Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have had an excellent and pointed debate this evening. Certainly, Opposition Members have together pointed out the deficiencies in the Bill, pointed out what a specious and potentially damaging Bill it is and, indeed, questioned why the Bill was brought to the House in the first place. All that is what I very much want to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) called this Bill “illogical and damaging” and pointed out that it could put marine protected areas at risk. My hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith) pointed out that it makes us look ridiculous on the world stage. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) pointed out that the Bill itself was based on a series of lies and, indeed, quoted the UN Secretary-General stating that “the truly dangerous radicals” are the countries that are increasing their oil and gas output.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) pointed out strongly that this Bill, contrary to its claims, is not about energy security. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), who reminded us of the real effects of climate change right now, pointed out that the future is largely electric and this Bill is a “great deception”. The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) called it stupid, unnecessary and dangerous—she did not mince her words very much. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) laid many of the myths of the Bill to rest and questioned why the Government are pushing it in the first place. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) pointed out the “political theatre” behind the Bill and why it is completely incompatible with our climate change commitments.

This really is a reprehensible Bill. It is a Bill based on a number of myths and, frankly, lies, which require people to believe that there are people around really saying that oil and gas is going to be stopped immediately and will not continue to play a substantial role, as it will in the energy economy up to 2050. No one is saying that oil and gas will not continue up to a period of time and no one is saying that the existing fields in the UK will not continue to produce and contribute their products in the future. There will be jobs in that continuing North sea oil operation.

However, this is a one-clause Bill with effectively two sections in it. The first section ostentatiously requires the Oil and Gas Authority to do what it is already doing; indeed, both the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion reminded us that the Oil and Gas Authority has been carrying out regular licensing rounds every 18 months since 2016. It is required to do so because it is bound by the maximum economic extraction requirement. All that is already in legislation and the Oil and Gas Authority is already doing it.

The second section sets out an entirely bogus climate test, which by definition cannot be failed. That is achieved by skewing the test conditions to test UK gas production emissions only against aggregate liquefied natural gas imports, which are overall likely to be dirtier in production than UK gas, and not against pipeline-delivered gas that, in the case of our main importer Norway, is half as dirty in production as gas in the UK.

There is no emissions test for oil, despite its constituting 70% of North sea fossil reserves—80% of which, as we have heard, is shipped and refined overseas. For oil there is a “net importer” test, which requires the OGA to issue licences if the demand for oil and gas products in the UK is greater than the production—when that has been the case in the North sea for 20 years, with no prospect of reversal. It is a Bill built on completely bogus premises.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about bogus premises, but he just suggested that we could get more pipeline gas from Norway. Does he not recognise that if we do not produce as much gas here, it will not be gas from Norway that we can access but will inevitably be LNG with higher emissions? Will he please, for the benefit of the House, step up and be honest? We do not have the option to get massively more gas from Norway—if we did, we would have done it already.

[Dr Whitehead]

I think I am going to get injury time for that intervention. If the Minister had been listening to what I was saying, he would know that I was stating that the Bill, in a very bogus way, has deliberately sidestepped the fact that there is gas available for import that is much cleaner than ours in its production. We should use that as a test, but the only test carried out was on LNG which, conveniently, is a little bit dirtier than the gas we produce in this country.

The Bill is about not what it says as much as what it does. As the former Energy Minister and author of the Government net zero report, the former right hon. Member for Kingswood, said recently, the Bill goes against everything the UK is saying internationally about moving away from oil and gas, and it has already damaged our international stance by appearing to double down on precisely the thing to which we are saying the opposite on the world stage. The right hon. Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma), the former president of Glasgow COP, said in a courageous and precise speech this evening that the Bill puts into legislation something that already happens under the agency of the OGA. He also stated that its sole purpose is to double down on more oil and that nations around the world will not take that very kindly as far as our commitments are concerned.

The OGA itself emphasised that the Bill was “not necessary”, but

“would significantly challenge one of the tenets of independence for the NSTA, to decide when to run a licensing round.”

Whatever the position in the North sea objectively, the OGA would be forced to scrape up at least a licence a year forever. We know the claim that that would somehow do something for energy security is also bogus. The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) recently said that

“new oil and gas licences only provide for energy security if all that energy is sold into the UK and, actually, it will be sold on the world market”—

a point that a number of Members have made this afternoon.

The whole Bill appears to have come about as a result of a wheeze, cooked up by a couple of strategy advisers over a heavy lunch, to put the Opposition on the wrong foot—or, to put it another way, on the right side of history. Quite honestly, that wheeze should have been put down as soon as the effects of the heavy lunch wore off, but instead it has persisted through the corridors of power and has finally made it to the Floor of the House in the shape of this risible Bill, the contents of which evaporate on the first examination by anybody of its serious purpose.

That says rather more about the state of the Government than anything else. Where were the quality controls on policy making? How did something so evidently content-free and fact-averse as this piece of legislation ever make it so far? How did the present departmental Government Ministers, for whom I have a great deal of respect, allow it to happen on their watch, when they must know it is a load of hokum with no policy merit at all? Now they are forced to go out and try to justify it to the House. It is a very sad reflection of what a tiny, bitter and sad space the Government have retreated into, where serious policy development in the energy sphere—God knows we have enough of that to be working on—is replaced by such ill-advised emptiness. That is what this Bill is, in the end: just empty. If passed, it will linger on the statute book for a short period, make no difference to anything in the meantime and be rapidly overtaken by the reality of the forward march to decarbonisation in energy.

However, the Bill will have one lasting effect, as I have mentioned, because it signals strongly and, I am afraid, potentially lastingly that the UK is not serious about its climate and net zero ambitions and is prepared to say duplicitous things on both an international and a national stage. That is bad news for all the genuine work that has so far been done by the UK on net zero climate leadership. This Bill will not stick, but that charge might. For that reason, if for no other of the many reasons that have been put forward in this debate, it is best that we take this Bill no further than Second Reading and refuse as a House to let it pass to further stages.

Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We are in Committee, so I remind Members that the Chair should be addressed by name or as “Chair” or “Madam Chair”, as Sir Alok Sharma did, and not as “Mr Deputy Speaker” or “Madam Deputy Speaker”.

Before I call the shadow Minister, I want to make it clear that I will be calling those who have amendments down first and I will then move on to others, going from side to side.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I would like to speak to our amendments 17, 18, 19 and 20, to comment on other amendments before us today and then to place all this into the context of the Bill as a whole by way of what will effectively be a stand-part contribution. This Bill remains an ill-advised, pointless piece of political posturing—

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

Don’t pull any punches!

[Dr Whitehead]

That was the mild version.

As the right hon. Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma) has informed us, the Bill legislates for something that happens anyway. It will make no difference to bills, according to the Secretary of State. It will make no difference to our energy security, according to the former chair of BP. It will undermine the independence of the North Sea Transition Authority, according to the NSTA’s own board, and it and will reinforce the perception around the world that the UK is rowing back from climate action, according to the former COP President, the right hon. Member for Reading West. We regret that this insubstantial and damaging Bill has proceeded this far, and we will vote against it on Third Reading.

We do not need this one-clause Bill. We need instead a strategy for managing the North sea that supports our energy security, meets our climate commitments and secures the economic and jobs benefits of the transition to a low-carbon economy. We would have liked to debate a new clause setting out a new principal objective for the North Sea Transition Authority that would have put such a strategy into effect. However, because the Bill is so short and tightly drawn around the narrow issue of mandatory licensing rounds, amendments to put a more sensible strategy into place are regrettably not in order. We must therefore take the Bill on its own terms, even if that means treating it with significantly more respect than the drafters have treated this House with in presenting such a trivial and nakedly political proposal.

We have in the Bill at present two tests that should be passed if the Oil and Gas Authority is to proceed with mandatory licence issuance, and we know that the two tests cannot be failed. It is a fact that if properly drafted—we might come to that in a moment—liquefied natural gas will always be more greenhouse gas-intensive in production than UK natural gas and we will always be in a position where gas and oil produced in the UK and in a declining North sea field will not meet our total demand for gas and oil.

I learned in my first year at university—as I think the Minister did, because he did a similar degree to me—that a proposition that cannot be falsified cannot stand as a valid proposition. Here we have two completely non-valid propositions in the Bill. They are bogus and cynically contrived to give the appearance that something has to be achieved before mandatory licencing takes place. At the very least we need a test or tests that can be failed and that produce a proper level of judgment into the advisability of proceeding with such mandatory licences. The best test surely has to be whether such action is compatible with our climate change goals. The Government had previously introduced climate change compatibility tests into production generally. It is strange that these appear nowhere in the Bill.

[John Redwood]

The shadow Minister has said that getting more of our own gas out of the North sea would help our security of supply and reduce CO₂ because it would displace imported LNG, so why does he not support that proposition?

[Dr Whitehead]

The proposition before us today is for mandatory licence rounds in a declining North sea field, which would make no difference in the long term to the total amount of gas that we get out of the North sea, as everybody knows. It would instead put us firmly on the back foot as far as international climate change discussions are concerned. That is the key issue that we need to address this afternoon.

[David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)]

Following on from the question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), is it therefore Labour’s position not to allow any new oil and gas licences in the future, if Labour were to come into power?

[Dr Whitehead]

It is Labour’s position that we do not wish to see new energy exploration licences issued for the future, but that does not mean that the North sea will not continue in production over a long period of time and provide a substantial amount of oil and gas for our domestic market.

Our first amendments, 17 and 18, would introduce a new test that would safeguard the legally binding commitments that the UK and all other nations made in the Paris agreement and have reaffirmed ever since. Every credible independent analysis—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency, the Climate Change Committee—shows that new exploration licences are not compatible with limiting warming and avoiding the worst of the devastating impact that climate change will have, and is having, around the world and here in the UK.

The test that we have put in amendments 17 and 18 is possible if we have achieved or are achieving our climate change goals internationally. Amendment 18 states:

“The climate change test is met in relation to a relevant year if the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the mitigation of climate change find that the granting of additional seaward area production licences is consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.”

No one who is serious about this can take that to mean that existing fields will not continue to produce for years to come—of course they will—but anyone who argues that business as usual and a few new licenses are the route to good, long-term jobs and energy security is frankly peddling a myth.

We must accelerate the transition to new opportunities for North sea workers in the low-carbon economy, including through carbon capture, usage and storage, through hydrogen and through floating offshore wind. We do not believe that tests are the best route to achieving that goal. We need a holistic strategy, but within the framework set out in this Bill, the climate change test we propose is the only way to achieve a policy that is consistent with being a responsible and leading actor on the world stage in the fight against climate change, with managing our existing North sea assets carefully and for the long-term, and with maximising the low-carbon economic potential of the North sea.

The other two amendments I will speak to highlight the extent to which the Bill fails even on the narrow terms it has set out. Amendments 19 and 20 would address the glaring deficiencies in the bogus carbon intensity test set out by the Government. Currently, the test compares UK gas production carbon emissions only against an aggregate of liquefied natural gas production emissions, ignoring pipeline-delivered gas, which makes up most of our imports, as the right hon. Member for Reading West reminded us. This amendment would correct that. As it stands, the test is designed to be impossible to fail, so it is barely worthy of the name. Including only LNG is a serious logical flaw. Before the Minister jumps to his feet, it is not true to say that every marginal unit of imported gas must be LNG. Indeed, we support substantial amounts of natural gas coming into the UK via the pipeline from Norway. The production of that gas is substantially cleaner than that of UK natural gas.

Apart from anything else, the Bill takes no account of the UK’s likely future gas demand profile. Demand for gas will decline as we rapidly decarbonise our power sector and electrify more and more of our economy. Indeed, this decline in demand, not just supply, is at the heart of a successful net zero transition.

Approving new exploration licences for fields that will take years to come online, on the assumption that the alternative must otherwise be LNG, without taking any account of future demand, is absurd. A fairer test would consider gas imports in the round.

[David Duguid]

I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s comment that, overall, 30% of our gas comes from Norway. Yes, that is the majority of our imports, but it is still 30% overall. Nobody in this House has authority over Norway’s future oil and gas prospects, but would he be in favour of the Norwegian Government exploring for new oil and gas to supply to us?

[Dr Whitehead]

No, in line with the IEA and the IPCC, I am not in favour of new exploration licences. The point is that, in a declining market, Norwegian supply will continue to be very substantial, even if no new exploration licences are granted in Norway.

The figure cited by the hon. Gentleman is almost right —the actual figure is 34%. The United Kingdom supplies 38% of its own gas, with the United States supplying 14%, Qatar supplying 9% and other countries supplying smaller amounts. Norway already occupies a very substantial position in our present gas supplies, and I am sure it will continue to do so.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it might be useful to remind Conservative Members that, according to the UN production gap report, Governments are already planning for their existing developments to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030 than is consistent with keeping global heating to 1.5°C or below? The idea that anyone can have vast new developments is not compatible with keeping below our climate target.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. New licences are an international issue. If we had new exploration licences around the world, we would simply produce far more oil and gas than is compatible with the 1.5° climate target. We should just keep it in the ground.

Finally, amendment 21 would go some way towards correcting another element of the carbon intensity test. As currently drafted—the Minister will want to listen to this bit—the test will not take account of methane emissions, which is a serious flaw. The whole case for comparing UK-based natural gas with LNG is based only on production emissions. The emission of methane at various stages of the production and transportation of LNG is, in aggregate, worse than the emissions of UK-produced and piped natural gas, but they are not carbon dioxide emissions, which is what the Bill says should be measured.

LNG’s potential carbon dioxide emissions upon burning are roughly the same as, or perhaps slightly greater than, the carbon dioxide emissions from UK natural gas. As the right hon. Member for Reading West said, that is elevated by the current UK practice of flaring surplus gas, which can be measured in carbon dioxide emissions.

Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over 20-year and 100-year timeframes. Its lifetime in the atmosphere is shorter than the lifetime of CO₂, but its impact is far more significant. The Climate Change Act 2008 is quite specific on how this should be measured. Section 93, which the Bill mentions but does not act on, states that

“greenhouse gas emissions…and removals of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere shall be measured or calculated in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.”

Proposed new section 4ZB(1) of the Petroleum Act 1998 mentions the carbon intensity of natural gas, but proposed new subsection (3) defines “carbon intensity” as

“the carbon dioxide emissions attributable to its production”.

But carbon dioxide emissions in production are not the principal concern here, as the gas has not been burned at that point. Indeed, I can conceive of smart climate lawyers challenging the test’s validity on precisely that point. The Minister might therefore see amendment 21 as providing a vital lifeline to the integrity of his Bill. To that extent, the amendment might be seen as helpful, but I somehow doubt that he will take it up. To coin a phrase, “It’s the methane, stupid.” The Bill should say so.

Proposed new section 4ZB(4) already gives the Secretary of State the power to amend the carbon intensity test to include emissions other than carbon dioxide. Perhaps the Secretary of State or the Minister will shortly take that up to save the test. We can anticipate a fairly amusing statutory instrument debate when he tries to do that.

Amendment 21 would simply require the Government to produce a report analysing what the impact of that change will be. In the spirit of trying to improve a Bill that, by design, is fairly resistant to improvement, we welcome the amendments tabled by the right hon. Member for Reading West and the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby).

The Climate Change Committee and the Environmental Audit Committee have called for a ban on routine flaring and venting, and such a ban is long overdue. A marine spatial prioritisation policy would help to organise and plan an optimal long-term, low-carbon economic strategy for the North sea.

There is clearly significant strength of feeling across the Committee that this is an inadequate Bill, and some of the proposed tests could undoubtedly make a bad Bill a little better, although some of those tests have internal problems. We would not want to vote against those tests, but the only comprehensive climate change and net zero compatible test is the one that we and, in principle, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) have set out. It is the best available route, within a severely constrained process, to align this deeply flawed Bill with our essential energy security and climate change priorities.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 2 on spatial prioritisation. The competing pressures on sea space mean there is essentially a spatial squeeze. I fully understand the Bill’s importance, as we all know that the oil and gas industry will have a key role as the UK transitions towards cleaner energy. The Bill will provide reassurance to the industry.

I am grateful that the Government have stated that each annual licensing round will take place only if key emissions tests are met, to support the transition to net zero. I thank the Minister and his team for their ongoing engagement on this issue but, as we seek to turn to renewables and clean energy, we need to ensure that we have the space and infrastructure to carry this forward, otherwise the energy transition will never come to fruition.

I brought up this issue directly with the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mark Spencer), at the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, as my concerns extend beyond just oil and gas. I am also concerned about how floating offshore wind and fishing can cohabit the same ocean space, and I am also concerned about marine protected areas. There is clearly a balance to strike.

It was good to hear the Fisheries Minister’s response about cross-departmental work to ensure that our fishermen have a future in the light of our need to expand our renewable energy sources, but there is an opportunity in this Bill to ensure that we do not repeat these conversations as other energy sources compete for space in the precious waters around our coast. This will help not only the UK’s energy security but our push towards renewable energy, which will support our fishing fleets and retain a simultaneous focus on biodiversity and improving the condition of marine protected areas.

As a coastal MP, all these points are especially important to me. Being an eternal optimist, I think we can do all these things simultaneously if we can plan strategically where we have the opportunity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

It is customary on Third Reading to start with thanks, and I would like to thank two groups of people. First, I thank the civil servants who held their noses to write this pile of rubbish for the House’s consideration. Secondly, I thank the Government for introducing the Bill, because as a number of people will know, it has led directly to the election of a new Labour Member of Parliament for Kingswood, following the resignation of the former Government climate tsar, who wrote the net zero report and had this to say about the Bill:

“This bill would in effect allow more frequent new oil and gas licences and the increased production of new fossil fuels in the North Sea… I can also no longer condone nor continue to support a government that is committed to a course of action that I know is wrong and will cause future harm.”

He then resigned, and the rest is history. Thank you, Minister, for increasing Labour’s representation in this Chamber by one seat. Although we hope to have a lot more seats in the very near future, that is progress.

The Minister has form on this. He was the Minister in the Adjournment debate on fracking some while ago—

[Graham Stuart]

It was not an Adjournment debate—get it right!

[Dr Whitehead]

Sorry; the Opposition day debate on fracking, which effectively brought down the Truss Government as a result of the various prevarications at the time. I thank the Minister for that.

What I do not thank the Minister for is the completely misleading and almost erroneous way in which he has characterised the future under the Bill. On licences, the Bill will do things that are already done, and it will not make any change. It will not suddenly increase confidence across the sector, because the sector knows that the Bill is just a piece of performative theatre; and it will do nothing—contrary to what the Minister and others have claimed—to cut energy bills, tackle the cost of living or improve our energy security.

At a time when people across this country have suffered two years of crushing energy costs and an inflationary crisis driven in large part by our significant exposure to gas prices—which, as we all know by now, are set internationally—the Bill offers no solutions. The Secretary of State herself admitted that it would not cut bills, and Lord Browne, the former chief executive officer of British Petroleum, said that it was

“not going to not make any difference”

to energy security. The board of the North Sea Transition Authority, which is responsible for giving out licences, unanimously agreed that the Bill is unnecessary and would challenge its independence. However, even though the Bill will achieve none of its stated aims, it is far from consequence-free.

[Graham Stuart]

Offshore Energies UK has said that if Labour’s policy was implemented, it could cost this country 42,000 jobs and £26 billion of economic value. Perhaps the shadow Minister will respond to that consequence.

[Dr Whitehead]

We are talking about what the Government are doing through this policy—that is what we are concentrating on today. I hope we will have another much wider debate about the effect that a comprehensive transition policy for the whole North sea field would have, with associated arrangements for the transition of investment, energy security and worker and job security, in the context of future jobs and future energy security. Many people in the industry have already said that that is exactly what we need to secure the future of the North sea. It is a declining basin; its output will not change greatly as a result of the measures that the Government are proposing. On the other hand, unless urgent action is taken to secure a holistic transition for the North sea, it certainly will not have the investment and the future that so many of us want to see. We need to put that overall consideration alongside some people’s shorter-term concerns about what will happen to the oil and gas industry right this minute.

[Douglas Ross]

This has been an extremely crucial issue in the north-east of Scotland, particularly this week. Does the shadow Minister think it is a small, short-term problem that 42,000 highly skilled workers in that area could lose their jobs under Labour’s plans?

[Dr Whitehead]

They will not. I have tried to make it very clear, against what is, frankly, misinformed scaremongering by Government Members, that under Labour’s plans the North sea will, of course, continue to produce efficiently and effectively over a very long period of time. We know that the North sea is a very mature field and is in decline, and all authorities have said that the Government’s proposals would make no difference to that overall pattern.

We are looking at how to make sure that the North sea continues to produce well and efficiently the oil and gas we will need for the future in declining amounts, while at the same time transforming that economy to produce new forms of energy for the future and maintaining security of production. That will be the big task for the future Labour Government—I am pleased that the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) is envisaging what the new Labour Government will shortly have to do. The long-term task in the North sea is not to pump every last drop of oil and gas it contains, but to give it a new lease of life. New industries can come into the North sea alongside the infrastructure that already exists, making it a new energy powerhouse for the UK in the future.

[Douglas Ross]

I cannot let that go unchallenged. This letter from the Aberdeen and Grampian chamber of commerce to the Leader of the Opposition—the leader of the Labour party in the UK—says that

“if North Sea production is to cease prematurely—a certain outcome of this”

Labour

“policy—then our entire energy transition is undermined.”

This has massive consequences, and I have to say that the reaction of the shadow Minister is quite telling.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Member rather gives himself away by the first sentence he read out:

“if North Sea production is to cease”.

North sea production will not cease—

[Douglas Ross]

It is

“a certain outcome of this policy”.

[Dr Whitehead]

North sea production will not cease over a long period of time, and Labour is committed to making sure that that production continues at the appropriate level for the maturity of the North sea basin. That is something that all sensible people understand to be the case, although it is unfortunate that certain Conservative Members pretend it is not the case for their own political purposes.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Whitehead]

I will make some progress.

The Bill, as I have said, will achieve none of its stated aims, but it is far from consequence-free. The consequence is that it makes a mockery of our country’s commitments to take serious and responsible action on climate change. That is exactly the point the former right hon. Member for Kingswood, Chris Skidmore, made in his resignation letter to the Prime Minister. That point should not be a partisan point. Indeed, it has not been a partisan point, because a number of Members on all sides of the House, including a number of Conservative Members, can see the direction in which this short-sighted Prime Minister and Government are going, and want no part of it.

Some Members are trying to make changes to the Bill. As I have said, one has resigned, and a number are working hard to turn around the direction of this Government in resiling from our country’s climate change commitments—commitments they so recently signed up to, at the recent COP—on moving away from oil and gas. Regrettably, the Prime Minister and the Government, including this Minister, are not having any part of that. I am particularly disappointed that the Minister is not having any part of it, because of his long and honourable commitment to these matters on the international stage over such a long time.

The right hon. Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma), the man who led this country’s climate negotiations at COP26 in Glasgow, has called the Bill “smoke and mirrors”, and a “distraction” that will

“reinforce the unfortunate perception of the UK’s rowing back from climate action”.—[Official Report, 22 January 2024; Vol. 744, c. 52.]

The right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), the former Prime Minister—she signed this country’s net zero commitment into law and understood, as the current Prime Minister sadly does not, the value of cross-party consensus on the science of climate change—has said that she takes a different view from the Government on oil and gas licences, and that they will not provide for our energy security. Away from this Chamber, every credible independent expert has taken a dim view of the Bill. Lord Stern, one of the UK’s foremost experts on climate change, whose work has shaped how the world understands the costs of inaction, has called the Bill a “deeply damaging mistake”.

The reality is that the cost of living crisis we are in is to a large extent caused by our country’s deep exposure to the volatile international price of gas. The International Monetary Fund has said that this exposure meant the UK was harder hit by the crisis than any other western nation. Just today, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has found that this country has spent an additional—in addition to normal spending—£75 billion on gas since the energy crisis began. Four extra days of gas supply by 2050 cannot possibly make the slightest bit of difference to this price. As I have highlighted, the Secretary of State herself conceded that point on the very day the Bill was announced.

The supposed arguments on energy security and jobs are similarly flimsy. The reality is that, as we have begun to discuss this afternoon, the North sea is an extremely mature and declining basin. Gas production will fall by 95% by 2050, even with new licences. The notion that this is a firm basis on which to build our energy security or protect jobs is clearly absurd. As I have outlined, we need a fair and balanced transition for North sea oil and gas workers that recognises the essential role they will continue to play in operating existing fields, which no one disputes will remain a vital part of our energy mix, and puts them at the heart of our clean energy future.

To safeguard the jobs, skills and livelihoods of the communities that have been the backbone of our energy system for decades, we need a Government with a proper industrial strategy to maximise the low-carbon economic potential of the North sea. Labour will create a national wealth fund to invest in low-carbon industries, it will launch a British jobs bonus to ensure that the supply chain benefits of renewable investment finally come to our shores, and it will create a new publicly owned energy company, GB Energy, headquartered in Scotland, to invest in home-grown clean energy and give us real energy independence. That is the answer that the country needs and that the communities who have served as the backbone of our energy systems for decades need. Political theatre, whether in Westminster or Holyrood, helps no one and does a disservice to the people looking to us for answers to the very real challenges we all face.

The final argument that the Government have made in favour of the Bill is that it is somehow, as we have begun to unwrap, a climate-positive piece of legislation. This argument rests on a series of partial and deliberately gameable tests, as we discussed in Committee, with skewed conditions that look only at a narrow band of emissions, ignoring methane for example; that look only at production emissions, ignoring the impact of actually burning the fuels we are extracting; and that look only at liquefied natural gas, ignoring the fact that the majority of our imports are pipeline-delivered. It includes no test whatsoever for oil, which makes up the majority of remaining reserves. That is why I have sympathy for the civil servants who wrote the Bill, who had to squeeze various things into it such as ignoring gas that was coming into pipeline, only having tests against liquefied gas and ignoring the methane emissions in the various versions of the arrangements in place for measuring emissions from production. I was very disappointed that the Minister gave no reaction at all this afternoon to that particular point on methane.

[Graham Stuart]

The data simply does not exist, as I think I set out. It does not exist and we cannot make a comparison if the data does not exist. We are world-leading in having that data; others do not have it. On the methane comparison, we are already below the internationally set goal; we have very low methane emissions in the North sea. On the comparison with LNG— which is the buffer fuel, which is why it is the true comparator, rather than Norwegian gas, which the hon. Gentleman is failing to admit—methane is emitted as it is shipped, so the methane story would make it even worse for LNG versus domestically produced fuel. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would put that into his argument.

[Dr Whitehead]

I would not put it into my argument, but I am a little puzzled under those circumstances that the North Sea Transition Authority recently published a factsheet on precisely this point about the relative emissions of various contributors to gas and oil into the UK, which looked at the contribution from various countries and at the various emissions levels of those contributions, and set out how those contributions arise. I do not know whether the Minister is quite up to date with what his own North Sea Transition Authority is doing, but perhaps he ought to have a little look at that because he would see that actually the data is there. It does exist, and we can draw the sort of conclusions I drew this afternoon from it, and indeed from a number of other international data sources that are coming in.

The argument that the marginal unit of gas must always be LNG is simply not correct, because the Bill makes no provision whatsoever for the shape of UK gas demand at the point at which the gas is extracted and used. It effectively assumes that our national demand for gas will remain unchanged in perpetuity. When we are in a crisis caused by our reliance on fossil fuels and committed to a net zero transition, that assumption is patently wrong.

[Graham Stuart]

I hesitate to intervene again, but to suggest that this Bill has the assumption that our gas demand remains the same is absolute nonsense. Of course it is coming right down. We are on a net zero pathway. We are leading the world in that and our demand is falling fast; it is just that our production will fall even faster. The hon. Gentleman should not mislead the House, and I am sure he would not want to do so.

[Dr Whitehead]

I think I have already indicated that gas production is predicted to fall by 95% by 2050. The addition of one or two licences will not make any difference at all to that precipitous fall in practice, as it will be four days more of gas over the period. That is the basis for why we say that the Government’s commitment to net zero transition while producing large amounts of additional gas and oil is patently wrong. We should be sprinting towards clean energy. We should be investing in renewables, rather than banning them, as the Conservatives have done with onshore wind. We should be saving the country billions by moving to decarbonise power systems by 2030 and making far greater efforts to insulate homes and reduce gas demand there.

On climate change, on energy security, on jobs and on bills, this Bill has nothing to offer but false promises that frankly insult the public’s intelligence. To support this Bill, we would need to believe that we can double down on the causes of the cost of living crisis and still solve it; that we can somehow defy geology in the North sea and change the fundamental nature of international energy markets; and that we can ignore all the science and credible experts on climate change and still meet our commitments, including our commitment to transition away from fossil fuels made by the Minister at COP28 a few short months ago. It is clearly nonsense, but it is emblematic of a Government who have run out of ideas and run out of road—a Government who can see the many real challenges our country faces, but have no answer to them beyond confected political drama. In their misguided pursuit of a political dividing line, they have shrunk our country on the international stage, made us hypocrites in the eyes of the world and opened the door in this country to a new divisive politics on climate change that I sincerely believe the Ministers sitting opposite me today are not comfortable with, do not want as their legacy and will come to regret profoundly. This Bill will deliver nothing, but it threatens much. For that reason, I urge the House to vote against it.