Michael Shanks

Contribution

The Chair of the Select Committee makes an important point, which is that the failure to acknowledge that the transition is already under way is to bury your head in the sand and pretend that everything will carry on as it was. The reality is that in the past decade a third of the oil and gas workforce—70,000 workers, as my hon. Friend says—have already lost their jobs and the transition is under way. We are determined to ensure not only that the transition leads to a future in the North sea energy sector that, yes, involves oil and gas for many years to come, but that we build the industries of the future now so that there is no gap. The alternative is to do what the previous Government did, which was to pretend that the transition was not under way and then somehow deal with the shock that would come when North sea oil and gas inevitably declined to the point where workers’ jobs were not protected. We are determined to build what comes next and to protect good, well-paid jobs in the North sea for many decades to come.

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