ExxonMobil: Mossmorran

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

I am pleased to meet another Member from a steelworker family. In fact, Ravenscraig is a plant that I never had the opportunity to work on, but I worked with many people who did, and they always spoke of the great sense of camaraderie among the workforce there. I absolutely refute the suggestion that this Government are not attracting investment. In fact, for Scotland alone, we have seen £800 million of investment in battery storage projects by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and £55 million has been awarded to the port of Cromarty Firth for small floating offshore wind. These are the industries of the future and the industries in which people in Scotland will be able to work in—in fact, they already are. The real responsibility of Government is to ensure that we help people to transition across into these industries. Fundamentally, that is the difference between this Government and every previous Conservative Government—and certainly the one in office over the past 14 years.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The Minister says that he and the Government have no bias against the people of Scotland, but they certainly have not done very well out of this Government—1,000 jobs being lost a month in the North sea, and now today’s announcement. He attributes it all to a commercial decision. That commercial decision was made in a hostile economic environment. He has told us some of the factors there: carbon taxes imposed by this Government, lack of supply as a result of the reduction in North sea production, and the energy prices as a result of the increasing reliance on wind energy. The common thread through it all is the Government’s net zero policies. Why can they not be honest with us and just tell us that these net zero policies are robbing the United Kingdom of all its energy-intensive industries and that this will not be the last job loss announcement that we will hear in this House?

[Chris McDonald]

The right hon. Member speaks of 1,000 jobs a month being lost in the North sea oil and gas industry. That is not a figure I recognise, so I would be happy if he would share the source of that figure with me. However, I have some figures of my own to trade, if he wishes to know them. We are expecting 800,000 jobs to be created in the clean energy industries. We have attracted £52 billion of private sector investment since July 2024, and £5 billion per year of gross value added to the UK economy from carbon capture and storage alone by 2050.