Michael Shanks

Also in the Energy Independence Bill is a commitment to support the management of existing fields by introducing transitional energy certificates. Those will enable some oil and gas production in already explored areas that are near licensed fields linked by a tie-back. At its heart, this is about taking a pragmatic approach to the North sea, providing long-term stability, maintaining jobs and ensuring that the sector continues to make an important contribution to the UK economy. I am sorry that the SNP seems to have changed its position from supporting that exact climate-leading position. I am not quite sure what its position is from one week to another, but I am sure that when this much-vaunted energy strategy is published at some point—we have only been waiting three years—we will know what the SNP’s real position on this is. Many right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Dunfermline and Dollar (Graeme Downie) and for Hartlepool (Mr Brash), made powerful comments about the importance of jobs being at the heart of this transition. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline and Dollar rightly made the point that we need an energy mix, which means not “or” but “and”: having oil and gas alongside the push to renewables as quickly as possible. Those jobs are critical to what we need to do in the energy transition, and we have to hold on to them in the UK. We have been ambitious about the number of clean energy jobs that we can deploy, tripling them in Scotland and at least doubling them in Wales, Northern Ireland and almost every region of England, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs across the UK by the end of the decade. These are not jobs arriving at some point in the future. Sumitomo opened the first UK high-voltage direct current subsea cable factory with more than 200 jobs; more than 1,500 jobs have been created in the electricity network sector in Scotland; and today we saw two new projects at Vanguard East and Vanguard West, with 2,400 jobs, as well as new jobs from SSE investment in Berwick Bank. These jobs are being created right now in communities right across the country, and we need to support even more of that investment in clean energy into the future. A number of points have been raised today about the either/or choice between oil and gas and our move to renewables. I want to be clear that our pathway must be towards the deployment, as quickly as possible, of clean power right across the country. Every single day we remain exposed to fossil fuel markets is a day our constituents pay the price in their bills—and in a very uncertain world, we no longer have the energy security on which we once relied. The long-term future of this country does not lie in fossil fuels from the North sea. The Government seek to make decisions that take a genuinely pragmatic view of the coming decades, in which we will require oil and gas in our energy mix, and ensure that we get as much economic advantage as possible. Renewables and nuclear is the economic opportunity of the 21st century. It is also a route to protecting bill payers and energy security and to meeting our hugely important climate commitments. Regardless of what decision the Energy Secretary makes on Rosebank, that transition will remain central to this Government’s objectives. Since we came into office two and a half years ago, we have consented enough clean energy to power more than 20 million homes. We have kicked off a new golden age of nuclear. Some £110 billion of clean energy investment has flowed into clean energy industries. We have saved millions of pounds every single day on oil and gas purchases that we no longer required, as the strait of Hormuz closed, because we could rely on home-grown, secure power here in the UK. I am proud of that record. There is much, much more to do and we are absolutely determined to do it.