Budget Resolutions

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

I will confine my remarks to the north-east of Scotland. Whether it is farmers, oil and gas workers, the fishing industry, local pubs and hotels, businesses, or families who are just about managing this festive season, no one—not one person—has approached me to say what a great Budget this was. People are angry and worried, and they are right to be. We are still in a cost of living crisis, and there was no change to the energy profits levy in the Budget, nor to the family farm tax. There was more punishment for Scotch whisky and no mention of the WASPI women. There was no review of the coastal growth fund to boost the local fishing industry and, worst of all, there was sleight of hand on the cost of living for so many families. When I recently led an Adjournment debate in this place on the Nolan principles, I voiced my fears that people are losing faith in politics. It now seems that that is not only because of Johnson or Truss, although they did not help; it is largely due to this Government.

Households in the north-east are facing harsher and colder winters than other parts of the country, and will continue to struggle as energy costs rise. That is even more unfair given the north-east’s contribution to energy production as the UK’s renewables powerhouse and, crucially, via our oil and gas sector, which is being hammered like a tent peg by this Labour Government. They are apparently hellbent on taxing our energy sector out of existence. Keeping the EPL in place until 2030 will mean haemorrhaging job losses in the tens of thousands. It will risk our energy security, incur eye-wateringly expensive carbon-heavy imports, scupper supply chain growth, and severely hamper our future renewables potential.

Just today, there have been a further 100 job losses at Harbour Energy in Aberdeen. People I know in my constituency are going abroad to get contracts because they lost their jobs in Scotland. Ninety thousand oil and gas workers in the north-east are bitterly disappointed. Why? This Budget was a chance to secure their jobs and to secure £50 billion of potential investment supported by the renewables sector, which needs the skills base of our workers. The hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) talked about banking. The four big banks made a £44 billion profit last year, and there is not a word about a windfall tax on them. This is the politics of madness. Forget investment in a just transition; this is industrial damage on a grand scale.

Talking of industrial damage, why have the Government got it in for Scotland’s world-class Scotch whisky sector? Once more it has been treated as a Treasury cash cow, with duty rising again in line with inflation, although I—as well as many others, including numerous industry sources—warned the Treasury that an increase in duty would reduce the income to the Treasury. Who does not understand the maths? Furthermore, with the family farm tax still in place, generational family farms across my constituency face ruin by Treasury spreadsheet, with the Chancellor balancing the books on the back of our domestic food security. Finally, where are the WASPIs in this Budget? There is no mention of the Government’s plan to review their decision on compensating those 1950s-born women.

The truth is that Scotland cannot afford to be dragged back into Labour’s black hole, or whatever fiscal fiction they care to conjure up to justify their economic choices. We are expected to believe that the same people who told us that removing the two-child cap was deeply unwise now say that it is the centrepiece of the Government’s achievements. This begs the question, “What does Labour stand for?” It certainly does not stand for working people, families or businesses. We have, instead, a chaotic “cost of Labour” Budget, caught in a perpetual doom loop, while the north-east of Scotland pays a high price for the Government’s economic mismanagement. Brexit Britain is broken, trust is broken, and the north-east is bearing the brunt. Scotland wants out.

--- Later in debate ---

[Frank McNally]

I absolutely agree. Let me also say, in response to some of our colleagues across the House, that the SNP Government could have eradicated the two-child cap eight years ago, but refused to do so. They chose to play politics with the cap; this Government have acted after 18 months to remove it. The two-child cap is the savage reality of austerity. It is the embodiment of cruelty, and it pushed children into the depths of poverty.

[Seamus Logan]

If the hon. Member feels so strongly about the two-child cap, why did he vote to keep it last year?

[Frank McNally]

I am more than happy to respond to the hon. Gentleman. This Government made it clear that when we had the economic ability to remove the cap, we would do so. It is the prudence of the Chancellor that has allowed it to be removed in full, and that has been done within 18 months. The hon. Gentleman’s Government could have done it eight years ago, and refused to do so. This decision will lift 2,000 children in my community, 95,000 across Scotland and 450,000 across the UK out of poverty. As Gordon Brown observed last week, the Chancellor has done more in this Budget to transform the lives of children in poverty and their families than any of the seven previous Tory Chancellors. This action, combined with significant uplifts in the national minimum wage by 8.5% and the national living wage by more than 4%, will help to tackle the scourge of poverty—and that represents a pay rise for more than 200,000 Scots.

This is a fair Budget, which builds on the Government’s efforts to grow the economy, tackle the cost of living crisis and fight poverty. It puts more money in our constituents’ pockets, and I am proud to support it.