Commons
Ministerial Statement
20 November 2025
Business of the House
I do not understand the mindset of an absent parent who tries to renege on their financial responsibility to support their children. Nor, it seems, does the Child Maintenance Service, because one of the manifold issues with that service is that absent parents renege on payments —starting and stoppin…
Commons
Proceedings
20 November 2025
Ukraine: Forcible Removal of Children
The Minister is very well read, so I wonder whether he can identify any point in history when the appeasement of an aggressive, expansionist autocrat has ever worked out well. The population of these isles and the rest of Europe have endured high energy prices for the last three years, have taken Uk…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
18 November 2025
ExxonMobil: Mossmorran
The Minister draws attention to the five Scottish Ministers on the Government Front Bench, but not one of them has said anything about the crisis facing those 400 families making a living from Mossmorran. The Minister seeks to hide behind the company’s statement that there was no lack of enthusiasm …
Commons
Debate
12 November 2025
4 contributions
Energy
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
+2 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
11 November 2025
Remembrance Day: Armed Forces
The three fatalities from Stirling that the hon. Member for Stirling and Strathallan (Chris Kane) has just set out so eloquently were three of the 135,000 men and women who died from Scotland during world war one. There were almost 60,000 Scots casualties in world war two, and more still in campaign…
Commons
Debate
4 November 2025
2 contributions
Supporting High Streets
The shadow Minister will, of course, be delighted to know that the Scottish National party was the first party anywhere in the United Kingdom to introduce business rates relief for small businesses. As for the Labour Government’s business literacy, which the hon. Gentleman critiques quite accurately…
Does the Minister understand the immediacy of the pressure on small businesses? She may have the best of intentions, and I am sure that prices will unwind in five or 10 years, eventually resulting in lower energy bills for commercial enterprise across the United Kingdom. That will not happen this we…
Commons
Oral Questions
4 November 2025
Scotch Whisky Industry
The Scottish Secretary—a grown man who seems easy to upset—was very upset recently when the First Minister of Scotland had direct meetings with the President of the United States over whisky tariffs. The SNP and the First Minister will always stand up for Scotch whisky. Will the Chancellor follow su…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
3 November 2025
Defence Industrial Base
The Ministry of Defence spent £1.2 billion with SMEs in 2024-25. Sadly, though, only 2.5% of that spending went to SMEs in Scotland, which report extreme difficulty in accessing those MOD contracts. This is an inevitable consequence of the MOD spending more in one region of England than it spends in…
Commons
Oral Questions
Wales
29 October 2025
2 contributions
Cost of Living
3. What recent discussions she has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on reducing the cost of living in Wales.
A century of Labour taking the people of Wales for granted came crashing down last week with the sensational victory of Plaid’s Lindsay Whittle in Caerphilly, with Labour reduced to third place. Why would anybody accept any more Labour, as Labour’s cost of living soars, its Westminster perma-crisis …
Commons
Oral Questions
Home Department
15 September 2025
Crime in City Centres
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 Offic…
Commons
Proceedings
10 September 2025
Russian Drones: Violation of Polish Airspace
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 …
Commons
Oral Questions
Treasury
9 September 2025
Government Debt Interest Payments
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 …
Commons
Debate
8 September 2025
Defence Industrial Strategy
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. T…
Commons
Oral Questions
Defence
8 September 2025
Topical Questions
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…
Commons
Oral Questions
4 September 2025
2 contributions
Household Water Bills
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 …
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 …
Commons
Debate
3 September 2025
Hospitality Sector
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 prob…
Commons
Debate
15 July 2025
5 contributions
Taxes
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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 destinatio…
+3 more contributions in this session
Commons
Debate
15 July 2025
2 contributions
Welfare Spending
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 Minist…
Will the hon. Gentleman take an intervention from a Member on the Opposition Benches?
Commons
Ministerial Statement
15 July 2025
Afghanistan
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 enoug…
Commons
Oral Questions
Scotland
9 July 2025
Industrial Strategy: Impact on Scotland
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 y…
Commons
Proceedings
25 June 2025
Nuclear-certified Aircraft Procurement
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…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
19 June 2025
UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy
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…
Commons
Proceedings
12 June 2025
Business of the House
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 o…
Commons
Ministerial Statement
11 June 2025
Spending Review 2025
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 Chanc…
Commons
Debate
21 May 2025
10 contributions
Business and the Economy
The shadow Minister takes a casual swipe at the business acumen of Ministers, and I wonder whether I can encourage him to develop that point. When I speak to businesses in Angus and Perthshire Glens about the changes that have been instituted since July last year, they are incredulous that anybody w…
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?
+8 more contributions in this session