Meeting of the Parliament 28 May 2026 [Draft]
Deputy Presiding Officer, congratulations to you and your colleagues on your appointment. If you will permit me, before I get into the meat of the debate, I thank my predecessor in Dundee City East, Shona Robison, who was not only an outstanding minister, as I am sure the First Minister will agree, but a tireless advocate for Dundee. I know that she will be greatly missed in the Parliament. I also thank my predecessors in this portfolio, Gillian Martin, who is here with me today, and Angus Robertson, not only for their tireless work in the portfolios that I cover but—I am not embarrassed to say—for their guidance and valuable advice in my first days in the post.
I thank colleagues from across the Parliament for their good wishes. I want to say straight off that it is my aim—the First Minister said this about his role, too—to work in a collegiate fashion: to agree where we possibly can and to disagree rigorously. I am sure that there will be opportunities for disagreement, but we must do so agreeably when we cannot agree.
No party or MSP has a monopoly on wisdom—certainly not me—and I very much look forward to working with everybody in this chamber. I am so grateful for the good wishes that I have received from colleagues from other parties. I will not embarrass you, but it has been heartening, and I thank you.
Nobody will mind me saying that, most of all, I thank the people of Dundee City East for their faith in me. I also thank people in Dundee and Angus for the privilege of serving as their member of Parliament. I will miss the parts of the constituency that my colleagues Heather Anderson and Lloyd Melville are now fortunate enough to represent, but I am absolutely determined to get stuck in for Dundee.
Dundee is Scotland’s “Yes” city. It is a city that my family once migrated to from Ireland. It is a city that, like the rest of Scotland, is at its best because of its diversity and its outward-looking nature, which enriches our industries and our society. The city informs my politics, as I know that it does for other colleagues in the Parliament.
Dundee is a city that has been at the heart of Scotland’s successes in food and drink, higher education, journalism and, of course, energy, which moves us to the fundamental point of today’s debate.
We are debating where decisions should be made. Are they better being made here, in Scotland’s Parliament, which is voted on by the people who live and work in Scotland, or at Westminster? Whatever our views, surely Scotland’s energy policies should be in Scotland’s hands. It is one of the most energy-rich countries in Europe, having won the natural lottery twice—once with hydrocarbons and then with its abundant renewables resources. Yet, despite that—