Angus MacDonald MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2026 · Coastguard Volunteers: Remuneration and HMRC Guidance · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate. This weekend, I watched the coastguard rescue a kayaker very close to my house. I spoke to the coastguard, who brought me up to date on the situation. There are two things to say. First, it is clear that the MCA management has made a right mess of this. It should listen to the petitioners and put its plans on hold. Secondly, will the Minister confirm whether he has discussed the volunteer fire service’s terms and remuneration with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and whether, for example, an honorarium, a stipend or another of its policies could be adapted?

• 30 Jun 2026 · Nationally Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects · Hansard source

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  The Minister knows that in the highlands we have had three massive pump storage sites move to the next level of development. Cumulatively, they will store 4 GW in an area that has the highest fuel poverty in Britain, at a cost of £5 billion. At the moment, the pumps will do very little for the highland economy, as there will be almost no local jobs, no legacy housing and no community benefit. It is a sorry state; it is all downside and no upside for the people of the highlands. I would love to see that addressed.

• 11 Jun 2026 · Clean Power by 2030 · Hansard source

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  It is a privilege to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for affording me the opportunity to make a statement on the publication of the Scottish Affairs Committee’s first report of the Session, on the Government’s clean power 2030 mission. It is a pleasure to speak on behalf of the Committee. This is the Committee’s second report on our inquiry into Great British Energy and the net zero transition. We launched the inquiry in November 2024, and it has been our longest-running piece of work to date. We have received more than 50 pieces of written evidence, held 11 oral evidence sessions and carried out numerous visits, both in Scotland and internationally. I thank all the stakeholders who have engaged with the inquiry. Last autumn, we published an interim report for the inquiry on the future of North sea oil and gas, and I commend that report to all hon. Members. The report before us today—our second and final report for this inquiry—explores a wide range of issues. We cover the achievability of the clean power by 2030 mission, the role of GB Energy in delivering it, the urgent need for grid upgrades, and the community ownership of clean power. However, I will focus in my brief remarks on the issue of community benefits. Community benefits are key to ensuring the fairness of the Government’s clean power mission, particularly for the communities of the highlands and islands, many of which I represent in my Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire constituency. It was declared that Scotland had the potential to become the Saudi Arabia of renewables, and there has been massive investment in onshore wind. However, those wind farm developments are seldom owned locally and offer few local jobs. In 2024, only £7 million of community benefit was generated in the highlands, and less than £30 million across Scotland, from that billion-pound industry. That was a disappointing outcome from a potentially transformative opportunity. Throughout our inquiry, we had a clear consensus that the communities in Scotland that shoulder the greatest impact of the energy transition by hosting renewable energy infrastructure must also share in its benefits. As one of our expert witnesses put it, highland communities see that “the turbines are generating lots of revenue for somebody but not for them.” That presents an acute problem of fairness. The communities across Scotland that host industrial-scale renewable infrastructure in their backyards are the very same communities that pay among the highest prices for energy. Although fuel poverty rates across the UK cannot be directly compared, it is also clear that those same communities are enduring among the highest levels of fuel poverty. Indeed, many will be among the 34% of Scottish households that are classified as fuel poor while looking on at the massive wind turbines generating renewable electricity nearby—that cannot be just. As our report highlights, that disconnect is a key driver of the sense of unfairness felt by communities across rural Scotland. It is for that reason that our report welcomes the UK Government’s commitment to introduce a mandatory community benefit scheme for new-generation infrastructure. The scheme, which is expected to be introduced by the end of 2027 at the earliest, could be key to ensuring that Scotland’s rural communities are adequately compensated for the disadvantages that come with enabling the whole of the UK to meet the Government’s clean power mission. However, that raises the thorny issue of what fair compensation looks like. As the report highlights, the Scottish Government were widely regarded as leaders in this area. In 2015, they introduced voluntary community benefits guidance for onshore renewable developers, which recommended community benefits of £5,000 per megawatt, with inflationary increases. They have recently proposed increasing that to £6,000. However, the UK Government have, in their policy paper on how their mandatory scheme will work, proposed a benchmark contribution of only £5,000 per megawatt. Our report finds that that sum is insufficient and does not reflect fair compensation for rural Scotland. A £5,000 contribution may have been an appropriate amount in 2015, when the Scottish Government adopted it, but it is now worth around 40% less in real terms. Our report makes it clear that the UK Government must be bolder. The Committee recommends that a figure in the region of £10,000 to £12,000 per megawatt would be more appropriate. The report also calls on the Government to consider carefully the Highland council’s view that £12,500, the upper end of that scale, is a fair figure. That proposal reflects the Highland council’s first-hand experience of supporting communities that bear the brunt of clean energy development. The Committee’s report also highlights that, no matter what figure the Government adopt, it is equally important that a mechanism is included to maintain that value over time—otherwise, Scotland’s communities will eventually find themselves short-changed as the real-terms value of the figure is eroded. Financial payments will be an essential part of a fair deal for Scotland, but they are not the whole story. Our report makes it clear that meaningful community benefit extends beyond financial payments, and that housing availability, access to skills training and the creation of long-term local jobs are just as important. If delivered successfully, the influx of vast amounts of renewable energy could provide an opportunity to leave a transformative legacy of housing, skills and quality employment. That would be especially valuable for communities in remote rural Scotland, which have seen little private or public sector investment. The Committee calls on the Government to seize this opportunity and ensure that their mandatory community benefit scheme is significant enough to reflect the needs and priorities of Scotland’s rural communities. Our report recommends one specific way in which the Government could achieve that: their scheme should include a requirement on energy companies building projects in rural areas to construct legacy worker accommodation to a standard suitable for permanent community housing, rather than temporary modular buildings. That would go some way towards addressing the acute housing shortage in the highlands, which requires an extra 24,000 homes to meet the demand of the next decade, according to Highland council. With that, I will conclude my statement. The Scottish Affairs Committee looks forward to the Government’s response, which I hope will reflect serious consideration of our recommendations on delivering a fair deal for rural communities across Scotland.

• 9 Jun 2026 · Energy Costs · Hansard source

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  We are waiting for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to come up with the results of the community benefit consultation. The highlands only got £9 million of community benefit last year, and Scotland as a whole got less than £30 million. There are tens of thousands of jobs in renewables in the highlands, but they are not for locals; they are imported teams. Very often, offshore firms are doing the construction. We sell 10 times more electricity than we produce. Effectively, there is nothing in it for the people of rural Scotland to produce electricity. Does the Minister agree that the community benefit conclusion from DESNZ is crucial?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  To support the hon. Gentleman’s argument about the price of electricity, renewable energy is largely generated in Scotland, north Wales and south-west England. We have the highest level of fuel poverty, we have no mains gas, and the suffering caused to those rural areas is remarkable. Until that is improved, we are not in a position to move to an electricity-based economy.

• 4 Mar 2026 · Energy Security and Net Zero: Scotland · Hansard source

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  Do you agree that £9 million in total community benefit for the highlands, and £30 million for Scotland as a whole, is a paltry amount for a multibillion-pound industry?

• 3 Mar 2026 · Small Charity Sector · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing the debate. I want to speak briefly about mental health charities. Fundamentally, we have an enormous problem in the UK: the public sector no longer funds the mental health sector properly, and the charities cannot fill the gap. Almost 800,000 kids in the 16 to 24-year-old group are not in education or employment, and covid has meant that the situation is effectively becoming a national emergency for the young. We all see in our casework an enormous number of parents getting in touch about their children. We have a big issue. There is one thing that the Minister could do to help. My wife’s father committed suicide. He was a farmer in Northern Ireland. Without the charities that I know of, I think a lot more people who are contemplating suicide would take their own lives. I would like to mention the charities Ewen’s Room, Lochaber Hope, and Mikeysline in Inverness. They have one particular request. Unlike VAT-registered businesses, charities cannot reclaim the VAT they pay on essential costs, from maintaining their premises to repairing vehicles. Does the Minister agree that reviewing the VAT rules for small charities could be a practical and immediate step to relieve some of the intense financial pressures facing the sector?

• 23 Feb 2026 · Firearms Licensing · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member consider the impact of defining what a farmer is? Is it somebody who is part time and has another job? Is it a vermin control guy? I do not think we can take out just farmers when considering this, because we are talking about multi-rural employment.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Taxation: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises · Hansard source

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  I have spent a great deal of my life looking at small businesses. There are 4.1 million sole traders or self-employed people in the UK and that £90,000 VAT restriction is a block on building businesses. Were it increased to, say, £250,000 and 10% of those businesses employed people, that would mean 400,000 youngsters in work, and the modelling that I have done shows that His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would get a lot more money. I would be delighted to go through it with the Minister. If we want real growth from UK micro-organisations, I would really appreciate a chance to meet him to discuss this.

• 3 Feb 2026 · Taxation: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises · Hansard source

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  The Scottish Affairs Committee is doing an inquiry into the viability of high streets. We heard from a professor at Glasgow University who specialises in the subject, and he made an extraordinarily convincing case that Amazon is basically being subsidised by the high street—that Amazon is being hugely undertaxed and the high street is being overtaxed. Would the hon. Gentleman support me in asking the Minister to look into that subject and the cost of whether it is actually killing the high street?

• 3 Feb 2026 · Taxation: Small and Medium-sized Enterprises · Hansard source

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  I met the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales this morning and am meeting the Federation of Small Businesses later. We have done all the modelling and I assure the Minister that our numbers are being checked out by all the experts. I think that the Government might be missing a trick on this one.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Neurodiversity in the Workplace · Hansard source

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  I left school at 16. I did extremely badly at school and seem to have been fine ever since, largely. It is now very clear to me that people who are neurodiverse in many ways contribute far more than normal people. If they were given a chance, they would succeed. Just 30 seconds on the internet produces the names Bill Gates, Greta Thunberg, Richard Branson, Emma Watson, Steve Jobs and many other people who have clearly excelled, all of whom would describe themselves as extremely neurodiverse. Employers should understand what they can contribute to an organisation.

• 4 Dec 2025 · War in Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) for bringing this very important debate to the House. It is very disappointing that the Chamber is not full and that we do not have the Prime Minister sitting there. I cannot think of a more important subject for us to be debating in the United Kingdom—the almost certain outbreak of war, as far as I am concerned. I am very sorry that the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) is not here to tell us his view on Russia. I think we would all be very interested in what he had to say. Ukraine is defending the western world against Russia. There is no doubt about that. The Baltic states, Finland, Moldova, Poland and Estonia are all building up their military forces. They expect that Putin has territorial ambitions on their land, too. In the meantime, all over Europe Russia is conducting sabotage: rogue drone flights, towing anchors over our power lines and data links, cyber-attacks, exploding packages in courier flights and even assassinations in the UK. In the previous Government, even Boris Johnson was much more supportive in his response than our current Government. France and Germany are very much leading the way now, with Britain timidly following on. The Chancellor raised £28 billion in the recent Budget and £40 billion this time last year, yet we have a target to increase defence spending from a very modest 2.4% of GDP to only 2.5% by 2026. Whether our Prime Minister or Chancellor will admit it, we are at war with Russia already. Surely the Budget would have been the perfect time to have announced a substantial new contribution to Ukraine to help it fund the defence of western Europe? Why is our Prime Minister being so timid in his support for Ukraine? Is he still hoping that President Trump will stop his flip-flopping and actually firmly support Ukraine? Is he not upset that the United States no longer donates arms to help Ukraine, but sells the arms to Europe? Just yesterday, Trump boasted that Ukraine is forced to pay “top dollar” for weapons to give to Ukraine. This is war profiteering. Does our Prime Minister read the Wall Street Journal , where he will have read a detailed report on Steve Witkoff and Trump’s own son-in-law, Jared Kushner, meeting the Russians to carve out multibillion dollar deals for the benefit of themselves and major American companies? Donald Tusk declared: “We know this is not about peace. It’s about business.” Did the PM see Steve Bannon stating that Russia was America’s true ally in world war two and that they should be allies again? Did he read the press yesterday where a German general, Christian Freuding, said that he no longer has peer group contact with US generals and that channels had been “cut off, really cut off”. My mother is American, from a long line of Republican supporters. She is appalled that the party of Reagan and George Bush has decided to ally itself with Russia, rather than its traditional allies of Britain, Germany, Canada, Japan and its many other old friends. I appeal to our Prime Minister to grow a bit of backbone with Trump, side firmly with European nations and once more ensure Britain is the leader of the world’s civilised countries in supporting Ukraine.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Support for Dyslexic Pupils · Hansard source

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  It is an incredibly important subject. I left school before I was 17, and that was the end of my education. I have had a fantastic business career, I have written lots of novels and I am now an MP. That is despite no help at all from the educational system, and society as a whole putting across the message that people such as me at school are not on the same level as more intellectual people. The subject is close to my heart. Does my hon. Friend agree that society should better recognise people such as him and me, to help people get on with their careers?

• 27 Oct 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Industry · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister really consider this a just transition? We have thousands of contractors arriving in the highlands. They stay in workers’ camps, and very few legacy houses are agreed. The companies are not employing local people, and this is all in an area with the greatest fuel poverty in Britain.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  When the hon. Gentleman prepares his agenda for the next small company roundtable, will he ask companies how they are getting on with the 8.7% national insurance increase, and the total employment cost increase of 12.4% as a result of the Budget? That is four times inflation. I think he will be surprised how uncomfortable the answer is.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  Would the hon. Gentleman admit that what actually happened in the Budget was a transfer of 2% of GDP from the private sector to the public sector? That private sector is, to a significant extent, the hospitality sector.

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  It is difficult to get a word in. [Laughter.] I am married; I know about these things. I have 100 staff members in the hospitality industry in the highlands, and I can say that all is not well in hospitality by any means. Those who are not on mains gas are paying for electricity, by and large, and we are paying four times as much for energy as people in the city. Moreover, we in Scotland do not receive the same business rates relief as the rest of the UK. [Interruption.] I thank my Scottish National party friends, who are sitting next to me. Our staffing costs, including employers’ national insurance contributions, have increased by 12.4%. So we have real problems, and I must say to the Minister that all is not well.