Chris McDonald

I start by thanking the hon. Gentleman sincerely for welcoming the support for Grangemouth—it really must be the season of good will. On this occasion, I can assure him that he is correct: this is the last ethylene plant, so we can agree on that this time. The hon. Gentleman talked about the business environment for the chemicals industry. I thought I had set that out reasonably well in my statement, but perhaps not. I shall just say a bit more. On energy costs, we already have the energy-intensive industries scheme and, as I mentioned, we have increased the level of the supercharger. The British industrial competitiveness scheme will come in in 2027 with an additional 25% reduction. He may be interested to know that our electricity costs are already more competitive than many countries in Europe, but not France and Germany, which are the benchmark for me. That is why we are introducing the British industrial competitiveness scheme. On gas, after policy costs we are already competitive. These businesses trade internationally, and our success in striking international trade deals with the EU, the US and India, and with Korea just this week, means that there are more market opportunities all the time. The shadow Secretary of State made the contrast with ExxonMobil. I reiterate the point that this Government —the Government would always do this, as I am sure he would expect—are investing in a business with a viable and sustainable future where there is a viable business plan, primarily because the owner of the business has invested in the business over time. As I said a few weeks ago in my statement on Mossmorran, ExxonMobil had failed to invest in that plant, and that is why it said that there was a £1 billion investment gap. On jobs, in the clean energy sector we are creating 40,000 new jobs in Scotland alone and 800,000 jobs across the whole of the country. This is a transition that the Government are actively engaging in and managing. The shadow Secretary of State says that a Conservative Government would do something different from what they did last time, but they did not do anything last time. When Ineos announced in November 2023 that it was going to close its refinery, the Conservative Prime Minister at the time said, “That’s a commercial decision.” They did nothing about it—nothing at all. Investment in this area is very important, so I refer the shadow Secretary of State to an article that was published this morning by my noble Friend Lord Stockwood, the Minister for Investment. He talked very carefully about the international investment environment and the performance of the UK economy and lamented the fact that so many people in this country—so many Cassandras, such as the shadow Secretary of State—are constantly talking the economy down and frightening investors away. I think it is about time he recognised the success of our clean energy industries and the success of this Government’s industrial strategy and stopped talking Britain down.