Angus MacDonald MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 14 Jan 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Relief · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 14 Jan 2025 · Agricultural and Business Property Relief · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Hospice and Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  May I intervene?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Hospice and Palliative Care · Hansard source

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  What does the hon. Member think about the many hospices that do not need the capital but are desperate for the income? I would be interested in his answer.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Scotland: Transport Links · Hansard source

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  If only we had a road with the quality of the A75—I dream of such a road. The A82 going up Loch Lomond has to be one of the worst roads in Britain. Lorries and buses cannot pass each other, and that is the main trunk road up to the west. CalMac ferries are a complete disaster story, as we all know. I bet nobody can guess how long it takes to travel the 145 miles from Mallaig to Glasgow. Five hours and 20 minutes, with an average speed of less than 30 miles an hour. High Speed 2? We dream of some of that money. The main road from Inverness to Skye is single-track with lay-bys. It is an absolute scandal in every possible way. I would like to put forward a motion that Transport Scotland is closed down and that the Scottish Government are not fit to run Transport Scotland.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Crown Estate Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  May I come back to the community benefits, which the hon. Member brought up in her intervention on me? The community benefits will be hundreds of millions for 25 years or the life of the project. It will be absolutely transformational to the most rural parts of Britain; it is not just something that will come and go.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Crown Estate Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  Funnily enough, as a Highland councillor, it is a subject that I have spent many years working on. Highland council—I know this does not relate to the Crown Estate in England and Wales—had £9.1 million of community benefits and Scotland as a whole had £23 million. This is an industry worth hundreds of billions of pounds across the whole of Britain, so we should have, say, 5% of that as community benefits, which would be transformational for Cornwall, Devon, Pembrokeshire and indeed Scotland. I encourage the House to consider how the Bill could establish a robust framework for community benefits that could serve as a model for renewable energy projects across the whole of the UK, working closely with the Scottish Crown Estate. The Bill represents a vital step forward in enabling the UK to meet its net zero targets and enhance energy security. However, it is equally vital that we legislate to include statutory powers for the Crown Estate in England and Wales, and indeed in Scotland, to ensure that these transformative projects see their fair share of community benefits for communities.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Crown Estate Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  I will speak about the Crown Estate’s borrowing powers and the broadening of its investment scope. These changes are intended to enhance the Crown Estate’s capacity to support our ambitious goals for renewable energy, nature recovery and economic growth. The Bill is undoubtedly a significant step forward in enabling the Crown Estate to play a greater role in the transition towards net zero. I fully support its efforts and ambitions. The partnership between the Crown Estate and Great British Energy to develop offshore wind projects is exciting. Many of us have been trying to get Great British Energy to include community benefits and community ownership within its reach, but we have failed to do so. [ Interruption. ] It does? Okay—we have tried hard. A measure is to be considered in the other House on 13 January to try to get it to do that, so perhaps Labour Members know something that I do not. Anyway, that is good news. I want to focus on a critical element that is close to my heart, and perhaps even more familiar to my colleagues, as I bang on about it. That subject is, of course, community benefits. Those of us in remote and rural Britain pay far more for energy than those who can access mains gas, and we also have a much higher level of poverty; especially fuel poverty. Communities hosting renewable energy projects, and particularly those overlooking offshore wind farms, deserve to see tangible benefits from those developments. The Bill presents an opportunity to ensure that offshore wind farm projects—indeed, all renewable energy projects—not only meet our national and global ambitions but provide meaningful real-world advantages to the people most impacted by them. There are numerous examples from overseas of where community benefits have become significant. One such example is from Germany, where in the North sea archipelago of Heligoland three offshore wind farms generated €22 million in 2016. These are massive amounts of money. While the Bill’s focus is on increasing borrowing powers and investment flexibility, there is no mention of how communities will benefit from these developments, although perhaps Labour Members know something that I do not.

• 6 Jan 2025 · General Election · Hansard source

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  Despite the 3 million people who signed this petition, we know that the Government will continue to stand. That said, the petition is an excellent thing, because it has let the Government know how deeply unpopular many of their policies have been. I feel that many Members on the Government side are rather ashamed of many of the things that have resulted in the petition. People in the Labour party—its voters—feel let down; I will expand on that in a second. Who would have thought that it would be the Labour party that would cut the winter fuel payments for older and more vulnerable people? Who would have thought that charities, GPs, hospices and hundreds of thousands of smaller businesses would suffer a national insurance increase of 8.7%—almost four times the rate of inflation? It really has destroyed the economy and many of the charities. Who would have thought that the Labour party would walk away from the commitment—maybe it was not written down but we have certainly seen the photographs—to the WASPI women? The Prime Minister would have been a much more compassionate person, and had a much more compassionate Budget, if he had increased the top rate of tax—both the income tax for better-off people and the corporation tax for companies making hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds of profit. That would have been a much more compassionate decision. It would have been much more compassionate to tax the online companies that are making many billions of pounds in the UK, maybe a percentage of revenue rather than a percentage of profit—say 1.5%. Almost everybody would have understood that. The petition cannot result in a new general election, but the Prime Minister will know he is on notice. He now has a dissatisfaction rating reaching 61%, and the economic optimism in our country is collapsing. Almost universally, the people of Britain have been appalled by this Budget. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have let down the poorest people, charities and struggling businesses. Personally, as a Scottish MP, I am appalled that the Prime Minister has done a big job towards helping the Scottish National party win the next Scottish Parliament election—not a good job, I am afraid.