Meeting of the Parliament 24 June 2026 [Draft]
I put on the record my thanks to Liam Kerr for bringing this debate to the Parliament. We do not always agree, but the ability to debate and discuss—which we have heard in many of the speeches tonight—is valuable. I also thank other colleagues for their speeches.
Liam Kerr started by reflecting on the opinion polls. I reflect on what people actually vote for, and a majority of members in the Parliament agree with the Government on this particular issue.
There are big increases taking place in renewables, and thanks to the policies that this Government has put in place, Scotland is a massive exporter of electricity.
I will go through some of the speeches—there were several of them—and I will start by picking up on something that Liam Kerr said. He talked about the war in Ukraine, which is one thing that we all agree on. We all know that European energy security is vital, so why we are turning our back on the rest of Europe is beyond me.
I want to touch on other points about Ukraine. The first point is on the attacks on the Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl nuclear plants, which I am sure that we would all wholly condemn. We all agree on that, and it is important to put that on the record. The other point relates to sanctions. Although the UK has sanctioned Rosatom’s subsidiary companies, we have not sanctioned Rosatom itself, which leads me to worry about our continued strategic vulnerability in that particular area. That is something that we should all be concerned about.
Alan Brown made several good points, as we would expect. One was that nuclear power is not green. Hinkley Point C was meant to be built by 2017 but has now been delayed to 2030. The expenses that come with that, along with clean-up costs, which cost billions, and the challenges—