Jackdaw Gas Field

Debate between Baroness Curran and Lord Bruce of Bennachie

Tuesday 27th October 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Curran (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. I believe in proactive government, and I am very happy to take a message back to Whitehall to say that we need to be much more assertive and proactive in defending not just our energy interests but the general interests of the country. I am happy to take that energy back—if I can. The Australian model is interesting and is something I want to look at.

Storage has been raised here a number of times. I have gone back to the department constantly to ask questions about storage and have had reassurance about that, but it is something I will continue to look at. The noble Lord is right: we need to look after the interests of British workers and industries, making sure we can extract every possible opportunity from that. Every penny the Government spend should be considered within that frame, and I will go back and pursue that. I do not know whether my team will always agree with me, but I am happy to challenge bureaucracy at all times.

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords, right now the economy of Aberdeen, in the north-east of Scotland, is hurting badly. The decision on Jackdaw has been welcomed and will be extremely helpful to the situation. By the way, I was an early supporter of targets for net zero, which I support 100%, and I am very concerned that the Conservatives have now abandoned that, because they are creating confusion in the markets for both retail and investment. We need to ensure that we deliver net zero, which is not incompatible with developing oil and gas reserves. My plea for Rosebank is: yes, it will have emissions, but those emissions will happen whether the oil is produced here or elsewhere. The logic is to produce it here at lower carbon and get the benefit of investment, jobs and taxes. I know the Minister cannot answer the question, but it is important that this is put on record as a legitimate reason for considering it positively.

[Baroness Curran (Lab)]

Yes, and of course the noble Lord will take the opportunity to put such matters on the record, because he knows that Jackdaw did not prejudge any other application and it will be looked at on its merits. I agree with his fundamental assertion and the generality that it is possible to still extract gas from the North Sea but also maintain our climate commitments, and we should not lose our energy on tackling the climate crisis. We have a responsibility here to tell the British public about what is happening and the potential difficulties and challenges that we face after this summer—we should all be alert to that. I share the noble Lord’s challenge to the Conservatives, who I think we are just about to hear from.

Defence Industrial Strategy 2025: Economic Growth and Job Creation

Debate between Baroness Curran and Lord Bruce of Bennachie

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Curran (Lab)]

My Lords—

Constitutional Law

Debate between Baroness Curran and Lord Bruce of Bennachie

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Curran]

For many years I have argued with the SNP, which wants to say that the problem facing Scotland is the English. I say that the problem facing Scotland at the moment is the Tories and the SNP. The SNP is imposing college cuts, and making Scotland one of the nations of the United Kingdom with the highest increases in unemployment. The hon. Gentleman would be well fit to look to his own party to see the damage it is inflicting in Scotland, instead of always trying to hide behind the blanket of independence—[Interruption]—although I thank him for that encouragement to energise this debate.

The order we are debating today demonstrates that devolution has been a success. It has empowered Scots and given our nation a new sense of confidence. With it, we have modernised and changed Britain and the way we govern ourselves. Labour Members will take the opportunity that the referendum presents us with to make the argument for a prosperous Scotland within a United Kingdom, backed up by a strong devolution settlement. We will be arguing against the nationalists, who would stop devolution in its tracks just 15 years after we set out on this journey and after it has been so successful. At the end of this process, that means that perhaps we can finally heed the advice of Scotland’s first First Minister.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady think that the SNP might be better prepared for the situation we are in today if it had taken any part in the reform process that has delivered devolution and home rule to date?

[Margaret Curran]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which affords me the opportunity to draw attention to the fact that those who opposed devolution—perhaps most strongly at some points—were those in the Scottish National party, which never participated on any multi-party basis to give Scotland the constitutional agreement that we now have. In fact, many of us who were prepared to work with others—and who demonstrated that we could do so—did, in fact, work in the best interests of Scotland.

The right hon. Gentleman also allows me to make the point—which I was just about to make—that we should heed the advice of Scotland’s first First Minister, Donald Dewar, who said in 1998:

“The…decade must not be one long embittering fight over further constitutional change. For me, the question now is what we do with our Parliament, not what we do to it.”

In these challenging economic times, perhaps we should focus our minds on the powers of the Scottish Parliament and question how they are being exercised at the moment. That, too, should occupy our energies.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Baroness Curran and Lord Bruce of Bennachie

Thursday 27th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Malcolm Bruce]

On the models that I have seen, the reverse is the case, particularly at a time of public spending constraint. The point is that it will depend on changes over time—some years it will be up and some years it will be down. However, the proposals provide the potential for successful economic management to provide genuine benefit.

I would give more credibility to the SNP claims that the measures are inadequate to grow the Scottish economy if its record in government showed that it was using the powers it currently has in ways that will grow the Scottish economy, but it has not done that. We have seen a succession of populist consumer gimmicks; almost a complete collapse in public investment; and the slow strangulation of local autonomy. Local councils have less and less control and more and more centralised management through the freezing of council tax. There is effectively less flexibility across Scotland to gear responses to meet local needs.

[Margaret Curran]

Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the Scottish Futures Trust? Does he see that as a model for using the levers appropriately to grow the Scottish economy?

[Malcolm Bruce]

My next paragraph relates to my constituency, and I am sure the hon. Lady can predict the answer to that question. I did not have a problem with the SNP saying that there were weaknesses in the public-private partnership method of financing, and that it wanted to look for a better method. I had a big problem with it abandoning all those projects and failing to come up with a better method, leaving us in total limbo. That has been catastrophic for investment in Scotland—catastrophic, not just seriously bad.

I am fortunate, privileged and honoured to represent the dynamic economy of the north-east of Scotland, which is probably the most dynamic economy in the whole of the United Kingdom at the moment. I and my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Sir Robert Smith) represent the constituencies with the lowest unemployment rates in the United Kingdom. I appreciate that other hon. Members face serious problems of unemployment in their constituencies, so I am not boasting about this; I am simply acknowledging it. The point is that Scotland has a region with the capacity to deliver economic growth, yet the Scottish Government have conspicuously failed to deliver what they should have been doing to facilitate that growth.

There is no Aberdeen bypass. The Scottish Government today announced the go-ahead for an upgrade of the A90 north of Aberdeen. I am glad about that, but all they have done is to announce, a year after the public inquiry, that they intend to go ahead with it. There is no date, and it is dependent on the resolution of the western peripheral route, which is still subject to legal argument. When the SNP loses office in May, not one stretch of tarmac will have been laid and not one ditch will have been dug—nothing will have happened on the ground.