Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)

My Lords, I think the noble Lord is being unfair. Of course we want to see workers who are being displaced by changes in the industrial sector being helped and supported as much as possible, with additional training to enable them to accept good jobs in other sectors. At Grangemouth, a support facility is being made available, with training need analysts for each worker, and I gather that 300 such employees have already requested to take advantage of that. There are open evenings, career fairs and direct engagement with local employers. As for the North Sea, I just make the point to the noble Lord that, although he has an obsession with gas, the fact is, as he knows, that the UK continental shelf is a declining basin. In the last 10 years, 70,000 people lost their jobs under the stewardship of the Government he served. I did not see much effort there by that Government to establish programmes to provide good jobs. We are at the early stages. We are working very hard. The green energy sector, including nuclear, has huge opportunities and we need to do everything we can to ensure that skilled workers being displaced in some areas of the energy sector are given every opportunity to take up new roles.