Torcuil Crichton MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Nov 2025 · Russian Ship Yantar · Hansard source

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  The Yantar was intercepted in the north Atlantic, which is the UK’s new frontline but my constituents’ backyard. I was reassured by the preparedness of the RAF and the Royal Navy and grateful for their defence of our airspace and seaspace, but what assurance can the Minister give my constituents about our preparedness and resilience to meet these kinds of hybrid attacks? These cables do not just run across the Atlantic; they run between our islands, too.

• 19 Nov 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. When the Prime Minister next meets the President of the United States, will he ask him if he knows any reasonably priced hotels near the MetLife stadium in New Jersey, where the world cup final is to be held, and, as we are about to provide the biggest boost to whisky exports since our trade deal was signed, will he gently ask the Chancellor to consider excise duties next week so that we Scots can continue celebrating at reasonable prices?

• 18 Nov 2025 · UNESCO: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Jonathan Davies) on securing the debate. We will hear a lot today about UNESCO world heritage sites across the UK, from the Giant’s Causeway to Saltaire and the Palace of Westminster itself. Magnificent as those examples are, I stand here today with the honour of representing the only part of the country with double UNESCO world heritage status for both cultural heritage and the surrounding natural environment. St Kilda, or Hiort, the remote archipelago, some 40 miles west of my own archipelago into the Atlantic, are the most westernmost islands of the UK apart from Rockall—perhaps its most taciturn Atlantic outcrop. It is not easy to get there—it takes a stern four-hour crossing on a high-powered boat into an Atlantic swell—but the reward is magnificent.

• 18 Nov 2025 · UNESCO: 80th Anniversary · Hansard source

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  Even in the summer. The sea cliffs of St Kilda are among the highest in the UK. When you crane your neck up from the deck of what feels like a very small boat below those cliffs, it feels as if someone has dragged New York’s skyscrapers midway across the Atlantic. The sea stacks teem with bird life, giving an otherworldly atmosphere, and the power of that ocean, in summer and winter, below your feet—that relentless swell—makes you feel as if these islands are on the edge of the world. It is the surrounding ocean environment that gives it its UNESCO natural heritage status, but it is the human footprint—the two millennia of human inhabitation of the main island of Hirta, along with Boreray, Soay and Dùn, where people grazed sheep and hunted seabirds—that exert such a pull and give it its heritage status. People lived there for two millennia, eking out a very tough life harvesting seabirds and breeding sheep, but modernity, contact with the outside world, depopulation, emigration and illness brought that chapter of human habitation to a close. The final 36 St Kildans requested assistance from the British Government and were evacuated on 29 August 1930, bringing that chapter of inhabitation to a sudden and sad end. Although the community dispersed and the voices faded, you still get an echo of the human habitation and the people when you go there. I last visited with the late Norman John Gillies, the last of the male St Kildans. He left when he was five years old, but he still had an umbilical link to the island. To stand with him outside his family home in Village Bay, and to hear him switch from his English Norwich accent into what that place evoked in him—his native Gaelic voice—was to walk across the bridge of time. It was quite a privilege. The remarkable story of St Kilda has been told and retold, from Tom Steel’s “Life and Death” to Roger Hutchinson’s “A People’s History”. There are about 700 books on St Kilda. We know more about the St Kildans than we know about the kings of Scotland. That is why we go back time and again: because when we walk in their footsteps, we feel for ourselves what it was like to live in a pre-industrial, communal, remote and co-dependent community as our ancestors must all have done. While St Kilda remains attractive, tourist traffic is increasing vastly. Cruise ships now go there and the light-touch tourism that is essential for UNESCO world heritage sites is hard to achieve. Ionad Hiort, the St Kilda Centre project, aspires to construct a world-class visitor centre in Ùig, on the west coast of Lewis. It would offer visitors an opportunity to encounter St Kilda from afar. UNESCO has adopted the project as an exemplar of remote access to world heritage sites, many of which are already physically inaccessible or fragile. Funding is formidable, and a £7 million package has been put in place, but prices are increasing as time is flowing, and there is a considerable funding gap. I appeal to the Minister and the UK Government to deploy the muscle of Government to fulfil their obligations not just as a custodian of this double world heritage site, but by using projects such as Ionad Hiort to show the potential of remote viewing, contain untrammelled tourism and breathe new economic life into remote communities like mine. I urge the Department, the Minister and colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to take the proposal seriously, to show how the UK can inform and lead the rest of the world—from the edge of the world—when it comes to world heritage sites.

• 18 Nov 2025 · ExxonMobil: Mossmorran · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to the Minister for his work, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Cowdenbeath and Kirkcaldy (Melanie Ward) for hers, in trying to engage regularly with ExxonMobil for the last couple of months. However, they failed to extract any viable proposal from the company on a way forward. Sharon Graham, the leader of Unite, has described ExxonMobil’s decision to pull out as “a disgrace”. It is a £25 billion company walking away from 179 jobs and 250 more contractors. Will the Minister ensure that, despite the axe-grinding that we hear from the Opposition, he works with the Scottish Government, Fife council and the community when he sets up the taskforce, to ensure a future for those workers?

• 17 Nov 2025 · Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Power Station: Wylfa · Hansard source

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  Scotland’s Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, told the SNP conference that her Government would not allow Labour to turn Scotland into a “nuclear playground”. I guess she knew her audience, but given her reputation as the common-sense member of that Government, she should have known better. That kind of playground politics is an insult to Scotland’s nuclear workers, thousands of whom leave Scotland to work in highly unionised, safe, skilled jobs in England—and now Wales—to build the next generation of nuclear power stations. Does the Minister agree that Scotland could have these jobs—that Dounreay, Torness in East Lothian, and Hunterston in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Alan Gemmell) could have these jobs—if it was not for the Dr Nos of the SNP and their outdated opposition to nuclear power?

• 11 Nov 2025 · Remembrance Day: Armed Forces · Hansard source

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  Madam Deputy Speaker, it was a pleasure to join you today at the remembrance service in Westminster Hall, and it was an honour to attend services in Tarbert, Harris in my constituency and at the Lewis war memorial in Stornoway at the weekend. The years are passing, but the numbers attending are not diminishing, which is perhaps not surprising in the Western Isles because we have a very high proportion of veterans who have served. Historically, certainly in world war one, the islands suffered a disproportionately high number of men lost in comparison with the rest of the Commonwealth. Military historians tell us that that is because the reserve forces such as the Cameron Highlanders, the Seaforth Highlanders and the Gordon Highlanders were thrown into action early in the war, and many were lost in November 1914, before the Regular Army had even deployed in France. Island losses were compounded by the loss of the yacht Iolaire, a ship requisitioned as a troop carrier, which struck the rocks less than 1 mile out of Stornoway harbour on new year’s eve 1919 with the loss of 200 returning sailors within a mile of their home. This event became the crowning sorrow of the war that cast a century of mourning across the islands. We remembered them, as we remembered all who served, when we gathered on Sunday under the Lewis war memorial, an 85-foot granite tower built to be seen from all parishes of Lewis. Like memorials across the country, the tower and memorial garden bears the names of all those who served and were lost in both world wars—except that it does not bear all the names. Malcolm Macdonald, the chair of Stornoway Historical Society and the author of “The Darkest Dawn”, a book on that Iolaire tragedy, revealed this week that his research shows that 389 names are not listed on the Lewis war memorial where they rightfully should be: 170 from world war one and 219 from world war two. Of those not listed, some are remembered in Commonwealth war graves or on war memorials elsewhere, but even then, 37 men from world war one and 58 from world war two do not appear to have been recognised anywhere. They come from all parishes from all over the islands. It is the painstaking research of Mr Macdonald—based on his own intimate knowledge, including of the street he grew up on—that has revealed those statistics. On Westview Terrace where he lives, there is only one name from the second world war on the war memorial, yet he knows seven men were lost: No. 1 was Norman Macritchie, who died in Egypt and was in the Royal Navy; No. 3 was James Mackenzie, killed at Arnhem; No. 5 was Kenneth Mackenzie, killed in an RAF crash; No. 9 was William Maclean; and so on—down the street and out across the island. That is an example from one street on one island. If this list of missing men, of lost fallen, is true for the Isle of Lewis, then it must certainly be true for places across the whole country. There are many reasons why men are missing from the Lewis war memorial. In the first world war, headmasters compiled the names for memorialising, and emigration and a lack of definitive information would have contributed. In world war two, families were simply asked to submit names for the roll of honour, which we now know to be incomplete—389 forgotten war heroes from an island where people do not just know their own history, they know their neighbours’ history and everyone else’s as well. The kind of assiduous research that Mr Macdonald undertook does not come cheap. He spent years of his own time digging through the force records, looking for ships’ lists and overseas war records—and, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you are looking for one John Macleod in an island of John Macleods, you can see how that adds up. Three things struck me about this situation. Of course I welcome this week’s announcement of £2 million of funding for the restoration of war memorials across the UK, but I would urge Ministers to go a bit further. We could find funds to help communities complete their rolls of honour by discounting or reimbursing research costs, but not every community has a Stornoway Historical Society and not every one has a Malcolm Macdonald to hand. Looking for the forgotten fallen across the UK is a much bigger task, but one that could, with the cross-fertilisation of existing lists, archival research and the innovative power of artificial intelligence, become a project that would recover the legacy of service and sacrifice, and correct the draft of history inscribed on stone memorials across the country. I hope the names of the Lewis men are inscribed on a new plaque or in some kind of accessible form—digital or in print—so their losses can be recorded and they can be accorded their rightful status among their comrades. I hope the same can be true of people across the UK and that we can make this a reality—that the Government can step in with an AI project to scour the archives, correct the records and bring back the names of all those who gave their lives for their island home, for this country. Lest we forget.

• 11 Nov 2025 · Support for Dyslexic Pupils · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Butler. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) and my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) for leading on this very important issue. In the short time that I have, I want to give a perspective from Scotland, where the Government state that one in 10 children are dyslexic. I am so glad that we are joined by so many young people—I count 20 or more, which means that perhaps two of them suffer from dyslexia. I am sure that far more of us speaking today have encountered the condition. Dyslexia is widespread. We have a lot of data, but the gaps are quite wide in Scotland. We know that a boy who is fortunate enough to be diagnosed will be 13 before that happens, and a girl will be 15. That is too little, too late; as the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) mentioned, being identified late in school is no good. We went to school at roughly the same time, although his skincare regime means that he looks a lot younger than I do. While there is no doubt that dyslexia did not go recognised in our school days, I was shocked to find out from Donna MacLeod of A Dyslexia Life, an advocacy group in my constituency, that young people and their parents, not just in the Western Isles but across Scotland, are still not dealt with properly in Scotland’s schools. Donna MacLeod has not just worked tirelessly to have her own child assessed and supported, but, having witnessed at first hand how the education system can fail pupils, asked for mandatory screening for pupils and mandatory training for teachers in Scotland to recognise dyslexia in younger children. That would come through a dyslexia screening and teacher training Bill in Scotland of the sort that Jamie Oliver campaigns for here; Donna MacLeod would like to complete in Scotland the work that he has started, and for good reason. As has been pointed out, some 40% of the 70,000-odd schoolchildren in Scotland with dyslexia are not receiving support. Studies by Made By Dyslexia show that 80% of dyslexic children leave school undiagnosed, and only one in 10 teachers have a good understanding of dyslexia. There is clearly a need for change, but in Scotland there is a lottery in the availability of support. While the Scottish Government publish statutory guidance for dealing with dyslexia under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004 and children with dyslexia are given additional support, there is no mandatory provision. There is support—£200,000 of core funding goes to Dyslexia Scotland to promote free online resources and a professional toolkit for teachers to support dyslexic learners aged three to 18—but Dyslexia Scotland and the Scottish Government both acknowledge that more must be done. Specifically, the Scottish Government must move away from guidance and towards mandatory support. The Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills, Jenny Gilruth MSP, recently wrote to all executive directors of education and children’s services in Scotland, urging them to provide appropriate support for children and young people with dyslexia in schools, but urging and issuing guidance is not enough. The Scottish Government do a lot of that—putting systems in place and thinking the mission is accomplished. Actually, the mission is accomplished only when we measure successful implementation and delivery. There needs to be far more scrutiny of the work of Dyslexia Scotland and of the work and support that the Scottish Government provide to pupils. It is only with mandatory screening and training that this issue can be properly addressed in Scotland’s schools and schools across the UK, so that many children do not leave school unsupported and still suffering from the effects of dyslexia.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Trading Relationships · Hansard source

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  12. What steps his Department is taking to improve the UK's trading relationships with other countries.

• 30 Oct 2025 · Trading Relationships · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State to his place and invite him to Benbecula Distillery in my place. It is a dramatic lighthouse distillery, and a great addition to the landscape. It recently secured £1.5 million from the British Business Bank’s investment fund. Benbecula’s distillery is one of a chain of small distilleries across the Western Isles and other islands. I had a wee dram in Raasay, where that distillery has revived the island as much as its product revived me. What is the Secretary of State doing to make sure that this new wave of small Scottish distilleries will be part of the next round of trade deals?

• 29 Oct 2025 · Asylum Seekers: MOD Housing · Hansard source

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  As the Minister pointed out, and as Shaun Fraser, the Labour candidate for Inverness, said yesterday, this situation has arisen because of the broken asylum system that the Labour Government inherited from the Conservatives, but it must be handled sensitively. While I sympathise with my friend, the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald), given how he heard this news, I must caution him against leaning into language about Army patrols, security fences and the security of young women. As I have said, this must be handled sensitively, and it falls to us all to set a reasoned tone when expressing reasoned concerns. May I ask the Minister how he will deal with the situation locally, and what talks he will have with Highland council, and other councils, when it comes to dealing with this proposal?

• 27 Oct 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Industry · Hansard source

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  I have to say that this is a very underpowered urgent question. It is similar to a two-stroke engine attached to a rowing boat— [ Interruption. ]

• 27 Oct 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Industry · Hansard source

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  I was, of course, referring to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who knows full well that he has missed the story here. Petrofac went into administration because the Dutch Government cut a contract for offshore wind farm developments. I dare say that that raises concerns about the viability for finance and the supply chain for the offshore wind farm industry, but as the Minister has pointed out, and as the shadow Minister well knows, Petrofac is successful in the UK. It has 2,000 jobs in the UK and it has contracts in the UK, so we need less scaremongering from this underpowered Opposition and more assurance from the Minister that he will look after those jobs.

• 27 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State to his office and thank the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), for a recent visit to the DWP debt and fraud centre in my constituency. There are 95 jobs at the centre doing tremendous work across the UK, proving that civil service job dispersal does work. Is this not a template for other Departments and an example to the SNP Government in Scotland, who have dispersed no jobs, no power and no funds from Edinburgh?

• 23 Oct 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  A return flight from my Western Isles/Na h-Eileanan an Iar constituency to Glasgow can cost £600 return. That is enough to make Donald Trump think twice about coming to his mother’s home island. There is an air discount scheme, but what we really need is a public service obligation, with Government support for those vital social and economic flights. Will the Leader of the House lean on the Department for Transport to get together with the Scottish Government, Loganair and the local authority to make those flights more affordable for islanders and for the President of the United States?

• 23 Oct 2025 · Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for coming to the Dispatch Box, and the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) for raising this important issue. There is a question of fairness in the geographical distribution of the fund, and the Minister should consider that; I hope the funding will be reviewed in due course. There is another aspect to fairness, too: there should be fairness across the sector. I want the funding to be aimed at new entrants to fishing communities that face big challenges to do with depopulation, crewing and keeping themselves going. For example, the funding can be used to allocate and buy quota, so that local authorities can distribute it to new entrants, as happens to a limited degree in Orkney and in the Western Isles. I also want the funding to be aimed at new opportunities. This summer, an 800 lb tuna was landed in my constituency from the North Atlantic, and it is to be sold at a famous market in Tokyo. Those are the kind of schemes, places, and fishing and coastal communities that the fund should be aimed at; we should not just funnel the money to the already wealthy quota barons who dominate the industry and the airwaves.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Energy Security: North Sea Gas and Oil · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State agree with me that the Conservatives have got a cheek? Some 77,000 jobs drifted out of the North sea under their Government, and they did not lift a finger. This Government, along with the Scottish Government, invested £18 million in a transition fund to help oil and gas workers move into energy jobs. That will be an uneven transition, but it is an inevitable one. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is what comes from having a Government with an industrial strategy that puts workers first?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for organising this debate—he is as much an institution as the Scottish Parliament itself. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray) speaks about the Scottish Parliament being the heartbeat of Scottish politics. Is it not time, in the next 25 years, to devolve power from Edinburgh to regions like mine and the highlands, to super-charge the Highlands and Islands Enterprise into a highland development agency, cutting out—shut your ears—those dynamos of economic activity, Inverness and the Moray firth, and to focus devolved power on transport, housing, depopulation and economic and cultural growth in rural areas of Scotland? Powers have been pulled back from them into a centralised Edinburgh.

• 21 Oct 2025 · Electricity Infrastructure: Rural Communities · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to the hon. Member for securing the debate. I gently remind him that there is an alternative to opposition: participation. In the Western Isles we have the highest level of community-owned wind farms in Britain: 22 MW, alleviating fuel poverty and powering community economics. Our council is ready to take a 20% stake in two big wind farms, leaving the local authority—one of the smallest local authorities in Britain—in charge of 89 MW of power on an island chain with a daily demand of 39 MW. Do the maths: the communities benefit. GB Energy has been set up with substantial sums for community involvement and I ask the hon. Member to consider what my island community and communities across the highlands and rural areas have done: buy in, participate and have a share. People might object to the pylons going past them, but they really object to the profits going past them. By having community participation, and a community share, we can make sure that communities benefit.

• 15 Oct 2025 · Community Helipads: Rural Access · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for raising this issue. His situation is not unique; we have a similar one in the Western Isles, at the Stornoway hospital. The Scottish air ambulance helicopter is perfectly free to land at the hospital helipad, but the health board has had to set up an alternative site for the search and rescue helicopter, some distance from the hospital. It should not be beyond the wit of Government or legality to close that gap, by giving a derogation and some assurance to the search and rescue operators—currently Bristow—that they will be able to land at designated helipads for hospitals, not just in Portree and Stornoway, but across Scotland, where I understand that this problem affects some 23 sites. It would be good if the Minister could find a way of bringing two helipads into one space.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Energy Profits Levy: North-east Scotland · Hansard source

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  I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for securing the debate. I share her passion for her constituents and their work in the North sea, because my constituents, over three generations, have done the same work, and I want to see people working in the North sea for another three generations. Does she accept that some 77,000 jobs in the North sea went on the watch of the last Government, and that the move from fossil fuels to renewables is inevitable and must be managed by things like passporting people into jobs? We must be honest about the fact that offshore jobs are dangerous. I pay tribute to the people who have gone out there for the past 50 years to earn our energy security. The danger that they put themselves in is simply not the same in the renewables sector. Does she accept that we must balance the move from gas and oil in the North sea to renewables in the wild Atlantic, probably, with a managed transition that looks after our communities? However, that does not make it an either/or question of having either carbon from oil and gas in the North sea or onshore and offshore renewables. We can and will do both, and this Government should be committed to both for another 40 years.

• 11 Sept 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Industry · Hansard source

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  On the subject of aviation, the beautiful Isle of Barra airport in my constituency has had to cancel 14% of its flights in the last year on the beautiful beach runway. This is not, on the whole, due to bad weather or tides, but because the Brexiteering Tories withdrew us from the European satellite navigation system, which allows flights to land in low visibility and bad weather. Will the new Minister celebrate his role by meeting me on the beach to discuss rejoining—perhaps not the European Union but at least the European geostationary navigation overlay service, EGNOS?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Digital Exclusion: Na h-Eileanan an Iar · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Secretary of State and her friendly-faced team to their posts. I also welcome the millions going into Project Gigabit. However, that money is finding its way into Openreach’s coffers but not to the end of the road in the Western Isles. I have many constituents, including two in my own village of Swordale, who have built their homes and have all the utilities except broadband. The cabinet is just a couple of hundred metres away, but why should Openreach throw the switch? It has made millions from installation down the spine of the islands, but it is not going the last few yards. Can the Secretary of State press Openreach to go those last few yards and look at the physical infrastructure access costs that other providers have to pay for legacies like copper wiring and wooden poles from another era?

• 10 Sept 2025 · Digital Exclusion: Na h-Eileanan an Iar · Hansard source

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  1. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to reduce digital exclusion in Na h-Eileanan an Iar constituency.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Remote Coastal Communities · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. He is Labour’s south by south-west to my north by north-west. It is good to have our communities connected to a Government who make change for rural areas and coastal communities. My constituency has much in common with his; it faces the same challenges of connectivity, demographics and housing, and it also has the same potential with fisheries, the people themselves, the culture, the language and the renewables resource, which all of the community should have a share in. Does he agree that we need not only more central Government support, but more devolution? My constituency has been badly treated by devolution: we faced the ferry fiasco that has cost half a billion pounds; we have faced the farce of highly protected marine areas being imposed on us by devolved Government that would have closed down our entire fishery; and because of depopulation, we face the fiasco of reduced funding—being punished for people moving away. Does he agree that we need not only more central Government support, but more power in these peripheral areas so that we can run our own affairs?