North Sea Oil and Gas

Graham Leadbitter Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your leadership today, Ms Furniss. I commend the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for securing this important debate.

The North sea oil and gas sector is of critical importance for the many of my constituents who work in the sector. Businesses across the north and north-east of Scotland—and far beyond—either directly operate facilities or provide specialist services and a very substantial supply chain. The oil and gas industry lost 70,000 jobs under the previous Conservative Government, and it continues to lose them under the current Labour Government. It is a complex challenge, and there are far too many people who, like the Tories, are backing full-scale oil and gas extraction with little to no focus on renewables or, like Labour, have a full-on focus on renewables while forcing the decline of the oil and gas sector and ongoing mass job losses. Neither of those extreme positions provides a solution to the challenge. While we must strive to substantially reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, there will still be a need to use oil and gas for many years to come.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

Can the hon. Member confirm the SNP’s position on this issue? Does it unequivocally support new licences in the North sea?

[Graham Leadbitter]

The SNP backs new licences with the normal environmental assessments and everything that goes with that, which, the hon. Lady will understand, is part of the regulatory process that the previous Conservative Government also followed. Every Government would have an appropriate regulatory and licensing regime.

The roads infrastructure, the foundations of installations, the fuels currently relied on by vessels transporting offshore wind towers and turbines, and even composite turbine blades rely heavily on oil and gas production. More significantly, the skills required to deliver the renewables revolution that will be at the heart of Scotland’s industrial economy are the same skills currently utilised in oil and gas. Those who wish to force the decline of the North sea without creating renewable jobs will do to the oil and gas communities what the Tories under Thatcher did to our coal and steel communities. That would be unforgivable.

[Douglas Lumsden]

Draft 1 of the Scottish Government’s energy strategy was released over three years ago, with a presumption against new oil and gas. Does the hon. Member agree that that is damaging, and that it is time the SNP scrapped that policy?

[Graham Leadbitter]

The hon. Member probably needs to keep up a bit because that position has already been scrapped. That was articulated by the First Minister.

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

Given the bombshell news the hon. Gentleman has just delivered to the Chamber—that we have a new energy strategy from the Scottish Government—when will that be published?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is not keeping up with the current debate because the question was about the SNP’s policy. The strategy will be published in due course.

Those who believe that we should drill, drill, drill with little to no investment in the renewables transition are simply pushing the cliff edge further away without dealing with the cliff edge itself. That would also be unforgivable. The industry is clear that it needs the Government to protect oil and gas jobs while building up the renewables sector to transfer those jobs to—a focus not on one or the other, but on a transition from one to the other. It is abundantly clear that neither the Tories nor Labour has a serious focus on that transition.

A new report out from the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University—a highly respected Aberdeen institute—makes for stark reading. The report predicts a further 18,000 job losses in the north-east of Scotland by 2035—1,600 jobs every single year. Crucially, the report then points to the huge benefits that can be achieved from a strong transition to renewables. The report’s author states:

“That is not a marginal advantage. It is a structural head start that few other regions in the UK or Europe can match.”

He goes on to say:

“The priority must be to prevent these losses in the first place, not simply to manage the consequences after the fact.”

What this needs now is the investment, policy, alignment and co-ordination to match. That is really simple. Scotland has enormous opportunity to reindustrialise with renewable energy technologies, but to do so requires existing North sea jobs to be protected, or the loss of those vital skills will stall that transition to renewables. There is a so-called “Goldilocks zone”, where growth in renewable jobs more than matches reductions in oil and gas jobs, but crucially, only if the transition is embraced and the oil and gas sector is protected through that transition.

Other scenarios have devastating consequences for jobs and the people and communities of north-east Scotland. Pragmatism and pace must be the watchwords on energy policy if we are to make the most of this enormous renewables opportunity in front of us and ensure a future for the workers of the north-east. It is abundantly clear that mass job losses under the Tories and the undermining of those vital jobs by Labour are leading to economic and social pain across the north-east of Scotland.

The people best placed to support the transition in Scotland and protect jobs and communities are the people who live and work in Scotland. That is why Scotland must have the full powers and control of energy policy that come with independence.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)]

It is a pleasure to serve in this debate, Ms Furniss. I thank the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas); at least I know his constituency, even if the shadow Minister does not—so much for being an hon. Friend. I also thank those who have contributed to the debate; the shadow Minister reeled off all the constituencies, so I do not have to, and I am eternally grateful to him.

I warmly welcome the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Douglas Lumsden). I was also a by-election MP and know what it feels like to arrive in this place without a cohort of 100 other new people. I wish him the best of luck finding his way around this building. I got on hugely well with his predecessor and appreciated his contributions—at the risk of misleading the House, I must say for the benefit of Hansard that that was sarcasm, but I welcome the hon. Member none the less. I also welcome the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is ever charming and kind to us all. We could all do with a daily affirmation from him in our debates. I certainly appreciate it.

This debate has been helpful for a number of reasons. The shadow Minister and I know each other’s arguments well enough by now, so there was nothing hugely illuminating in his speech, and I suspect there will not be for him in what I have to say. It was illuminating to hear from Scottish National party that it now has an energy strategy, but it is being kept secret. I hope we will see that strategy published soon, because for three years we have not known the SNP’s policy on oil and gas and a whole range of other things.

That matters for the industry that the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) says—and I believe him—that he cares about. It will help the industry to have clarity on the SNP’s policies. On devolving energy policy, many of the things he calls for, including further investment in renewables, have been driven by the strength of being part of the United Kingdom, of pooling and sharing investment in those hugely successful projects in Scotland, which I suspect would not be possible—[Interruption.] He is about to intervene to tell me how it would be possible, if they were devolved, to fund all those renewable projects and a whole series of other things, and how the electricity market would work in an independent Scotland. I am sure he will briefly explain that to us.

[Graham Leadbitter]

That is not the reason for my intervention. If there is such a drive to get investment and renewables in Scotland—there is some, though it is not nearly fast enough—why did it take two years to make a decision about Ardersier? After two years, the rug was pulled from underneath that with a simple no. If that was the decision the Government were going to come to, surely it could have been made sooner, and the project could have moved on and had some investment. That has the potential for 1,500 jobs on site and a further 4,500 in the supply chain.

[Michael Shanks]

I have made my position very clear on that project. We were carrying out national security assessments, which should always rightly take priority. The First Minister of Scotland has been briefed on the security grounds for doing that. He is aware of why we reached the decision that we reached. I am obviously not going to comment further on that. Our national security always comes first.

Something that I have always said in this role is that our domestic production in the UK does matter. It sustains jobs and it delivers tax receipts and the gas that flows into our pipes every single day. We are not a Government that are for turning off the taps, and we never have been. But we are for recognising that a transition is under way and that investing in what comes next is critical. I am afraid that that is at the heart of the problem with the argument put forward by the Opposition, because they say that we need to build up the jobs that come next, but then oppose all the decisions that drive forward that investment. They criticise that there are not enough jobs coming from renewables but then say that we should not invest in the renewables projects that create those jobs. That is not a coherent argument to have.