Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Iain Stewart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only are the two overbudget ferries languishing in the yard, but the head of CalMac’s engineering division has revealed that the existing vessels could fail at any time. At the weekend, he said that there are no spare ferries, so stand-ins are deployed from other services when one goes out of action, and that has a knock-on effect on other routes. The ships are so basic

“we do not have time to do deep maintenance.”

It was reported that more than a third of CalMac’s fleet is beyond its 30-year design life, making breakdowns more likely. These are the issues on which the Scottish Government should be concentrating, rather than an unnecessary and unwanted rerun of the independence referendum.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Does the Minister agree with the Minister for the Armed Forces, who went on the record last week to confirm that the record of warship building in Scotland is based on engineering excellence, outstanding quality and the role of higher education in defence manufacturing in Scotland? It is not charity or any kind of gesture politics; it is about skill and ability.

[Iain Stewart]

Scotland has a long and proud history of shipbuilding. What I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that the biggest threat to future orders is his party’s plan to break up the United Kingdom.

Sue Gray Report

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman will find the answers to his questions in the Sue Gray report. I really do not have anything more to add.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

By the actions of this Prime Minister, standards of public life in the UK now lie face down in the gutter. The Prime Minister wants us all to move on, collectively. Well, let me assure this derailed Prime Minister, there is no collective in Scotland of which he is a part. As his authority lies festering in a steaming pile of incredulity, will he set out to the people of Scotland the productive and positive role he will play with the Scottish Government in allowing and enacting a referendum on independence, so that we can finally free ourselves of exactly the type of behaviour he typifies?

[The Prime Minister]

I will continue to work productively with the Government in Scotland, as we did throughout the pandemic, not least in delivering the fastest vaccine roll-out in Europe, the furlough programme and everything else that we did together, which shows that we are stronger together.

Draft Public Procurement (International Trade Agreements) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 General Committees

[Rachel Hopkins (Luton South) (Lab)]

We have no further points to add and will not be pressing the regulations to a vote.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

We have nothing to add, Chair.

[The Chair]

Does the Minister have anything to add?

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Victoria Atkins)]

Is that not a sign of a community as a whole taking action, not just to reduce crime but to try to ensure that the young men my hon. Friend describes get on the straight and narrow and start to build healthy and happy lives for themselves? I would be delighted to discuss that further with him. I know for a fact that he has a superb police and crime commissioner, who I am sure will be supporting A Band of Brothers helpfully and meaningfully.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that police officer numbers play a key role in reducing crime and reoffending, so what plans does he have to increase England’s officer level of 23 officers per 10,000 people to bring it closer to Scotland’s of 32 per 10,000 people?

[The Minister for Crime and Policing (Kit Malthouse)]

Mr Speaker, as you know, the Government are in the middle of a huge recruitment drive of police officers. We have, happily, increased the number by 13,500, and I am confident that by the end of the financial year we will have hit our 20,000 target.

Referral of Prime Minister to Committee of Privileges

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I say at the outset that apologies are one thing, but apologies that are made in the wholesale absence of any evidence of repentance are not worth a button. I am pleased to stand and speak for the many Angus constituents—almost 100 now—who have written to articulate their outrage at this debacle of accountability at the feet of this Prime Minister. He was always a questionable choice to lead the Conservative party because he would inevitably have become—indeed, he immediately became—Prime Minister under the politics of that time. He was the indiscreet, verbose showman that the Conservatives seemingly required to unlock the Brexit impasse in this place. It was always going to be a high-risk strategy, and the chickens have now come home to roost. If the Tories claim to have got Brexit done—which in itself is a questionable assertion that rests uncomfortably with the truth—why are they so reluctant to dispose of their one-trick-pony leader?

I say this in all candour: with this train crash of a Prime Minister, it was always going to be a question of when, not if. If the reputational capital and parliamentary respect that the Prime Minister is furiously feeding off to keep himself on political life support is a function of a zero-sum game, that which he is gorging upon is coming at a direct and equal cost to all Conservative Members, because they have the ability to stand up for what is right and remove him. More seriously, it is also coming at a cost to the public’s faith in political leadership, such as it is, except, I am pleased to say, in Scotland, where Scottish Tory voters—including in my Angus constituency—needed to take only one look at this Prime Minister for Tory seats in Scotland to fall by 55% at the 2019 election. Only two Scottish Tory MPs were present for this debate today. They are not in their place now, and the Scottish Tory leader never showed up at all.

The Prime Minister’s vacuous claim that he must stay in office to help with the cost of living crisis and the crisis in Ukraine is a grotesque contortion of reality and history. In reality, the UK Government under this Prime Minister are adding to the cost of living crisis with tax increases heaped upon soaring fuel and food prices. In France they are in the final throes of a presidential election while supporting Ukraine. Politics is not displaced by conflict; quite the opposite, in fact. In historical terms, the UK and other nations wasted no time in changing leaders ahead of or during two world wars, so this charade is little more than a disgraced Prime Minister desperately seeking to attach himself to a convenient cause to distract from his now trademark injudicious character.

I know that Conservative Members get this. We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who is no longer in his place. His excellent speech highlighted the risks to the parliamentary and democratic reputation if the Prime Minister does not take responsibility. Similarly, the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) made his position on the Prime Minister clear earlier this week. The public have not forgotten the nature and letter of the rules or the immeasurable constraints on their lives and freedoms during lockdown. As other hon. and right hon. Members have said, it is inconceivable that there was any grey area over these parties and bring-your-own-booze-ups.

The Prime Minister’s refusal to go is beyond acceptable. These views are shared by constituents up and down these isles, not just in Angus. My constituent Nicola Livingstone has pointed out:

“The Prime Minister’s refusal to go and the Conservative party’s acquiescence undermine the rule of law and any trust in political institutions. The Conservative party’s tawdry self-preservation is an insult to the nation and to the behaviours we expect from our leaders. It will be profoundly damaging to our faith in Government at a time when it is already dangerously low.”

I deeply regret that the Government have weakly withdrawn their amendment. I look forward to ensuring that we can put on record our position on this matter in the voting Lobby today.

Easter Recess: Government Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank her. Look, I cannot offer any further commentary on the investigation. All I can do is renew and repeat the apologies I have given to her constituents, whether they accept them or not.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Only this Prime Minister could have, together with his staff, laughed up their sleeves believing they were above the law and demonstrated to an entire country that they are beneath the public’s respect, more accurately. Vacuous self-congratulations from the Tory opposite about the role that the Government are playing in Ukraine are a disservice to the service men and women who are in country, doing the spade work, protecting democracy. To use the bloodshed of the fallen Ukrainians as some sort of political cover to keep this Prime Minister in office, is an utter disgrace, but no less than my Angus constituents have come to expect. This Government are compounding the cost of living crisis, but we are led to believe that that, together with the Ukraine crisis, is why we must endure this Prime Minister. So let me test his knowledge. What anti-ship missiles will his Government be sending to Ukraine? If he cannot answer that simple question, will he resign?

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. One of the systems that we are looking at, since he asks, is to see if we can mount some Brimstones on the back of technicals to see if that will do the job, but there are other options that I do not want to discuss.

Sue Gray Report

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The police are independent and they must get on with their inquiry.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

This reads like a dreadful, poorly written soap opera—an unbelievable soap opera. I hear Government Members say how important it is to their constituents to go into the detail, but my constituents are incandescent at the behaviour of this Prime Minister. Will he accept the damage he is doing to the office of elected representative—to all of us—and will he do the right thing and clear out?

[The Prime Minister]

No, for the reasons I have already given.

Covid-19 Update

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 19th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent summary of what I was trying to say in response to the hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting). It would have been a great thing—a fine thing—throughout the pandemic to have had useful advice and co-operation from the Opposition. We did not get it, but I think we have taken the right decisions on the whole and we have got the big calls right.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

I take this opportunity to thank staff at NHS Tayside and the Angus Health and Social Care Partnership for their tremendous work. If we look at the covid heat map across the United Kingdom as of 18 January, almost all of England is in the top two of four categories for infections per 100,000, whereas all of Wales and Scotland are in the bottom two. Why is now the time to reduce control measures in England? Is it on the basis of public health advice or is the Prime Minister having to kowtow to the febrile ambitions of his Back Benchers on whom his future now depends?

[The Prime Minister]

Really, that is a complete travesty. If we look at the numbers, as I think even the Opposition Front-Bench team have accepted, we can see that they are going down in all age groups across the country. What is interesting is that hospitalisations have not only stabilised but started to come down, which has always been the most important thing for me. That is why this is a sensible and proportionate step to take, but I have to remind him and everybody that it is still important to be cautious, and I am sure he will be.

Non-UK Armed Forces Personnel: Immigration Requirements

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. and gallant Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for securing this important debate—would that we did not have to debate the issue, however.

Commonwealth personnel have for decades fulfilled a vital role in the UK armed forces and have ensured that skills are maintained across the board. It is therefore disappointing to be once again debating immigration issues relating to these personnel that should have been dealt with years ago, and most certainly could have been dealt with during the passage of the Armed Forces Act 2021 or the Nationality and Borders Bill. Hon. Members from across the House repeatedly raise this issue, on account of its status as a national disgrace, and this Government repeatedly fail to act. On the one hand, Ministers talk up the importance of our personnel, but on the other, they create a hierarchy within our veteran community.

It is, frankly, scandalous to ask people to put their life on the line to serve the United Kingdom, and then to charge them thousands of pounds for the right to live in the state that they defended. Their families pay a high price, too, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) pointed out, and many find themselves living apart from their loved ones and partners. We should do everything that we can to ensure that families are held together and supported; instead, we find the Government separating members of the armed forces from their families and then hitting them with exorbitant visa fees.

Commonwealth personnel are vital in all three services, and are increasingly important because of the serious issues with recruitment in the United Kingdom. The Defence Committee noted that the Government’s 10-year partnership with Capita has been “abysmal since it started”, and that Capita has

“failed to meet the Army’s recruitment targets every single year of the contract”.

The Army has embarked on further recruitment campaigns across the Commonwealth to ensure we have the minimum troop numbers required to properly defend the state. Commonwealth citizens who have stepped forward to fill the gaps deserve to be rewarded, not penalised, but it seems as though the UK Government would prefer to do the latter.

The Government must seriously reconsider the income requirements for Commonwealth serving personnel who wish to have their family join them in the United Kingdom. The minimum income requirement is currently £18,600 for a spouse, and an additional £3,800 for a first child and £2,400 for children thereafter. That is not reasonable or realistic today, and the role of the Gurkhas and other Commonwealth serving personnel over the decades, and during the first and second world wars, shows that this is a historical scandal as well.

If families meet the minimum income requirement, they are then hit with visa application fees, which have more than doubled in the last five years to £2,389 per person. We are talking about nearly £10,000 for a family of four. As the hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) said, this is a curious type of gratitude for the UK to dish out. The UK Government are also on the wrong side of the Royal British Legion and Poppyscotland on this matter, which is really not a good look.

In addition, the families left behind by Commonwealth personnel serving in the UK can be severely affected. My hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Drew Hendry) recently mounted a campaign for his constituent Denis Omondi, a British citizen serving in the Army. His daughter, living in Kenya, was denied a visa, despite him having uncontested custody, to come and live with him in the United Kingdom. Thankfully, because of my hon. Friend’s campaign, the Home Office made a U-turn on that decision, but these cases are not unique.

Exemption from UK immigration control ends when the person is discharged from the armed forces. They have only 28 days from then to apply to remain in the UK, if they have not already done so. That relies on the person overseeing the discharge process having knowledge of the immigration rules and communicating it clearly and effectively. Unfortunately, as we know, that does not always happen.

The woeful example of the Fijian military, which other Members have mentioned, highlights that very clearly.

After independence, Scotland will, like many countries, engage in attracting talent from abroad to help populate our armed forces and other key public services. However, unlike the UK, Scotland’s esteem for service personnel from abroad will not end with their signing, only to be replaced with a hostile environment and a £10,000 bill to continue living in Scotland at the end of their service.

The SNP has been clear that after three years of full-time service, non-UK citizens who have served in the armed forces should be recognised with an automatic right to citizenship. As set out in our 2019 manifesto, the UK Government must remove the visa fees for Commonwealth armed forces personnel and their immediate families when applying for indefinite leave to remain.

In closing, will the Minister afford the Ministry of Defence sufficient latitude to fix these problems, right these wrongs and restore some justice to this process, or will we be back here, debating this again, in 12 months’ time?

Afghanistan

Dave Doogan Excerpts

Wednesday 18th August 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The humanitarian disaster unfolding in front of our eyes is a political failure rather than a military one, and I think it is important that this House recognises that. The work of our armed forces who were sent into Afghanistan to achieve what many believed at the time was a near-impossible, and certainly dangerously idealistic, ambition prevailed in military terms. I was working in the MOD in 2001 just before military operations in Afghanistan got under way. At a meeting of the MOD and industry in Yeovil, I recall clearly the universal incredulity at the idea that this intervention in a theatre that had previously humbled both the British and the Soviet Union could ever conceivably end well—and so it has come to pass.

The media reported last week the unbelievable pace with which the Taliban advanced across the country, but why was that such a shock? Perhaps the Government can explain why they were so ill prepared. Many observers, myself included, do not think for one minute that there was a failure of military intelligence; rather, we think that there was a failure of Ministers to act on it. This House and the public at large need to know whether civilian officials and intelligence analysts are at liberty to convey difficult and unwelcome messages to senior Ministers in this Government, and that those same Ministers will act in the national interest rather than on any more expedient or transient priority.

Can the Government tell the veterans and their families in Angus and across these islands what this was all for—not the intention or the ambition of the dedicated and successful military operations, but the outcome and the consequences? What is the legacy of those people’s bravery, sacrifice and loss? I want to highlight to the Defence Secretary the correspondence I have received from my constituent, a former company commander in 2011 in Operation Herrick. He shares the chilling email he got from his former translator—with whom he keeps in touch, such are the bonds forged in combat—and his Afghan friend’s plight in trying to exit the country through the UK embassy with his family. I will send on the details to the Defence Secretary and the Foreign Secretary, who I am sure will both give them dedicated support. Then there are the civilians and NGOs, who endured no small measure of risk and hardship to apply their skills and expertise in the service of Afghanistan and her people. What of their work to build order and systems of just administration, and challenge endemic corruption? What remains of those hard fought gains and of civil society—those brave Afghan souls, many of them women, who stepped into the space that we created for them and took up roles supporting the UK and its allies?

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

rose—

[Dave Doogan]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Perkins]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have put in place a three-minute time limit. Every time Members from certain parties get to the end of their speeches, they add on another minute by taking an intervention. Is it not a huge discourtesy to everyone on your list who is going to miss out for them to add on a minute every time they do not think the time limit is long enough?

[Gavin Newlands]

I should point out to the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) that we are six hours into the debate and this is the second SNP Back-Bench speech on this important issue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) mentioned women and girls. The Taliban have said that they are committed to the rights of women. Does he agree with me that these misogynist thugs see women as third-class people and chattels only there to serve men, and that this House cannot believe a word the Taliban say about the rights of women?

[Dave Doogan]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. As many hon. and right hon. Members have observed this afternoon, the Taliban need to be judged on their actions, not on their words.

Against this new reality, it is beyond credibility that the Foreign Secretary has publicly claimed that the UK will hold the Taliban to account. What does that mean? By what means and to what end would this be done? It would suit the Foreign Secretary better to fully restore the foreign aid budget, rather than issuing abstract and random threats to a regime that has just shown the UK the door. Five thousand refugees this year is not commensurate with the scenes in Kabul of people literally running for their lives and clinging to aircraft, and a hazy figure of 20,000, over what period we are not certain, is insubstantial to say the least, given the circumstances.

In closing, I urge the Government and the Prime Minister to review and expedite this element of the UK’s response, including through a cogent plan to extricate brave Afghans who are not already in Kabul. The UK was front and centre at the genesis of this political catastrophe. It should be similarly positioned for the clear-up.