Dave Doogan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Apr 2025 · Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Minister speaks about the whole of the United Kingdom. I am very pleased that the Government are acting, literally at pace for once, by stepping in to protect the workers in Scunthorpe, in precisely the opposite way to when they turned a blind eye to the plight of workers at Grangemouth, which is also critical national infrastructure labouring under energy prices. Why is there one rule for industrial production in England and another for industrial production in Scotland?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Investment: Regulatory Policies · Hansard source

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  Inward investment projects in Scotland grew by 12.7% in 2023, compared with 6% across the rest of the United Kingdom. 2023 saw record investment in Scotland, which maintained its position as the top-performing area of the UK for the ninth year running. International businesses want to locate in Scotland because they understand that GDP per person in Scotland has grown by 10.5%, compared with 6.5% in the rest of the UK, since 2007. What impact does the Chancellor think her fiscal interventions since October will have on the attractiveness of Scotland as a destination, and what discussions has she had with the Scottish Government about the jeopardy that she has placed our economy in?

• 8 Apr 2025 · Persecution of Christians · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as the special envoy for freedom of religion and belief. I wish it had not taken the Government six months to appoint him, but I am sure that he will approach the role with the alacrity that it demands. The hon. Gentleman talks about the attrition of global Christianity and the oppression of Christian faiths around the world. Does he agree that in the discourse in which we engage in Parliaments in the west and in societies where religion is tolerated, we need to accept that there is no league table of religious persecution? I am concerned that sometimes Christianity is seen as being at the bottom of that league table—that there is a view that religious persecution is wrong, but that some forms of it are more wrong than others. The persecution of Christians often comes out at the wrong end of that equation. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to be crystal clear with the regimes that are persecuting Christians that we believe that it is anathema to what any Government should be doing?

• 27 Mar 2025 · Scunthorpe Steelworks · Hansard source

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  It is difficult to listen to the Minister at the Dispatch Box saying that everything is okay with the United States because of the positive relationship between the Prime Minister and the President, when it can be characterised as the President saying, “Jump,” and the Prime Minister asking, “How high?” The US has visited precisely the same tariffs on the UK steel industry as on the Chinese. If that is a special relationship, I would hate to see what an ordinary relationship looks like. When will the Government get a grip on the production of primary steel? It is a non-negotiable for a G7 nation to produce primary steel. It is intrinsic to our defence and security. The Government seem to be trying to negotiate a situation that is the worst of all worlds, whereby the taxpayer has to stump up the money but the private sector in China gets to dictate the terms.

• 27 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  Yesterday, in my trademark balanced and consensual way, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if she would review her tax and spending plans. I gave her three principal examples of how she could raise substantially more revenue, which would, I hope, enable her not to cut disability benefits quite as much, or possibly even at all. She gave me a response about the Trident nuclear deterrent. I know what my position is on that, and I know that it is at odds with that of most of my colleagues in this Chamber, but so too did my constituents when they elected me—twice. Can we have a debate in Government time about the minimum standard of responses that elected Members, whatever the colour of their rosette, can enjoy from Ministers in this Chamber?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Spring Statement · Hansard source

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  The Chancellor tells us that the world has changed. If that is true and it allows her to stick the boot into disabled people, it must also be true to allow her to review her income tax rates, perhaps making them commensurate with those in Scotland, which saw the Scottish economy grow in January by 0.3%, while the UK economy contracted by 0.1%. She could also choose to revise the Government’s position on re-accessing the European Union single market, which would allow a £30 billion recurring return with no compensation required. She could impose a 1% tax on assets over £10 million— a wealth tax, as the hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) has just highlighted—which would allow a £40 billion recurring return every year with no need for compensation. If she has the disabled, the WASPI women, pensioners and hospices in her cross hairs, why can she not tap up multi-millionaires for a few quid?

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree entirely. This is a £24 billion fiscal drag that is intended to create growth. Work that one out if you can, because it is beyond my ken. The Government will not make derogations for key elements of health and social care, because the benefit of the £24 billion drag on the economy that the right hon. Gentleman pointed out is, after compensation, already down £10 billion. If they compensate the people who they definitely should, such as GPs, pharmacies, care providers and hospices, that would take it down to somewhere around £7 billion or £8 billion. What type of Chancellor and Treasury orthodoxy says, “We place a £24 billion burden on the economy in exchange for an £8 billion return for the Treasury”? It is absolutely catastrophic. It is misadventure writ large, and it has Labour as its logo.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The Lords amendments seek to address a clear, present and insurmountable financial challenge for significant elements of health and social care delivery in all our communities. The Government say, in the most spurious and disingenuous way, as though they did not understand their role in the health service, that social care providers, GPs, dentists and pharmacies are contractors. How they are dealt with by His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is irrelevant. It is the role that they fulfil in our society and in the delivery of health and social care services that is at stake. These are not contractors that can go and develop new markets somewhere else. Their market is exclusively within the NHS and health and social care up and down these islands. Many properly commercial businesses will not manage to pivot their way out of this attack from Labour—and GP practices, pharmacies, care providers, nurseries and hospices certainly will not. I want to mention hospices. When Macmillan Cancer Support speaks, no matter what colour our rosette, we should listen. It has highlighted clearly what the measures mean for end-of-life care. There have been 15 years of chaos in the United Kingdom, most of it economic; there has been the lost decade of Brexit, and its catastrophic effect on the UK’s economy and the material welfare of people up and down these islands. I ask: who can we blame? Who is culpable? Who has their fingerprints all over it? Not terminally ill children in hospices, who will, as a result of the Bill, suffer as a result of the debilitating effect on the care with which they are provided. The Minister and his Government could do a simple thing: give hospices a derogation from the grasping hand of the Bill, and protect children in the worst imaginable circumstances. From the outset, the Government’s fiscal misadventure has been met with opprobrium from all manner of sections of the economy and society, but they have held firm. I pay tribute to the Minister; he fronts up here every time with a smile, and does his best to defend what he has to. That is his job, and I do not judge him for that, but the bottom line is that the Government have yielded, not to children in hospitals, or to people trying to deliver social care and free up hospital beds by preventing delayed discharge, but to the bankers by restoring their bonuses, and to the non-doms who want all the benefits of living in this country but do not want to pay for it. That speaks volumes about what a Labour Government in this day and age are all about.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises two excellent examples of what could be done to raise the funding that the Government need in a just way. Let us not forget that Labour knew fine what it was walking into when it won the election. We told it, as did the Liberal Democrats and the media—the Tories were a bit quiet on the issue, right enough—that there would be an £18 billion black hole if it stuck to Tory tax and spending policy. This is on Labour. The hon. Member mentioned two examples of excellent and just ways to raise funding. Similarly, the Government could apply Scottish income tax thresholds to the whole of the UK, giving most people a pay rise and raising £16 billion into the bargain. They could raise £40 billion from a 1% wealth tax on assets over £10 million. There are a range of other measures that they could take, such as raising £30 billion by rejoining the single market—not very many people in here talk about that.

• 25 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  Is the hon. Gentleman concerned that the Government patently do not understand whole-system cost, which is a key element of fiscal policy? When care providers—whether hospices, in-home care providers or social providers—fall over as a result of these measures, as they will, those costs will get picked up by the rest of the system, and that will have a net cost to the Treasury.

• 25 Mar 2025 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Can the Minister advise the House on the level of recurrence to that funding? Will it be year-on-year funding? Will he also give us an indication—maybe not precisely, but broadly—what that funding stream will be year on year under GB Energy?

• 25 Mar 2025 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I agree that the compensation is risible. Many people in the hon. Member’s constituency and mine who are subject to these installations are pretty much resigned, because no matter what they do or say, it will happen. Will the Minister confirm that where constituents are subject to multiple developments, that £250 a year will be cumulative per imposition on their property? Why is it limited to 10 years? Will the developers come and take the pylons away in 10 years? In the ambitions that are represented by clause 22, people will see the very minimum that the Government can do while acknowledging that this infrastructure is an imposition. It is not reasonable that people should have a 10-year miserly compensation for a lifetime’s imposition on their home. With that, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will grant you 30 seconds for somebody else.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I am pleased that the great majority of the Bill will not affect me or my constituents, but I will speak briefly to the areas that do, beginning with clauses 9 to 13 on electricity network connection reform. I acknowledge that the first come, first served debacle has served the development and drawdown of these schemes very poorly, but I simply ask the Minister: when will the regime materially change such that properly consented, properly financed projects, which are behind projects that are not either of those things, can get their connections approved? In clause 14 on consents for generating stations and overhead lines, the amendment to the Electricity Act 1989 makes it clear that consenting to electricity infrastructure in Scotland is carried out by Scottish Ministers, not the Secretary of State. That is all well and good, but under clause 16 appeals would need to be made within six weeks of a decision being published, with challenges made to the inner house of the Court of Session in Edinburgh—that is all fine—but with a route to appeal to the Supreme Court in the United Kingdom. Can the Minister confirm that the final arbiter of any disputes over consents for generating stations and overhead lines will be here in London? Clause 21 addresses the cap and floor mechanism, which I have mentioned to the Energy Minister, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), who I am touched to see has come in for my contribution. The cap and floor mechanism for long-duration electricity storage is vital for Drax’s plans for Cruachan and SSE’s plans for Coire Glas in Scotland. That they are track 2 and track 3 projects gives me some concern. Can we have some reassurance that the 2030 deliverable projects will be facilitated without delay by the ambition of those clauses? Clause 22 on benefits for homes near electricity transmission projects is bordering on insulting. If the utility and value of someone’s home and area have been significantly impinged by the erection of a pylon nearby, £20.83 a month off their electricity bill will not ameliorate that. It is referred to as a financial support scheme—the implication being that people need financial support. They do not need it. Ministers should call it what it is: compensation for the imposition of electrical infrastructure. In all reality, a community has very little say over whether that happens at all. That £20.83 a month off their electricity bill will be precious little compensation for people who have been mired in the planning process of a pylon or any other generating infrastructure, who have not been able to sell their property for the last two years and will not be able to sell it for the coming two years either. I am not saying that this infrastructure should not be built, but the Government should not insult people’s intelligence with vastly less money than they took off them when they ended the winter fuel payment.

• 24 Mar 2025 · Planning and Infrastructure Bill · Hansard source

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  I hesitate to try to help the hon. Gentleman with his answer, but might it be that the coalition Government were having difficulty building affordable houses in that period because the former Labour Chief Secretary to the Treasury had said there was no money left?

• 24 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Staff Sergeant Peter Cluff died in February 2016, with an in-service designation to that death. His widow, Kirsty, and his children, Meredith and Heather, were in the benefit of the armed forces pension scheme and remain so. However, the scheme made a miscalculation and have sent debt collectors to them to try to recover a fairly small sum. I asked about the matter three months ago and have not had a response from the Department. Will the Secretary of State or one of his Ministers meet me to discuss this unedifying advert for the Ministry of Defence?

• 19 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is almost three months to the day since we were here in this Chamber on Third Reading. The SNP and other parties warned at that stage of the very real, dire consequences for organisations, businesses, charities, hospices and so on. It certainly does not give me, or anybody else on the Opposition side of the House, any pleasure that those threats have come to pass. There is no pleasure in that whatsoever. The British Chambers of Commerce spoke last month of a “powder keg of costs” for businesses, with 82% of firms surveyed saying that they faced the potential of staff lay-offs, wage freezes or cancelled promotions in the workforce, which will be a terrible drag on the economy. Last month saw vacancies in the UK contract at the second-fastest rate in nearly five years, while wage growth has slumped to an almost four-year low. If we want the evidence of what business thinks of this change, it is there in the figures: 300,000 small business owners surveyed last month said they intend to lay off employees in order to cope with Labour’s national insurance increase. The economic impact is now becoming absolutely clear. Last week’s GDP figures show the UK economy shrinking in January. On Monday this week, the OECD downgraded the UK growth forecast for both this year and the next. The reality under Labour is that economic growth has fallen in four of the past seven months. The national insurance grab represents an extraordinary and unforced error in fiscal policy. If Labour genuinely has confidence in this move, then it should have no issue whatsoever in agreeing to Lords amendment 21 and publishing an impact assessment of its national insurance increase. What the Minister detailed as an impact assessment was in fact an analysis. An impact assessment deals not with the numbers, but with output in the real economy—the effect on business. The Minister knows fine that that is not what he is talking about. On GPs and Lords amendments 1, 4, 5, 9 and 13, the Scottish Government will be investing—or compensating, rather—£13.6 million in general practice this financial year to support GPs in Scotland alone, obviously, to retain and recruit staff in the face of the change. But Scotland’s GPs, any more than England’s, Wales’s or Northern Ireland’s, should not be paying the price for UK Government decisions. Labour’s decision to increase national insurance contributions is a catastrophe for GP practices and for charities across Scotland—the relevant Lords amendments are 2, 7, 12 and 16. There are 7,000 charities in Scotland at risk from this Labour Government. Marie Curie faces a £2.9 million inflation to its costs, with £75 million across the charitable sector in Scotland. The Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals alone is exposed to a £400,000 recurring pressure from this Labour Government. Scotland’s public sector faces a £700 million recurring pressure, which, with the Government’s compensation, still leaves a £200 million shortfall. Scotland is again being punished for choosing to invest more in its public services and paying people who deliver those services better. The Government regularly attack us by saying, “What would you do?” I will tell them what I would do: £30 billion by rejoining the single market; £16 billion by introducing Scottish income tax rates; and £43 billion from a wealth tax of 1% on assets over £10 million. But this Labour Government will not go after multimillionaires. They would far rather go after the disabled, hospices, family businesses, GPs, farmers, councils and charities. That is what these so-called socialists are intent on doing. In conclusion, Labour’s fiscal bonfire is what my colleagues in the Scottish Government have had to deal with to try to ameliorate and protect communities from Labour’s economic ineptitude. But even fiscally incompetent Unionists—a cadre in whose number I include the Minister—must realise that the Scottish Parliament cannot exist simply to ameliorate and protect Scottish public services from the United Kingdom’s decisions. Devolution can only ever be a temporary face-lift for the crumbling foundations of Unionism. As the Union crumbles, I shed no tears, but I wish it was not ripping the economic heart out of Scotland on its way down.

• 19 Mar 2025 · National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister says it is inexplicable, and I agree that on the face of it, it is. However, is one possible explanation for fiscal misadventure on this scale not that the Government Benches are filled with people who have scarcely any understanding of the real economy, much less what it means to try to start, run and sustain a business?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Durability of UK-US Relations · Hansard source

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  I agree with those sentiments. This week’s ceasefire negotiations are a cause for great optimism, and I welcome the efforts of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, in leading on that priority. However, last week the Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box, in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), that he had no knowledge of the United States’ planning to withdraw military aid from Ukraine, which the United States did the following day. It is against that backdrop that I ask the Prime Minister—because I know he wants a just and lasting peace in Ukraine that respects Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity—what reassurance he can give the House that when he is impressing that priority on the President of the United States, the President is actually listening.

• 12 Mar 2025 · Durability of UK-US Relations · Hansard source

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  Q9. If he will make an assessment of the durability of UK-US relations.

• 5 Mar 2025 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State will be well aware of the manifold range of family-owned businesses in Scotland, many of which are very large and trade with multimillion-pound balance sheets every year. The Chancellor’s move to change the rules on business property relief threatens at best these businesses being sold off to plcs and at worst their being liquidated to pay their liabilities to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. What assessment has the Scotland Office made of the potentially catastrophic implications for Scottish enterprise of the BPR changes in train from the Treasury?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Iranian State Threats · Hansard source

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  I welcome the content and nature of the Minister’s statement. He says that he is considering new ways to enforce robust immigration rules specifically to address threats from Iran. Can he flesh out what that means, specifically on the Government’s stance about proscription of the IRGC? I know he is reluctant to talk about that, but he may sense the frustration among right hon. and hon. Members that zero context has been given and the Government are standing behind a veil of obscurity about how that might happen. The Minister spoke appropriately about the protections that will, quite rightly, be afforded to members of the Jewish community in the United Kingdom, and previously, in response to the urgent question, he spoke about the protections that will be afforded by the UK state to Hongkongers against foreign state actors acting against their best interests. Will he tell the House what the UK state will do to protect Iranians and Persians living in the UK who are the subject of malign foreign state action against their interests?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Economic Growth: Scotland · Hansard source

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  We can listen to the braying of Labour MPs from Scotland or we can look at the fact that the Scottish economy grew 12% more than the UK economy in 2024. That is because of the SNP Scottish Government’s forensic focus on making Scotland the most attractive place in the UK for foreign direct investment year after year, having a progressive taxation system, rewarding our public sector workers properly and investing in our communities. What difference does the Minister think agricultural property relief and business property relief will have on the Scottish economy—positive or negative?

• 4 Mar 2025 · Economic Growth: Scotland · Hansard source

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  I’m grateful for nothing!

• 3 Mar 2025 · Fire Safety: Local Authority Planning · Hansard source

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  An architect constituent of mine alerted me to his concerns about Camden council’s approach to fire safety in an application to construct a 400-guest underground hotel. At the planning stage, the London Fire Brigade expressed serious concerns that the proposed safety features would be difficult to maintain and dangerous were they to fail. A freedom of information request revealed that the London Fire Brigade’s fire safety compliance team felt that their concerns were ignored by Camden council at planning. Will the Minister commit to reviewing regulations to see whether they are sufficient to ensure that local authorities in England properly attend to serious concerns raised by local fire brigades?