Speeches by Murray.

“It is good to hear it being highlighted how defence industry spending can benefit other industrial sectors, and how investing in the defence sector can benefit growth generally at the same time. £20 million of the £182 million UK Government Defence Skills Package will be spent in the devolved nations of Scotland, Wales…”

“We heard earlier about the reticence of people to move into defence education, but we have also seen the launch of defence-focused undergraduate degrees at the University of Hereford. Do you think that creates a need or an opportunity for Scottish universities to develop similar programmes? I think this ties us into th…”

“Do you feel that the UK Government should be doing more?”

“Where do you think that that money should be spent to best benefit Scottish needs?”

“I believe I can. I apologise for that mistake. I will go and make sure I get those names.”

“Yes, I am very comfortable with that.”

“Yes, I think so. Now?”

“Thank you to the Committee for the opportunity to present this application for a debate. We have recently marked 30 years since the Nolan principles were laid out. They were established following a number of scandals in the early 90s and were designed to set high ethical standards to ensure integrity, accountability an…”

“On 23 February, the Cabinet Office confirmed that hardship loans would not be available to dependants or surviving spouses of civil service pension scheme members. That left one of my constituents alone, with two children and just one income after sadly losing their partner. Can the Minister explain how much it would h…”

“11. What estimate he has made of the cost of the civil service pensions recovery plan.”

“I absolutely agree: the vision is there, but we take too long to make decisions. When that happens, our workforce make their own decisions, and businesses do not come that might have considered coming. We have to support the opportunity that is available to us. We must look seriously at how we encourage companies to bu…”

“Given that the total pricing structure by suppliers is including the cost of the debt, going forward debt prevention would seem to be a sensible thing to do in the total system that might not necessarily put costs up for everybody if the suppliers were pricing in a way that included a social tariff. Is that part of the…”

“Citizens Advice also mentioned social tariffs. Is any work being done to look at social tariffs?”

“Finally, what role do you think that community energy schemes have in reducing the demand on the national grid to move power around?”

“I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which I absolutely agree with. As I have just said, this is something that needs to be looked at, and there is an opportunity to make sure that communities all across the UK benefit from the power generation that they have to live with locally every day. Will Ministers comm…”

“Do the curtailment costs happen all over the UK? What proportion of that falls in Scotland?”

“I absolutely agree. We have a real opportunity with Great British Energy, in the current environment, to take advantage of what the commercial companies are offering with regard to reducing costs for individual homeowners and to use digital technology to ensure that community energy generated into the grid benefits the…”

“You recognise that there is a Scotland-England bottleneck at the moment. When do you expect that bottleneck to be relieved? Will that remove some of these constraint costs?”

“I absolutely agree. Although I am focusing on Scotland, it is Scotland as part of the UK and not Scotland alone. We want to make sure that we do not lose the skilled labour that is vital to a successful transition, because we would then have to pay more later to import the labour and expertise that we should have retai…”

“You have to work within existing policies. We have heard already about community benefit. Do you think that if communities could see more benefit from having the infrastructure on their doorstep, it would help with some of the potential delays that are coming to building this network?”