Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 26th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I shall do my best to not be long-winded and boring.

This Bill is yet another example of this Government’s colossal stupidity. They are a deliquescent Government that really should stop putting Bills through both Houses. It is also quite dangerous. It is a climate change deniers’ charter. I guess it came from Tufton Street and all the Conservative Party donors attached to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, probably helped by people in the oil and gas industry kindly donating millions of pounds to the Conservative Party.

These people make profit from pollution. They want to carry on doing so for as long as they can. They do not like net zero and renewables because they mean less money for them. They do not like the idea of less plastic in the world because plastic means oil and that is a money-spinner for them as well. They do not like new solar and heat pumps being standard on new homes because this affects their profits too. These people are killing the planet while helping to keep the Conservative Party solvent.

What is their solution to the climate crisis facing us all? It is carbon capture and storage, on which the Government are spending billions. At the same time—the irony—they are bringing in this Bill, which will severely damage nature’s own carbon capture and storage system: the ocean. It has proof of concept over probably a couple of billion years. This is far more efficient than anything we can dream up.

As an aside, I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, talk about Labour’s commitments after the next election. I shall look forward to helping it and holding it to account on that.

The Government’s big idea is to use taxpayers’ money to pump all the carbon down oil and gas wells so that they can make a lot of money from it. Perhaps the Minister can confirm this.

It is almost five years since Theresa May signed the 2050 net-zero target into law. We have now wasted one-sixth of the time available to meet the 2050 target. This Government have failed to set out any realistic plans to reach net zero. The solutions are obvious. As I have said before, I can give the Government the Green Party’s manifesto to make sure that they have enough policies to do what they ought to be doing. The solutions include rapid delivery of insulation, energy efficiency and energy reduction on a street-by-street model, and a wholesale transition to renewables, including onshore wind, with a full-scale retraining programme of the existing workforce. We should send a clear message to investors and businesses that fossil fuel extraction is a dying industry, carrying stranded assets, with no prospect of making a return on any investment.

Instead of reducing fossil fuel production and ending new licences in line with COP agreements, the Conservatives bring us this Bill. In justification, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has claimed that domestic oil and gas is four times cleaner than imported oil and gas. This is such incoherent nonsense. I can hardly believe that anyone could say this, let alone someone in that position. We do not keep our oil. It also means that we would be using international markets just as they are at the moment.

The Bill establishes a totally meaningless test that new licences can be granted so long as imports of fossil fuels exceed exports. This would allow the UK to extract every last drop of oil and gas from the North Sea, as long as we continue to import more and more oil and gas to balance it out.

Finally, the continued expansion of fossil fuel production is incompatible with a liveable planet for humans and for millions of species. It does not matter from where on earth those fossil fuels are extracted or what the balance of trade is; we need to cut our carbon emissions massively.

I was absolutely astounded to see the environmental statement in the Bill, which says that

“the Bill will not have the effect of reducing the level of environmental protection provided for by any existing environmental law”.

That is nonsense.

I wish all noble Lords a happy Easter and that they come back refreshed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

It is the industry that is the dinosaur, not you.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

That was very kind of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. She is an apologist for the noble Baroness, Lady Young. Now I have almost forgotten what I was going to ask. Is the noble Baroness, Lady Young, happy that we should do without carbon capture and storage at a risk, according to the estimates of the Climate Change Committee, of doubling the total cost—trillions of pounds—of meeting the net-zero target?