UK Infrastructure: 10-year Strategy

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I agree very much with my hon. Friend. Next week I will be meeting finance Ministers from the devolved Governments in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. We will put forward today’s update on our infrastructure strategy and seek to partner with them as best we can to deliver for people and places across the whole of Scotland. But given the track record of the SNP Government, I am afraid that I do not have a huge amount of confidence.

[Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)]

The denial in this statement is truly breathtaking. This UK Government could not come up with a 10-year strategy that would survive first contact with reality on anything, and the statement comes against a backdrop of challenging cuts off the backs of the poorest while we are fitting £10 million new doors to the House of Lords and providing £100 billion for a not-very-fast railway that will not be finished for some time.

There was nothing for Scotland in the Chancellor’s spending review, there is nothing for Scotland in this statement, and there is nothing for Scotland in the UK’s 10-year infrastructure working paper. On that latter document, it is interesting to note that it does not mention devolution, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland once. Does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury think that simply mentioning Acorn will make private capital hang around and wait for the Government to put a number on it? How much of this will be a rerun of Labour’s disastrous private finance initiative projects, which Scottish councils are still haemorrhaging money on, and why is he heralding working with the Welsh Government but not the SNP Scottish Government? Is he a democrat or not?

[Darren Jones]

That was a stream of slightly incoherent questions, if I may say so. I point the hon. Gentleman to the document that we have published today, which does mention Scotland quite a few times. He says that this Labour Government have not delivered anything for Scotland. I will just point him to the largest real-terms increase in funding since devolution began—his SNP colleagues might want to think about how they could spend that more wisely for the people of Scotland. That is in addition to the supercomputer in Edinburgh; the development funding for Acorn, and for carbon capture, usage and storage; and our defence spending, including on the Clyde—I could go on and on. The only people in denial are those in the SNP.