Conservative and Unionist Party MP for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale since (elected).
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| Party | Office | Area | Period | Began | Ended | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Conservative | MP | Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale | – present | elected | — | Party history |
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May I just put it on the record that the Tour de France will be passing through my constituency twice?<span id="419" class="column-number" data-column-number="419"></span> Will the Secretary of State investigate the position on Kirkconnel station in my constituency, on the Nith valley line? Kirkconnel is a former mining community with an older population, and many people are unable to use the station because of infirmity or poor mobility.
I do not know whether you or the Leader of the House are cinemagoers, Mr Speaker, but this weekend you could visit the Lonsdale cinema in Annan for its range of Halloween films, including a 30th anniversary screening of “Scream”. I commend Alan Towers, the proprietor of the cinema, on the fact that Lonsdale has been nominated as Cinema of the Year at the British Independent Film Awards, and further commend Alan and his team for keeping the cinema going through sometimes difficult times and providing a much-valued entertainment service for people across the south of Scotland and beyond.
My constituents will welcome the robust tone of the Minister’s statement, but what difference will this make for constituents such as John Carroll from Annan, who worked at Dumfries prison and who has been waiting since February to hear anything meaningful from Capita? What difference will it make to the likelihood of a response?
Order. The shadow Minister should not intervene from a sedentary position.
I very much commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this issue forward, because Glasgow School of Art is a national institution and Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a national figure across the United Kingdom. That is why, when I was in the Scotland Office, I argued that the UK Government should intervene after the first fire, which they did. I had the opportunity to see some of the renovations that took place after 2014, which were so tragically lost in the fire of 2018. I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that, given the national significance of the Glasgow School of Art, the UK Government have a role to play in its renovation.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stuart. I commend the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) for securing this debate, and I very much welcome the Minister to her place. The Magnox reactor at Chapelcross, near Annan, provided highly skilled employment for five decades, supported families, sustained communities and helped to power the country. Like many people living locally, I am deeply frustrated that the possibility of a new nuclear plant on that site has been all but ruled out by dogmatic SNP policy—dogma that runs counter to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the EU’s Joint Research Centre and the OECD, among others. Mr Stuart, you will recall that when we first entered Parliament in 2005, nuclear was perceived as a declining industry, but as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nuclear energy, I have seen at first hand the renaissance that the industry is going through. Sadly, that is happening only in England and Wales, where billions of pounds are being invested, new technologies are being developed, supply chains are growing and thousands of skilled jobs are being created. Scotland, once at the forefront of nuclear generation, is being left behind. That is the only conclusion that any reasonable person can reach when they look at the facts. The hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire set out the numbers, but I think they are worth repeating. Since 2014, England has added more than 47,000 civil nuclear jobs; Scotland has added just 661. Scotland has missed out on almost 5,000 jobs, while many highly skilled Scots have little choice but to travel south to work on projects that could just as easily be taking place at home. Many people from the Annan area, for example, travel daily to west Cumbria when they would much rather be working closer to home.<span id="199WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="199WH"></span> While Scotland misses out on jobs, investment and opportunities, what do communities such as mine hear from the Scottish Government? The answer always seems to be more of the same: more pylons, more wind turbines, more solar panels, more substations, more battery storage and more expensive energy, none of which brings substantive employment to the communities actually impacted. When it comes to the skilled jobs, apprenticeships and long-term investment that nuclear can bring, though, the answer from the SNP is an unequivocal no. Dumfries and Galloway council, like East Lothian council and others, has called on the Scottish Government to take a fresh look at nuclear, because they recognise the opportunities that nuclear could bring to their communities. The irony is that Scotland has some of the best potential nuclear sites anywhere in the United Kingdom. A recent technical assessment by Great British Energy—Nuclear concluded that sites including Torness, Hunterston and Dounreay all have high potential for future nuclear development, if the Scottish Government were willing to reconsider their position. Chapelcross would be ideal for a small modular reactor, and I very much continue to campaign for that to happen in my constituency. What is the alternative? A grid that is becoming increasingly expensive and volatile—Scotland now spends £1.5 billion a year balancing the electricity system, five times what it spent before Hunterston B was retired. The communities I represent know that the country needs reliable power. They also want good, stable jobs. They understand and have seen for more than five decades that that all comes with a nuclear power station.
How will the Minister persuade the SNP to change its position? If it does not do so, there will not be any nuclear in Scotland, because there will be no investment. Even if there were a Labour Administration in Scotland, people would know that it could change, and we only got nuclear investment in the UK when people understood that both Labour and the Conservatives backed it.
Can the Secretary of State assure me that those people who are off-grid—they are prevalent in my constituency—are at the heart of the Government’s thinking with regard to energy support? While I welcome regulation on heating oil, which has spiralled in price, it is not clear that regulation alone will bring down prices. Therefore, if the Chancellor is to give energy support, can off-grid be part of that?
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Allin-Khan. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Naushabah Khan), not just for her thoughtful contribution but for securing this debate. It is so important that we take every opportunity we can to shine a light on this conflict. The International Development Committee, of which I am a member, has relentlessly sought to bring forward evidence to enable discussion of the issue, but we have failed to get the widespread coverage and attention that it most certainly deserves. I recognise the focus that the former Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), brought to the conflict during her time in office; the same applies to the former development Minister, the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds). I am sure that the new Minister, whom I welcome to her post, will do likewise. Nevertheless, as I said, Sudan remains chronically under-reported. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on nutrition for development, I want to focus most of my remarks on the appalling reality of hunger and acute malnutrition, which represent some of the most brutal consequences of the ongoing conflict. Famine conditions are no longer a distant warning; they are an already present reality. Acute malnutrition among children under five and breastfeeding mothers is projected to surge from 3.7 million last year to nearly 4.2 million in 2026. <span id="295WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="295WH"></span>Furthermore, Save the Children estimates that cases of severe acute malnutrition will rise by a further 4% to a devastating 800,000. We saw the horrific realities of the crisis just two weeks ago with the totally unacceptable attack on a World Food Programme convoy in Kordofan. Civilian personnel were injured and lifesaving aid was destroyed. Aid has become a weapon in this conflict, so I urge the Minister to continue to exert every possible diplomatic lever to ensure that El Obeid does not suffer the same fate as El Fasher, where starvation was used as a weapon of war, with local food supply chains systematically targeted in preparation for the siege and eventual massacre. I recognise that the Minister and her colleagues in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office must navigate delicate regional dynamics, but the Government must not shy away from forcefully challenging the covert actions of some of our Gulf allies in Sudan, both publicly and in private diplomacy. That would be totally consistent with the statement earlier in the House of Commons about elsewhere in the middle east. Crucially, as I understand it, the UN arms embargo is due to expire, so the UK must act. The United States has rightly called for its expansion and extension. As UN Security Council penholder, the UK has a distinct moral and diplomatic duty to lead these negotiations at the upcoming UN General Assembly and press relentlessly for a humanitarian truce, a permanent ceasefire, robust civilian protection, civic engagement and unhindered aid access. This war has created the largest forced displacement crisis on the planet. Egypt alone is currently hosting some 1.5 million refugees fleeing from the violence. Compounding that, severe El Niño weather events now threaten fragile food supply chains across east Africa, with UNICEF warning of intensifying drought, extreme heat and flooding that will further afflict vulnerable children. Our humanitarian response must be prioritised to mitigate that environmental pressure and include renewed efforts to secure a stable, civilian-led peace in accordance with the Berlin principles.
I absolutely agree. I—and the Minister, I am sure—would like the Quad that was established to be more effective in relation to the involvement of the United States and neighbouring countries, with those neighbouring countries playing a positive role rather than supporting the protagonists in the conflict. As the right hon. Member for Oxford East has previously said, the greater involvement of the African Union would be most welcome, but that has not really developed. We are deluding ourselves if we believe that the consequences of the conflict can be contained in Sudan and neighbouring countries. Displacement will not stop at Egypt, particularly given that the camps are under pressure. Failing to properly support host countries and to address the conflict will ensure that the pressures are <span id="296WH" class="column-number" data-column-number="296WH"></span>delivered closer to home, so it is totally in our interests to resolve the conflict. We must do everything we can to achieve that.