Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

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

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Douglas Ross]

I respect that ruling, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I do not think it is reopening anything, because we have not got any further. I have tried at Second Reading, in Committee, and now at Third Reading. Why is it so difficult for SNP Members who represent communities in the north-east of Scotland to say what is actually in their own draft energy strategy? It says there is a “presumption” against new “exploration” for oil and gas “in the North sea”. The fact that the hon. Member for Angus cannot simply stand up and give his own position tells us exactly how people in the north-east of Scotland feel. The SNP has breathtaking hypocrisy on this issue. It wants to run down the oil and gas sector. It is no friend of the oil and gas sector. Of course, the SNP asked the Green party into government—that tells us everything we need to know.

[Sammy Wilson]

Was the hon. Member as confused as I was by the answer given by the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan): that somehow or other there is no need for a licence to drill for oil to create and protect oil jobs, and that we can protect oil jobs by not extracting any oil from the ground?

[Douglas Ross]

That is just one example of the mixed and confused messaging from the SNP which, sadly, we hear far too much in this Chamber. We have heard it across the north-east this week and it has dominated much of our proceedings.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

May I first say that we fully support the Bill and the objectives that have been set? As has been said time and again during the debate, we will require oil and gas for decades—and it may as well be British oil and gas, because that means jobs in Britain, tax revenue, and reducing our imports. If we are to continue to use oil, there are very good reasons why we should give licences for its production.

I find some of the arguments made today very strange. Passionate speeches have been made against this Bill on the basis that—let me paraphrase the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead)—it does not do anything that is not already being done. He went further and said that even though that is the case, civil servants must have “held their noses” when writing the Bill. If it does not do anything that is not already being done, why on earth is there such passionate opposition to it? [Interruption.] A Member asks from a sedentary position about the climate emergency. Apparently, one of the arguments against the Bill is that it will provide only another three days’ worth of oil and gas. We are hardly going to push up world temperatures if another three days’ worth of oil and gas is drilled out of the North sea, but we will ensure years of jobs for people currently working in the gas industry, guarantee years of finance for much-needed public services in this country, and guarantee that we do not have to import from other countries.

Another argument used against the Bill is that it is a confected and contrived piece of legislation, designed simply to be part of the culture wars and to drive a wedge. Indeed, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) said it was “specious” and dealt with a problem that does not exist. The easy way of ensuring that the Bill does not become a confected piece of legislation or drive an artificial wedge is for those who think that it is only window dressing to make it quite clear that they would continue to allow licences to be issued. Then it would not be confected; we would know that either there is a real difference or there is no difference. I am not sure where the Labour party stands on this issue, but if, like the hon. Member for Angus, it cannot give a commitment that there would be licences granted under a Labour-controlled Administration, the Bill is not confected or specious. It is real, and people have to make a judgment: will the Bill ensure that our economy and workers can benefit from the oil we have? If so, this legislation is necessary.

Given the stance that has been adopted by the Labour party, my great worry in all this is that although the Government are trying to inject some confidence into the debate, it does not give any long-term confidence, because we will have an election this year and investors will not know whether the arguments we have heard today will lead to licences not being granted in the future.

My second concern, which has been alluded to by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), is that because we have established legally binding targets for net zero in legislation, the benefits that might come from this Bill will not be realised because they will get stuck in the courts. I have said this to the Minster before, and I say it again: legally binding targets leave the Government open to legal challenges on every piece of sensible legislation that they try to bring through this House, whether it be to alleviate the burden placed on people by their heating bills by changing the policy on heat pumps, or to reduce the impact on travel costs by not having mandatory targets for electric vehicles; I could go through a whole list of policies. This is something that we will have to revisit.

We give the Bill our support tonight. We think it is sensible, and that it gives confidence. It also shows that the Government recognise the reality: people will use oil and gas for many decades into the future, and we have to ensure that we benefit from the fact that demand is there.