Dave Doogan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 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.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Middle East: Economic Update · Hansard source

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  Just three weeks ago at the spring statement, I cautioned the Chancellor that significant fiscal intervention would be required to protect businesses and households in the face of the war in the middle east. She said at that time that, thanks to her actions, the finances of the UK were in robust condition. Now she prevaricates in order to protect those self-same public finances. Those two things cannot be true at the same time. Some 13% of my constituents are reliant on oil; in Scotland the figure is 5%, in England 2%, and in Leeds West and Pudsey it is 0%. Perhaps that is why she provided just £53 million to support oil users, which will not even touch the sides.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  Whatever has gone well in defence and whatever has gone wrong in defence in the United Kingdom over the last 50 years, it is the responsibility of the two main parties, one currently in opposition and one currently in government, and the ping-pong back and forth today has been a bit difficult to listen to. I heard the Minister’s plea earlier for us to inject some seriousness into the debate. He directed it over here although he could equally have directed it to those behind him, but I agree with him that this is a serious issue, not just because we have troops deployed but because, as others have pointed out, the first duty of Government is to defend the state and the people. I also agree with him that the motion in the name of His Majesty’s Opposition is a bit of a catch-all. It is a spleen-venting motion, and there is absolutely no way we can agree with it, much as we might agree with some of the priorities that the Opposition wish to be advanced purely on the defence side. In response to the Opposition’s stated wish to fund their ambitions through the reinstatement of the two-child limit, the Minister referred to the importance of society. We do not invest in the importance and the priority of defence by marginalising people in society. It is essential that our communities have a sense of belonging in defence, and that defence has a sense of belonging in them. I speak from experience in Scotland, where defence has become an increasingly remote activity, as it has in large parts of England as well. I am not making a constitutional point. As defence has contracted into the south-east of England, it has become increasingly irrelevant on the rest of these islands. It is something that happens somewhere else, and there is a price to be paid for that, as people choose other careers and see other political and fiscal priorities as being more important than defence.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I think the hon. Gentleman thinks that he is being smart. I do not need to be reminded where Trident is based, and neither do the people of Scotland. We do not need to be reminded where the bullseye of the target on these islands is based. I do not need to be reminded how many Scots were asked whether they would like the UK’s supposedly independent nuclear deterrent to be based in our waters. I do not need to be reminded of that for one second—and in case the hon. Gentleman is under any illusions, which he apparently is, let me point out that the United Kingdom spends more money on defence in the south-west of England than it spends in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. He might like to reflect on that.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  We will disagree on that last point, but I am very happy to agree with the hon. Gentleman on the benefit of complex warship manufacturing in Scotland. It would be nice if it was occasionally framed as something other than a benevolent gesture from Westminster towards Scotland, as opposed to what it actually is: the United Kingdom benefiting from the skills and engineering expertise that have been present in Scotland for an awful long time. [ Interruption. ] I would not go that far. That leads me to an intervention that was made on the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who declared that an independent Scotland would be completely defenceless and penniless. Classic Unionism! It totally ignores the fact that, at current rates, hard-working taxpayers in Scotland contribute £5 billion every single year to the defence of the United Kingdom. That has been airbrushed from reality.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  The United Kingdom invests so much in the independent nuclear deterrent—more than £100 billion over a 10-year period—but the Government cannot even tell us the 10-year rolling price. It is not independent, and I do not believe that it makes us any safer. We would be far safer if we invested that money in playing a leading role in Europe in conventional defence. I further disagree with the unilateral decision of the UK Government to suddenly go and buy F-35As for gravity-drop nuclear weapons without even so much as a debate in this House. I think that clarifies for the hon. Member my position on the non-independent nuclear deterrent. I implore the Government to get their finger out and get the DIP published.

• 24 Mar 2026 · Defence · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress. A key problem for the current Government is that when they took over in 2024, they set great store by their strategic defence review. They said that they were going to fix defence from the ground up, and that it would all be in the strategic defence review, but when the strategic defence review was published it contained more questions than answers, principal among which was the defence investment plan. That was going to come in the summer. Then it was the autumn and then it was the winter and now it is the spring, and we do not even know whether we will get it in the following summer. It is critical for businesses to plan on this basis. I know that the hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) takes a dim view of business and its role in defence, and takes a dim view of defence manufacturers. I respect his position, but I deeply disagree with him. We cannot honour our service personnel in uniform and then besmirch the manufacturers that equip them to do the job of defending us that we require them to do. Similarly, the Government must come clean on the defence investment plan. It is simply not tenable. The Minister was clear with us in saying that Defence was very clear about what we required from the defence investment plan. That, alarmingly, tells us what the problem with the defence investment plan is, and it is the Treasury. Some of us have the privilege of speaking on defence and on the economy, and the fact that the current Chancellor of the Exchequer is the arbiter of how our nation, or rather this state, will be defended in the future is deeply concerning given her competence in generic fiscal matters, let alone issues to do with defence.

• 23 Mar 2026 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  One thing that unites the Prime Minister of Israel and the supreme leader of Iran is that neither could care less about what the UK Prime Minister says, and it is difficult to imagine that the US President is not in a similar camp. With fiscal headroom evaporating, business confidence vanishing and household budgets being shredded by this war, what can the Secretary of State offer, over and above the vacuous calls for de-escalation, to ensure that people on these islands are protected from the ferocious effects of this war on the supply of energy?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  I do not have the detail of the Scottish Government’s plans, but I am pretty sure that nobody in England or anywhere else in the United Kingdom has received actual monetary support from that funding. Let us be really clear. The Chancellor talks about the broad shoulders of the Treasury and says that thanks to her fiscal wit—if you can believe that—she has come up with £52.4 million. If we divide that money across the number of people who will need support, it comes out at about £35. That is £35 of support from a Labour Government for people seeing a £700-odd price shock in heating oil. Somebody somewhere in the Treasury needs to get themselves a calculator. The fuel duty increase is inflationary: it will feed through to the prices of goods and services, all of which will subsequently have VAT added on to them. The 5p added to the price of fuel is actually 6p, because it is added before the VAT is added to the fuel, so it is not 5p at all. I am pretty certain that we can read in the Government’s amendment to the motion the vacuous nature of their application to this subject. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I am pretty confident that a wee bit closer to the time of the elections in Scotland and Wales in May, the Government will suddenly find the wit to scrap this hike in fuel duty. I am quite happy for them to do that, but as other people have pointed out, households are in crisis now. Now is the time for the Government to lead, but that will never happen with a Labour Government.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  This is where I practise respectful disagreement. For rural areas such as my constituency, the constituency of the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan, and many other places across all four nations, this issue is really challenging. There is not limited access to public transport in many places such as ours; there is no access to public transport in any meaningful sense. Remote areas get a lot more winter, and the people there tend to work in more agricultural professions. They tend to drive larger, heavier vehicles that are more fuel-hungry, so they will end up paying more. Deliveries have to come from further away, and that all gets added to the cost. Of course, all that adds to the cost to councils of delivering public services. The public services delivered in constituencies such as mine are very much more expensive to deliver than those in Holborn and St Pancras. It is on that point that we need to see how much harder this issue will impact on people in rural areas. I have looked at the “Fuel Finder” app. At the BP petrol station at the bottom of Montrose before crossing the river, the price of a litre of petrol is 149.9p. If I go to the BP petrol station over at Vauxhall Bridge Road, the price of a litre of petrol is 5p cheaper. People in Scotland are already paying a premium that people in London and the south-east do not pay on their fuel, and the 5p that the Labour party wants to apply will come on top of that. The UK rate of oil consumption for heating is 4.9%. In Angus and Perthshire Glens, the rate is 13%. Some 6,101 households heat their homes with oil. Oil has gone up sometimes by 150%, so a £300 to £400 delivery is getting on for £1,000. There are also punitive requirements for the volume that people get delivered. A further 2,000 people in my constituency are on tankered gas. That must not be forgotten in this cost spike crisis, which, as I said, I predicted at the Chancellor’s spring statement.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  How could I not give way to the Scottish Labour MP who has managed to come in here for the tail end of the debate?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  I raised this entirely inevitable circumstance with the Chancellor at the spring statement, and she did something that she is given to do, which was to glaze over briefly and then talk about the strength and broad shoulders of the Treasury because of the difficult decisions that she had taken, as though they affected her and not the working people up and down these islands who have had their bank accounts raided by an insatiable appetite for more and more tax from this Government.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  What evidence did the Chancellor have to suggest there was profiteering in petrol retailing? The Petrol Retailers Association rightly took umbrage at the implication of the Chancellor; I think that did not go quite the way that she thought it would.

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  The shadow Secretary of State mentioned his perception of the intransigence of this Labour Government, to which I would add their brittle hubris in their pursuit of not achieving any form of economic growth. Does he agree that the Chancellor would not have to keep dipping into the pockets of hard-working people in the midst of a cost of living crisis if she had a clue about how to achieve economic growth?

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  rose —

• 18 Mar 2026 · Fuel Duty · Hansard source

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  Before the hon. Lady gets back to her feet, she asked me about tax and she should be aware—although apparently she is not—that most income tax payers in Scotland pay less tax. Over and above that, her constituents do not have to pay for their tuition fees when they go to university. All her constituents, like my constituents, pay 30% less for their council tax than people in England. The Scottish living wage that her constituents benefit from is 74p per hour higher than the UK’s minimum wage. Of course, her constituents get the £40 Scottish child payment on top of all the other benefits that the SNP has delivered. On that note, I will take her intervention.