Stephen Gethins MP: speeches

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2026 · Lord Mandelson · Hansard source

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  I have raised the point about the Prime Minister, but there is a broader point here. Lord Mandelson was appointed to the Lords. For 115 years, Labour has been promising to get rid of the Lords. The Conservatives and other parties have appointed people to the Lords who we should be getting rid of. Please—is now not the time to take the opportunity to scrap the Lords?

• 20 Jan 2026 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T6. An opinion poll in the Sunday Herald at the weekend showed that three quarters of Scots would vote to join the European Union. They get that leaving the EU was a disaster a decade ago, and it is even more of a disaster given the international situation now, so why do this Government continue to pursue yesterday’s policies, backed up by yesterday’s men and women?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I would take the Secretary of State a little bit more seriously if so many Labour MPs had not lost the Whip for backing our vote on tackling the two-child cap. The Scottish child payment, which has been described as “game changing”, has been extended to provide additional funding for babies, meaning that those from deprived communities in Scotland get the best start in life anywhere in the UK in Scotland, so why on earth is Labour abstaining on the Budget? [ Interruption. ] Just as the Prime Minister turns up, maybe Labour can explain why it abstains and why it does not stand for anything.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I wish the Secretary of State the best for 2026. I am glad he caught “The Traitors”, because I am so sorry to have heard the language used about Scottish Labour MPs by Labour MPs in the press recently. If what he is saying is the best way to improve our lives and our economy, why is Scotland the only part of the UK where child poverty is going down?

• 14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  I associate myself with the Minister’s comments, for which I thank him. I have some significant and substantive questions to ask, but I will reflect for a moment on the human side of this conflict, which is important. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Johanna Baxter) did that very well, as she always does. I have travelled a lot to Ukraine over the past 20 years for work and other purposes. One of the most significant visits was on Thursday night, when I drove into Kyiv during the bombardment. I was reminded that that bombardment, in the early hours of Friday morning, was not aimed at any military target, but at the energy infrastructure, as temperatures in Kyiv reached minus 15°C and minus 20°C. It was nippy, Madam Deputy Speaker, but, unlike so many people, I had somewhere warm to go. What told us perhaps a little more about the Russian Administration, and the way in which they conduct their war, was the double-tap strikes. They hit apartment blocks, and shortly thereafter they hit again, killing the ambulance workers who are reacting. I then travelled to Sumy—I believe I was one of the first British Members of Parliament to do so since the full-scale invasion—which has a partnership agreement with Angus council in my constituency. The sense of solidarity must go beyond Kyiv, and I am sure that our friends in Kyiv would not mind that. I want to give a shout out to the people of Sumy who welcomed me. As we lay flowers for the 37 people who were killed in an artillery attack as they were out shopping, we were moved on very quickly—we could not even mourn or mark our respects for much longer. As the governor of Sumy told me, that human element is so important. I give a shout-out to Timmergreens primary school in my constituency. Miss Baird’s class, led by Mrs Biesok, wrote letters to children in Sumy. Although I took other gifts, including a tartan scarf—colleagues from Scotland will understand—and mentioned other areas of connection, it was those simple letters from primary school children in my constituency that meant so much to everybody in Ukraine. They were exceptional and beautifully written. I pay tribute to those children, because their efforts remind us of the more serious issues that we are dealing with. That human element tells us why Ukraine is fighting and why we have a responsibility, across Europe, to help Ukraine in its time of need.

• 14 Jan 2026 · Ukraine · Hansard source

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  Accountability is so important, as I know the hon. Gentleman and other Members agree. On the local element, will the Minister say something about the 100-year agreement? I know that this place has an important role in the response to the war in Ukraine, but the message I received during my travels at the weekend was how important local-to-local solidarity is. Will he say something about the conversations that he has had with devolved Governments and local administrations on the 100-year agreement. Matters such as education are for those administrations, rather than the Government, and it is important to involve others going forward. The most substantive issue is that we face a significant challenge in European security and have done for some years. The transatlantic relationship is not quite what it was—we must look to Canada in many ways. The common European approach to defending Ukraine, which is, after all, defending us, will be incredibly important. The Minister for the Armed Forces, the hon. Member for Birmingham Selly Oak (Al Carns), has been very thoughtful on these issues, and it would be good to hear his reflections on deepening that co-operation. Over the weekend in Ukraine, I heard so many thank yous—we hear that so many times when we visit. But that is the wrong way around. We should be saying thank you to Ukraine from us all.

• 13 Jan 2026 · Iran · Hansard source

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  Iran is a remarkable country and its people are remarkable, but I agree with the Foreign Secretary that the actions of the Iranian regime are no aberration. She was absolutely right to say that. Will she consider proscription of the IRGC? As others have said, we proscribed Wagner. That was the right thing to do. Will she bring us more information about the targeting of the shadow fleet, which is crucial? Finally, will she look longer-term at support for civil society, which will be crucial in any rebuilding efforts?

• 17 Dec 2025 · UK-EU Common Understanding Negotiations · Hansard source

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  I am afraid to say that it is almost 30 years since I made the transformative journey from Dundee to Antwerp for my Erasmus experience. I thank the Minister, because there is some progress in this area. May I ask him a couple of practical questions? First, obviously there is a different higher education system in Scotland, and Scottish universities are very involved in this. How will the financial mechanisms work? Has he worked that out with the Scottish Government and other devolved Administrations? Secondly, I want to see all young people have the opportunities that he and I enjoyed. When will we see a return to freedom of movement for our young people entirely?

• 16 Dec 2025 · Electoral Resilience · Hansard source

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  Members of this House, including me, who have been targeted by Russia will be particularly horrified by the crimes of Reform UK’s former Wales leader. I am pleased that Philip Rycroft has been appointed to lead the review: we know he has been a fine public servant and has deep experience of Europe and Northern Ireland. Will the Secretary of State assure us that the EU referendum will be in scope— [ Interruption. ] I think I am being heckled by a Reform UK Member, today of all days.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  We focus an awful lot on the Scottish Parliament. I have no problem with that, but Members who sit here choose to be part of a Parliament that has powers that far outweigh those of the Scottish Parliament. I do not like that, but other Members here do. On the future generations fund, since we are having a biblical debate and there has been biblical reference, I say to the hon. Member—he will not mind—that, to paraphrase Matthew’s gospel, sometimes you talk about the speck in my eye and ignore the plank in yours. Some £1.5 trillion, and 1.5% of every share on earth from the top 5,000 companies, is now in Norwegian hands, and Norway can use that, with transformative effect. If he thinks that Westminster control over oil and gas and other aspects of energy—it still has that responsibility—has been positive, I encourage him to think again. It has not been wholly positive; things have failed. As he has prompted me, it should be reflected that the failings of Holyrood are dwarfed by the gargantuan failings of Westminster. There has been Brexit, austerity—the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale was part of the Cabinet who brought that in—the Truss Budget, which put up all mortgages, and our relationship with the rest of Europe. Those failings have now been brought to bear.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  And the ’90s.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I fought hard against Brexit in this place, and I continue to fight hard against it. I worked in the European institutions. I was an Erasmus student whose life was transformed by our membership of the European Union. The hon. Member’s party has removed, or refused to take decisions on, those opportunities for young people, having embraced a hard Tory and Reform Brexit. Labour could change everything right now, but Labour Members could not even bring themselves to vote with the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and others on entering into a customs union. It speaks to the cautious nature of the Scottish Labour party that whereas 13 Labour MPs managed to rebel, not one Scottish Labour Member rebelled, just as only one Scottish Labour Member—they were chucked out—was able to rebel on the two-child cap. The EU goes to the heart of what we are about. Labour Members talk about devolution, yet a third of the Labour group in Wales has had to write to the UK Government about the rolling back of devolution. I would be grateful to the Minister for tackling that. It speaks to our place in the world. To go back to St Andrew, I encourage anybody visiting Kyiv—I did so on a constructive visit with the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar—to visit the church of St Andrew. It is one of the founding churches, from when Christianity was brought to Kyiv. It is beautiful, and it speaks to my vision about where we sit in the world. Hon. Members have referred to their constituency; let me make my inevitable reference to the declaration of Arbroath at its abbey, an event that has influenced other parts of the world. I hear gripes, but I rarely hear any sort of positive vision from anybody else. Here is mine, and it speaks to the points raised by the hon. Member for Carlisle. My vision is one of normalcy—of a Scotland that joins a European family of nations. We see all our neighbours outperforming us when it comes to fairness and the economy. Why? Because they have the normal powers of independence. They have the powers that Westminster has, but that Labour refuses to use to make life better for people. On borders, we can look at Antwerp and Rotterdam, Strasbourg and Baden-Baden, and Nice and Italy. We see borderlands across Europe that thrive because they sit within the European Union; they thrive because of that partnership. It is not for me to tell England what its future should be, but surely the EU provides a 21st-century model for union—one that is embraced across Europe—whereas ours is an 18th-century model of union, with no article 50 to allow us to get out, no equal rights, and no place for the smaller parts. The situation is different for the Åland islands, Greenland and others. In Central Lobby, we have St David over the door above the Commons, St George above the door to the Lords, and St Patrick above the door to the way out. The old joke goes that St Andrew sits above the door on the way to the bar, but maybe St Andrew is merely taking a slightly longer way out than St Patrick.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman always makes an entertaining speech. He quoted Edwin Morgan, who, after writing that poem, donated a significant sum of money to the SNP. I just thought that should be on the record.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) for securing the debate, and for the very constructive way he approached it. He focused on young people, migration and those who make our country so much richer, which I thought was a useful thing to debate on St Andrew’s day. In that spirit, can I be the first to wish the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) a very happy birthday, and thank her for her speech? She touched on some really positive aspects of the cross-border element of the debate, which I will come on to in just a moment. I thoroughly enjoyed her speech, and I hope that she manages to enjoy the rest of her day. The hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar talked about history, and touched on this point very effectively. It is sometimes useful for all of us, regardless of our political allegiance, to reflect on the fact that history, like politics, is not black and white, but various shades of grey. There are things we get right and things we get wrong, and sometimes we do not do nuance as effectively as we could. Sometimes that is a debt we owe. On that point, we should talk about migration, which the hon. Member talked about very effectively. In recent times, we have talked about migration in very black and white terms, forgetting, as the Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Glasgow West (Patricia Ferguson), set out very effectively, the rich tapestry that makes Scotland, as McIlvanney described it, “a mongrel nation”. I represent Dundee as well as Angus, which had an even higher proportion of Irish people in its population than Glasgow. I am a product of that—I am a Stephen Patrick, after all—but to this day, I am very proud of my Scottish heritage. I will not mention any one individual, Madam Deputy Speaker, but when we debate migration, that includes the question of emigration from Scotland. We all know people who have moved away, and we have a rich diaspora around the world who will be celebrating this day, along with Scots in Scotland and elsewhere in the UK. We have benefited from that, but we have also benefited richly from those who have migrated to Scotland. Dundee is a richer city and Angus is a richer county as a direct consequence of that. I would like to reflect on how our predecessors have talked about the subject. The hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) is not in her place, but of course Ming Campbell was my immediate predecessor in North East Fife, which was my previous seat. He sadly passed away this year; the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) mentioned others who have passed away and contributed so much. I may not have always agreed with him, but he contributed so much, as did others who represented my constituency. There was Winston Churchill, but there was also, of course, former Labour MP E. D. Morel, who did so much on the slave trade and on what was going on in Congo, along with Roger Casement. I encourage anybody who is not aware of Morel’s fine work to read up on it. As we are talking about that, I also pay tribute to my predecessors, Gordon Wilson and Andrew Welsh, who contributed so much to this place and to the broader debate. It is a debate that it is right to have. We talk about young people. We parliamentarians—this is a good thing on which to reflect on St Andrew’s day—have a responsibility to leave the world a little bit better than we found it. We should leave more rights for young people than we enjoyed, but unfortunately, we do not always get that right. For example, our immigration debate does not benefit our higher education sector, which thrives when it is international, and when it brings students in from around the world. Scottish students benefit from sitting in the same classroom as students from elsewhere around the world. Scotland thrives internationally as an energy hub—others rightly talked about that—yet we are the only country that has found oil and gas not to have implemented a future generations fund. Norway’s is now worth £1.5 trillion. That is not the fault of the current Administration, but it is worth all our while to reflect on that.

• 11 Dec 2025 · St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs · Hansard source

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  I will give way one more time, out of respect for the Chair of the Committee, if she can tackle the issue of our relationship with the rest of Europe.

• 11 Dec 2025 · US National Security Strategy · Hansard source

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  The US national security strategy says in black and white what many of us have been warning about for years now. The Minister was right to say that we Europeans need to step up, so can she tell me why Canada has be able to join the SAFE—Security Action for Europe—procurement scheme, which far outstrips any resource the UK could provide and would make us more secure and provide for more jobs, but the UK cannot? Why can Ottawa reach that agreement but the UK cannot?

• 11 Dec 2025 · Foreign Interference · Hansard source

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  I commend the hon. Member for securing this timely and important debate. Given the NSS and other challenges, we must move closer to European partners—we see what happens when there is division. I commend him for his work in Georgia in particular. Will he comment on the breakdown of the belief in the rule of law and democracy there?

• 9 Dec 2025 · EU Exit: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  2. What assessment she has made of the potential impact of leaving the EU on economic growth.

• 9 Dec 2025 · EU Exit: Economic Growth · Hansard source

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  I will try to strike a note that is maybe a little better. We worked together with the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and others to overcome the Tories’ secrecy about their analysis of what it would be like to be outside the single market and the customs union. If we can overcome Tory secrecy on an analysis of leaving the EU, with it now costing an estimated £250 million a day, when will the Labour party release its analysis?

• 3 Dec 2025 · Official Secrets Act and Espionage · Hansard source

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  May I thank the Minister for his responses today and for the way he is responding to this matter? I know he will be as concerned as the rest of us about descriptions of the process being “shambolic” and the criticism of systemic failures. Can the Minister tell us what has changed? Secondly, what has changed over the past almost four years? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed the world profoundly, and China continues to provide assistance to Russia.

• 3 Dec 2025 · Venezuela: US Military · Hansard source

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  Nicolás Maduro is no respecter of the international rules-based system, but we must be. We do not want to see chaos in Latin America, but we are seeing the biggest military build-up in the Caribbean since the Cuban missile crisis and the biggest US military build-up since the war in Iraq. What lessons would the Minister draw from previous regime change that the UK Government have been involved in, and what advice would he give his US counterparts?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Ah! Is the hon. Lady about to disagree with her Scottish leader? Please, I would love to hear it.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  It is good to be able to make my presentation today, after the past few days of drama. The Budget is meant to be a showcase for this place. The Conservatives will be well aware of past years when Budgets unravelled in the days just after they were delivered, but I think we all found it quite something to see a Budget unravel in the days before it was even delivered. Now, there are a couple of more serious points. The Scottish Government get most of their finances from Westminster. We continue to live in an overly centralised state. I say this constructively, because the Health Secretary is a constructive person: engagement with the devolved Administrations should happen before a Budget, not after. It is unacceptable for the First Minister to offer meetings and get no response. That is unacceptable not just for the First Minister of Scotland, but for the First Ministers of Northern Ireland and Wales, who should be afforded a similar courtesy. We have had a lot of silence from Scottish Labour about the Chancellor over the past few days—a lot of silence.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I have already given way. I urge the Health Secretary to look at the benefits of the Scottish child payment. I am a believer in solidarity, and would love to see it being rolled out to the rest of the UK, given its successes in Scotland. I say that constructively, and I hope that the Health Secretary will consider it. We are talking about renewal. On the energy sector, we have heard about Harbour Energy, which is the latest to announce job losses as a direct consequence of the energy profits levy. Offshore Energies UK has talked about the loss of thousands of jobs as a result of the levy. I remind the House that the UK is about the only state in the world that found oil and gas and never introduced a future generations fund. Why have such a fund? Because oil and gas are finite resources, and a fund allows us to invest in the future instead of taxing them out of existence, which is what is happening at the moment. I hear that from my constituents, and we hear it from across north-east Scotland. Yesterday, the Prime Minister mentioned the failure of Brexit, and the Health Secretary has done the same. According to House of Commons figures, it is costing the public purse £250 million every day. That is a disgrace. It is a Tory and Reform failure that all of us are paying for. Trade is down. Brexit is responsible for a large chunk of the tax rises and, according to the Mayor of London’s research, made the economy £140 billion smaller. I appeal to the Labour party: start doing something differently from the Conservatives and Reform. They failed; please do not.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  We would have had the money that the hon. Lady talks about had we remained in the European Union and had access to European regional funding, which she does not want any more. I am astonished at the split in the Labour party over what happens to the Chancellor. I am glad that the Chancellor has the hon. Lady’s confidence, but even the BBC is reporting that “we were misled”. We can all agree that the Chancellor holds a serious post. With the chair of the OBR gone, and the director general of the BBC having recently gone, we have to be sure that the Chancellor has the confidence of this House and those around her. Given the chaos of the past few days, we cannot be sure that that is the case anymore. On a more positive note, I give the Health Secretary his due: the question of child poverty is close to his heart, as it is to mine, and he speaks passionately and eloquently about it. The Labour party was chucking out Members of Parliament for voting to get rid of the two-child cap, and it voted against our motion just a few weeks ago. A couple of years ago, the leader of the Scottish Labour party even said that getting rid of it would “spook the markets”. The markets have not been spooked. It has been done. The Scottish Government were ahead of the game. What is the only part of the UK where child poverty is falling? Scotland. What is the only part of the UK that has a Scottish child payment that is driving down child poverty? Scotland. I know that the Health Secretary is constructive and takes this to heart.