Al Carns

Before I address what the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) has passionately talked about, I want to be very clear that I agree that climate change is a security threat. It is something that we must collectively address, and I support the effort to reduce emissions. However, the hon. Member’s narrative worries me. I hear a great deal about what we should stop doing and far less about the economic, ecological and security consequences of those decisions. Britain emitted 367 million tonnes of greenhouse gases last year. That sounds like a lot, but it represents less than 1% of total global emissions. That is less than 1%. That does not mean that we should abandon our responsibility to reduce them—far from it. But we must be honest about the scale of our contribution, the cost that we ask people to bear up and down the country and whether our policies actually reduce global emissions or simply move them elsewhere. The reality is that Britain will continue to need oil for decades. That cannot be refuted. Refusing to produce it here does nothing on its own to eliminate that demand—it just does not. It simply increases our reliance on imports, which can carry their own environmental costs. In 2024, Britain spent nearly £52 billion importing oil and petroleum products, leaving us with a net trade deficit of £24 billion. Before Putin invaded Ukraine, Russia supplied around a third of our diesel imports. It could be thought that that experience might have taught us something, yet we are remarkably relaxed about making Britain more dependent on overseas supplies. Next, there is the export argument, which we have heard a lot. We are repeatedly told that North sea oil is exported as though that settles the argument. Much of it goes to European refineries and returns to Britain as fuel. Commissioned research estimates that around 65% of UK continental shelf crude oil ultimately reaches the British market directly or through European refining. My final point is that before we embark on this journey, we must look people and businesses in the eyes and tell them that we are going to cancel it all.