Speeches by Doogan.

“What evidence did the Chancellor have to suggest there was profiteering in petrol retailing? The Petrol Retailers Association rightly took umbrage at the implication of the Chancellor; I think that did not go quite the way that she thought it would.”

“I raised this entirely inevitable circumstance with the Chancellor at the spring statement, and she did something that she is given to do, which was to glaze over briefly and then talk about the strength and broad shoulders of the Treasury because of the difficult decisions that she had taken, as though they affected h…”

“The shadow Secretary of State mentioned his perception of the intransigence of this Labour Government, to which I would add their brittle hubris in their pursuit of not achieving any form of economic growth. Does he agree that the Chancellor would not have to keep dipping into the pockets of hard-working people in the …”

“Defence is a long-held and valued element of the Scottish economy. Scotland has a proud martial tradition stretching back hundreds of years. Added to its tradition of innovation, it is no wonder that we have so many primes in Scotland delivering outstanding equipment to a global market, but sometimes there is a bit of …”

“How could I not give way to the Scottish Labour MP who has managed to come in here for the tail end of the debate?”

“rose—”

“I am very happy to explain that to the hon. Lady when I get to that element of my speech, which I will in due course. The other thing that really irritates me about this Government is the way that they talk about the just transition. They say, “We will be using fossil fuels for another 50 years, and we will be producin…”

“Thank you, Chair. Mr Donoghue, I don’t think it was just you who was surprised that the funding from the UK Government was contingent on match funding. That came as a surprise, as I understand it, to the Scottish Government themselves, who had not been consulted on the conditionality that the UK Government had applied …”

“Mr Donoghue, you expressed concern with capacity and demand outstripping supply in apprenticeship places within Scotland. I see that the Scottish Government’s budget supported around 25,000 modern apprenticeships, and there are more than 39,000 in train at the minute. That is roughly 60,000-odd in a population of 5.5 m…”

“It is from the £182 million. I will move on to question No. 10 if that is okay, Chair. One of the great things about the way apprenticeships have developed is that you don’t miss the boat now in the way that you did when we were all younger. On the role of upskilling mid-career workers for defence related roles, does t…”

“This is where I practise respectful disagreement. For rural areas such as my constituency, the constituency of the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan, and many other places across all four nations, this issue is really challenging. There is not limited access to public transport in many places such as ours; there is no …”

“To be clear, have your opposite number in, say, Wales or England got the same issue, or do they have the right amount of apprenticeships? Because 4.1% of Scotland’s population is in college; that is higher than anywhere else in the UK.”

“There was a pork-barrel stench when the first defence growth deal was awarded to the Minister’s constituency. Over six months later, he has finally got around to making an award to Scotland, but for Scotland, the £50 million has turned into £20 million—and he wants the Scottish Government to foot the bill. Can he be cl…”

“Is it a managed process?”

“Mr McMahon, you talked about public acceptability. In this scenario, somewhere on the east coast of Scotland, somebody sits in a cold house looking out across the sea at all the wind turbines generating very cheap, zero-carbon electricity. They then look inland and see the spot that is going to have a really big 400 kV…”

“The trouble is that 3% of an enormous number is still a very big number.”

“Does that percentage include the gas that you have to introduce to replace the renewables?”

“Talk to me about the success involved in the amount of money that bill payers have to pay in abatement charges and then to replace the renewable energy that is turned off from abatement with dispatchable power from gas.”

“Why is it that we have a massive mismatch between generation and transmission in GB? Whose fault is that?”

“You will be well placed to understand how we have got where we have got, in terms of grid planning and infrastructure.”