Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Douglas Ross

Thursday 19th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the right hon. Lady for raising this matter and for all her work through the all-party parliamentary group on haemophilia and contaminated blood, which she has chaired for many years. It is not lost on anyone that those individuals have waited far too long for redress in this appalling situation. I know that the Paymaster General feels that way, too, and I will ensure that he has heard her request for him to update the House.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

At its conference this weekend, an SNP MP said he was “sick and tired” of Scottish Conservatives speaking in Parliament about the A9. The Leader of the House will know that that is a crucial road between Perth and Inverness and up to Wick which the SNP promised would be fully dualled. That is not happening. Can we have a debate in this House to discuss that crucial infrastructure project? Perhaps the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) will attend and stand up for his constituents, rather than sit down and support the SNP Government’s failure to dual that road and the A96 through my constituency.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. I happened to see what I would describe as a spittle-flecked monologue, criticising members of the general public in Scotland for daring to voice their disappointment at the quality of the A9 and other road infrastructure. My advice to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) is that if he does not want the public to continually complain about things, he might dual those roads, as that project has been long overdue. The public should have decent roads for the taxes they pay.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Douglas Ross

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

This is an extremely important issue and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it. He will know that my right hon. Friend the Security Minister is leading a taskforce designed to protect and strengthen democracy, primarily in the UK, although it will also have benefits for other nations around the world. Our democracy is precious; we cannot take it for granted and, if people start to lose trust in it, the system will fail. Maintaining that trust is one of the most important jobs that we have in this House and I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman were to apply for a debate, it would be well attended.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

Can we have a debate about law enforcement across the United Kingdom? The Leader of the House will be aware that yesterday Scotland’s Chief Constable Sir Iain Livingstone confirmed that the initial probe into SNP finances, looking at fraud, has been expanded to look at possible embezzlement and misuse of funds. It has already seen the arrest of former First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, along with other senior SNP members. Does the Leader of the House agree that that shows how serious the investigation into the SNP’s murky finances is?

[Penny Mordaunt]

My hon. Friend’s question follows that asked by the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), about trust in democracy and our institutions. That is incredibly important. Whatever our differences and whichever side of the House we sit on, we should all be able to agree that trust and confidence in those systems are vital. That is why standards and having strong, democratic institutions matter.

We have had over 22 police investigations into the SNP. The original £600,000-plus that went missing has now been exceeded by the £800,000 in police time that has been spent on those investigations. It is a very sad and sorry state. Whatever shape future investigations take, I hope they are resolved swiftly, because this has been a sorry chapter.

Business of the House

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Douglas Ross

Thursday 6th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this important matter, which he may also wish to raise with the Health Secretary on 11 July. He will know that there has been a huge push in parts of the country where this is a particular issue, but of course it is relevant everywhere. One innovation, for example, is an automatic screening service for people who go into accident and emergency, which identifies those who may need further support and services. It is a good topic for a debate and I encourage him to answer the call of the Chairman of the Backbench Business Committee. I am sure that, if he applied for a debate, it would be well attended.

[Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)]

May we have a debate about rural colleges? I remind the Chamber that I am a former student of the Scottish Agricultural College, and, like many people across Scotland and the UK, I benefited from the experience of Hugh McClymont who has retired from Scotland’s Rural College after more than four decades. For 43 years, Hugh has been part of the fabric of SRUC and has been widely recognised for his contribution to Scottish education, dairy farming and grassland management. Will the Leader of the House join me in congratulating Hugh on his immense contribution to Scottish agriculture and thank him for the encouragement and support that he has provided to so many?

[Penny Mordaunt]

I am sure the whole House will want to join my hon. Friend in thanking Hugh for his long list of achievements and for the contributions he has made to that community in particular. Not least, I understand, he is responsible for Daisy, a life-size plastic cow that he took around various areas in 2012 to raise awareness of the Royal Highland Education Trust.

Leaving the EU: Impact on the UK

Debate between Penny Mordaunt and Douglas Ross

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Douglas Ross]

The SNP has allocated £600,000 to hold a referendum and campaign for one this year. The hon. Lady’s leader in this place, the right hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford), has said that the referendum should be in 2021. In the earlier debate, the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard) said it will happen in the next 12 months—whether it is in December or January of next year, it will be within a year. While we are still struggling to fight this pandemic, while we are still seeing lives lost and livelihoods on the line, the SNP priority is, as always, separation. That is their mandate and all they are interested in.

We also have had no comment from the SNP today, in a debate about Brexit and the EU, on the EU’s roll-out of the vaccination programme and how we in Scotland have benefited from decisions taken by the UK Government, led by the Prime Minister, to procure and develop vaccines right at the start of the pandemic. These vaccines are protecting people in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. How does our vaccine roll-out in this country compare with that in the rest of the EU, which the hon. Lady would like to take us straight back into?

The hon. Lady also spoke about all the great infrastructure that has been built and developed in Scotland during the SNP terms in office. I tried to intervene on that point, because I would be interested to know what she thinks of the actions of one of her party colleagues, an SNP Cabinet Minister in the Scottish Government, Fergus Ewing, writing to his own Government asking their Transport Secretary to give his constituency some good news ahead of purdah—ahead of the period in which the Scottish Government are not allowed to make any further announcements. SNP MPs know that their 14 years are coming back to haunt them: their inability to get ferries into the water and to get hospitals open to take patients. It has been a litany of failure over the past 14 years and it has come to the extent that SNP Ministers have to ask their own Government to try to sneak out some more information because they have let down so many communities.

[Penny Mordaunt]

I would just like to update the House by saying that the success of the vaccine programme in Scotland has meant that a third of the eligible population have been vaccinated, whereas the figure in France is just under 8%.

[Douglas Ross]

The Minister outlines the figures excellently. I know that my own parents have benefited—they have been vaccinated in the Fiona Elcock centre in Elgin. People across Moray and across Scotland have benefited because of the vaccine roll-out in the UK and in Scotland. I want to reiterate that the two debates from the SNP today have been all about division and arguments about the past, with no positive vision for the future. The Scottish Conservatives are determined over the next seven weeks that we focus on Scotland’s recovery and on building back better than before this pandemic struck. We will be supporting jobs and livelihoods and communities right across Scotland. The SNP just want more division and I think that people across Scotland are beginning to realise that after 14 years of failure we can do so much better than that.