Dawn Sturgess Inquiry
Dave Doogan Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Dan Jarvis
I am, as always, grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the expertise and experience that he brings to these matters, not least given his very long-standing service on two relevant Committees in this place. He mentioned Counter Terrorism Policing. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work that they do. I have a very good and close working relationship with CTP. They do extraordinary work and it is a privilege to stand alongside them. They are exceptional in the work that they do.
It is in part a symptom of the work that the previous Government and this Government have done to make the UK the hardest possible operating environment that increasingly Russia and other malign states are seeking to use criminal proxies to do their bidding and business in the United Kingdom. There is a lot of work taking place, not only across Government but with our allies in Europe, who we are working very closely with, and further afield to ensure that we are best placed to target malign states that are using criminal proxies. The director general of MI5 referenced that in his recent annual lecture on the threats we face.
On the right hon. Member’s point about the UK being a hard target, he will understand better than most that I am very limited in what I can say about that, and that it would be unwise to give detail that would be helpful to our adversaries. However, I can give him an assurance of the seriousness with which we take these matters. He raised an important point about dissidents. It is an issue that I keep under very close review. We make sure that we have the right mechanisms in place to provide security.
The right hon. Member’s point about chemical weapons was well made. We work very closely with our international allies to ensure that we are doing everything that we can to minimise the risk and threat. It is not easy work, and there are no guarantees of its success, but I give an assurance of the seriousness with which we take it. Our approach is to work closely with our allies.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
I join the Security Minister in acknowledging the memory of Dawn Sturgess, and the sacrifice made by Dawn’s partner Charlie, Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey and the fearless first responders. In the seven years since this attack, an emboldened Putin has increased his aggression across Europe. Can the Minister assure the House that all the lessons that come out of this inquiry will be acted on in full? Will the UK Government continue to work with our EU partners in standing up to Putin’s aggression in Europe? Will the Government underscore the point that our multilateral defence of the international rules-based order is our strength, and his isolationist aggression will forever be his weakness?
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful to the hon. Member for his comments, and I can give him the assurances that he seeks. As he will acknowledge, the report was published less than a couple of hours ago, but the Government will look very carefully at its findings. I give him and the House an assurance that where there is a requirement to act, we will not hesitate to do so.
The hon. Member’s point about our EU partners was well made. We value our relationships with our neighbours, EU partners and Five Eyes colleagues, and I recently met members of the G7 to discuss these matters. When it comes to standing up to the threats that we face, we are much stronger when we join up with our international partners, and that is the right approach. I completely agree with what the hon. Member said about the rules-based order; I am sure that all Members of this House do. That is the right approach. Respecting international law and standing with our allies is the best way to defeat Putin.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Wales (Jo Stevens)
I have regular discussions with the Chancellor and Treasury Ministers on a wide range of issues, including the cost of living. This Labour Government are on the side of working people. That is why we have already taken action by increasing the national minimum wage and the national living wage for 160,000 workers across Wales. We have frozen fuel duty and extended the warm home discount. There is more to do, and we are determined to put more money into people’s pockets right across Wales.
Dave Doogan
A century of Labour taking the people of Wales for granted came crashing down last week with the sensational victory of Plaid’s Lindsay Whittle in Caerphilly, with Labour reduced to third place. Why would anybody accept any more Labour, as Labour’s cost of living soars, its Westminster perma-crisis deepens, and 700,000 people in Wales live under its poverty prospectus? The Secretary of State will not say what she is going to speak to the Chancellor about, but does she think the Chancellor is ready and willing to help the people of Wales? The people of Wales feel abandoned by Labour over the last five decades.
Jo Stevens
I am not sure whether the hon. Member has ever been to Caerphilly or even to Wales. If he has, that is good; if he has not, he needs to be careful about what he says about the people in Wales. He absolutely does not know what he is talking about. His party’s record in Scotland is nothing to boast about. Nationalists will divide the United Kingdom, costing Wales £21.5 billion every single year.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(7 months, 1 week ago)
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Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Wales (Jo Stevens)
We are negotiating a new partnership with the EU and believe that securing a broad-based security partnership, bringing closer co-operation on law and order and tackling barriers to trade will boost our economies, keep us safe and improve families’ finances. Since coming into government, I have worked with UK and Welsh Government colleagues to drive more than £1.5 billion in private investment into Wales from the likes of Eren Holding and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, creating hundreds of jobs and laying the groundwork for thousands more.
Dave Doogan
Only this Government can deliver cold comfort and warm words all in the same sentence. The fact of the matter is that, after the Labour-Tory hard Brexit, the Welsh economy suffered by £4 billion, trade has gone down by £1 billion and Wales has lost £1 billion in European structural and development funding. On top of that, the Labour Budget has kicked Wales even further down the track. When will the Secretary of State stand up to her Westminster masters and finally do something in the interests of the people of Wales?
Jo Stevens
Welsh businesses both large and small tell us time and again that they are being held back by red tape. We need to tackle the barriers to trade in order to help drive investment, jobs and growth for both the UK and EU economies. Nationalists can continue their obsession with the constitution, putting up borders instead of breaking down barriers, and raising taxes on working people, as they have done in Scotland.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(9 months ago)
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The Prime Minister
This is a really serious issue. The hon. Gentleman has let himself down, and he knows it. I expect all trusts and healthcare providers to take necessary action against any staff who have expressed views that do not reflect the views and values of the NHS.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
As the hon. Gentleman knows, and as the House knows, I am committed to strengthening those relations. The United States is an indispensable ally, and we are working together to try to secure a just and lasting peace in Ukraine. I have spoken to the President on a number of occasions, including this week.
Dave Doogan
I agree with those sentiments. This week’s ceasefire negotiations are a cause for great optimism, and I welcome the efforts of the Prime Minister’s national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, in leading on that priority. However, last week the Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box, in answer to my right hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), that he had no knowledge of the United States’ planning to withdraw military aid from Ukraine, which the United States did the following day. It is against that backdrop that I ask the Prime Minister—because I know he wants a just and lasting peace in Ukraine that respects Ukraine’s borders and territorial integrity—what reassurance he can give the House that when he is impressing that priority on the President of the United States, the President is actually listening.
The Prime Minister
Let me give this reassurance. As soon as that step was taken, my team and I started work to try to ensure that we could return to a situation of full support for Ukraine. I will not detail everything that was involved over the last week, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that a huge amount of hard work, discussions and diplomacy was used with all our allies, and others, to ensure that we could get yesterday to go as well as we hoped it would. I am pleased that we made progress—I think that is very important for Ukraine—and I am extremely pleased that support has been put in, backed by the UK. So that is what I did once I understood what had happened. I am pleased with where we have got to, but, as ever, we must go further.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(9 months, 1 week ago)
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Ian Murray
I agree with the hon. Lady about the commitment given by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury at the Dispatch Box yesterday, and I reiterate that the only watering down of whisky in Scotland will be the little bit of water that some put in to taste.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Secretary of State will be well aware of the manifold range of family-owned businesses in Scotland, many of which are very large and trade with multimillion-pound balance sheets every year. The Chancellor’s move to change the rules on business property relief threatens at best these businesses being sold off to plcs and at worst their being liquidated to pay their liabilities to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. What assessment has the Scotland Office made of the potentially catastrophic implications for Scottish enterprise of the BPR changes in train from the Treasury?
Ian Murray
It seems to me that SNP Members decided when they came back to the House in July to defend the Conservative Government’s economic record. We inherited a £22 billion black hole, and when the Chancellor came to the Dispatch Box for the Budget, she had to fill that black hole and end austerity. It is what we promised, and it delivered £4.9 billion to the Scottish budget, which the hon. Gentleman’s party is intent on spending. This is the key point: SNP Members in this House have objected to every single measure in that Budget, but they are very happy to spend the money.
Defence and Security
Dave Doogan Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Prime Minister
That has to be done through the industrial strategy and the growth strategy that we will put in place, but it is vital that this is seen as not just a duty and responsibility, which it is, but as an opportunity for British businesses, and for well-paid, secure jobs, which are so vital to so many communities.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Prime Minister knows that he can rely on the support of the SNP when it comes to efforts to restore Ukrainian sovereignty in the face of Russian aggression, despite the baseless rhetoric from those on the Benches behind him. I would like him to acknowledge that.
I welcome the Prime Minister raising defence expenditure to 2.5%, albeit by 2027, which will be three years after the election, despite the pledge being in the Labour party’s manifesto. However, it cannot be right to balance the books at a cost to the poorest in global society, when there is a Government Budget of £1.1 trillion. When he goes to Washington on Thursday and gets his pat on the back from the President of the United States, will he spare a thought for those—predominantly women and children—who will suffer immeasurably, and some of whom will die, as a result of his decision today?
The Prime Minister
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support on Ukraine. The First Minister has set out that support in clear terms in recent days; that is important, and I acknowledge it. We have had to make difficult decisions, but as he and the House know, wherever there is war and conflict, it is the poor and the poorest who are hit hardest. There is no easy way through this, but we have to ensure that we win peace through strength, because anything other than peace will hit the very people the hon. Gentleman has identified harder than anybody else on the planet. That is why it is so important that we have taken the decision we have today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(10 months, 1 week ago)
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The Prime Minister
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to point out the failure of the Government in Scotland. They do not want to talk about that failure. They have got the powers, and they have got the resources; they just have not got any excuses left.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
The hon. Member asks about visiting Scotland. As he knows, my first visit, within days of becoming Prime Minister, was to Scotland, where I met the First Minister. I have also visited Scotland for the meeting of the Councils of the Nations and Regions in October, for the Interpol General Assembly in November and for the British Irish Council in Edinburgh in December. I look forward to going again very soon.
Dave Doogan
Interestingly, the Prime Minister could not tell me when he will next be visiting Scotland, but does he agree with the withering assessment of the eminent politics professor Sir John Curtice, who says that the current UK Prime Minister is
“the worst thing that ever happened to Anas Sarwar”?
If he does not—and he should—does he think that it is stripping Scottish pensioners of their winter fuel payment, abandoning workers in Grangemouth or attacking the national insurance payments of farmers that has catastrophically torpedoed Labour in the polls in Scotland? When he does get a date, he can even bring his Chancellor with him to back him up on the numbers—assuming that she is still Chancellor by then.
The Prime Minister
I remember when that rhetoric used to come from SNP Members sitting down there—
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(11 months, 3 weeks ago)
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The Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the people of Syria and to the health workers of all backgrounds who do vital work in our NHS. The fall of Assad’s brutal regime is to be welcomed and should be welcomed, but we must be cautious about what comes next. We have provided £50 million of extra support to vulnerable Syrians and I have spoken to G7 leaders to work towards a Syrian Government that respects international law, universal human rights and protects all citizens across all sectors.
Dave Doogan (Angus and Perthshire Glens) (SNP)
The Prime Minister
Scottish National party Members used to ask those questions from an area that contained a great many MPs not so long ago, but all that changed in July. Now the hon. Gentleman is carping right up there at the back, and we can hardly hear him.
Public Procurement
Dave Doogan Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The SNP does not oppose the draft Procurement Regulations 2024. Their context is a deeply unwelcome Brexit reality from Scotland’s point of view, but they are largely uncontentious and little more than one would expect under the framework established by the Procurement Act 2023. However, that framework is unsatisfactory to some extent, not for what it gives effect to but for what it does not safeguard against. The Act fails to mandate sufficient tax transparency for large multinationals bidding for public contracts—a profoundly basic requirement for those seeking to profit from public expenditure to be transparent about their own tax position and, therefore, it is a significant failure in the framework. The Act also fails to appropriately protect workers’ rights—never more important for workers in the UK, who face a growing threat to their employment rights, having been stripped of EU protections. It does not properly uphold the priority of social benefit from such contract awards.
Vitally, the Act fails to close the loopholes that allowed for the appalling Tory VIP lane for the procurement of personal protective equipment during the pandemic. If there is no institutional learning from that glaring and seismic misappropriation of public funds, it prompts the question of whether the omission is by dint of incompetence or by design, given the repeated denials of this Tory Government with respect to that particular crisis.
John Spellar
Some underlying reasons for the PPE failures were the lack of industrial capacity, the complete inability to communicate with industrial capacity, and the endless reliance on middle men who rushed off to China. Firms in this country could have done the job but had no way of getting access, as back-door routes were used, which dominated a lot of the newspapers.
Dave Doogan
The right hon. Member made a number of important points, not least that we allow the atrophy of our industrial base at our peril, particularly in times of crisis. It unduly compliments the Government to suggest that there was only an inability to communicate with ordinary firms in the United Kingdom—I am afraid that the circumstances around the Tory VIP lane were far more sinister than that. With that, I will make some progress.
A third of public expenditure—some £300 billion annually—is spent on public procurement, so it is essential that its regulation is not simply minimalist administrative housekeeping, but an ambitious plan to improve public procurement continuously. In the absence of any such ambition in these regulations, we can clearly see the sloping shoulders of a dying Administration content to pass on their responsibility for forging a public procurement system that benefits taxpayers, local suppliers, industry and service users alike to the next UK Government—God help us.
The SNP and Scotland more generally must, under the current constitutional settlement, concede to be bound by the regulations, for the time being at least. In so doing, however, we note that the Tory Government promised in 2019 to get Brexit done, yet they are still fumbling around with fundamental and basic legislation five years later, trying to implement what was their pipe dream, but is a bona fide nightmare for ordinary people across these islands. Still further regulation will be required to give full effect to the Procurement Act 2023, but it seems unlikely that it will be the same Government standing there to advance it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Dave Doogan Excerpts(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but I am afraid that she will have to refer to the answer I gave earlier. The Court judgment was handed down only earlier this morning; it is a complex case and we have more than 200 pages of judgment to consider. I do not even believe that the Government KC has gone through the ruling yet in any great detail. We were not given any notice beforehand of what might be in it, but obviously I pledge that we will consider Mr Justice Colton’s findings carefully. As I will continue to say, we remain committed to implementing the Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023, including delivery of the ICRIR.
Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)
The recent “Safeguarding the Union” Command Paper claimed to
“copper-fasten Northern Ireland’s political and constitutional place in the Union,”
yet the British-Irish agreement makes it clear that the agreed position is
“for the people of the island of Ireland alone, by agreement between the two parts respectively and without external impediment, to exercise their right of self-determination”.
How does the Secretary of State square that clear contradiction in the UK Government’s commitments to all the people of Northern Ireland?
Chris Heaton-Harris
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. First, getting the devolved institutions in strand 1 of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement running is of vital importance, because it means that the strand 2 institutions can work properly for everyone in all communities, and it also allows the strand 3 institutions to work in a better way, because they can include representatives such as the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, and bodies such as the British-Irish Council, so there is a whole host of things involved. The constitutional status of Northern Ireland obviously requires the consent of a simple majority of its people. All the provisions of the Belfast/Good Friday agreement still stand.