Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
Ministry of Defence: Palantir Contracts
It shows yet more extraordinarily poor judgment on the part of the Prime Minister that he met personally with Palantir—a highly questionable organisation that is complicit in the ruination of Palestine and the devastation wreaked in the US by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Palantir are into th…
Commons
Oral Questions
10 February 2026
2 contributions
Consumer Energy Prices: Scotland
12. What steps he is taking to help reduce consumer energy prices in Scotland.
The energy market in Scotland operates in surplus in both generation and transmission, whereas the energy market in England operates in shortage in both generation and transmission. Unfortunately, that means that in a GB energy market, Scotland gets sucked in to subsidising energy costs for English …
Commons
Debate
26 January 2026
Armed Forces Bill
The SNP is broadly supportive of the contents of the Bill. It is an important Armed Forces Bill; it is hard to remember another Armed Forces Bill that stepped into such a yawning breach between the armed forces capabilities that we have and the armed forces capabilities that we need. Notwithstanding…
Commons
Debate
14 January 2026
3 contributions
Oil Refining Sector
The hon. Member is right that the UK Government said that they are not in the business of saving failing businesses, but they have washed their hands of some of the key factors that contribute to those businesses failing. For example, they are signalling about new licences in the North sea, but thes…
The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way again. He is setting out a seriously curious sequence of events for a well-intentioned Government relative to a vital industry. Is he concerned, as I am, that this is more about the beliefs of the Secretary of State than the industrial imperati…
+1 more contribution in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Scotland
14 January 2026
Economic Growth
The SNP delivered yet another ambitious budget for Scotland yesterday. It saw almost £1 billion for rates relief, £5 billion for energy and climate change and a 10% uplift for Scotland’s colleges. [ Interruption. ] The SNP has delivered 10.5% growth since 2007, compared with the UK’s 5.1%. The quest…
Commons
Debate
13 January 2026
6 contributions
Finance (No. 2) Bill
The Minister says that she has considered carefully the fairness of the changes in this clause. Has she considered at all the compound effect of this and all the other taxes that are currently killing hospitality businesses?
I remember precisely the dynamic that the hon. Member sets out in his local high street. We used to have it in Scotland, too, until we introduced minimum unit pricing, which took the very large volume, high-strength alcohol products off the shelf in Scotland, or at least put them way up in price. He…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Oral Questions
Transport
8 January 2026
Topical Questions
It is not enough just to freeze rail fares; they should be cut, as the Scottish Government have done in Scotland. It is fair to say that English rail commuters should enjoy the lower level of cancellations enjoyed by rail commuters in Scotland. That is why ScotRail, with its public ownership, has th…
Commons
Westminster Hall
8 January 2026
Glasgow Safer Drug Consumption Facility
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I genuinely mean that in this instance.
Every drug death in Scotland is a tragedy, and the painful reality is that the number of drug deaths remains far too high. The latest figures indicate that 898 people are suspected to have die…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
7 January 2026
Ukraine and Wider Operational Update
I wholeheartedly endorse the resolve across this House to continue to help Ukraine to prevail against this aggression. By extension, I therefore commend the armed forces personnel who enabled and assisted the US in this very slick interdiction of a rogue vessel—a key element of the funding of Russia…
Commons
Debate
7 January 2026
2 contributions
Rural Communities
I am interested to know how keen the Minister is to adhere to that distinct element of the Labour party’s manifesto, because it seems clear to rural communities up and down Scotland and elsewhere on these islands that it is pick-and-mix as the Government introduce things that were never in the manif…
Is the shadow Minister as aghast as I am to hear Labour Back Benchers taking credit for the substantial U-turn on the family farm tax, as though it was inevitable, when it was they who introduced the tax?
Commons
Oral Questions
Energy Security and Net Zero
6 January 2026
Energy Transition
Refined hydrocarbon fuels are excluded from the Government’s carbon border adjustment mechanism, meaning that although UK refineries face emissions trading scheme costs of £50 per tonne, overseas fuel producers do not. That is clearly incomprehensibly damaging in economic terms and is self-evidently…
Commons
Debate
5 January 2026
Agricultural Property Relief and Business Property Relief
I pay tribute to the Minister: he is back out again doing a sterling job of being a totally discredited Chancellor’s human shield. He will remember the Finance Bill that we debated just before Christmas, which took three hours in this place, and two hours of that was taken up with agricultural prope…
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
5 January 2026
2 contributions
Rural Crime
8. If she will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a specific offence of aggravated theft from commercial vehicles.
Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker—but unfortunately for the haulage industry, 2026 promises to be a year of increasing freight crime from haulage operators up and down these islands. Whether it is Alan Davie of Forfar, Taylor’s of Forfar or McLaughlan’s of Perth, who operate up and down from Scotlan…
Commons
Debate
16 December 2025
14 contributions
Finance (No. 2) Bill
Will the Minister give way?
The Minister will know that for the vast majority of employees in Scotland, the increase in the national living wage is redundant, because it is less than the Scottish living wage. He talks about the things that the Government increased in the Budget; was it their intention to increase unemployment …
+12 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
15 December 2025
Sudan: Humanitarian Situation
For the UK Government to decline to take part in the atrocity prevention programme in Sudan is regrettable, and for the UK Government to fail in their due diligence on arms export diversions via the UAE to the RSF is disgraceful, but for the UK Government to have done both looks alarmingly like ambi…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
15 December 2025
Topical Questions
Defence innovation is harmed by a default America-first posture. Ironically, that is especially apparent in the so-called independent nuclear deterrent, which relies on US tech for fusing, firing, arming, neutron initiators, the gas transfer system and the mark 4 aeroshell. We can add to that the pu…
Commons
Proceedings
11 December 2025
6 contributions
St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for giving way, but I am struggling a little bit to reconcile his rhetoric with the facts. The fact is that waiting lists have been falling in Scotland for five months in a row up until now. He then moved on to emergency healthcare. Scotland’s core A&E func…
It is especially generous of the right hon. Gentleman to give way again. He touched on general practice. I am not suggesting for one minute that everything is perfect in Scotland, but our constituents enjoy 83 general practitioners per 100,000 population, compared with 67 GPs in Wales and 64 in Engl…
+4 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
10 December 2025
5 contributions
Conduct of the Chancellor of the Exchequer
We know that there are serious questions over this Chancellor’s alleged experience in the financial services sector. We can see that she has no experience in either industry or commerce. Perhaps the worst of her detriments, however, is her clinical lack of empathy, seeming totally unable to connect …
Indeed. In terms of that conduct and those decisions that have been made, that is most evident in the egregious family farm tax—a betrayal of the producers of our food, no less—and the, let us call it, management of market-sensitive information before the Budget, which had a material effect on the e…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
9 December 2025
Railways Bill
I salute the ambition of the Bill, and determination with which the Secretary of State is articulating that ambition. Does she agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) that the way that the Bill has been discussed with Scottish Government partners…
Commons
Oral Questions
9 December 2025
Forth Valley: Industry
The challenges experienced by the businesses of Forth valley are the highest industrial energy prices in the G7, Labour’s farm tax, Labour’s family business tax, Labour’s £26 billion raid on the cost of employing people, Labour’s fiscal drag on everybody’s earnings, the Potemkin support for Grangemo…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
8 December 2025
Ajax Armoured Vehicle
This is not the Minister’s fault, but it is his responsibility. This issue has gone from Labour to a coalition Government to a Tory Government. It is now back with Labour, and we have a system that is nine years late, has cost £6 billion and has just injured a further 30 of our service personnel. GD…
Commons
Debate
4 December 2025
Dawn Sturgess Inquiry
I join the Security Minister in acknowledging the memory of Dawn Sturgess, and the sacrifice made by Dawn’s partner Charlie, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and the fearless first responders. In the seven years since this attack, an emboldened Putin has increased his aggression across Europe. Can the…
Commons
Proceedings
4 December 2025
Business of the House
Of the manifold carnival of basically lies that was the Vote Leave campaign, becoming £350 million richer a week was one of the principal lies. The sad reality, of course, is that we are £250 million a day worse off as a result of Brexit, which has forced the Chancellor to come after £66 billion of …
Commons
Proceedings
3 December 2025
OBR: Resignation of Chair
The head of the OBR has taken responsibility and resigned, just like the BBC director general took responsibility for a crisis and resigned. Given the backdrop that the UK is in the throes of a full-on fiscal crisis of the Chancellor’s own making—both materially by removing £66 billion from the econ…
Commons
Debate
26 November 2025
3 contributions
Budget Resolutions
I thank the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) for a fascinating lecture on amnesia—it was dripping with irony given his last role in government.
I wish to congratulate the Chancellor on delivering what is almost certainly her final Budget. There is no conce…
I will give way in a second. The SNP did Labour’s job for it, with a Budget proposal that involved a surcharge on banks that would have created the £300 discount for bill payers, just like Labour promised. I am very happy to give way to the hon. Member, if he can tell me when Labour will come good o…
+1 more contribution in this session