Meeting of the Parliament 02 September 2025
The voices that speak to me from the oil and gas sector tell me that the cost regime that is applied by the taxation levels of the United Kingdom Government—which this Government does not support—is undermining investment to sustain activity in the North Sea. This Government is investing heavily in supporting the energy transition that we must make to ensure that we achieve our climate change objectives.
That brings me to my comments about energy. I know that people in Scotland share my frustration that households are not feeling the benefit of the rapid expansion of low-cost renewable energy generation here in Scotland. A clear Scottish policy success is not delivering the savings to consumers that it should, because of policy choices made by successive United Kingdom Governments, and some of what Mr Ewing has just raised with me is relevant in that respect.
Westminster will happily take our energy but will do nothing to lower our energy bills and nothing to give Scottish business the competitive advantage of lower energy costs. That is why Scotland’s energy resources should be in Scotland’s hands, but that can come only with the control that independence would give to the people of Scotland.
It is my firm belief that our vast, low-cost, renewable energy generation has the capacity to be as transformational for Scotland’s economy, and for the wealth of our people, as corporation tax was for Ireland’s. It has the capacity to send Scotland on a new, more prosperous course.
The fundamental truth that anchors all my politics is that the people who care most about Scotland, the people who choose to live here, should be the ones setting our nation’s course—not politicians in Westminster for whom Scotland is too often just an afterthought.
That principle has been delivered in part by the creation of this Parliament. We have some ability—but limited ability—to shape our nation, but for so long, as big decisions about our budget, our economy, immigration, membership of the European Union, energy, jobs and wages have been taken elsewhere, there has been a brake on what our country can achieve. Westminster choices hold us back when we should be moving forward.
Let us consider immigration. Not having control of immigration means that our national health service and our care homes are facing critical staff shortages. The UK Government has made it more difficult for them to recruit abroad, which impacts on the levels of care that they can offer. It is a completely unnecessary problem that has been manufactured by Westminster’s toxic immigration debate, and Westminster policy is doing, and will do, real damage to Scotland’s national health service and to our care sector. The solution is a simple one: a Parliament with the power—