St Andrew’s Day and Scottish Affairs

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) on securing it.

Today’s debate is timely and important because Scotland stands on the cusp of an election that will determine the future of our country. Regardless of our politics, we know how lucky we are to live in Scotland, represent it, bring our families up in it, and work for a better future for it.

Unusually for a history graduate of Scotland’s finest university, I am going to focus my remarks on the future. I am a Scotland rugby fan, a Scottish football fan, an Aberdeen fan and a Scottish Conservative, so I have to be an optimist. And I am: I do believe that a better Scotland, in a more secure and prosperous United Kingdom, is possible, but only with change—a change in Government in Edinburgh and a change of direction by the Government here in London.

Scotland has suffered 18 wasted years—18 years when we should have been focused on binding our country together, building a better economy, promoting Scottish business and building up and improving our education system. However, we were not doing that. Instead, we have had 18 years of division, constitutional obsession and the bitter and, at times, petty politics of grievance. It was Edwin Morgan who, in his poem “Open the Doors”, commissioned on the opening of the new Scottish Parliament building in 2004, wrote,

“What do the people want of the place? They want it to be filled with thinking

persons as open and adventurous as its architecture.

A nest of fearties is what they do not want.

A symposium of procrastinators is what they do not want.

A phalanx of forelock-tuggers is what they do not want.

And perhaps above all the droopy mantra of ‘it wizny me’ is what they do not want.”

I am afraid that in the Scottish National party, that is indeed what the Scottish people have had for the past 18 years—a party that leads a Government so misguided from the priorities of the Scottish people that they have allowed themselves to be distracted by narrow political fads instead of focusing on the real issues, with hard-working Scots suffering ever higher taxes to pay for them. However, those are as nothing when compared to the eye-watering social security spending, which is forecast to hit more than £9 billion in Scotland by 2030—triple what it was in 2017. For a population of less than 5 million people, that is insanity.

In Scotland, we have an economy that has lagged behind the rest of the UK ever since the SNP first took power. If Scotland’s economy had kept pace, the Scottish Government would have had £12 billion more to spend over that period. It is said that the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out other people’s money; the problem with nationalism is that you eventually run out of other people to blame.

[Stephen Gethins]

The hon. Gentleman always makes an entertaining speech. He quoted Edwin Morgan, who, after writing that poem, donated a significant sum of money to the SNP. I just thought that should be on the record.

[Andrew Bowie]

Well, it is obviously for Edwin Morgan to determine where he spends his money. I do think that the hon. Gentleman and his party should reflect on the desire of the Scottish people when they voted for a Scottish Parliament in 1999 to address the real issues facing them. He must acknowledge that far too much of the past 18 years has been spent on issues that divide Scots, rather than building our country into a better place that we all want to see for our children.

Scotland knows who to blame. They know who could not build two ferries and who let Scotland’s drug deaths become the worst in Europe. They know on whose watch it was that our education standards slipped from their once great heights. They know that today, Scotland is worse off because of the decisions taken and promises broken by the Scottish National party, from its broken promise to dual the A9 and A96, as often highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross), to its neglect of the A75 in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper), long raised in this House by my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell). Remember the SNP promise to scrap council tax 18 years ago, the promise to close the attainment gap or the promise to deliver a national care service? For 18 years, the SNP has let Scotland down with broken promise after broken promise.

[Torcuil Crichton]

Does the hon. Gentleman regret that the Scottish Conservatives propped up the SNP for four of those 18 years?

[Andrew Bowie]

In 2007, when the decision was taken by the Scottish Conservatives to ensure continuity and certainty for Scottish business at the heart of the Scottish Government, it was indeed the right thing to do. However, hindsight is 20/20, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman and other Members present that no such agreement would be reached if we were to be asked at the next Scottish parliamentary election to support a Scottish National party Government for a further five years.

Scotland was suffering under the SNP, and the very last thing it needed was another Government letting them down. Then, enter stage left—far left—the Labour party. My goodness, it is not going well. After having been sold a story of false hope, folks in Scotland now have no hope in the Labour Government. The harm that this Government are inflicting on key Scottish industries is staggering.

Look at our farmers: already hammered by the daft policies that emanate from Bute House, they now have to contend with the brutal and callous family farm tax. The stories that we hear—and I know that hon. Members on the Government Benches are hearing them, too—are just heartbreaking.

The Government are knowingly destroying an entire way of life for thousands of families across Scotland, placing entire rural communities and our food security in jeopardy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) spoke recently of how this Government have no grasp whatsoever of the constant struggle facing our family farms. He was absolutely right. It is exactly the same for our energy industry. Oil and gas workers are an afterthought—if they are even thought about at all by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, whose messianic zeal to destroy the oil and gas industry knows no end.

I have stood at this Dispatch Box many times now over the past 18 months and raised the plight of our oil and gas industry. Almost every week we find that another business operating in the North sea has made the decision to cut jobs in the UK. It was Harbour Energy the other week. Before that it was ExxonMobil at Mossmorran. It was the Port of Aberdeen before that, then Petrofac, then Hunting, then Ineos, then Apache—I could go on. One thousand jobs are going to be lost every single month, and £50 billion-worth of investment is being passed over. The country is being made more vulnerable through increased reliance on imports. A poison is spreading through the energy industry, and this Government are doing nothing to stem it.

All of that begs the question of what the Secretary of State and his Ministers are going to do. Maybe the Secretary of State knows that the Prime Minister’s days are numbered and is just biding his time. Maybe, like every other member of the Cabinet, he is looking around the Cabinet Room and measuring the curtains. But time is something that workers in our oil and gas industry and on our family farms do not have.

Scotland does, of course, have another option—something that neither the SNP nor Labour can offer—and that is common sense. That is something that only the Scottish Conservatives are offering, and Scotland desperately needs it. The Scottish Conservatives would put an end to the stagnant, tepid policies that have come from the SNP Scottish Government and put growth at the heart of every single decision.

We would end the hostility to entrepreneurs and make it clear that Scotland is open for business. We would reverse the decline and go for growth. We would scrap the SNP’s 21% tax band and cut income tax to 19% for all taxable income up to £43,000.We would slash the number of quangos, restore regular police patrols, and allow for the building of new nuclear, bolstering our energy security, securing new jobs and driving investment. We would restore pride to our education system, so that it enables Scots to compete in a globally competitive marketplace for ideas.

Scottish Conservatives in this House would scrap the energy profits levy and the family farm tax. We would proudly, without fear or favour, stand up for Scotland’s continued place within our United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. To be British as well as Scottish is, I believe, something that should be cherished. It is, in my view, to win the lottery of life. It is the best of both worlds—our freedoms, our shared culture, our institutions and our history. Being British has never relied on the rejection of being Scottish, English, Welsh or Northern Irish. Those identities are entirely complementary, not contradictory.

To be British is to be part of something larger—a shared civic and cultural inheritance built across these islands together. Whether you find yourself in Dundee or Doncaster, you will realise that those shared values are to be discovered at every turn. The United Kingdom at its best is not a denial of national identity but a partnership that allows each nation to contribute its own unique character to something greater together.

From the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers who shaped British democracy to the engineers and writers who helped forge its industrial and cultural strengths, Scots have never been passengers in the British story but always at the tiller. We will continue to be so, but we need change in Scotland, we need common sense in Scotland, and we need it desperately. The Scottish parliamentary election in May can be that moment. Change can and will be delivered. Of that I am certain.