Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Debate between Nigel Evans and Dave Doogan

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan]

I do not know about you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I have just about heard enough from the hon. Member today. For the fourth time, Government Members’ association between the number of licences issued and the number of oil and gas jobs protected is specious at best. We have been accused by them—including, I think, the hon. Member—of wanting to put the oil and gas industry in Scotland to the sword. There is no such plan. The leader of the SNP and Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf was in Aberdeen just yesterday talking about how Scottish oil and gas workers must never be left behind.

I am disappointed in the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid)—I thought more of him—misquoting Humza Yousaf, who said that he would rather Aberdeen was not the oil and gas capital of Europe but the renewable energy capital of the world. That promises vastly more economic opportunity for workers in Scotland. Government Members had better start dealing with that.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind Members that this is a Third Reading and that we should not be reopening arguments that were heard in Committee or previous stages.

Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Nigel Evans and Dave Doogan

Report stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The hon. Gentleman mentioned a small issue that makes a big difference. The energy bills support scheme, which was very harsh, ended far too soon and has caused an awful lot of problems. This has been covered by Radio 4, and people have written letters about it—I have a letter here from Stourport, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who is a member of my Energy Security and Net Zero Committee. People the length and breadth of the UK are feeling the harshness of the Government’s penny-pinching and tight deadlines, and those who live in caravan parks or on boats are being especially hammered by this. This Government should listen and make a difference. One of the big things affecting people watching this debate today is that they are not getting that £400 for the last year.

[Dave Doogan]

I agree entirely, and I echo the calls from my Scottish National party Westminster leader, my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Stephen Flynn), who wants to see the £400 support package reintroduced. The idea that the pressure on household budgets from energy prices has somehow gone away is for the birds.

Energy security is not some abstract area of Government policy, nor is the purchase of energy a discretionary one for homes and businesses in our constituencies. Failing to legislate and plan strategically in this area, as Westminster has done in perpetuity, is the very reason people are facing the choice between heating and eating. It is the same reason that businesses across these islands have closed their doors due to energy costs. The exorbitant cost of energy in the UK is a function of supply-side constraint, and this Government have compounded that through incompetence, inaction, lack of ambition, penny-wise, pound-foolish misadventure and their obsession with nuclear.

Just imagine how much more perilous the situation for energy consumers in England would be if they never had Scotland’s energy powerhouse to shore up this Government’s incompetence and spaffing money on nuclear left, right and centre. This Bill was an opportunity to make up lost ground and catch up with functioning unions—the United States and the European Union—but as usual, the dysfunctional United Kingdom gets it wrong again, and it is ordinary taxpayers and bill payers who will pick up the pieces and pay the cost. There is one reason why households in energy-rich Scotland are facing fuel poverty and haemorrhaging household budgets on energy costs, and it is sitting in this Chamber: the UK Government.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind Members of the four-minute limit.

Ukraine

Debate between Nigel Evans and Dave Doogan

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valuable point. He asks whether I agree with him, and I am afraid that I do not. My understanding is that although tranche 1 Typhoons may have hours left, by the time the penalty factor for what they did when they were flying is applied, there would not be many hours left. They may look like Typhoons, but their combat air systems are very old, and they are perhaps not exactly what Ukraine is looking for. That is nevertheless a valid point, and it leads me directly to my next point.

Not a single Typhoon in the United Kingdom is available for use by Ukraine, which makes me wonder what we are training its pilots on—unless we are training them on NATO combat air standard protocol. That is all we can do, because they will not be getting Typhoons—mark my words—and they do not actually want Typhoons. People talk about getting pilots for Ukraine, but pilots are just the tip of the arrowhead. They need maintenance crews, avionics specialists, refuellers and armourers. The logistic tail for a fourth-generation combat aircraft is enormously long, and none is quite as long as the Typhoon’s. What Ukraine actually needs is something more akin to the Gripen or the F-16, and the United Kingdom does not have any of those. That means that the United Kingdom is just part of the puzzle of working with allies in NATO and in Europe. The Gripen in particular is ideally suited to the types of facilities that Ukraine will be able to operate from.

The Secretary of State said that Ukraine must “take back more land.” I wonder how he intends for Ukraine to do that without exercising air superiority. There will be a spring offensive, as I think most Members agree. We need to make sure that that offensive belongs to Ukraine.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I remind all Members that if they take part in the debate—not in an intervention but in a speech—they will be expected to be here for the wind-ups. I call Liz Truss.

Government's Management of the Economy

Debate between Nigel Evans and Dave Doogan

Tuesday 23rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dave Doogan (Angus) (SNP) [V]]

Tory economic incompetence is a rich seam to mine and it is a challenge to do justice to the millions of marginalised workers and families up and down these islands who pay the price of Tory policies. The Chancellor borrowed £55.2 billion in May 2020, nine times more than in the previous May, and the highest monthly borrowing since records began. Indeed, we need to go back 50 years to find UK gross borrowing exceeding the size of the whole UK economy as it now does—and this is a Government who are trying to tell us that they have this under control? National debt of £2.1 trillion might not worry the millionaires in the Tory Cabinet, but the rest of us are horrified.

The Chancellor said last June that the best way to restore public finances is to open the economy and get people back to work. Well, we now know what an ill-fated risk calculation that was, to the UK’s great public health and economic cost, brought to bear on the population by a Chancellor seemingly more invested in his personal brand than judicious ministerial responsibility.

The Labour party will need to be careful with its criticisms, though. It inherited falling debt and a surplus in ’97, and took only two years to revert that into rising debt. The current tenant of No. 11 Downing Street is the latest in a long line from both UK parties seemingly more chancer than Chancellor. And let us not forget that, in 2010, Labour was planning devastating austerity cuts that it was very clear were going to be tougher and deeper than Margaret Thatcher’s in the 1980s. In this, UK politics is revealed as the worst ever Hobson’s choice.

Today’s Chancellor, mirroring Alistair Darling when he shored up the banks, presents himself as something of a benevolent genius for wheeling out the furlough scheme, conveniently forgetting that it represents a very standard fiscal intervention by any Government in a developed economy in times of crisis, and of course it is future generations, not he, who will be paying down the bill. The UK Chancellor, like most before him in my 48 years, is neither genius nor generous, and there are 3 million excluded who will testify to that, not to mention our pensioners, who, by 2016 figures, endure the worst state pensions in the developed world.

We must then consider the shameful UK economic growth of 2% over the last 10 years of this Government, which compares with figures of 6% in the US, 9% in the EU and Japan, and 7% in the G7. We see clearly the chickens of historical UK underinvestment in science, engineering and manufacturing coming home to roost—the legacy of Thatcher alive and well—and that is before the long-term negative effects of Brexit flow through. Since devolution, the UK’s growth in output languishes at 23.8%, while Scotland’s has risen by 33.7%, outpacing the outmoded UK and doing so despite the dead hand of the UK Treasury holding us back. It will not do so for much longer, for at independence, Scotland will retake our place on the international global stage and forge ahead with our independent, progressive and inclusive economic future.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Before I call Ben Everitt, may I just ask the remaining MPs participating remotely to look at the clock on the left or right hand side of their monitors, wherever it may be? If they cannot see that, please could they use an alternative device, because they will be cut off after three minutes.