Joe Morris

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) on securing a debate that is so incredibly important to my constituents. Drilling at Rosebank would be a mistake for our climate goals and it would not accomplish the very things that many voices arguing in favour of it claim it would. I represent a community where fuel poverty is real; it is real in those rural homes that struggle with insulation and it is real for the families that come to my surgeries and tell me they struggle with the cost of heating oil. I do not believe that drilling at Rosebank would help those families; indeed, it would continue our destructive addiction to fossil fuels at the precise time we should be looking at the geopolitical situation and weaning ourselves off them. I have not discovered this issue out of political convenience. I have always been a proud member of the environmental movement. My constituency is one where protecting our landscape is paramount. It is the land of Hadrian’s wall, swathes of peatland, the Tyne river and, until a few years ago, the Sycamore Gap tree. My constituents have been proud of the natural beauty of Northumberland for generations. Protecting and conserving what we have should not be a left-wing idea; it should be the oldest idea that we have. Over the summer, I surveyed my constituents. Hundreds of people took the time to answer and 89% said protecting the environment and fighting climate change is a key priority for them. When I asked whether they would support granting new oil and gas licences or expanding current drilling, 98% said no.