Speeches by Doogan.

“We talked about the PR role of “not just a career in engineering” although there is so much more that can be done with that. If I think of the people who I served my time with now as aircraft engineers, they are all over the world doing all manner of things in all range of different disciplines. I worry that younger pe…”

“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…”

“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.”

“Yes, there is. Mr Leslie, how long have you been involved in strategic planning within NESO?”

“You are responsible for where we are now.”

“You understand how that sounds a bit “jam tomorrow”.”

“If, as you suggest, bill payers should be grateful, I do not think that we should confuse effort with effect. I am sure that Ofgem is busy doing a lot of stuff, whatever that is, but in your scenario, people should be grateful and hold Ofgem in high esteem. If Ofgem was not there, how much worse could it be for bill pa…”

“It is a badly managed process.”

“We have just heard a 40-minute, self-aggrandising monologue on how wonderful everything is in the economy. Does the Chancellor have any clue how her tone-deaf monologue will have landed in the real economy, where growth has been downgraded, unemployment is soaring and the cost of energy has just spiked? There was nothi…”

“It is only fair that I accept both of those from the hon. Member. We are here because of the 121,000 signatures on the petition, and many of the constituencies with the highest counts of signatures are in Scotland, where gun ownership per capita is much higher than it is elsewhere in these isles, for entirely predictab…”

“I completely agree that the Government have to look again at it and listen carefully. I know it is a serious Minister who has come to speak to the debate today, so I am hopeful that we will get clear remarks on how the Government intend to properly interrogate the consultation and divine from the responses precisely ho…”

“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On 10 February, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry was called to the House to answer an urgent question about a meeting between Palantir, Peter Mandelson and the Prime Minister in February 2025, after which there was an uncompeted award of £245 million from the Mi…”