Michael Shanks

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As a fellow by-election MP, I can agree with the hon. Member that we need to dine out on our by-elections as much as we can; he was quite right to raise that. The hon. Member is right about the process. I will not comment on timelines for upcoming decisions, but over the past two years, we have put in place a process to allow consideration of scope 3 emissions and consultation on that, and then to get the consenting decisions back into the process. That has all now been done, so now, the process will be just consideration of individual applications, rather than us having to go through all that again. Obviously, there is consideration to be given to upcoming consenting decisions. That consideration will be based on the evidence submitted, and not an artificial timeline. The hon. Member talked about common sense. It is really important to make this point. The common-sense, pragmatic position for the future of the north-east of Scotland is to say, as I do, that oil and gas will continue to be important for a long time—I have been in Aberdeen often enough to know how important it is to the jobs there—but that must go hand in hand with us investing as much as we can in the long-term industries that will create jobs there. That is why I talked about decommissioning in my statement; there is a huge opportunity there for jobs and the supply chain in the north-east. I hope that we can get a bit more cross-party consensus, maybe not on everything to do with oil and gas, but on the need to invest in supply chains and industry, so that we can build the renewables of the future.