Contribution
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak to Amendment 60, and also to Amendment 74, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. Amendment 60 relates to the Government’s projection of 650,000 jobs. This is to be achieved over five years, when we achieve net zero. It is a very ambitious target. I hope it can be achieved, but there are questions related to where those jobs will come from, whether we have the skills and whether jobs will be lost in the process as well.
I make no secret of the fact that I live in the north-east of Scotland and I represented the constituency of Gordon for 32 years. I have monitored the oil and gas industry from its very early days in the North Sea right through to the present, and the massive contribution it has made to the UK economy throughout that time—not just in terms of money but in terms of technology, the balance of payments and skills. I accept that the Government have said that we will continue to operate our North Sea oil and gas fields and that we will continue to have oil and gas in the mix, to and through net zero.
My basic concern on jobs is that we do not expand jobs in renewables at the expense of the naturally declining jobs in oil and gas: that we do not accelerate that process, especially as we do not quite know how fast we can achieve this creation of jobs. We do know right now that we have at least 200,000 people employed directly in the oil and gas industry, and many more in the supply chain, which, of course, is also part of the supply chain for the renewables sector. Not all of the skills are directly transferable, but many of them are. Provided that the transition is orderly, just and sensible, it will be possible for the decline in the oil and gas industry to be orderly while we expand the renewables sector and hopefully deliver the jobs that the Government are looking for.
I was surprised that, when I suggested that we were going to have oil and gas in the mix to and through net zero—which all projections from all sources say we will—there were people who thought we should just shut down our oil and gas now. There are people who say that. When I asked, “Why would you do that?”, I was told, “Well, you can set an example to the world. Yes, we will need oil and gas, but plenty of other people produce it, so we will just import it”. So we close down our own industry and then import it from other people—further away, with a higher carbon footprint and less efficient—so undermining UK technology and expertise. So my plea is: let us have the jobs, but not at the expense of existing jobs. Let us have an orderly transition that maximises them both.
I was at an awards ceremony for the industry in Aberdeen last month, and what impressed me was the wonderful array of bright, young people engaged in the sector who were very committed to the transition to net zero. But they were equally aware that oil and gas were part of the transition and that many of the supply-chain companies were now investing in technology relevant to the industry, including subsea connections, cabling and electronics. A lot of the things that have been developed in the North Sea are transferable to oil and gas, and that is a welcome factor; but let us not accelerate the loss of jobs while we build the new ones up. That is the simple point that I wish to make.
Turning to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I am in the same situation as him, so I declare an interest. I live in a village in Aberdeenshire where we do not have gas. In the dying days of the nationalised British Gas, I was involved in a fairly high-profile argument with the then chair of British Gas, Sir Denis Rooke, making the point that he and his company, in the run-up to privatisation, were not interested in extending the gas network. I had some success: I sort of shamed him into it and managed to get some substantial extensions in the dying days of British Gas in my own constituency. I was also right that, once British Gas was privatised, there was no more extension of the gas network beyond what already existed. Those were the days when everybody wanted gas, and gas was the option.
For many parts of the country, however, gas is not an option and the main alternative is oil. The House of Commons produced an interesting report at the end of last year, which I had a look at. I point out to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, that it says that the number of households off the gas grid is 4.5 million—a higher figure than his. I do not know which is right, but it is quite a lot.
It then did an analysis of the proportion of households that use oil for central heating. In England and Wales, it was 3.5% in total; in Scotland, it was 5.1%; and, in Northern Ireland, it was 49.5%. I suggest that that is an issue. The other point—and, again, I thank the House of Commons Library for this—is that it gave a constituency analysis. The overall figure does not quite focus on some of the communities that are much more dependent—ones that I know well—so I picked out three constituencies to give the House an example. The highest was Caithness and Sutherland, where 31% of households have oil central heating. The second-highest was my former constituency of Gordon and Buchan, at 26%, while the neighbouring constituency of West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine was 22%.