Speeches by Doogan.

“I am sure the public will be delighted to hear Labour’s never-never promise on energy bills. Unlike the hon. Member, I do not exist on my knees, waiting to get patted on the head by Labour Ministers on the Front Bench. I am off my knees. The consequentials we get in Scotland are a consequence not of largesse by the Lab…”

“I thank the right hon. Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne) for a fascinating lecture on amnesia—it was dripping with irony given his last role in government. I wish to congratulate the Chancellor on delivering what is almost certainly her final Budget. There is no conceivable way—not politi…”

“Where would they be?”

“Dame Nancy, you mentioned a consistency of challenge that you had uncovered in your discussions with industry across the United Kingdom—I may be putting words in your mouth—principal among which, or certainly a major one among which, was access to skills. Did you find that was particularly acute in one part of the Unit…”

“Just to complete that line of thought about skills, it has long been my belief that industrial careers, and engineering careers in particular, are not being very well communicated to young people, either in school, in their community or in their homes. It seems glaringly obvious to me, and I do not understand why they …”

“Dave, I was not going to ask this, but you mentioned it, so I will probe it. Some people, perhaps including me, are concerned that Ministers of either Government, who are necessarily generalists and certainly not experts, are relying on expert advice coming from officials within the civil service and within UK and Scot…”

“Do you want to add to that, Sara?”

“In the context of that ambition, Dave—and linking back to what you said previously about the opportunities and the areas, particularly in energy, where Scotland has had businesses that have been first movers at a very small scale—what would you like to see in a UK industrial strategy that allowed those big, apex primes…”

“I do not understand the mindset of an absent parent who tries to renege on their financial responsibility to support their children. Nor, it seems, does the Child Maintenance Service, because one of the manifold issues with that service is that absent parents renege on payments —starting and stopping payments again and…”

“The Minister is very well read, so I wonder whether he can identify any point in history when the appeasement of an aggressive, expansionist autocrat has ever worked out well. The population of these isles and the rest of Europe have endured high energy prices for the last three years, have taken Ukrainians into their …”

“I want to see that too; we all do. We all want to see as many well-paid, good jobs in the energy sector as possible but we are disappointed and disillusioned that the very explicit prospectus is now being backtracked on.”

“I do not think that was clear, Mr McGrail. It certainly was not clear to the people of the north-east ahead of the election last year; that is not your wheelhouse either. We were told that there would be 1,000 jobs in GB Energy coming to our area. This Committee was told that 1,000 jobs would happen, and it would take …”

“I have a question on community energy. You are an energy professional; I am not, so I bow to your knowledge. But actually it would be my assessment that the acquisition of land, the raising of capital and the creation of an energy-generating system at a community level is actually well within the reach of many exercise…”

“That sounds like a summary of where we are just now. What I was asking about is how we harness that engineering and academic IP and lock it into a Scottish supply chain. That is the secret, is it not? The UK and Scotland have been creating difficult solutions for generations and then the benefit of it goes offshore—no …”

“What is the plan?”

“I am very sympathetic to Angus MacDonald’s view; I see it in my side of the country as well. I wonder what your assessment would be of whether GB Energy and DESNZ—and DBT for that matter—need to make a strategic decision to say, “We have not entirely but substantially missed the boat on onshore wind. But in the UK and …”

“The workforce plan within your strategic plan will have a workforce in GB Energy in Aberdeen of how many?”

“The Minister draws attention to the five Scottish Ministers on the Government Front Bench, but not one of them has said anything about the crisis facing those 400 families making a living from Mossmorran. The Minister seeks to hide behind the company’s statement that there was no lack of enthusiasm by the Government to…”

“Will the right hon. Lady give way?”

“Speaking of screeching U-turns, when the hon. Gentleman was campaigning for last year’s election, he told his potential constituents that he would lower their energy bills by £300. What is he saying to them now?”