Dave Doogan MP: speeches 2026

Speeches

• 20 May 2026 · Banking Hubs · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way? [ Laughter. ]

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He is accused of being messianic in his approach to proscribing new oil and gas licences in the North sea. If it can be demonstrated that UK consumption of oil and gas is not falling at a rate that is equal to, or faster than, the rate of production in the United Kingdom, will he release his screeching U-turn on new oil and gas licences in the North sea?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  The Minister will know that Scotland has almost all the oil in the United Kingdom. We have the vast majority of the gas. We have the most onshore renewables and the most hydro. And yet, under his watch, his constituents and mine in Scotland pay the highest electricity bills anywhere on these islands. What does he say to our constituents?

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  I would never accuse the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, of being a rank, rotten revisionist, but the problem is that in the last 10 years of his Government, oil and gas jobs in north-east Scotland went down by 100,000, and just in the two years that he was a Minister, including in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, they went down a further 10%. Why is he now manifesting as some sort of caped crusader for oil and gas workers? It is difficult for many of us in north-east Scotland to believe.

• 19 May 2026 · Energy Security · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Lady paints a picture of the stark consequences of the Labour party’s policy for a total proscription on new oil and gas licences. Can she advise us what the future will look like for the United Kingdom without access to oil and gas from the North sea basin?

• 19 May 2026 · Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address · Hansard source

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  The Minister must accept that there is no more august Committee in this place than the ISC. He must further accept that it is the least partisan organ of this Parliament. It is against that incomprehensible reality that the pedlars of chaos in No. 10 have sought to confound the ISC by withholding information and deviating unilaterally from the terms of the Humble Address. The Minister has given himself and No. 10 till after the Whitsun recess. Will he say very clearly when after Whitsun recess he will release the next tranche of documents?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  The defence sector is a significant part of the Scottish economy, and I just wish that the hon. Gentleman and his Unionist colleagues in the Labour party, and in other lesser parties, would acknowledge the fact that this is a mutual endeavour and that the UK benefits greatly from the skills and expertise that exist in Scotland, as well as from the apprenticeships, training and investment. Let us not forget that everybody who works in the defence sector in Scotland went through a Scottish school, a Scottish apprenticeship, a Scottish college or a Scottish university. There is this idea that everything was fantastic previously and is terrible now. The former is not true, and the latter is not true either. It is a work in progress, and we are investing heavily in Scottish education. That is why such a high percentage of people leaving school in Scotland are going on to a positive destination. The Prime Minister said that he was going to take steps to bring the United Kingdom into the very heart of Europe. Well, he is not going to do that without rejoining the EU, so this is yet more hyperbole and fantasy. My final word on this is that a Government in this level of disarray—with this level of division and infighting, who have caused so much damage in such a short period of time to people’s livelihoods and to the economy—needed to make an emergency response today, but this King’s Speech was anything but. I look forward to them getting their house in order, but I won’t be holding my breath.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  What the hon. Gentleman needs to understand is that countries grow their way out of these issues. Growth comes from economic investment in equipment and people, raising productivity and lowering economic inactivity and all those things that have risen under Labour, because Labour does not understand economics—never has, never will. Before I move on, I want to focus on the real impact on real people. Unemployment is now at its highest level in five years. Unemployment across the UK is at 5.2%; thankfully, through the economic efforts of our SNP Scottish Government, it is at 4.1% in Scotland, although that is still far too high for our communities. Youth unemployment in the UK is at 15%. That is a catastrophe. The way young people enter the world of work dictates their relationship with employment for the rest of their lives, and that is catastrophically damaging for young people up and down these islands. Youth unemployment is particularly acute in hospitality. Hospitality is a gateway industry for employment, but the Government are taxing it out of existence. People with a pub, a hotel or a restaurant now feel like unpaid tax collectors for this Labour Government.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I am listening intently to the hon. Gentleman’s anticipation of a brighter future, with a closer relationship with the EU. He even goes so far as to say that he looks forward to another referendum on whether to rejoin the European Union. Does he agree that when we are sold an outcome in a false prospectus on a referendum, it is probably no big deal to have a rerun of that referendum so that we can make an informed decision about our constitutional future?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  We still got more than four times as many seats as the Lib Dems in Scotland, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not be taking any lectures there. However, I look forward to working closely with the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Government—

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I am not sure the hon. Lady has that in her gift, but to her point about youth unemployment, as I said to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), the Scottish Government are subject to the same economic malaise as anywhere else in the United Kingdom. It is to the betterment of the fortunes of their constituents and mine that they are under an SNP Government—on that point, I can assure the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) that she is welcome. Do not just take my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker: the markets give their verdict on what is happening in the United Kingdom, and the markets are incredibly concerned. That is why 10-year gilt interest rates touched 5.13%, a rate not seen in the UK since the financial crash of 2008—a very dangerous report card.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to highlight that issue, which is so important to many people across the UK but especially in the north of England, and in Liverpool in particular. But it is not just that. It is the way Labour rushed during the campaign to stand shoulder to shoulder with WASPI women before abandoning them when they got into office. It is about the family farm tax, which the Labour party expressly said before the election that it would not introduce but then got in and did exactly that. That was a gross betrayal of our agricultural industry and our rural communities. The change to employer national insurance was self-evidently anti-industry, self-evidently inflationary and self-evidently a tax on jobs. It was going to have one potential outcome. The £25 billion that the Government said that it would bring in was complete fantasy; by the time they had compensated for the public sector, it was down to single figures of billions, and even that did not take into account the drag on the economy and the lower fiscal receipts as a result of that disastrous, self-defeating policy.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  What the hon. Lady, as a Scottish Unionist—I am sure a proud Scottish Unionist, for reasons best known to herself—needs to understand is that the UK is not contingent on Scotland, but Scotland is contingent on the UK. The decisions made here affect Scotland, but the decisions made in Scotland do not affect down here. Against that backdrop, Scotland is regularly in the upper quartile for GDP per capita in the United Kingdom. This myth that we are subsidised by the rest of the UK is risible. We economically outperform more than three quarters of the UK in any given quarter, roughly. We are the top destination for foreign direct investment. Foreign companies are not confused: they know where they get a return on their investment in the United Kingdom, and it is in Scotland. Our unemployment is lower and our employment is higher. I could go on, but I do not want to get in trouble, Madam Deputy Speaker.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  No. I am going to make progress and close my speech. Defence is the first duty of government, but under this Labour Government, if we had a significant investment for every blunderbuss piece of hyperbole and rhetoric on defence, we would be in a far better position than we are. The Prime Minister said in his speech earlier that we are negotiating a de-escalation of the war in Iran. He did not tell us which of the three protagonists was listening to the pontifications of the UK Prime Minister—because not one of the three participants in that conflict could care less what the Prime Minister thinks about the war in Iran. The defence investment plan—the road map for what defence will look like in the United Kingdom for the next decade—is now a year late. I do not know what the Government think they can get away with, but if their signal, apex piece of defence legislation is more than a year late, that tells this Parliament and everyone up and down these islands that they do not have a clue about defence any more than they have a clue about anything else.

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  I am very grateful to the Prime Minister for giving way. He talks about energy security; he should know that Scotland has an energy surplus—we generate more electricity than we use—and that, in conditions of surplus, prices go down. However, in Scotland, because we are stuck in the GB energy market, we pay for the scarcity of energy in England—not just to the point of equality, but to our detriment, so that there are higher prices for energy in Scotland. Can he explain why that dysfunction exists, and what is in this King’s Speech to fix it?

• 13 May 2026 · Debate on the Address · Hansard source

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  If I was not cheered by the landslide victory of the SNP in Scotland last week, I certainly am after this King’s Speech. It is just as well that the people of Scotland have John Swinney as First Minister and the SNP as the Scottish Government to stand as the buttress of fairness and justice between them and the remote and unaccountable UK Government in Westminster. They are not just remote and unaccountable but dysfunctional to an alarming degree, and that dysfunction is what has precipitated this most vapid of King’s Speeches. If somebody who was unaware of the UK malaise, and the multiple economic crises affecting it, saw the Government’s solution in the form of this King’s Speech, they would be unable to identify the problem. That speaks to an obscurity of purpose. Government should have a clarity of purpose—see also the SNP Scottish Government in Edinburgh—but this Government have not got a clue. They are so busy bickering with one another, arguing with each faction about who gets the next shot at being the Prime Minister, that they cannot focus on the problems ailing the people up and down these islands—and the problems are profound. People are unable to pay their energy bills, and they do not know whether they will have a job this month, next month or the month after that. There is a crushing concern about everything, not just this or that. People are now terrified about their washing machine breaking down or their car getting a puncture, because they are so hard up. Under this Labour Government, the margin of economic resilience in people’s homes has been eroded to a translucent wafer. There is nothing between the wolf and the bank account, after less than two years of a Labour Government. I do not understand why that could be. I am a political bore and I understand these things—or I thought I did. They have a majority that would choke a horse. They have been preparing for government for 14 years, yet they come in and it is like they just landed. They even said as much: “Well, we didn’t know the state of the books.” If they never knew the state of the books, they were the only people who did not, yet they had the temerity to come in, take power and make it even worse. Labour Members kid themselves about the reason Labour was elected, but really they know it. They tell themselves, “It was our manifesto. We have a mandate.” There was no mandate for this guddle. Nothing that has happened over the last 22 months was backed up by a mandate. Labour was elected, and ushered in with a colossal majority, for one reason alone: Labour was not the Tories, and it is a two-party system in this place—or rather, it was. That is why Labour Members are here.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges · Hansard source

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  I want to start with a clumsy metaphor. If one is in public office, having anything to do with Peter Mandelson is akin to filling the world’s smallest hot water bottle with the world’s largest kettle, while dressed only in shorts and flip-flops. The question is not whether one will get burned, but how badly—and will it be fatally so? One of the falsehoods that the Prime Minister has sought repeatedly to advance is that it was a mistake to appoint Peter Mandelson. It was no such thing; it was a debt to be repaid. He had to appoint Peter Mandelson to that job. It was a deal he made with the devil. It was a high-stakes political game of Russian roulette. The Prime Minister pulled the trigger when the bullet was in the chamber and it went off at the heart of his Government. Now that they have got through the noise of the bang, they are all suffering from some sort of collective cognitive dissonance where they cannot see what a preposterous defence the Prime Minister and the Labour party have mounted. I will frame the rest of what I have to say around honesty, integrity and respect. On honesty, the Prime Minister’s version of events is inconsistent with the evidence in greater or lesser part than that which has been proffered by officials—that much is clear. That in itself is enough to seek recourse to the Privileges Committee. The Prime Minister’s evidence consistently sought to omit that this was a catastrophe of his own making, for the reasons I have set out, in so far as it was political payback. These are the detriments and de-merits against the Prime Minister on the honesty front, but I cannot be the arbiter of that. On integrity, the Prime Minister made this happen, as we have discussed—it is his mess—but he has inflicted substantial damage on politics across these islands. Many of us are campaigning in elections at the minute. Most of us realise that people do not care which party we are in when they have lost trust in politics; it is a plague on all our houses, and that plague is now substantially more fatal because of the actions of the Prime Minister. Does somebody want to intervene on me? No, I did not think so. The Prime Minister was but one of five actors involved in this debacle. The other four have all lost their jobs, while the Prime Minister, for the time being, has kept his. I will touch briefly on the whipping scenario. I will not go over what others have said already—although, that the Government have whipped the vote reveals how deeply questionable is the conviction of Back Benchers in their Prime Minister; and conversely, how questionable is the Prime Minister’s conviction in his Back Benchers. However, to be clear, notwithstanding the very brave speeches by the hon. Member for South Shields (Emma Lewell) and others, I am prepared to believe that there are Labour MPs who will vote against the motion tonight in good conscience, on the basis of the evidence as they see it, and that is fine. The problem they face is that they have been whipped to do so, whether that is their position or not, and they should be absolutely furious about that. But I cannot be the arbiter of that. On respect, the Prime Minister says that the appointment was a mistake. No, he must take responsibility. Officials and spads have all had to walk the walk while he remains in post, looking increasingly like a cuckoo waiting for his successor to arrive. On respect, the most important thing is that when the Prime Minister stands there and says that he is sorry to the victims of Epstein, what he should continue to say is, “When I appointed Mandelson to the pinnacle of United Kingdom diplomatic appointments over in Washington, I did so in the knowledge that he was a sympathiser, close friend and confidante of the world’s most prolific paedophile, and I still appointed him—I just did not know how much of a friend and confidante he was of the world’s most prolific paedophile.” That is no defence. I know that, and I am surprised that the former Director of Public Prosecutions does not know that that is the shallowest of all defences. Many Labour Members have talked about how often the Prime Minister has been in this Chamber fielding questions, and how many hours he has spent doing so, but very few of those questions have actually been answered and, with the exception of the Leader of the Opposition, nobody has the right to reply on the questions about the appointment of Peter Mandelson that the Prime Minister serially does not answer. Recourse to the Privileges Committee is what we need here. I cannot be the arbiter of all the things I have covered, and neither can anyone else here, but the Privileges Committee can.

• 28 Apr 2026 · Fuel Costs: Support for Motorists · Hansard source

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  If you were a gardener with a Renault Trafic or a builder with a Ford Ranger in Scotland, Mr Speaker, you would be paying over £150 just to fill up at the pump in order to get to work. When Spain and Poland and Germany and France and Italy and Ireland and Australia are all intervening to help their industry and economy, our Chancellor here stands idly by and congratulates herself on the quality of her inaction. We do not want to hear from Anas Sarwar in Scotland, because he promised £300 off our energy bills and they are now £700 higher than the level that he promised in 2024. We want to hear from the Chancellor. What is she going to do about diesel specifically, and when is she going to do it, to keep the grafters of Scotland turning up for work?

• 28 Apr 2026 · Fuel Costs: Support for Motorists · Hansard source

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  6. What fiscal steps she is taking to support motorists with fuel costs.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Cost of Living · Hansard source

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  7. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to help reduce the cost of living in Wales.

• 22 Apr 2026 · Cost of Living · Hansard source

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  In just two weeks’ time, the people of Wales will have an opportunity to elect a Government who genuinely care about child poverty in Wales—Plaid Cymru. In Scotland, the Scottish Government’s child payment has helped protect 407,000 children from UK poverty, and Plaid Cymru will do the same if it prevails on 7 May. Does the Secretary of State agree that Labour’s fag-end Administration in Wales has come to an end and Plaid Cymru’s time has come, and not a moment too soon for the people of Wales?

• 21 Apr 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  On 3 March, during the Chancellor’s vacuous spring statement, I raised with her that the war which had just started in the middle east would have an inevitable and immediate consequence for energy prices. I asked her what she was going to do about it, and she said that she had no plans to do anything about it. Today, the Chancellor comes to the Chamber like the coo’s tail, talking about fiddling about with contracts for difference next year while my constituents are currently paying nearly £2 a litre for diesel. In Ireland, the Government spent €750 million to support farmers, hauliers, agriculture, fisheries and household energy bills. If the Chancellor were to do the same, the figure would be £8 billion. Where is the £8 billion for our communities, Chancellor?

• 20 Apr 2026 · Security Vetting · Hansard source

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  This saga is drawing to a close, and it will come to a conclusion with the Prime Minister’s resignation, whether he can accept that or not. What I cannot accept is the “ask me no secrets and I’ll tell you no lies” regime that he expects us to believe prevailed at the very top of Government between officials and not just Ministers but the Prime Minister. He has talked a lot today about what he did not know and what he was not told. Well, he knew that Mandelson had a serious human frailty for other people’s wealth. We knew that Mandelson was involved with the Russians. We knew that Mandelson was sacked twice as a Government Minister. Can the Prime Minister explain what Mandelson’s actual qualities were that he was pursuing for the role as US ambassador, and what steps he has taken to contain the serious and measurable breach in national security that his appointment of Peter Mandelson facilitated?

• 16 Apr 2026 · British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme · Hansard source

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  We were promised a statement on the British industrial competitiveness scheme; we got the Secretary of State talking about foutering around with the energy bills of less than 1% of UK companies and compensating them to some undetermined extent at some period in the next year. That will come as the coldest of comfort for industries across the UK, such as the ScanStone industrial equipment manufacturers in my constituency, which is already burdened with extraordinary energy bills but is not an “intensive” energy user, so it will get no help from this. It will be similarly encumbered by the same Secretary of State’s quotas on steel imports, which stockholders and manufacturers are already saying will risk output. Will he meet me to discuss my constituents’ concerns about his plans? We support the supporting of British steel in theory, but British manufacturing cannot be put out of work in the process.