North Sea Oil and Gas
Debate between Steve Yemm and Torcuil Crichton(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Torcuil Crichton
I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I hear him and I hope Ministers hear him as well. In that transition, we on the west coast and he in the Northern Isles have a privileged vantage point. We look eastwards to the North sea and the jobs and fortunes that it has provided to our islands, and we look westwards into the Atlantic and see the wealth of wind, the promise of renewable energy and the next chapter of our country’s story.
The Minister knows that we in the Western Isles have the highest concentration of community-owned renewables anywhere in the UK. I believe that communities should have a big share in that new industry and in the renewables fortune. The Select Committee on Energy Security and Net Zero, of which the hon. Member for Bromsgrove is a member, recently recommended that community power schemes should have priority access to the grid.
Communities and councils should have the right—indeed, they already have the right; it is just that it has not been enacted—to take a 20% stake in any commercial renewables scheme in their area, onshore or offshore, and commercial wind farm companies ought to be incentivised through the planning system to see communities as partners, not just as peanut beneficiaries of their schemes. In that way, my community and those across Scotland that have earned a fortune for this country and for commercial companies in the North sea will have a share in the future and the fortune of renewable energy.
Let me be clear that I support a pragmatic transition in which we utilise domestic gas production rather than importing it, and support Scottish skills and jobs as we move the workforce into renewables and elsewhere. I accept that, as the hon. Member said, there may not be a like-for-like match between existing jobs and emerging jobs. The North sea is one of the most dangerous environments to work in anywhere in the world, and the pay reflects that.
But this is not just a question of pay. It is not just a question of economics, climate change or tax regimes, important as all those things are. It is just as much a question of who we are—a question of identity and belonging, and the relationship that we have with place and our place of work, which is a powerful political emotion that we should take note of. And as my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) said, it is not an either/or. Our task is not to choose between the two, but to manage the transition from one to the other responsibly, pragmatically and in a way that protects the country’s energy security and, crucially, ensures that we enrich the communities that have already powered this nation for two generations.
Steve Yemm
On a point of order, Ms Furniss. In my contribution, I neglected to draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, in particular the donations that were made by Unite and GMB to my election campaign. I would like to put that on the record.