12:07 Andrew Bowie (Conservative)

May I ask the Minister whether she has personally met any oil and gas workers since taking office, in order to understand what her Government’s policy means for them and their families, and whether the Secretary of State has done so? Will the industry receive an answer on the uncertainty surrounding the calculation of scope 3 emissions and environmental impact assessments? Given the announcement of £200 million to support the 400 workers affected by the closure of Grangemouth, how much does the Minister think the Treasury might need to find to support the 200,000 workers currently supported by the oil and gas industry? Does she agree with the Climate Change Committee that we will need oil and gas until at least 2050, and has she accounted for the higher carbon emissions associated with importing liquefied natural gas instead? Finally, let me ask whether she still sees the Department as a sponsor and a champion for the industry—because the industry certainly does not trust that to be the case.

We are getting on with a plan for the future. First, we will invest in clean power. It is ludicrous that at this time when our bills depend on what Putin chooses to do and we have to respond, the shadow Minister is suggesting that we should do more of that. Even if there were no climate change, even if there were no push to clean power, if we drilled as much oil and gas from the North sea as we possibly could, it would amount to less than 1% of the global market and would have no impact on bills whatsoever.

The North sea gives the UK the opportunity to become a powerhouse in renewable energy generation, and it is time that we seized it. We urge the Government to make good their commitment to consult on a new regime to boost investment in jobs. We want to ensure that the oil and gas industry is wound down in a way that supports the redeployment of skills and jobs, and provides the right incentives to encourage fossil fuel industries to invest in green technologies. What details can the Minister give us of the support that the Government will provide to upskill and redeploy those who were formerly working in the fossil fuel industry?

We believe that much bolder action is urgently needed to ensure energy security, to cut bills and, with Donald Trump threatening to pull the United States out of the Paris agreement once again, to resume the UK’s global leadership role on climate action, which was abandoned by the previous Conservative Government. We urge this Government to introduce an emergency 10-year plan to insulate homes, starting with free insulation for the most vulnerable residents, and to introduce an energy social tariff to tackle fuel poverty and health inequalities caused by cold, damp homes.

I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. On upskilling and redeploying workers, as I said previously, we are introducing the passporting scheme and making sure that we can break down the barriers that exist in different industries, because the skills and talents of people working in oil and gas can be transferred to renewable energy. We want to make sure that we do that.

When I climb the hill behind my home in the Lincolnshire wolds, I can see, 20 miles away, a wonderful array of wind turbines in the North sea. We love it locally—we love it for our economy—but nothing in that precludes oil and gas exploration. If we in Lincolnshire are doing so much for green energy, why are we allowing the bread basket of England to be covered with solar farms? We have 10,000 acres of them around Gainsborough, and there is another application for 3,900 acres at North Clifton. Will the Minister and her boss please look at such mass applications in the round so that there is not overdevelopment in the break basket of England?

It is good to see the Government taking a very sensible approach in the consultation to working with our European partners on how we develop renewable energy and get energy costs down. As with so many other areas, our constituents have paid higher bills because the previous Government refused to work with our European counterparts. Can the Minister give us a bit more detail? As we look to expand our capacity to create renewable energy, she will be very aware that there is a risk of an £800 million charge because of the variation between our emissions trading schemes. Can she also tell us a bit more about what working with the North Seas Energy Co-operation might entail, and whether we might rejoin that organisation to help drive down bills further for our constituents?

I am in favour of net zero, and this country has achieved a great deal in working towards that, but what planet is the Minister’s Department on? Is she unaware that there is now a national security crisis that demands much higher defence expenditure? Is she aware that the costs of net zero are inflicting untold harm on our industry and have done for some years? It is now time to prioritise economic growth, to target cheap energy instead of net zero, and to generate growth and energy exports in order that we can afford the defence we need. The Department is living on another planet, and the Minister should listen to her Chancellor and her Business Secretary, who are trying to give her this advice.

I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am on planet Earth and that we are well aware of what we are doing. We look at the world around us and see the enormous hike in energy prices, which is linked to our being attached to the global market for oil and gas. The previous Government spent tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in order to protect people against the price hike, and we cannot allow that to happen again. It is absolutely right that we push for cheaper renewable energy, and I remind the hon. Gentleman that I sit in two Departments: the Business Secretary is my boss, and the Energy Secretary is my boss. They both agree with this policy, as does the Chancellor, because it is the right thing to do.

I am not sure how many times I will have to go through this, but we are not cutting energy jobs. The North sea is declining because there is less and less oil and gas there. The work the previous Government did on renewable energies secured no supply chains for this country, so we were reliant on other countries, as the hon. Member points out. We are putting in place incentives for supply chains to be in this country, so that we make more. I am delivering a steel strategy to make sure that we use steel from this country for our clean energy future. These are the policies we are putting in place to make sure we have a managed transition, clean energy, lower bills and energy security.

My hon. Friend is completely right to expose Reform’s arguments for the nonsense they are. The CBI brought out a report a week or so ago showing that the net zero economy grew by 10%, which is much faster than the wider economy. This is delivering jobs already, as well as investment from around the world, in part because we are the second most attractive country in the world in which to invest, as PwC has told us. The reality is that we can bring down bills, secure good jobs and make ourselves more energy secure, and Reform is living in the past.

Conservative-led North East Lincolnshire council has embraced the green industries that are helping to reshape our identity in Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and it is playing a critical role in decarbonising our energy estuary. Does the Minister agree that the Opposition’s new anti-renewables position undermines the ambition of young people in my constituency, who are excited by this sector? They are keen to work with these companies, which do good, pay well, provide training and benefit the community.

However, that does not take into account the jobs they have supported, the tax intake that comes with them, and the skills, investment and expertise they have preserved and that will help in the transition to renewable energies. Is the Minister saying in her statement that she is actually willing to sacrifice all that to ideologically stop new licences in the North sea?

I welcome my hon. Friend’s statement, and indeed the fact that there is a plan. Although the Tories now accept that they did not have a plan, which is at least an important admission, the result of that lack of a plan is that have been left with uncertainty for both workers and consumers. In East Thanet, we need better jobs and lower bills, and surely she will agree with me that the overall security of our energy is also vital. There is one solution, which is to get off fossil fuels and shift to renewable energy as soon as possible.

The usual luddite tendencies are on display on the Opposition Benches after 14 years of abject failure. This Government are embracing the golden triangle: energy security to reduce bills, transitioning to net zero, and hundreds of thousands of secure British jobs in Scotland and across the UK. Does the Minister agree that if the shadow Minister, who has a great track record of losing jobs, does not want jobs in Scotland, we will have them in Cornwall?

As someone with two generations of their family who have depended on the North sea oil and gas industry, I know that we have to move away from fossil fuels and that we have to drive forward to the just transition, but we must also recognise that we are not there yet and that this is not the moment to push the industry off a cliff. It is declining naturally. We are leaving ourselves in a position where we will still need oil, so will we import it? We will need gas for hydrogen production, plastics, chemicals and pharmaceuticals. All of that is necessary. We also face a threat from the Chinese trying to infiltrate our renewables, so what are the Government going to do about that?

The Minister has already alluded to last week’s CBI report, which set out some of the huge opportunities that net zero offers for job creation, investment and growth. Will she outline to the House what steps her Department is taking to ensure we benefit from all that opportunity through Great British Energy and the National Wealth Fund?

With due deference to the newly appointed Minister for Aberdeen on the Conservative Benches, the question of these jobs is not a matter purely for the north-east or purely for Scotland. Those 200,000 jobs are spread across every constituency in this country and they are all at risk. As we heard from the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), they are being pushed off a cliff edge. The Minister talked about our energy bills being in the hands of Vladimir Putin. Does she not agree with me that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place? We have Vladimir Putin on one side driving up energy bills and her dogmatic Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero on the other.

Scandalously, the workers of the Grangemouth refinery are to be the victims of a very unjust transition. The folly of a foreign state and private capital being in charge of such a key vital piece of energy infrastructure is laid bare, especially with no UK Government involvement. I am curious as to what ownership role the UK Government will take in the new energy industries that will be at Grangemouth.

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