Speeches by Cross.

“From your point of view, Scotland and the UK are quite aligned at the moment. Are there places where they are diverging, or does it seem like we are working together?”

“Thank you all for coming. I will keep the first question relatively brief. It is to do with the ambition and feasibility of the two Government schemes for looking at the transition of the energy sector. In your answer, could you refer to the NESO report as well, and your take on how it plays into and sits beside the tw…”

“Yes, of course, but in terms of how the country works as a whole, everything has to be seen very much together. That comes into more of it. A lot of the energy policy is quite disconnected at the moment. This whole thing together has to be seen as a holistic thing, because, as a country, as households, as businesses, w…”

“Yes.”

“The energy mix today.”

“Thank you all for coming. Investment is clearly going to be key to driving this forward, but it is about investment and delivery. Those two things have to line up if we are going to make sure that skills and energy security are secured as well. As nice as it may be for all our energy to come from clean sources, if peop…”

“Sorry, can I just jump in? We will look at skills later. It is not necessarily skills; that is a very important part of it that I am very interested in, but it is about the investment, where the investment is going and whether we are putting the investment that is coming in into the right place at the same time. You me…”

“I welcome the Government’s efforts in bringing us up to speed today, but also in imposing the import ban. I recognise that the ban applies to products from Germany, but does it capture products that may originate there but for which the point of import is outside Germany? What steps are the Government taking to proacti…”

“At the Oxford farming conference, the Secretary of State suggested that farms should diversify to be more profitable, but diversification has become a lot less incentivised because that all gets wrapped up into the BPR, as well as the APR. Does that not completely negate the Secretary of State’s argument for diversific…”

“I thank my right hon. Friend for bringing forward this debate, which is so important. Just this morning, I was at the meeting on food security, speaking to poultry farmers there, and they said that they are already taking decisions not to invest in new buildings, directly because they are now thinking of how they need …”

“The Chancellor referred in her statement to safeguarding national security, which I welcome, but this must include energy security. Yet her changes to the energy profits levy, removing investment allowances and not permitting new licences at a time when we are still reliant on oil and gas, not only undermines our energ…”

“Last week was the coldest week of the winter. Also last week, 41.9% of our energy mix was gas and just about 25% was wind. We have heard about issues with gas storage, and the Government are penalising the oil and gas sector by extending the windfall tax, not allowing new licences, and removing investment allowances. I…”

“Next has said that it will increase prices by 1%, directly because of the increases to national insurance contributions, and has warned of slowing growth. With business confidence plummeting, gilts at a 26-year high and growth stagnating, do the Government still maintain that they have an iron grip on public finances, …”

“To follow up really briefly, how do you monitor or measure levels of either actual or, more likely, perceived impartiality? Is that all internal? Is there some external? How do you display this to the public? If we are to tackle perceived levels of impartiality, that needs to be the message that is coming across as wel…”

“Good morning. We know that impartiality is prescribed in the BBC’s charter and it is really important, and no one is doubting BBC Scotland’s or any of your individual sincere commitment to impartiality. Despite this, in the mid-term review, there were concerns of perceived lack of impartiality throughout the BBC, but p…”

“What was it at its peak?”

“Louise, just coming back to you for a second, there is no denying that 13% is a low figure. I understand what you are saying about linear decline and that it has pretty much held steady, but you would expect that 13% is a pretty hard and committed base, so you would not expect that to change much. When BBC Scotland was…”

“I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate. In my constituency, the A96, which goes from Aberdeen to Huntly and up to Inverness, and the A90 north of Ellon are known as accident blackspots. On these roads, we know that local residents are not going out, because of the fear of an accident, which has an i…”

“The changes to national insurance contributions mean that Aberdeenshire council has to find an extra £13 million in its budget this year. How will that help with education standards and health in Aberdeenshire?”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) on securing this debate, although I find it odd that Scottish MPs have been celebrating the Budget, as if it was the best thing ever to come to Scotland, given that it is nothing short of disastrous for so many of the key sectors that underpin Scotland’s ec…”