Michael Shanks

My hon. Friend is a great champion for making sure that the transition has workers at its heart, both in his constituency and across Scotland. The developer estimates that there will be 27 direct jobs on the project, which is all that we are able to take into account with regard to the decision that I can talk about today. Of course, a significant number of jobs in oil and gas come from the wider impacts on the supply chain—things such as travel to and from offshore rigs and wider jobs in the north-east of Scotland—and jobs that might otherwise have been lost are also safeguarded. It is important to look at both sides. On the question of jobs, I have always been really clear that we cannot just look at one side of a balance sheet and the jobs being lost. Energy transition means people moving from one part of an industry to another. We should not just look at jobs being lost in one area without following through to where those jobs end up, whether it is in other parts of the energy industry, in nuclear, in defence or in advanced manufacturing. One of the things we will launch soon is the future jobs service, which will support workers all the way through that process, giving them the necessary retraining so they can take up the opportunities in the future. That is how we will keep the workforce delivering in energy in Scotland.