Energy Security: North Sea Gas and Oil
1/52. What assessment he has made of the contribution of North sea gas and oil to energy security.
Oil and gas from the North sea will remain part of our energy system for decades to come. As a Government, we are strengthening our energy security, and as part of that effort, we are investing in home-grown clean power and energy through Great British Energy. We are committed to a fair and orderly transition. Next week, I will be in Aberdeen to meet energy companies from across the north-east.
We all know that the Government’s energy policy is unsustainable. It has even been reported that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero is looking at authorising tiebacks to access new oil and gas wells using existing infrastructure in the North sea. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge that if we want to increase energy security and reduce energy prices for households and businesses, we must expand the use of the energy resources available to us, including North sea oil and gas?
As I sought to reflect in the first answer, oil and gas will be a central part of our energy mix in the United Kingdom for decades to come, but it is also right to recognise that there is a transition that needs to be managed and there was an abject failure by the previous Government to manage it. That is why we saw tens of thousands of jobs going in the North sea without the level of investment that we are now seeing from GB energy to manage that transition effectively.
Does the Secretary of State agree with me that the Conservatives have got a cheek? Some 77,000 jobs drifted out of the North sea under their Government, and they did not lift a finger. This Government, along with the Scottish Government, invested £18 million in a transition fund to help oil and gas workers move into energy jobs. That will be an uneven transition, but it is an inevitable one. Does the Secretary of State agree that that is what comes from having a Government with an industrial strategy that puts workers first?
I find myself in agreement with my hon. Friend from the Western Isles. The North sea has provided decades of good jobs, not just for people from the Western Isles and across Scotland but from the whole of the United Kingdom. The last Conservative Government did not believe in industrial strategy—it is as basic as that. It is not just a difference of policy; it is a difference of philosophy. We believe in open markets and an active state. That is why we set up GB Energy, that is why there is a transition fund and that is why people can rely on Labour.
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to the Dispatch Box as Secretary of State for Scotland after his sabbatical over the last 20 or so years. The messianic zeal of his colleague the Energy Secretary to see the destruction of our oil and gas industry is having real-life consequences. Scottish workers are being made unemployed in their thousands, while this Government ban the drilling and exploration of oil and gas in British waters, and import more gas from Norway, which gets it from the very same sea that we are prevented from exploiting. Come on, Secretary of State; it is all a little unhinged, isn’t it?
Where to begin? We have a Government that have invested in GB Energy and that have a transition fund up against an Opposition that abjectly failed in their responsibilities towards the North sea. We just heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) that 77,000 jobs were lost. That is the record that they own, and we will continue to point it out.
The Secretary of State for Energy is not the messiah. Week after week, I come to this Chamber to ask Energy Ministers and Scotland Office Ministers why they are content to sacrifice one of this country’s greatest national assets and allow highly skilled workers to go on the scrap heap or go overseas. As Scotland’s man at the Cabinet table, the Secretary of State knows that his job is to speak up for those people who are losing their jobs today, not to defend the Secretary of State for Energy. Will he explain that to the people of Aberdeen when he visits next week?
I gently remind the shadow Secretary of State that there is a difference between abuse and argument, and in relation to his substantive arguments, of course I am happy to be Scotland’s voice at the Cabinet table. That is why only next week I will be meeting a range of energy companies based in Aberdeen and listening directly to them. That dialogue has already started. I think we can do better than his question.