Powering Up Britain

Debate between David Mundell and Graham Stuart

Thursday 30th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

We have not cut our funding commitments; we have moved to a one-year allocation. The budgets are set based on our assessment of projects and where they are in the planning and permissions process. Those budgets, if projects can come forward and put themselves in a different position, can be altered by Ministers. I think we are in a fantastic position. We are the world leader and we have put in a ring-fenced pot specifically for tidal, so I suggest to the hon. Lady and her constituents that they should be celebrating Government support for tidal. We are the world leader, we are going further and our support continues. I look forward to visiting Scotland, and indeed Orkney, next week with a view to learning more about tidal potential, an enthusiasm for which I share with her.

[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend not just on his statement, but on his long-standing passion for this subject. Perhaps he can expand on something he referenced a moment ago: the fact that liquid gas imported in tankers creates two and a half times as many emissions as domestically produced gas in the North sea. Does he not agree with me that it is incomprehensible that the SNP and now Labour oppose domestic production, which is not only bad for jobs, but bad for the environment?

[Graham Stuart]

My right hon. Friend is, of course, absolutely right. The hon. Member for Leeds East (Richard Burgon) talked about growing our oil and gas. We are net importers of oil and gas, and production in the mature basin of the North sea is falling. Only new investment can unlock the greening and electrification of production, with even lower emissions in sight from the North sea than from tankered gas coming in from abroad. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we did as the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), said at Davos and had no new oil and gas licences, we would not stop using gas; we would just import more of it from abroad with higher emissions attached, with no jobs, no tax and no long-term benefit to the United Kingdom. That is not a tenable policy. I hope that, apart from their far-left colleagues on the far Labour Back Benches, everyone else in the Labour party recognises that is a crazy position and it needs to change.