The speech made by Dave Doogan, the SNP MP for Angus and Perthshire Glens, in the House of Commons on 13 May 2026.
If I was not cheered by the landslide victory of the SNP in Scotland last week, I certainly am after this King’s Speech. It is just as well that the people of Scotland have John Swinney as First Minister and the SNP as the Scottish Government to stand as the buttress of fairness and justice between them and the remote and unaccountable UK Government in Westminster. They are not just remote and unaccountable but dysfunctional to an alarming degree, and that dysfunction is what has precipitated this most vapid of King’s Speeches.
If somebody who was unaware of the UK malaise, and the multiple economic crises affecting it, saw the Government’s solution in the form of this King’s Speech, they would be unable to identify the problem. That speaks to an obscurity of purpose. Government should have a clarity of purpose—see also the SNP Scottish Government in Edinburgh—but this Government have not got a clue. They are so busy bickering with one another, arguing with each faction about who gets the next shot at being the Prime Minister, that they cannot focus on the problems ailing the people up and down these islands—and the problems are profound. People are unable to pay their energy bills, and they do not know whether they will have a job this month, next month or the month after that. There is a crushing concern about everything, not just this or that. People are now terrified about their washing machine breaking down or their car getting a puncture, because they are so hard up.
Under this Labour Government, the margin of economic resilience in people’s homes has been eroded to a translucent wafer. There is nothing between the wolf and the bank account, after less than two years of a Labour Government. I do not understand why that could be. I am a political bore and I understand these things—or I thought I did. They have a majority that would choke a horse. They have been preparing for government for 14 years, yet they come in and it is like they just landed. They even said as much: “Well, we didn’t know the state of the books.” If they never knew the state of the books, they were the only people who did not, yet they had the temerity to come in, take power and make it even worse.
Labour Members kid themselves about the reason Labour was elected, but really they know it. They tell themselves, “It was our manifesto. We have a mandate.” There was no mandate for this guddle. Nothing that has happened over the last 22 months was backed up by a mandate. Labour was elected, and ushered in with a colossal majority, for one reason alone: Labour was not the Tories, and it is a two-party system in this place—or rather, it was. That is why Labour Members are here.
Alison Taylor (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman explain to the House what the Government in Scotland have done over the last 20 years to generate the economic growth that he talks about?
Dave Doogan
What the hon. Lady, as a Scottish Unionist—I am sure a proud Scottish Unionist, for reasons best known to herself—needs to understand is that the UK is not contingent on Scotland, but Scotland is contingent on the UK. The decisions made here affect Scotland, but the decisions made in Scotland do not affect down here. Against that backdrop, Scotland is regularly in the upper quartile for GDP per capita in the United Kingdom. This myth that we are subsidised by the rest of the UK is risible. We economically outperform more than three quarters of the UK in any given quarter, roughly. We are the top destination for foreign direct investment. Foreign companies are not confused: they know where they get a return on their investment in the United Kingdom, and it is in Scotland. Our unemployment is lower and our employment is higher. I could go on, but I do not want to get in trouble, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Seamus Logan
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech—his first as our party’s new group leader. He mentioned the vapid King’s Speech—this is no criticism of the King, of course—which contained the renewed promise of a Hillsborough law that the Government have had two years to introduce. Why on earth is it taking the Government so long to deliver on their manifesto promises?
Dave Doogan
My hon. Friend is right to highlight that issue, which is so important to many people across the UK but especially in the north of England, and in Liverpool in particular. But it is not just that. It is the way Labour rushed during the campaign to stand shoulder to shoulder with WASPI women before abandoning them when they got into office. It is about the family farm tax, which the Labour party expressly said before the election that it would not introduce but then got in and did exactly that. That was a gross betrayal of our agricultural industry and our rural communities.
The change to employer national insurance was self-evidently anti-industry, self-evidently inflationary and self-evidently a tax on jobs. It was going to have one potential outcome. The £25 billion that the Government said that it would bring in was complete fantasy; by the time they had compensated for the public sector, it was down to single figures of billions, and even that did not take into account the drag on the economy and the lower fiscal receipts as a result of that disastrous, self-defeating policy.
Noah Law (St Austell and Newquay) (Lab)
What would be the hon. Gentleman’s answer to filling that massive fiscal black hole that we were left with?
Dave Doogan
What the hon. Gentleman needs to understand is that countries grow their way out of these issues. Growth comes from economic investment in equipment and people, raising productivity and lowering economic inactivity and all those things that have risen under Labour, because Labour does not understand economics—never has, never will.
Before I move on, I want to focus on the real impact on real people. Unemployment is now at its highest level in five years. Unemployment across the UK is at 5.2%; thankfully, through the economic efforts of our SNP Scottish Government, it is at 4.1% in Scotland, although that is still far too high for our communities. Youth unemployment in the UK is at 15%. That is a catastrophe. The way young people enter the world of work dictates their relationship with employment for the rest of their lives, and that is catastrophically damaging for young people up and down these islands.
Youth unemployment is particularly acute in hospitality. Hospitality is a gateway industry for employment, but the Government are taxing it out of existence. People with a pub, a hotel or a restaurant now feel like unpaid tax collectors for this Labour Government.
Christine Jardine
While I agree with the hon. Member about young people’s routes into work, how does that sit with the way his SNP Government in Scotland have destroyed apprenticeships up there? As for the hospitality industry in Scotland, it pays business rates in Scotland—I hear complaints about them all the time. Is that perhaps why the SNP lost seats in the election that he is so busy congratulating himself on?
Dave Doogan
We still got more than four times as many seats as the Lib Dems in Scotland, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will not be taking any lectures there. However, I look forward to working closely with the Liberal Democrats in the Scottish Government—
Christine Jardine
That’s never going to happen.
Dave Doogan
I am not sure the hon. Lady has that in her gift, but to her point about youth unemployment, as I said to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Alison Taylor), the Scottish Government are subject to the same economic malaise as anywhere else in the United Kingdom. It is to the betterment of the fortunes of their constituents and mine that they are under an SNP Government—on that point, I can assure the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine) that she is welcome.
Do not just take my word for it, Madam Deputy Speaker: the markets give their verdict on what is happening in the United Kingdom, and the markets are incredibly concerned. That is why 10-year gilt interest rates touched 5.13%, a rate not seen in the UK since the financial crash of 2008—a very dangerous report card.
Alison Taylor
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Dave Doogan
No. I am going to make progress and close my speech.
Defence is the first duty of government, but under this Labour Government, if we had a significant investment for every blunderbuss piece of hyperbole and rhetoric on defence, we would be in a far better position than we are. The Prime Minister said in his speech earlier that we are negotiating a de-escalation of the war in Iran. He did not tell us which of the three protagonists was listening to the pontifications of the UK Prime Minister—because not one of the three participants in that conflict could care less what the Prime Minister thinks about the war in Iran.
The defence investment plan—the road map for what defence will look like in the United Kingdom for the next decade—is now a year late. I do not know what the Government think they can get away with, but if their signal, apex piece of defence legislation is more than a year late, that tells this Parliament and everyone up and down these islands that they do not have a clue about defence any more than they have a clue about anything else.
Dr Arthur
I am genuinely grateful to be here for the hon. Gentleman’s first speech as SNP leader here in Westminster. It is just a shame that only one other of his fellow SNP MPs is here—no doubt they are all on important business. I know that he does champion the defence sector, unlike some of his colleagues in Scotland, but he sits on the Scottish Affairs Committee and he knows the sector’s concerns about skills development and education in Scotland. Does he share those concerns, and what is he doing to influence his colleagues in the Scottish Government to ensure that the sector is more fully supported?
Dave Doogan
The defence sector is a significant part of the Scottish economy, and I just wish that the hon. Gentleman and his Unionist colleagues in the Labour party, and in other lesser parties, would acknowledge the fact that this is a mutual endeavour and that the UK benefits greatly from the skills and expertise that exist in Scotland, as well as from the apprenticeships, training and investment. Let us not forget that everybody who works in the defence sector in Scotland went through a Scottish school, a Scottish apprenticeship, a Scottish college or a Scottish university. There is this idea that everything was fantastic previously and is terrible now. The former is not true, and the latter is not true either. It is a work in progress, and we are investing heavily in Scottish education. That is why such a high percentage of people leaving school in Scotland are going on to a positive destination.
The Prime Minister said that he was going to take steps to bring the United Kingdom into the very heart of Europe. Well, he is not going to do that without rejoining the EU, so this is yet more hyperbole and fantasy. My final word on this is that a Government in this level of disarray—with this level of division and infighting, who have caused so much damage in such a short period of time to people’s livelihoods and to the economy—needed to make an emergency response today, but this King’s Speech was anything but. I look forward to them getting their house in order, but I won’t be holding my breath.