North Sea Oil and Gas Industry

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

First, can I just say what a contrast it is when someone rightly responds to this concerning issue in a serious way and does not talk down the industry? This is where the House should stand taller and recognise that that company is doing good work and that there are 2,000 workers out in the North sea right now carrying out their duties. We want to ensure that there is a viable future for the company, and we are doing everything that we can in that space. All the signs are that it is a growing, successful business, and we should recognise that and talk it up, not talk it down, as the Conservative party seems hellbent on doing.

On the hon. Lady’s wider point, she is right to say that the future of clean energy involves tens of thousands of jobs across Scotland and hundreds of thousands across the UK, but that we need to ramp those jobs up as quickly as possible and ensure that people can achieve those jobs. We are doing what we can around looking at the skills framework, but we also ensuring that, through the investments we are making through Great British Energy, those jobs come forward much faster and that people are supported to move from jobs in oil and gas into jobs that have a real correlation in skills. We are picking this work up after the failure of the previous Government to have any plan. We are moving as fast as we can, and we will see more on that North sea plan in the coming weeks.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I have to say that this is a very underpowered urgent question. It is similar to a two-stroke engine attached to a rowing boat—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. When I decide on an urgent question, I do not need to be questioned about how urgent it is, or whether it is like a two-stroke engine or a 50 cc—actually, some of us think it might be a three litre.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I was, of course, referring to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), who knows full well that he has missed the story here. Petrofac went into administration because the Dutch Government cut a contract for offshore wind farm developments. I dare say that that raises concerns about the viability for finance and the supply chain for the offshore wind farm industry, but as the Minister has pointed out, and as the shadow Minister well knows, Petrofac is successful in the UK. It has 2,000 jobs in the UK and it has contracts in the UK, so we need less scaremongering from this underpowered Opposition and more assurance from the Minister that he will look after those jobs.

[Michael Shanks]

I will just reflect on something that my hon. Friend said. This is a global company, and it has not had its troubles to seek for some time. It was subject to an investigation back in 2017, and it has gone through a number of restructuring routes since then. Ultimately, that process came to an end when it lost a significant contract from TenneT, one of the Dutch transmission operators. This is a company that has faced global headwinds for some time, but I repeat to the House that the UK business has a viable long-term future. It is already growing, it is successful, and we have a responsibility across this House to talk up British businesses and the workers in those jobs, not to talk them down.