14th February 2022: A Week in Parliament

Above Adventure

I was delighted to visit Above Adventure, the new Climbing and Bouldering Centre at Woodstock Street, Kilmarnock [the former Grange Church]. It is testament to the commitment of the Trustees and the man determined to see it through, Dean. They must be so pleased to see it come to fruition with years of work to secure the funding and get the works undertaken. This involved dealing with covid, Brexit, rising building supply costs, and unplanned works arising from an old-listed building. Steeple works are ongoing and some additional funding is required to complete the steeple climbing space. In the meantime, let's hope the bouldering area is a great success. I recommend getting along as soon as possible - we are lucky to have such a facility in Kilmarnock. Given I was able to reach the top it proves that as well as being designed to take experts, it really does cater for all ranges including absolute beginners!

Windfall Tax

As the energy crisis has intensified, a talking point has been a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies. It sounds appealing, but Labour hasn’t actually told us how it will work. For example, profits announced this financial year by BP and Shell will fall within existing tax laws. If a new law is brought in, it will not catch these profits anyway, unless it is applied retrospectively. And retrospective tax laws are generally only applied in authoritarian states or banana republics. That said, one could be introduced to catch profits for the next financial year. There is a risk this will still scare off investment as happened with all three previous windfall taxes. This meant a short term cash boost would actually do more long term economic damage.

In a debate, I pointed out to Ed Milliband that when Labour was in power, oil prices bottomed out at $12 a barrel in 1998 rising to nearly $100 a barrel ten years later. They should have set up an oil and gas fund but instead spent the lot as it came in. A terrible waste. This is the entire problem with the North Sea oil and gas – it has been used as a cash cow all these years by Westminster.

Going forward, we do need to review the tax system for the industry. We need to look at the tax rebates companies get in terms of decommissioning and capital investment. If they are getting record profits which they argue they will re-invest then there shouldn’t be tax rebates for the capital investment.

Let’s not forget the oil and gas industry is providing at least £3.5bn extra to the Treasury for this year and next, not to mention what should now be payment of corporation tax at the higher rate they pay. The treasury should already be using their own windfall to help us, instead of giving a poxy £200 loan to billpayers. The sad reality is that despite Scotland being energy-rich in terms of resources, our households are energy poor because of UK energy policies and regulations.