Speeches by McDougall.

“Do you want to expand on that?”

“While we are talking about the impact of disinformation, Imedi TV is one of the main propaganda organs of the GD Government. I dipped into its feed today. It was full of some of the things you have been describing. It was blaming Georgia for its own invasion by Russia, cheerleading the attacks on peaceful protesters an…”

“Chair, I will just draw the Committee’s attention to my register of interests. President Zourabichvili, we are seeing violence on the streets, violence in the prisons, the pressurisation of civil society and the seizing of assets. Everything that we are seeing in Georgia at the moment we saw five years ago in Belarus. …”

“Could the Leader of the House make time for a debate about local sporting excellence, to celebrate REN96 swimming club in my constituency, which won 73 medals in one weekend, GHA rugby in Giffnock, which won the championship, and the young athletes of Giffnock North athletics club, who came home with a haul of medals a…”

“I congratulate the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley) on securing the debate. However, I do not thank her for giving me that familiar feeling of dread—I am discovering that we often get it in this place—when the speaker immediately before makes almost identical points to those I had inte…”

“I was not planning to intervene, but I am minded to mention the 80th anniversary of Operation Open Door, in which the Royal Navy went to Norway to rescue 500 refugees who were under extreme terror from the Nazis. They were brought to my constituency, to the village of Neilston, where they found sanctuary and humanity a…”

“Q10. I join the Prime Minister in welcoming the delegation from Bring Kids Back, which is trying to return the tens of thousands of children abducted by Vladimir Putin in an act of pure evil. The Prime Minister will be aware that that initiative has been working with Yale University’s humanitarian lab, which was tracki…”

“Luckily, one of my questions has already been covered.”

“Can I ask about something that occurred to me while you were both talking there: the changing way in which people consume media? Is that making the projection of soft power more difficult for liberal democracies? I had the same thought as the Chair when they were talking about the opinion of Vladimir Putin, but I was t…”

“If we do indeed believe in the social model of disability described earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Dr Tidball), may I encourage the Secretary of State, and indeed everyone, to find a different language in which to talk about this? When we describe disabled people as being unable to…”

“I am nothing if not efficient. You talked about the amount of money that Russia and China are putting into this space. Is there a competitive advantage when it comes to soft power that we get from being an open society, and a disadvantage for those closed societies? Given the enormous amount of money they are putting i…”

“We are trespassing a bit on our disinformation inquiry.”

“Prior to this conflict, Global Witness had gone to the trading centre in Nzibira and had found that the international due diligence labelling of the three Ts was meaningless. Most of it was actually coming from militia-controlled mines.”

“I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s uncompromising message to Vladimir Putin. I wonder whether he would add to that a clear message that there can be no peace while tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, who have been stolen from their parents and scattered across Russia, are not returned? Does he share my concern at r…”

“So if you are Apple, Tesla, Samsung or one of those companies that have leant on the certification process—it feels like any certification process coming out of eastern DRC at the moment is pretty meaningless.”

“Giving legitimacy to misused minerals.”

“But they may give permission through silence to people who are backing it and have mineral interests on both sides of this conflict. They may just turn a blind eye because of that to things that they should otherwise be challenging.”

“Can I ask you about that? I think 25 years ago with the second war there, much of the conversation was about international indifference, whereas this time there seems to be a lot of, as you say, great power politics going on. We have a critical minerals deal, which the Trump Administration are also talking about. Is th…”

“Coming on to minerals, earlier you spoke eloquently about the historical, ethnic and political drivers of this conflict. A lot of press coverage immediately reaches for minerals to simplify and explain what is going on. How central do you think conflict minerals are to this conflict?”

“To prevent the atrocities we are seeing at the moment.”