”
“I am going to keep this quite basic, because I think this is where a lot of the public will come from. The Government should always want to do everything they can, and more, to keep the British public and our institutions safe, so I do not understand why they will not do everything they possibly can at least to try to bring this to trial—at least to try to give a jury an opportunity to take matters into its hands and consider this case. I do not understand why they are willing to accept advice, and not actually put this matter to trial when they have the opportunity to do so. Will the Minister please commit to publishing all minutes from any meetings at which matters discussed with the CPS, or what the CPS had requested, were asked for?”
“I thank our Select Committee Chair for the statement—I have a brief question. I am sure that she expects me to say this, but I just want to say for the record that although I supported the report as a whole, there are a couple of recommendations that I could not support. The first is the recommendation on the inclusion of an inhalation room, and the second is on the provision of tourniquets. I cannot ever support the facilitation of addiction as a way of helping to treat addictions—I just do not see that as an option. Why, before we know the results of the pilot, does the report conclude that it should be extended?”
“I thank the shadow Chancellor for introducing this debate on such an important issue. Properties and assets are vital to the country and to people. On the lifetime limit for inheritance tax, over the past year everyone will have heard the Government telling farmers and family businesses to get their affairs in order and to plan. Not having a limit on the lifetime cap was what allowed them to plan. If that is cut or the cap is not in the right place, it will negate every argument that the Government have made in the past year to justify their family farm and family business tax. Will the Minister please acknowledge that and rule out any change to the cap, which would penalise family farms and businesses?”
“The fact that the Government hope to build all those new homes shows that they recognise the importance and value of a home to a family. The Minister says that he will not talk about specific tax measures, but does he recognise the principle that we should not tax people’s homes if we are a country that values home ownership?”
“Can the Minister please outline directly to these workers across the country, whether at Prax or in the north-east, how their jobs will be supported into the future? I am talking about comparable full-time jobs, not just the temporary ones.”
“I have listened closely to the Minister’s answers, and he is rightly highlighting the importance of the jobs and the redundancies, but I think we need to be a bit clearer and more open with people about what the new jobs in the renewables sector that the Minister refers to are about. These jobs are not comparable to a lot of the ones that will be lost in the oil and gas sector. A lot of them are not full-time jobs; a lot of them are part time or temporary jobs during construction phases. We are losing a huge number of workers across the country, and we will continue to do so because of the Government’s policies on oil and gas and the speed at which the sector is being demolished.”
“On pretending, it seems to me that Labour likes to pretend that the covid pandemic never happened and that the £400 billion that the previous Government spent to protect the country and protect jobs, which Labour supported and asked us to go further on, never happened. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on that and at least acknowledge what happened in the recent past?”
“I am sure the Minister agrees it is vital that local residents’ concerns are properly listened to, especially on major planning decisions. Having listened to many constituents in places such as New Deer, Kintore and Rothienorman who are facing huge amounts of energy infrastructure, I tabled an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill that would have created a statutory duty of consultation for infrastructure in Scotland. In Committee, the Minister argued against it and said that the Scottish Government’s discretionary power was satisfactory. Will he please explain why the Government believe that a discretionary power, which my constituents fear will simply be ignored, provides meaningful engagement while the statutory right that I proposed would not?”
“Those of us who advocate for the North sea oil and gas sector are not climate change deniers. We are realists who understand that we will need oil and gas for years to come; that we would be replacing our domestic supply with imports that have four times the carbon intensity; that China emits in 10 days what we emit in a year; and that we will not transition to cleaner energy if we make ourselves poorer. I recognise what today’s report says, but does the Secretary of State accept that increasing our use of imported gas will only make us more carbon intensive in the future?”
“The spending review came off the back of last year’s autumn Budget, which hit businesses in my constituency in north-east Scotland very hard, whether it was family businesses and farms with the changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, or the extension of and increase in the energy profits levy hitting investment in our vital oil and gas sector. What conversations is the Secretary of State having actively with the Treasury to ensure that north-east Scotland does not have to pay the price for this Government’s decisions again next year?”
“From rural pubs to city centre hotels, these businesses need the flexibility to serve their communities during national celebrations. When His Majesty the King was crowned in 2023, establishments across the country wanted to mark that historic occasion. The current process makes it unnecessarily difficult to respond to such moments of national significance. Since 2003, this power has been used sparingly for national events; every single order has had to pass through Parliament, and has done so unopposed. Public consultation also shows strong support, with 77% backing the coronation extensions to licences in 2023.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Member for Watford (Matt Turmaine) for bringing forward this private Member’s Bill, alongside the hon. Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger), and I am pleased to confirm that the Conservative party supports the measure. It is legislation that the previous Conservative Government supported, and we welcome its return to the House. The Bill changes section 197 of the Licensing Act 2003, moving licensing hours orders from the affirmative to the negative procedure. As we have heard, this will save precious parliamentary time while maintaining full democratic accountability through the prayer procedure, which allows Members to object within 40 days. The hospitality sector is vital to local economies throughout the United Kingdom.”