Dave Doogan MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  We know that there are serious questions over this Chancellor’s alleged experience in the financial services sector. We can see that she has no experience in either industry or commerce. Perhaps the worst of her detriments, however, is her clinical lack of empathy, seeming totally unable to connect cause and effect. That is why she has allowed the disastrous—

• 10 Dec 2025 · Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer · Hansard source

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  I share the hon. Gentleman’s appreciation of the fact that the motion is about the post and role of a Minister, not about a local MP and a person. However, while he is dishing out sympathy and empathy, can I encourage him to think of his constituents and mine who are disabled, who thought for the longest time that they were going to lose their livelihood until the Government U-turned on that policy? Can I encourage him to worry about family business owners, who now have no idea how they will afford to pass their local growth-generating business on to the next generation—not to mention farmers, who are now scared to die?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Railways Bill · Hansard source

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  I salute the ambition of the Bill, and determination with which the Secretary of State is articulating that ambition. Does she agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) that the way that the Bill has been discussed with Scottish Government partners is the exemplar that other Government Departments in Whitehall may wish to follow? What steps can she take to highlight to her colleagues in Government that there is the possibility of constructive dialogue between the two Governments, as she has ably demonstrated?

• 9 Dec 2025 · Forth Valley: Industry · Hansard source

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  The challenges experienced by the businesses of Forth valley are the highest industrial energy prices in the G7, Labour’s farm tax, Labour’s family business tax, Labour’s £26 billion raid on the cost of employing people, Labour’s fiscal drag on everybody’s earnings, the Potemkin support for Grangemouth, the ambivalence to Mossmorran and the defunding of the Acorn project. For how long does the Minister think Scotland should put up with this chaos from Westminster?

• 8 Dec 2025 · Ajax Armoured Vehicle · Hansard source

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  This is not the Minister’s fault, but it is his responsibility. This issue has gone from Labour to a coalition Government to a Tory Government. It is now back with Labour, and we have a system that is nine years late, has cost £6 billion and has just injured a further 30 of our service personnel. GD is a US prime. Does the Minister think for one second that the US would allow themselves to get messed around by a UK prime in the same way? Does he have any indication that he can share with the House about defence contingency planning if he has to press the button to cancel this project, in terms of the CV90 or Rheinmetall Lynx?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Dawn Sturgess Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I join the Security Minister in acknowledging the memory of Dawn Sturgess, and the sacrifice made by Dawn’s partner Charlie, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and the fearless first responders. In the seven years since this attack, an emboldened Putin has increased his aggression across Europe. Can the Minister assure the House that all the lessons that come out of this inquiry will be acted on in full? Will the UK Government continue to work with our EU partners in standing up to Putin’s aggression in Europe? Will the Government underscore the point that our multilateral defence of the international rules-based order is our strength, and his isolationist aggression will forever be his weakness?

• 4 Dec 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Of the manifold carnival of basically lies that was the Vote Leave campaign, becoming £350 million richer a week was one of the principal lies. The sad reality, of course, is that we are £250 million a day worse off as a result of Brexit, which has forced the Chancellor to come after £66 billion of unreconciled revenue from the real economy. It was supposed to take back control but, well, this control does not feel very nice. It was supposed to stop immigration, but irregular immigration is through the roof. It was supposed to save the Tory party, but I give you exhibit A: the Tory Benches. Can we have a debate on Government time to get real about the catastrophic consequences of Brexit?

• 3 Dec 2025 · OBR: Resignation of Chair · Hansard source

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  The head of the OBR has taken responsibility and resigned, just like the BBC director general took responsibility for a crisis and resigned. Given the backdrop that the UK is in the throes of a full-on fiscal crisis of the Chancellor’s own making—both materially by removing £66 billion from the economy with no corresponding stimulus and objectively by briefings, counter-briefings, screeching U-turns, leaks, and a profound lack of discretion over market-sensitive information—why will she not resign?

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I will give way in a second. The SNP did Labour’s job for it, with a Budget proposal that involved a surcharge on banks that would have created the £300 discount for bill payers, just like Labour promised. I am very happy to give way to the hon. Member, if he can tell me when Labour will come good on that promise.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I am sure the public will be delighted to hear Labour’s never-never promise on energy bills. Unlike the hon. Member, I do not exist on my knees, waiting to get patted on the head by Labour Ministers on the Front Bench. I am off my knees. The consequentials we get in Scotland are a consequence not of largesse by the Labour party but of the taxes that Scottish enterprise creates within this so-called United Kingdom. There is nothing in the Budget on the energy profits levy, which is putting North sea oil and gas into an early grave. As things stand, 42% of the forecast revenue of firms in the North sea oil and gas sector for 2026 is expected to come from outside the UK continental shelf. Analysis earlier this month from the Fraser of Allander Institute showed that the industry is undergoing an accelerated decline. In my view, that is a direct result of this Labour Government, who do not understand energy or the economy. This is Scotland’s reality within the so-called Union: our future and our natural endowments decided on by Westminster Ministers rather than the people of Scotland. It must really stick in the craw, especially for Scottish Labour MPs who have to come down here to toe the party line, to see the difference that Scotland has had under the SNP since 2007. Under the SNP, GDP in Scotland has grown by 10.2% per person compared with 6.8% in the UK. Productivity has grown in Scotland at a rate of 0.9% per year, compared to 0.3% per year in the UK, and Scotland attracted 135 foreign direct investment projects in 2024, maintaining our position as the top performing part of the UK in that regard. Labour MPs are not so keen on the facts. Scottish Labour MPs jump up and down about the new minimum wage, despite the fact that their constituents and mine are already on more than that as a result of the Scottish living wage being £13.45. There was little today to suggest that Labour grasps the severity of the cost of living crisis, which for many people feels endless. Inflation has almost doubled under Labour, and food prices are up a staggering 37% over the last five years. People are rightly asking, “What is going to sort this?” I can assure them that it is not Labour. I am pleased to see that the two-child cap is gone, and with it the appalling rape clause. It is just a shame that all the Labour MPs who were cheering the Chancellor when she announced that today did not vote with the SNP in September 2024 when we had a motion to try to remove the cap. It is rank hypocrisy. In the last year, businesses have been trying to survive this Labour Government, rather than trying to thrive and invest. Businesses know that this Chancellor does not understand business. Family-owned businesses feel that most acutely, and farm businesses know that the Labour party is out to get them. Today’s announcements will not repair the damage. The reality is that it is already too late for some. Whisky duty is going up again. The Scotch Whisky Association said that hiking duty today, for the third time in two years, limits Scotch whisky’s ability to generate growth, and will have a direct consequence for investment and jobs. This Chancellor has run out of road with businesses across these isles. Last year, after £40 billion of tax rises, most of that on jobs, she said: “I’m not coming back with more borrowing or more taxes.” She said the Government had “taken the hard decisions”, and as a result: “We won’t have to do a Budget like this again.” Twelve months later, here we are again with another round of tax rises. Let me make a prediction: 12 months from now, we will be back here once more, albeit with a different Chancellor. Today’s Budget supports the view that taxes are up, borrowing is up, the cost of living is up, the cost of energy is up, spending is up, but growth—the central aim of the Chancellor, I remind the House—is down. Scotland deserves better than this Westminster version of groundhog day, and fortunately, the people of Scotland will be in a position to choose that in May’s elections.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) for a fascinating lecture on amnesia—it was dripping with irony given his last role in government. I wish to congratulate the Chancellor on delivering what is almost certainly her final Budget. There is no conceivable way—not politically and certainly not economically—she can remain in post for a further year. Businesses, workers, bill payers, farmers, hospices, industry and the public sector cannot endure another cycle of this Chancellor. It has been just over a year since she stood at the Dispatch Box, delivered her first Budget and boasted that she had made the “right choices”—if anyone outside the real economy believed that, we would not be in this situation right now. She promised to “restore stability to our public finances” and to “drive growth right across our country.” —[ Official Report , 30 October 2024; Vol. 755, c. 828.] She told us that growth would be her central Budget mission. However, last month the IMF forecast that the UK will have the lowest per-capita growth in the G7 next year at just 0.5%, compared with the 1.4% average for advanced economies. Labour promised to turn the page on high food prices, but households see food inflation running out of control—it hit 4.9% last month. The Chancellor promised more jobs to tackle poverty, but unemployment hit 5% this month—its highest level since the pandemic—while poverty is at record levels. Government borrowing stands at a five-year high—£17.4 billion for October alone—and Labour is spending double the defence budget every year just to service the UK’s chronic national debt. The OECD has downgraded the UK’s economic prospects, singling out the Chancellor’s policies as exposing the economy to “significant downside risk”. That gloomy prognosis is not borne out only in the SNP’s analysis; just listen to the Chancellor. She has spent the past 18 months insisting that the economy is in a terrible state, while blaming everyone and everything except herself, and misunderstanding what negativity her musings signal to investor confidence. It is as if she forgets that she is the Chancellor, as yet another stream of consciousness resonates—invariably negatively—around the economy. She has blamed the black hole—yes, the one that the SNP told Labour about before the election, and which she pretended only to discover after getting into No. 11. She has blamed the markets for their focus on her fiscal rules—you could not make it up—and she has blamed Brexit, despite having herself voted to trigger article 50. However, this is not just about the fundamental economic incompetence of the Chancellor, nor just about Labour’s inheritance, which, while bad, was not the cause of this malaise. This crisis remains a product the Chancellor’s catastrophic decisions, and she will own them, just as she will own Labour’s compound fiscal bonfire. She is the in the frame for one of the most chaotic preludes to any Budget in living memory. Andy Haldane, former chief economist of the Bank of England, called it a “circus” of speculation around the Budget. The endless leaks, U-turns and media trails created panic in the economy, which, according to Mr Haldane, “without any shadow of a doubt” contributed to weaker than expected economic growth in the UK. There is nothing meaningful in the Budget on energy. The measures on energy bills are a start, but they do not fulfil Labour’s election promise to reduce bills by £300. Bills are set to rise in January and again in April; £150 off energy bills will still leave the Labour party in a debit of £87 a year on its commitment at the election.

• 20 Nov 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  I do not understand the mindset of an absent parent who tries to renege on their financial responsibility to support their children. Nor, it seems, does the Child Maintenance Service, because one of the manifold issues with that service is that absent parents renege on payments —starting and stopping payments again and again—and the CMS resets the clock every time, meaning that the receiving parent has to start from the very beginning. Might we have a debate in Government time on the manifold issues with the CMS, to find a way forward for that deeply dysfunctional agency?

• 20 Nov 2025 · Ukraine: Forcible Removal of Children · Hansard source

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  The Minister is very well read, so I wonder whether he can identify any point in history when the appeasement of an aggressive, expansionist autocrat has ever worked out well. The population of these isles and the rest of Europe have endured high energy prices for the last three years, have taken Ukrainians into their homes, and have heard his Government and the previous Government unite the House by saying that, whatever it takes and however long it takes, we will get Ukraine’s sovereign territory back. Yet here we are, with the United States apparently in bilateral talks with Russia about how to carve up Ukraine. Does he have any positive message about the UK’s role in rejecting that? If he does not have a positive message for me today, what is the message from the UK to our allies in Norway, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Moldova, who know very well what appeasement of Russia looks like and feels like?

• 18 Nov 2025 · ExxonMobil: Mossmorran · Hansard source

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  The Minister draws attention to the five Scottish Ministers on the Government Front Bench, but not one of them has said anything about the crisis facing those 400 families making a living from Mossmorran. The Minister seeks to hide behind the company’s statement that there was no lack of enthusiasm by the Government to find a solution, but that is not the point. The point is about what led the business to get into that situation in the first place, which is a direct consequence of Labour Government policy. For the hard of thinking, those policies are: the carbon tax, at £20 million for Mossmorran alone; the cost of UK energy, which Labour cannot fix; the supply of ethane feedstock from the North sea; the energy profits levy, which this Government backs; the Government signalling an artificially accelerated decline in the North sea; and, of course, the national insurance raid on employers, taxing every job across the United Kingdom. This is industrial illiteracy and regulatory incompetence writ large. What does the Minister say to that?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Lady give way?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Will the right hon. Lady give way?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Speaking of screeching U-turns, when the hon. Gentleman was campaigning for last year’s election, he told his potential constituents that he would lower their energy bills by £300. What is he saying to them now?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I suggest that the Minister does not crow too much about GB Energy, given that at the Scottish Affairs Committee the Scottish Secretary let the cat out of the bag about the 1,000 jobs—“Well, we never really meant 1,000 jobs at GB Energy, just maybe 1,000 jobs somewhere, some time.” When will Labour lower people’s energy bills by £300? It sounds to me as if that is to be at some indeterminate point in the future. The electorate could rightly and justifiably have thought that Labour meant some time in the immediate future.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Remembrance Day: Armed Forces · Hansard source

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  The three fatalities from Stirling that the hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) has just set out so eloquently were three of the 135,000 men and women who died from Scotland during world war one. There were almost 60,000 Scots casualties in world war two, and more still in campaigns thereafter in Malaya, Korea, the Falklands, the Gulf and Afghanistan. Some 25% of all Scots who answered the call during the great war never returned to Scotland. We are united in remembrance of their selflessness and heroism and the personal sacrifice endured during that period. As well as the brave men on the frontline, we must pay tribute to the Scots at home—many of whom were women—who toiled on the land and in the mines, shipyards and munitions factories. Without their efforts and sacrifice, the war could never have been prosecuted in the way that it was. One thousand and twelve men and women from Perthshire gave their lives during world war one, with 248 coming from Blairgowrie alone and many hundreds more coming from the Angus glens and the burghs of Angus. As well as the human sacrifice and cost, we must remember the cultural and economic toll of such high attrition of breeding-age men—men who would father families, or not as the case may be, and men who would have worked productively, or not as the case may be. On the eastern tip of my constituency lies Montrose, the site of the UK’s first operational air station, home to No. 2 Squadron of the Royal Flying Corps, established in 1913. During world war two, Montrose was a strategic target for the Luftwaffe. Montrose was bombed at least 15 times in October 1940, suffering huge destruction to the port, air base and the Chivers jam factory, which caused a huge consternation. In that attack, three German Junkers dropped at least 24 bombs on the station, killing five, injuring 18 and destroying two hangars and the officers’ mess. Angus was bombed a minimum of 44 times before the war ended. Against this, I was pleased to stand in the heaving rain on Sunday in Blairgowrie with veterans of the Black Watch, the Brownies, Guides, Scouts, cadets and a good 150 local people braving the elements to pay tribute and give thanks to our veterans. We should note that at the end of the second world war the state invested greatly in veterans. That concordance with our service personnel is one that we should seek to continue to honour. I know that in Scotland the Scottish Government have worked with business to proactively assist in the recruitment of veterans, not least because veterans are excellent employees. ScottishPower is demonstrating this by actively recruiting 300 veterans by the end of this year and a further 2,000 by the end of next year to support investment in our energy infrastructure. Our armed forces are not essential to the fabric of our society. They are the fabric of our society. It can be quite fashionable to pretend that war is something that belongs in the history books, but 80 years is the blink of an eye in human history. Humans have demonstrated that they can be brutal, visceral and lethal, and I want the defence on my side to outpace logistically, industrially, technologically and lethally those who would seek to do us harm. We have a debt to our armed forces. They will step up and answer the call when needed, and that is their duty, and we owe them a serious debt of gratitude for that.

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister will, of course, be delighted to know that the Scottish National party was the first party anywhere in the United Kingdom to introduce business rates relief for small businesses. As for the Labour Government’s business literacy, which the hon. Gentleman critiques quite accurately, does it concern him that it manifests itself in deeply disingenuous moves, like taking a penny off the price of a pint, while the same pub—the Taybank in Dunkeld, perhaps, or the Stag in Forfar—is seeing its national insurance contributions put up and its energy bills going through the roof? This Government cannot join the dots. Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that this is only going to get worse?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister understand the immediacy of the pressure on small businesses? She may have the best of intentions, and I am sure that prices will unwind in five or 10 years, eventually resulting in lower energy bills for commercial enterprise across the United Kingdom. That will not happen this week, however, or even this year or next, and many of them will not survive. What is her message to them about this perpetual “jam tomorrow” culture?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Scotch Whisky Industry · Hansard source

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  The Scottish Secretary—a grown man who seems easy to upset—was very upset recently when the First Minister of Scotland had direct meetings with the President of the United States over whisky tariffs. The SNP and the First Minister will always stand up for Scotch whisky. Will the Chancellor follow suit, or will she continue in the Treasury’s long-standing tradition of suckling off the enterprise of Scottish businesses rather than supporting them? Her tax hike on Scotch whisky last year cost jobs and investment in Scotland. Will she now stand up—

• 3 Nov 2025 · Defence Industrial Base · Hansard source

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  The Ministry of Defence spent £1.2 billion with SMEs in 2024-25. Sadly, though, only 2.5% of that spending went to SMEs in Scotland, which report extreme difficulty in accessing those MOD contracts. This is an inevitable consequence of the MOD spending more in one region of England than it spends in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland put together. Does the Secretary of State agree that this is an undesirable outcome, and what steps will he take to increase SME expenditure by the MOD in Scotland to at least Scotland’s per capita share, which is what it contributes to the cost of defence?

• 29 Oct 2025 · Cost of Living · Hansard source

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  3. What recent discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on reducing the cost of living in Wales.

• 29 Oct 2025 · Cost of Living · Hansard source

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  A century of Labour taking the people of Wales for granted came crashing down last week with the sensational victory of Plaid’s Lindsay Whittle in Caerphilly, with Labour reduced to third place. Why would anybody accept any more Labour, as Labour’s cost of living soars, its Westminster perma-crisis deepens, and 700,000 people in Wales live under its poverty prospectus? The Secretary of State will not say what she is going to speak to the Chancellor about, but does she think the Chancellor is ready and willing to help the people of Wales? The people of Wales feel abandoned by Labour over the last five decades.