Speeches by Doogan.

“Thank you for your guidance, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has inadvertently advanced the same argument that he did on 21 July on “Channel 4 News”. Will he clarify that pollution levels under publicly owned Scottish Water are substantially better than those under privately owned English water companies? Will he re…”

“Unbelievably, the Secretary of State has just doubled down, in the House, on the falsehood that he advanced on 21 July on “Channel 4 News” that pollution levels are worse in Scotland than they are in England. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not want to mislead the House. Will he take the opportunity to corre…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today at Prime Minister’s questions in relation to the Norwegian Government’s £10 billion investment in the Scottish defence sector, the Prime Minister stated, “I am perplexed that the First Minister of Scotland has not welcomed this deal.” The problem for the Prime Mi…”

“How many of each have left since you have been there?”

“In relation to not winning the SVRP work that we were just talking about, has that caused any attrition to levels of agency or core staff?”

“You sadly never got that order, but you have the block work. How much of the production operations on the block work is agency and how much is core?”

“It sounds like you agree with the findings of the Scottish Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee in their report around Ferguson’s year. Are you in accord with their ambitions in respect of Ferguson’s?”

“On the Small Vessel Replacement Programme, Ferguson’s scored really highly on quality, so the workforce can turn out the goods; that is established. Where we did not manage to get it over the line was on cost and price. I hear what you are saying about investing in the means of production and lowering the labour hours …”

“On that point, Ferguson’s is state-owned, and the Scottish Government has spent £500 million on it now. If it is just about the state funding shipyards, why does it have no work on its order books beyond what it has received from BAE Systems?”

“Do you think we sometimes forget we are on an island?”

“It is good for Ferguson's to get the block work on the Type 26, is it not? It is a good synergy between commercial shipbuilding and supporting complex warship construction. That is good, but building blocks is a long way away from building ships. There is steel work in building blocks, and that is pretty much it. That …”

“Indeed. That having been said, though, would it be unfair to characterise block work like that? Would it be infill that would be really helpful to have between orders?”

“Pretty soon it is going to be all Ferguson has, and that is not great.”

“Is it novel for commercial yards to build blocks for complex warships?”

“It has been going on for a long time.”

“Is there any risk that the tier 2 work for BAE will interfere with the delivery of the ship?”

“How long do you think this tier 2 work for BAE will last?”

“How many agency staff are in the yard, both in production and support roles?”

“Low volume and specialist is the market that we need to get after.”

“Just to try to drill down to the genesis of this decision-making process, where do these procurement rules originate from?”