Douglas Lumsden MP: speeches

Speeches

• 7 Jul 2026 · Summer Jobs · Hansard source

  More

  We have heard lots of people describe their summer jobs, and I will do so too. When I was a student, I enjoyed a summer job. I was working as a postman in my constituency, delivering letters and leaflets to homes up and down Aberdeen—and what do you know, Madam Deputy Speaker? Thirty-five years later, I am still delivering leaflets and letters across the city of Aberdeen. That job was vital to me, because it gave me the resource that I needed—the money that I could spend through the rest of the year—as it is for so many people. What has changed in the intervening years is that our city now finds itself under attack from not one, but two Governments—the enterprise-crippling national insurance increase from the Labour party and the double whammy of business rate increases and banditry from the First Minister in Holyrood. The First Minister is clearly content in hoarding business rates in Edinburgh to fund his independence obsession and his other failed projects. That is before we even talk about the barons of Aberdeen city council, which is run by an SNP-Lib Dem coalition of malaise. It will be of no surprise to this House that all it wants to do is tax, tax, tax. That is clear because of the massive 7% tourism tax levied by the council on hotel stays. That is the highest in Scotland—more than Glasgow or Edinburgh. As a result, hotels are sitting empty, with the council content to punish vendors and visitors alike.