Dave Doogan MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2025 · Crime in City Centres · Hansard source

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  Sometimes crime wears a suit, as happened in Brechin in my constituency, where Mackie Motors had equity in their vehicles stolen by a French bank based in London. Then, through mendacity or incompetence or both, the bank turned off the oxygen for that business of 50 years. I have met with Home Office and Treasury Ministers to try to get around this. My constituent has been to the Financial Conduct Authority, who told them to go to the police, who then told them to go back to the FCA, who then told them to go to Citizens Advice—you could not make this cluster-fankle up. Is it not the case that in the UK today, if a small or medium-sized enterprise is in dispute with a bank, the FCA will demonstrate that it is neither use nor ornament?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Russian Drones: Violation of Polish Airspace · Hansard source

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  I congratulate and salute the brave aircrew who intercepted this flagrant breach not just of Poland’s airspace but of the international rules-based order. I do not believe for one second that this was some inadvertent mistake. This is classic Russian playbook. Russia was probing NATO in that attack and will continue to probe until it comes up against the resistance that it deems worthy of a change in policy. Russia responds in two ways: one is strength and the other is weakness, and if it sees weakness it will continue. Can the Minister help the House understand what the robust response to this flagrant attack will look like?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Government Debt Interest Payments · Hansard source

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  In the spring statement earlier this year, the Chancellor said that the responsible choice is to reduce our level of borrowing in the years ahead. That is a noble sentiment, which I applaud—if she was not trying to fix a watch with a hammer. This is the Chancellor that has seen UK debt interest now soar to a 27-year high, while annual debt interest is almost twice the cost of servicing the Ministry of Defence. Given her catastrophic first Budget, what reassurance has she got for Scottish businesses that things will not get even worse when she finally has her next Budget in the winter?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  An independent northern European nation of 5.5 million people, Norway, has just signed an order for £10 billion-worth of the world’s best anti-submarine warfare frigates, designed and built in Glasgow in Scotland. Despite that, despite Scotland’s longer coastline, and despite the ingenuity displayed in that product, none of those Type 26s—unless I am wrong—will be stationed in Scotland. Would the Minister like to tell me that I am wrong, and that he is prepared to place Type 26s on station in Scotland in the future?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Defence Industrial Strategy · Hansard source

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  If Scotland is lucky, we will get a per capita share of the £250 million in the growth deal, which is barely twice what the SNP Scottish Government have invested in the skills academy in BAE alone. However, the omens are not good, because Scotland is routinely short-changed in defence expenditure. The London Government are spending more in the south-east of England than they do in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland put together. The Minister’s own region seems set to benefit, and I am not sure where the Union dividend is between Portsmouth and Yorkshire. Seeing as he is holding the pen and writing the cheque, which hopefully will not bounce, will Scotland at the very least get its per capita share of that £250 million?

• 4 Sept 2025 · Household Water Bills · Hansard source

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  Thank you for your guidance, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has inadvertently advanced the same argument that he did on 21 July on “Channel 4 News”. Will he clarify that pollution levels under publicly owned Scottish Water are substantially better than those under privately owned English water companies? Will he recognise that Scottish bill payers pay lower bills and that Scottish Water’s borrowing is sustainable and consistent with the value and quality of Scotland’s water?

• 4 Sept 2025 · Household Water Bills · Hansard source

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  Unbelievably, the Secretary of State has just doubled down, in the House, on the falsehood that he advanced on 21 July on “Channel 4 News” that pollution levels are worse in Scotland than they are in England. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not want to mislead the House. Will he take the opportunity to correct the record—

• 3 Sept 2025 · Hospitality Sector · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today at Prime Minister’s questions in relation to the Norwegian Government’s £10 billion investment in the Scottish defence sector, the Prime Minister stated, “I am perplexed that the First Minister of Scotland has not welcomed this deal.” The problem for the Prime Minister is that the First Minister did in fact welcome the order from the Norwegian Government to Scottish shipbuilding, meaning that the Prime Minister’s statement today was untrue. The First Minister said: “The announcement by the Norwegian Government of their intention to buy frigates from BAE is obviously a significant boost to employment and opportunity in the defence sector in Scotland. It’s an indication of the steps that have to be taken to ensure that countries are able to defend themselves. And I welcome the investments in Glasgow.” This is an open and shut case and a serious one where the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom was today engaged in advancing a completely false accusation against the First Minister of Scotland. I seek your advice, Madam Deputy Speaker, on how we might get the Prime Minister to come to the House to correct the record.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  I would just like to follow up on the hon. Gentleman’s talking down of Scottish skills and training—classic Labour. How does he reconcile the disparaging characteristic that he paints of Scottish skills, entrepreneurialism and training when Scotland has, for 10 years running, been the top destination for foreign direct investment outside London? What is it that foreign enterprise can see in Scotland that no Labour MP ever will?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  Yes, it had to come, and I am relieved that there is a cleavage. Where I diverge with them is on a wealth tax. I see that we are in a state—the UK is not a country—where poverty levels among our children are rising in every country in the UK except Scotland. In Scotland, it costs us £150 million a year—it will be £200 million by the end of the decade—to mitigate Westminster’s mismanagement of child poverty. We cannot say that it is somehow punitive for people with assets of more than £10 million to attract an annual, modest rate on those assets. That is reflective of the highest tax burden that ordinary people have paid since the second world war—incidentally, I say to Conservative colleagues that that was the case before the election. The Labour party has just knocked that into the stratosphere with its misadventure. There has been no talk anywhere in this Chamber today about Brexit. I remember the Prime Minister—what was she called? Theresa May. She was asked repeatedly, “What does Brexit mean?” She said, “Brexit means Brexit,” which is as nebulous as it sounds. In 2025, we now know what Brexit means. It means enduring child poverty and flatlining growth, no matter who is in charge of the Treasury in the United Kingdom. It means a common purpose between Labour and the Conservatives to have a neurotic policy on immigration. It means pale imitations to substitute for EU programmes, such as substituting Erasmus with the pointless Turing scheme, or EU structural funding and other funding with “levelling up.” It means a permanent drag on business. The further we get from covid, the more we see that the fundamentals that are wrong with this economy are due to Brexit. The Minister, in his summing up, will doubtless say—

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  The first line of the Tories’ motion gets to the word “manifesto”, and I accept their premise that that is what this is about—it is about the commitment “not to increase taxes on working people, and not to increase National Insurance or the basic, higher or additional rates of Income Tax”. I do not think that is a tall order. The next item on the list, however, is VAT. Never mind the headline rate, the concern now, from comments inside the Government, is about what will be dragged into VAT or have its reduced rate increased. There is no clarity on that from the Government, much less any reference to it in their manifesto from which Parliament, and taxpayers across these islands, can take any comfort or otherwise. The motion “calls on the Government to reaffirm the statement made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer…that…personal tax thresholds will be uprated” in the manner that they said. That is a fair point. Fiscal drag is an iniquitous thing to inflict on people. It eats into pay rises and erodes people’s incentives to get on and progress, and there is a real concern, given the fiscal misadventure—it seems to be one farce after another with this Government, and one U-turn after another. They talk about introducing stability into the fiscal dynamic. Well I am holding my breath waiting for that to happen, but I think I am making a mistake in that pursuit. Worst of all—well, it is not worst of all, but it is really bad—are the changes to agricultural property relief, which were also not in the Government’s manifesto, and I sincerely urge the Minister to pause and review those changes. As others have articulated, that measure was clearly something that Treasury officials put in front of every new Chancellor, and every new Chancellor to date has had the wit to say, “Well, I’m not doing that,”—expect for this Chancellor, who is lacking in wit and much else to recommend her. She said, “Ooh, I’ll just go ahead and do that,” completely failing to understand the agricultural economy as it exists in these islands. My constituency of Angus and Perthshire Glens is the garden of Scotland and the highest productive agricultural land in Scotland. An ecosystem exists around that farm enterprise, of recruitment, training, plant sales, feed stock, markets, fuel sales—it all exists, and it revolves like satellites around the farm business. Those farmers are now saying, “Why would I invest? What on earth would I invest for? Why am I investing my hard-earned capital into increasing technology and lowering the cost of production, so that I can get more competitive food on to the shelves of supermarkets and help with the cost of living, which this Government are incapable of doing anything about, meaning that my asset values go up, and so that when I die and my assets transfer, my tax bill goes up?”

• 15 Jul 2025 · Taxes · Hansard source

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  That is a welcome and comprehensive round-up of some of the broader issues on this, but it speaks to the fiscal innumeracy that says, “There is no cost to any of this; we can just help ourselves to that and it won’t have any impact.” As the right hon. Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) pointed out, if we speak to any rural plant sales or dealership, and they will say that sales have gone off a cliff, along with the VAT, employment, income tax, and national insurance that went with them. That speaks to a Treasury and a Chancellor who have a passing understanding of the price of everything but could not identify value in a line-up. The motion goes on to talk about pensions. This is difficult, because I do not believe for one minute that we should pull pensioners whose income is only the state pension into tax. Neither do I believe that by dint of being a pensioner someone should get tax relief on the same income that somebody who earns that income will not get tax relief on. The Government are in a difficult position on this, and that is of their own making. Unless and until they guarantee to uprate the rates and protect pensioners from fiscal drag, there is little point in making a great big song and dance about the triple lock, if what that does is pull pensioners into taxation. Where I diverge from the movers of the motion—

• 15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman take an intervention from a Member on the Opposition Benches?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Welfare Spending · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister talks about kindness. Does she agree, therefore, with the Children’s Commissioner for England, who has said that children in England are now living in “Dickensian levels” of poverty? A principal element of that is the two-child cap. What element of kindness does the shadow Minister see present in that unfairness?

• 15 Jul 2025 · Afghanistan · Hansard source

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  This has been a difficult statement for the Secretary of State—make no mistake. He said in his statement that this was a breach of very strict data protection protocols. Well, on the basis of this breach and the other breaches around Afghan resettlement, those protocols were clearly not strict enough. He has declined to say whether it was a contractor, a civil servant or a member of service personnel. I do not think that anyone in this House wants to know who it was, but I would like to know how senior that person was. If it was a junior member of MOD staff, the delinquency is both systemic and personal, but if it was a senior member of MOD staff, the delinquency is purely personal on the basis of their knowledge and seniority. This instance related to brave Afghans, but what reassurance can the Secretary of State give us that the brave personnel of the UK forces would not be compromised by a level of delinquency similar to this in the MOD—and why the synchronicity between the lifting of the super-injunction and the ending of the schemes? Should we not walk a mile in the shoes of the people who have fled the Afghan regime, and do should we maybe think whether we need an ARR-plus wash-up to get these people out of danger if it becomes a reality?

• 9 Jul 2025 · Industrial Strategy: Impact on Scotland · Hansard source

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  With the exception of the London vortex that sucks in wealth capital and talent from across these islands, it is Scotland that tops the league for foreign direct investment. It is Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh that are among the top 10 cities in the UK for FDI, as they have been for 10 of the 18 years in which the SNP has been in power. What has the Scottish Secretary ever done to get foreign direct investment into Scotland?

• 25 Jun 2025 · Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement · Hansard source

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  I do not understand industrially or militarily why the F-35 is the default choice. If the F-35 can be delivered only by the end of the decade, why is Tempest, which is more than capable of being delivered by the mid-2030s, not being considered? That is if we agree with the decision to be part of the nuclear sharing enterprise, and I do not agree with that, because no other nuclear-armed state takes part in nuclear sharing, no other P5 member delivers any other nation’s nuclear deterrent, and no nuclear power in the world delivers anyone else’s nuclear weapons.

• 19 Jun 2025 · UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy · Hansard source

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  The denial in this statement is truly breathtaking. This UK Government could not come up with a 10-year strategy that would survive first contact with reality on anything, and the statement comes against a backdrop of challenging cuts off the backs of the poorest while we are fitting £10 million new doors to the House of Lords and providing £100 billion for a not-very-fast railway that will not be finished for some time. There was nothing for Scotland in the Chancellor’s spending review, there is nothing for Scotland in this statement, and there is nothing for Scotland in the UK’s 10-year infrastructure working paper. On that latter document, it is interesting to note that it does not mention devolution, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland once. Does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury think that simply mentioning Acorn will make private capital hang around and wait for the Government to put a number on it? How much of this will be a rerun of Labour’s disastrous private finance initiative projects, which Scottish councils are still haemorrhaging money on, and why is he heralding working with the Welsh Government but not the SNP Scottish Government? Is he a democrat or not?

• 12 Jun 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  When the Bank of Scotland branch closes later this year in Pitlochry, the town will desperately need a banking hub. That is why I was disappointed that the independent assessor and Link assessed only access to cash, not access to banking. I challenged Link on that, and it said that that is because of the mandate set for it by the Financial Conduct Authority; so I challenged the FCA on that, and it said that that is because of the regulatory framework in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2023; so I challenged the Treasury on that and asked it to change its regulatory framework and imposition on the FCA. The Treasury said it will not do that. In opposition, Labour tabled an amendment to the Financial Services and Markets Bill that would have mandated a survey of access to banking services, not just access to cash. Can we have a debate in Government time about how we fix this utter guddle?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Spending Review 2025 · Hansard source

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  I welcome the U-turn on the winter fuel payment—of course I do, and lots of my constituents will do likewise—but there is no respite in this spending review for farmers in Scotland, business owners in Scotland, GP surgeries in Scotland, or the disabled in hospices in Scotland. Despite what the Chancellor says, there have also been real-terms cuts to the Home Office, Foreign Office and local government in this spending review. The Chancellor is an open book. She plays roulette with the economy, but I would not encourage her to play poker any time soon, because she mentioned Reform and the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) in her speech more times than she mentioned Scotland—what a disgrace! She mentioned that she has finally got around to Acorn, but without a figure attached. What funding is she going to allocate for Acorn? We know that if it is Merseyside or Teesside, there is £22 billion for them. How much for Acorn?

• 21 May 2025 · Business and the Economy · Hansard source

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  Is the Minister a little worried that the unexpected growth in the first quarter of this year was businesses making capital investment to get in ahead of tariffs?

• 21 May 2025 · Business and the Economy · Hansard source

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  I do agree; I would rather not agree, but I do agree. That is why I implore the Treasury Minister, who is in his place, to have whatever private conversations Ministers have in their Departments about things that they may have got wrong. They cannot U-turn or row back on everything, but honestly, agricultural property relief and business property relief is an absolute landmine for businesses to be pulled across by this Government. He does not even have to address it in his summing up; he can just go back and quietly look at it again and have a review—kick it into the long grass at least. I want to speak briefly on quantitative tightening by the Bank of England; I probably will not have too many supporters in the Chamber on this issue, but no change there. I have raised this matter a couple of times with the Chancellor and she talks about all manner of things in response, none of which are quantitative tightening. The over-zealous nature of the Bank of England’s disposing of Government bonds is hugely costly to the Exchequer. There is no need for the rate of quantitative tightening that the central bank of the UK is undertaking. It is not replicated by other central banks. Even if the Bank was to go to a passive model of quantitative tightening that would have substantial, multibillion-pound savings for the Exchequer, at a time when the Chancellor returning from China was getting excited about £600 million for the whole UK economy over five years; £600 million is not even the annual budget of my local health board in Angus and Perthshire Glens. If those types of numbers are important to the Chancellor, the total quantitative tightening cost of £45 billion since 2022 should really be nearer the top of her red box for her attention.

• 21 May 2025 · Business and the Economy · Hansard source

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  I cannot help but agree with the hon. Lady. At the very least, that is what the Government should do, and other hon. Members have suggested that too. To be fair, it cannot be easy to form a new Government—it certainly does not look easy. Any new Government must come in, make decisions and quietly think, “Och, I wish we had not done that.” I am certain that APR was put under the nose of a Minister by a civil servant, in the full expectation that the Minister would have the wit to say, “We are not going there—we are absolutely not doing that.” And blooming heck, they have gone and done it. I am sure that when the civil servants walked away they were saying, “Oh God, we never expected that.” And so it is with business property relief, because of the consequences. The cost-benefit relationship between what they are doing to enterprise and business and what they will accrue to the Treasury is out of all kilter. The damage is way in excess of the potential accrual, and that is before behavioural changes are brought into effect. I recently spoke to a large-scale potato farmer near Kirriemuir, in my constituency, who has massive cold storage, a vital element of potato production, so that farmers can keep the potatoes in tip-top condition and ensure that the supermarkets are supplied as and when, just in time. I sometimes think that the Government think that farmers are trotting around in their tractors, chewing on a bit of straw, but these are really switched-on businesses that are doing the utmost to keep food prices down. We have some of the lowest food prices in Europe, and that does not happen by not investing seriously massive sums in capital and equipment. At a stroke, the Government have catastrophically disincentivised the very behaviour that helps keep food prices down and is anti-inflationary. Look what is going to happen with that.

• 21 May 2025 · Business and the Economy · Hansard source

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