Speeches by Crichton.

“You have a lot of experience. You know what you are talking about.”

“Thanks.”

“Will the hon. Member give way on that point?”

“Will the hon. Member give way?”

“I take what the hon. Member says about pregnant mothers having to travel long distances. In my own constituency, pregnant mothers have to travel two weeks before their baby is due to another island where they are given an overnight allowance of some £50 or £60 in a tourism economy where beds cost £120—so they are havin…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Gregor Poynton) for securing this important debate. I join him in welcoming this record settlement of more than £4 billion for the Scottish Government, but I would not want Members to go away with the i…”

“Can I ask the hon. Member which taxes the SNP would raise?”

“Would the hon. Gentleman describe £50 million for Argyll and the Isles and £20 million for the Western Isles as a “disaster”?”

“I am sorry, Ms Vaz. On ferries, we welcome the very late arrival of the Glen Sannox and soon the Glen Rosa. A minor earthquake welcomed the Glen Sannox through the Sound of Mull as she made her test run. We are glad they are there, but that is only one ferry crisis; there is also the inter-island ferry crisis. The two …”

“Time is short, my friend, so I must press on.”

“I understand the hon. Gentleman’s passionate defence of his own position, but the truth is that, despite higher spending per head in Scotland, that money is inefficiently used on a massive management structure—boards upon boards and quangos upon quangos—that does not put patients first, as evidenced in the Western Isle…”

“I will give way. I would love to hear the hon. Gentleman’s excuses.”

“If the hon. Gentleman does not wish to blame the SNP Government for the economic mismanagement of Scotland, why does he provoke SNP Members with his choice of Union Jack socks?”

“I hope the hon. Member will forgive me for not giving way to him when I was mid-flow during my own speech. We are waiting until 2031 or 2032 for our ferries. We need ferries this winter, not next decade.”

“Let’s move on to the technical stuff now. I am interested to hear how Tesco uses the NDA to deliver stuff to supermarkets, and how you make money like that. You spend something like £100 million on R&D each year and you are at the edge of innovation; with everything you do, it is the first time it has been done. Are th…”

“What do you get out of that? Do you get patents that you can then sell on?”

“Corhyn, David and Euan, thanks for coming in, for your evidence and for your expertise and for keeping us safe, I guess. I have technical questions about R&D and where we get value for money out of that, but I want to go back to a version of the question that the Chair asked you at the beginning about what keeps you aw…”

“Our plants do not have missiles flying over them every night like Ukraine’s do, but we are in almost a cyber war with hostile actors. You mentioned that security and cyber are among the pillars of the NDA. Have you seen an uptick in cyber-attacks in the last couple of years?”

“This is a bonus question from DESNZ. DESNZ has just issued a strategic review of the National Nuclear Lab, which we have not had time to digest. I do not know if you have had time to do that, but did you feed into the review?”

“Do you have to buy in technology and patents from other sites around the world?”