Dave Doogan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 30 Apr 2025 · UK Airstrike: Houthi Military Facility · Hansard source

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  The brutal oppression of the Palestinians in Gaza will not be helped one iota by the bombing of merchant shipping and drone strikes against the merchant marine, so we are supportive of the action that has been taken. It seems to be an operation that has the appearance of something which may endure into a more strategic affair. Does the Secretary of State agree that, notwithstanding the general consensus in the Chamber on the action that was taken, a broader debate in Parliament would be desirable—not to discuss operational imperatives, plans or anything of that nature, but to further reinforce the will of the House? While he celebrates the actions of aircrew, will he further acknowledge that the aircrew would not be able to do their tremendous work if it was not for all the other trades that keep them mobilised?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Clean Energy Transition · Hansard source

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  There was more good news last week for carbon capture, usage and storage workers in England, with £200 million in supply chain contracts for the Liverpool Bay HyNet project, which will even benefit north Wales now. That is on top of the £22 billion that benefits Teesside and Merseyside. I have checked, and those places were not the centre of the UK’s energy industry for the last five years. Why have the Government not allocated a single penny to the Acorn project in Scotland, where the clock is ticking and where investors are very concerned that this Government are not serious about it?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State always enjoys the better side of my face. He characteristically paints Scotland as some sort of economic basket case, which I find a little offensive. If he wants to be robust in that accusation against our industry and our enterprise, how does he explain why Scotland is persistently in the top half of economic performing regions of the United Kingdom, and oftentimes on certain measures in the top quartile?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member, who until about two minutes ago was one of the few people on the Government Benches I had any time for, talks about what a catastrophe it would be if Scotland could unilaterally control who comes to work on our shores and who comes to invest in our economy. Ironically, he forgets that that is exactly the encumbrance under which Scotland exists now: we get what England says we can get. It is a disgrace, and he is trying to defend it. Defend it now!

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member is too kind. Will he identify which SNP elected Member has prescribed unfettered immigration to Scotland, because I would like to know?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an interesting point about the epiphany the Secretary of State for Scotland has had in the intervening decade about the merits and de-merits of Brexit. Is it not the case that no matter what this Minister thinks—or what any other Minister thinks in any British Government, Scottish or otherwise—they are not in thrall to the realities of the economy; they are in thrall to voters in middle England?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 25 Apr 2025 · Devolution (Immigration) (Scotland) Bill · Hansard source

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  Before the hon. Member gets to the end of her prepared litany of apparent failures in Scotland, she might want to touch on the far greater spending on education and health in Scotland. But just to get clarity on this issue, in this grotesque thing that is the United Kingdom, can she give me one measure—because I know she is super-smart—on which the devolved Welsh Government perform better than the SNP Government in Scotland?

• 23 Apr 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q15. His Chancellor’s economic policies started off badly and have headed rapidly downhill from there, his Energy Secretary’s policies ensure that energy-rich Scotland lives under the highest domestic and commercial energy prices in the world, and his Foreign Secretary provides diplomatic cover for the atrocities committed in Gaza by the Israel Defence Forces, to the horror of the people of Scotland, but the Prime Minister is the incompetent-in-chief who refuses to bring his Ministers into line. That is just one of the reasons why independence enjoys an 11-point lead over remaining in this dysfunctional, broken, Brexit Britain. Does he understand why the people of Scotland are so dissatisfied with his latest iteration of dysfunctional British rule in Scotland?

• 22 Apr 2025 · Ukraine Update · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. There is much in it by way of a helpful update, but the key element of it for all of us should be on the final page, where he says that we must not allow “borders to be redrawn by force”. That enjoys unanimous support. I have a question on the £4.5 billion. How much of that is rolled over from previous commitments, and will the Secretary of State update the House on how much of it is consumed in this financial year? How much of it is in cash support and how much of it is in matériel? When it comes to potential air policing in Ukraine, that will be on top of air policing in the south Atlantic, quick reaction alert from Coningsby and Lossiemouth, and air policing in the Baltic and the eastern Mediterranean. Would it not be unconscionable to try to do that without a substantial new order of Tranche 4 Typhoons?

• 12 Apr 2025 · Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister speaks about the whole of the United Kingdom. I am very pleased that the Government are acting, literally at pace for once, by stepping in to protect the workers in Scunthorpe, in precisely the opposite way to when they turned a blind eye to the plight of workers at Grangemouth, which is also critical national infrastructure labouring under energy prices. Why is there one rule for industrial production in England and another for industrial production in Scotland?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Investment: Regulatory Policies · Hansard source

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  Inward investment projects in Scotland grew by 12.7% in 2023, compared with 6% across the rest of the United Kingdom. 2023 saw record investment in Scotland, which maintained its position as the top-performing area of the UK for the ninth year running. International businesses want to locate in Scotland because they understand that GDP per person in Scotland has grown by 10.5%, compared with 6.5% in the rest of the UK, since 2007. What impact does the Chancellor think her fiscal interventions since October will have on the attractiveness of Scotland as a destination, and what discussions has she had with the Scottish Government about the jeopardy that she has placed our economy in?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Persecution of Christians · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as the special envoy for freedom of religion and belief. I wish it had not taken the Government six months to appoint him, but I am sure that he will approach the role with the alacrity that it demands. The hon. Gentleman talks about the attrition of global Christianity and the oppression of Christian faiths around the world. Does he agree that in the discourse in which we engage in Parliaments in the west and in societies where religion is tolerated, we need to accept that there is no league table of religious persecution? I am concerned that sometimes Christianity is seen as being at the bottom of that league table—that there is a view that religious persecution is wrong, but that some forms of it are more wrong than others. The persecution of Christians often comes out at the wrong end of that equation. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be crystal clear with the regimes that are persecuting Christians that we believe that it is anathema to what any Government should be doing?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Scunthorpe Steelworks · Hansard source

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  It is difficult to listen to the Minister at the Dispatch Box saying that everything is okay with the United States because of the positive relationship between the Prime Minister and the President, when it can be characterised as the President saying, “Jump,” and the Prime Minister asking, “How high?” The US has visited precisely the same tariffs on the UK steel industry as on the Chinese. If that is a special relationship, I would hate to see what an ordinary relationship looks like. When will the Government get a grip on the production of primary steel? It is a non-negotiable for a G7 nation to produce primary steel. It is intrinsic to our defence and security. The Government seem to be trying to negotiate a situation that is the worst of all worlds, whereby the taxpayer has to stump up the money but the private sector in China gets to dictate the terms.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, in my trademark balanced and consensual way, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if she would review her tax and spending plans. I gave her three principal examples of how she could raise substantially more revenue, which would, I hope, enable her not to cut disability benefits quite as much, or possibly even at all. She gave me a response about the Trident nuclear deterrent. I know what my position is on that, and I know that it is at odds with that of most of my colleagues in this Chamber, but so too did my constituents when they elected me—twice. Can we have a debate in Government time about the minimum standard of responses that elected Members, whatever the colour of their rosette, can enjoy from Ministers in this Chamber?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Spring Statement · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor tells us that the world has changed. If that is true and it allows her to stick the boot into disabled people, it must also be true to allow her to review her income tax rates, perhaps making them commensurate with those in Scotland, which saw the Scottish economy grow in January by 0.3%, while the UK economy contracted by 0.1%. She could also choose to revise the Government’s position on re-accessing the European Union single market, which would allow a £30 billion recurring return with no compensation required. She could impose a 1% tax on assets over £10 million— a wealth tax, as the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) has just highlighted—which would allow a £40 billion recurring return every year with no need for compensation. If she has the disabled, the WASPI women, pensioners and hospices in her cross hairs, why can she not tap up multi-millionaires for a few quid?

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely. This is a £24 billion fiscal drag that is intended to create growth. Work that one out if you can, because it is beyond my ken. The Government will not make derogations for key elements of health and social care, because the benefit of the £24 billion drag on the economy that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out is, after compensation, already down £10 billion. If they compensate the people who they definitely should, such as GPs, pharmacies, care providers and hospices, that would take it down to somewhere around £7 billion or £8 billion. What type of Chancellor and Treasury orthodoxy says, “We place a £24 billion burden on the economy in exchange for an £8 billion return for the Treasury”? It is absolutely catastrophic. It is misadventure writ large, and it has Labour as its logo.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Lords amendments seek to address a clear, present and insurmountable financial challenge for significant elements of health and social care delivery in all our communities. The Government say, in the most spurious and disingenuous way, as though they did not understand their role in the health service, that social care providers, GPs, dentists and pharmacies are contractors. How they are dealt with by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is irrelevant. It is the role that they fulfil in our society and in the delivery of health and social care services that is at stake. These are not contractors that can go and develop new markets somewhere else. Their market is exclusively within the NHS and health and social care up and down these islands. Many properly commercial businesses will not manage to pivot their way out of this attack from Labour—and GP practices, pharmacies, care providers, nurseries and hospices certainly will not. I want to mention hospices. When Macmillan Cancer Support speaks, no matter what colour our rosette, we should listen. It has highlighted clearly what the measures mean for end-of-life care. There have been 15 years of chaos in the United Kingdom, most of it economic; there has been the lost decade of Brexit, and its catastrophic effect on the UK’s economy and the material welfare of people up and down these islands. I ask: who can we blame? Who is culpable? Who has their fingerprints all over it? Not terminally ill children in hospices, who will, as a result of the Bill, suffer as a result of the debilitating effect on the care with which they are provided. The Minister and his Government could do a simple thing: give hospices a derogation from the grasping hand of the Bill, and protect children in the worst imaginable circumstances. From the outset, the Government’s fiscal misadventure has been met with opprobrium from all manner of sections of the economy and society, but they have held firm. I pay tribute to the Minister; he fronts up here every time with a smile, and does his best to defend what he has to. That is his job, and I do not judge him for that, but the bottom line is that the Government have yielded, not to children in hospitals, or to people trying to deliver social care and free up hospital beds by preventing delayed discharge, but to the bankers by restoring their bonuses, and to the non-doms who want all the benefits of living in this country but do not want to pay for it. That speaks volumes about what a Labour Government in this day and age are all about.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises two excellent examples of what could be done to raise the funding that the Government need in a just way. Let us not forget that Labour knew fine what it was walking into when it won the election. We told it, as did the Liberal Democrats and the media—the Tories were a bit quiet on the issue, right enough—that there would be an £18 billion black hole if it stuck to Tory tax and spending policy. This is on Labour. The hon. Member mentioned two examples of excellent and just ways to raise funding. Similarly, the Government could apply Scottish income tax thresholds to the whole of the UK, giving most people a pay rise and raising £16 billion into the bargain. They could raise £40 billion from a 1% wealth tax on assets over £10 million. There are a range of other measures that they could take, such as raising £30 billion by rejoining the single market—not very many people in here talk about that.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that the Government patently do not understand whole-system cost, which is a key element of fiscal policy? When care providers—whether hospices, in-home care providers or social providers—fall over as a result of these measures, as they will, those costs will get picked up by the rest of the system, and that will have a net cost to the Treasury.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Can the Minister advise the House on the level of recurrence to that funding? Will it be year-on-year funding? Will he also give us an indication—maybe not precisely, but broadly—what that funding stream will be year on year under GB Energy?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree that the compensation is risible. Many people in the hon. Member’s constituency and mine who are subject to these installations are pretty much resigned, because no matter what they do or say, it will happen. Will the Minister confirm that where constituents are subject to multiple developments, that £250 a year will be cumulative per imposition on their property? Why is it limited to 10 years? Will the developers come and take the pylons away in 10 years? In the ambitions that are represented by clause 22, people will see the very minimum that the Government can do while acknowledging that this infrastructure is an imposition. It is not reasonable that people should have a 10-year miserly compensation for a lifetime’s imposition on their home. With that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will grant you 30 seconds for somebody else.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am pleased that the great majority of the Bill will not affect me or my constituents, but I will speak briefly to the areas that do, beginning with clauses 9 to 13 on electricity network connection reform. I acknowledge that the first come, first served debacle has served the development and drawdown of these schemes very poorly, but I simply ask the Minister: when will the regime materially change such that properly consented, properly financed projects, which are behind projects that are not either of those things, can get their connections approved? In clause 14 on consents for generating stations and overhead lines, the amendment to the Electricity Act 1989 makes it clear that consenting to electricity infrastructure in Scotland is carried out by Scottish Ministers, not the Secretary of State. That is all well and good, but under clause 16 appeals would need to be made within six weeks of a decision being published, with challenges made to the inner house of the Court of Session in Edinburgh—that is all fine—but with a route to appeal to the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom. Can the Minister confirm that the final arbiter of any disputes over consents for generating stations and overhead lines will be here in London? Clause 21 addresses the cap and floor mechanism, which I have mentioned to the Energy Minister, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), who I am touched to see has come in for my contribution. The cap and floor mechanism for long-duration electricity storage is vital for Drax’s plans for Cruachan and SSE’s plans for Coire Glas in Scotland. That they are track 2 and track 3 projects gives me some concern. Can we have some reassurance that the 2030 deliverable projects will be facilitated without delay by the ambition of those clauses? Clause 22 on benefits for homes near electricity transmission projects is bordering on insulting. If the utility and value of someone’s home and area have been significantly impinged by the erection of a pylon nearby, £20.83 a month off their electricity bill will not ameliorate that. It is referred to as a financial support scheme—the implication being that people need financial support. They do not need it. Ministers should call it what it is: compensation for the imposition of electrical infrastructure. In all reality, a community has very little say over whether that happens at all. That £20.83 a month off their electricity bill will be precious little compensation for people who have been mired in the planning process of a pylon or any other generating infrastructure, who have not been able to sell their property for the last two years and will not be able to sell it for the coming two years either. I am not saying that this infrastructure should not be built, but the Government should not insult people’s intelligence with vastly less money than they took off them when they ended the winter fuel payment.