Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dave Doogan and Alister Jack

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack]

My hon. Friend is a champion for this industry, and it is the UK Government’s ambition to increase planting across the United Kingdom. I know she is keen for productive forestry to be used to support the construction and manufacturing industries, which is also the Government’s ambition.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

Scotland, as in so much else, leads the way on forestry and tree planting, at 10,000 hectares, fully three quarters of all tree planting across these islands. Can the Secretary of State instruct the House on how, around the Cabinet table, he has championed Scotland’s progress in this area, or is he too cowering?

[Mr Jack]

Not only do I champion it, I plant trees myself.

Scotland Act 1998: Section 35 Power

Debate between Dave Doogan and Alister Jack

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jack]

I am not an expert on the Northern Ireland Bills, so I will not stray into that area, but we have been advised that protections and safeguards for women and children need to be looked in light of those adverse effects. That is what we are dealing with through section 35 of the Scotland Act.

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

You would think that before pulling the trigger on section 35 the Secretary of State would be absolutely across his brief, but it seems that he does not have a clue about this at all. We have heard very little about process and even less about substance. He says that the Bill would have a significant impact on, among other things, GB-wide equality matters in Scotland, England and Wales, so what consultation did he have with the Welsh Government or the Senedd before this drastic intervention, or is this really a priority issue for the de facto English Government? With independence looming larger than ever before this crumbling Union, is this not an act of desperate democratic vandalism?

[Mr Jack]

No. The Minister for Women and Equalities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), tells me that the UK Government consulted a number of years ago, and Wales would have been included in that consultation. The point is that there is no democratic vandalism, or whatever the hon. Gentleman was saying. The Act that contains section 35 is entirely democratic, and we are now using that order to protect women and children’s safeguards, which we believe are undermined by the cut-across in two GB-wide laws.

Scottish Referendum Legislation: Supreme Court Decision

Debate between Dave Doogan and Alister Jack

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

This is nothing short of parody. I have been an MP here for nearly three years and I have never heard a Minister say “I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer I gave some moments ago” as many times as this. That is because the so-called Secretary of State for Scotland has his back against the wall because he is denying democracy and democratic norms. He and all the other Tories say that we cannot have another referendum because we do not want to foment the division that exists around the constitutional space in Scotland—well, it exists already, so let us lance the boil. Let us have a referendum and find out what the people of Scotland want.

[Mr Jack]

To pick up on the hon. Gentleman’s first point, the reason I say that I have answered the question so many times before is that hon. Members are asking the same question time and again—it is just a little bit repetitive. The answer is quite simple. As I have explained many times before, the route to a referendum in 2014 involved consensus between both Governments, across all the political parties and across civic Scotland. We are far from being in that place now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Dave Doogan and Alister Jack

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP)]

The Secretary of State and his colleagues are given to chest-beating about the tremendous amount of revenue flowing to Scotland to get us through the pandemic—every penny of it, of course, borrowed. Will he tell me and the people of Scotland why those borrowing decisions are better made here than they would be by the people of Scotland in Scotland, and why we are habitually brow-beaten into being grateful for a service that we never asked for?

[Mr Jack]

The simple reason is that not only do we have a strong Bank of England underpinning a strong currency, in the pound, but we are one country with one currency and because we have a strong economy, we are able to borrow money at much better rates.